Chapter 146

And when he came, he yelled her name the way he always did. He let himself fall down over her back, fully clothed except for his cock. And because she couldn’t see him, or what might be written all over his face, he buried his head in her neck.

Tyler tried to breathe. He’d spent all these years fucking other women and pretending they were her. He’d made a hobby out of it. But now he knew better.

Now he knew.

And he didn’t see how he was going to go fooling his cock into thinking that anyone else was her. That anything else was this. His breath sawed in and out of him. Everything hurt, and not from exertion. Lexi’s lips were parted as she did her own bit of panting, and her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks. He would remember this, too. It would haunt him.

Her lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes, and then she smiled over her shoulder, intimate and soft. Tyler pulled out and turned her over, lifting her up so he could get his mouth on hers. And he kissed her, haunted already while she was still right here, until they were both a little dizzy. Then they both lay there, breathless again, as the ocean crashed around outside and absolutely nothing changed between them. Because it never would. Why couldn’t he hold on to that the way he should?

“You’re going to have to go soon,” he said, because not saying it was no longer doing the trick. “Have you sorted out your plane ticket yet?”

He turned his head to look at her, stretched out beside him, and there was something stark and awful on her face. But she looked away before he could look too closely. And Tyler didn’t like the fact that she was hiding something from him, or that she was feeling something she didn’t want to share. He wouldn’t wish the hurt in him on anyone, especially not Lexi.

But he couldn’t say he hated the idea, either. If she hurt a little more, maybe she’d hurt him less. And maybe you’re a bleeding idiot, a caustic voice in him snarled.

“I keep meaning to do that,” she said softly. To the ceiling.

Tyler sighed. “You can’t hide forever, Lexi.”

“On the contrary.” And when she looked back at him, there was something wise and weary in her pretty eyes. It made the ache in him deepen. “It turns out you can hide forever. All you have to do is pretend to be blind.”

“People are blind for a whole host of reasons,” he countered. He wanted to pull her close. Or jackknife up, then storm about the room, pacing out this mess in him. But more than that, he wanted to pretend. He wanted to keep on pretending, because that was how this worked. That was how this had always worked. “And those reasons aren’t going to go away simply because a person takes a long holiday and engages in a little unexpected intimacy with an old friend.”

“It’s not unexpected to you,” she said quietly. “You told me it would happen.”

And there was a part of Tyler that wanted this so badly that he thought he might break out in blisters from the wanting.

But he wasn’t made of steel. And he knew what that look in her eyes meant. He was sure it was in his, too—the only grace in that being that it had always been in his eyes and all over his face. She wouldn’t see any shift because there hadn’t been one.

You’ll have to be fine with this as is, he told himself stoutly. Bloody martyr that he’d always been. You always thought that given the chance, she’d be head over heels in love with you. And so she is.

But he couldn’t celebrate his rightness, because it didn’t matter. It changed nothing. She was Lady Alexia Graham. And he might have put a shine on things since he’d left university, but he was still nothing more than who he was all those years ago. He’d made a silk purse out of the proverbial pig’s ear, but that didn’t change what he was. Who he was.

Money would never change where he’d come from.

And a few weeks in sunny Olkfield, taking in the Sea, didn’t change everything he knew to be true about Lady Alexia. Or, more important, Lord Fuckface himself.

Lexi might not want her arranged marriage any longer, when this was said and done. But when she got away from Tyler and flew back to Nemford, reality would trickle in. She would remember who she was. Who she’d always been. And the complexities of the life she’d planned out long before she’d decided to come down under and see what she was missing.

Tyler knew that all he had to do was give her the faintest signal, and she would tell him every last thing he’d waited his whole life to hear. That she loved him. That finally, finally, she loved him. And there was a part of him that wanted that almost more than he could bear. He reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face. He saw her eyes get glassy, and he felt that same emotion land on his chest like a block of concrete.

In a way, he’d always known she loved him. Because she hadn’t treated him like all those other boys back when. Because he was the one she called her friend.

Tyler had always held that as a sacred trust. Because he’d never been one of the wankers. He’d truly been her friend —that part hadn’t been pretending. And that meant that now, he had to be a better friend to her than she was to herself. If he bailed on her when it mattered most, he’d be no better than every last one of those tossers who’d tried to use her for their own ends. Tyler would bloody well love her enough to let her go.

He was sure he’d seen that shit embroidered on a tea towel somewhere.

She was still gazing at him, everything he’d ever wanted right there in her eyes—but he knew it wasn’t what she wanted. He never had been.

“I told you what would happen,” he agreed, and made himself sound kind. “It’s a byproduct of proper fucking, remember? I did warn you.”

Her eyes were glassier, then. And he knew he’d hurt her, he hated that he’d hurt her, but it couldn’t be helped.