But most of all, Darling’s words haunted her.
“When it’s just the two of us and we’re alone, I can forget what happened, and I’m better. Then just as I think I’m all right, it all comes barreling back and kicks me in the crotch. I can still hear you laughing out in the hallway when I needed you most. And honestly, it hurts all over again. I feel betrayed. I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but my feelings don’t have ears and they don’t listen to my head.”
Which meant she had no idea where she currently stood with Darling. Honestly, she was too scared to ask lest she find out just how little he trusted her.
So she settled on the simplest truth. “I’m the woman who loves him.”
Drake’s expression said she was completely insane. “You know he’s gay, right?”
“He’s not gay.”
He laughed until he realized she was deadly serious. “Since when?”
“Always.”
Drake scoffed. “You don’t know my brother very well, then.”
She had to bite back her own laughter. “Trust me. I know him better than most, and I definitely know him better than you do. Darling only claimed to be gay to save your mother’s life.”
“Bull. Shit.”
“No. Truth,” she said, duplicating his sharp staccato. “You can ask Maris if you don’t believe me. He’s the one who helped Darling pull the ruse off all these years.”
For a moment, she thought Drake might vomit as he finally accepted the truth. He looked positively green with sickness as he stepped away.
“Are you okay?”
He shook his head before he pinned her with a brutally cold stare. “Are you sure? Positive?”
“Absolutely. No doubt in my mind. He and I have been sleeping together for over three years now.”
Once again, he shook his head as if he couldn’t grasp the possibility that Darling had lied to him. Rage blazed deep in his blue eyes. Never had he looked more like Darling than he did right now. “I should go in there, and beat the utter shit out of him.”
She scoffed at his bravado. “I think you’d find that extremely hard to do. I’ve seen him fight. If there’s anyone better, I haven’t come across them.”
Drake held his hand up and laughed. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person? Darling never fights. He hates it.”
“And again, I’m telling you that I have seen him in battle. Many times. Bloody and fierce. He never hesitates. Your brother is a major badass with a capital ‘B.’ He’s a fully trained assassin with all the skills that entails. How do you think he took your uncle out so easily and held the guards at bay?”
Drake still looked like someone had sucker punched him. “I’m such a stupid bastard,” he breathed. “How could I have missed seeing it?” He winced as if some bad memory had slapped him. “Damn, the shit I’ve said to him over the years for…”
Whatever it was, he didn’t finish naming it.
She rubbed his arm comfortingly. “Don’t beat yourself up, Drake. Siblings fight. It’s what we do.”
“No,” he breathed. “Not like I did. Until I was fifteen, I was a total asshole to him, in ways you can’t begin to imagine. I honestly don’t know why he even speaks to me, never mind tolerates my presence, now. You know how he got that long scar on his face, don’t you?”
“He fought with Ryn.”
“Yeah. Because of me.” The pain that one word betrayed was so deep that it put an instant lump in her throat for him. The self-loathing in his eyes was hard to look at. “That fight would never have happened had I not been a first-rank bastard.”
“I don’t understand.”
Drake ground his teeth so viciously that his jaw muscles protruded. “I was only eight when my father died, and honestly, I barely remember the man. Still, I didn’t want to go back to school after the funeral. I wasn’t ready. I needed my family around me, especially my mother, but Darling made me leave. He literally picked me up and carried me out of my room and forced me onto the shuttle without any explanation other than I was better off at school.”
She felt terrible for Drake. It had to be awful to be so young and alone after something so tragic. She knew how lost she’d been when her parents had died. The only thing that had kept her going after her father’s death had been Sorche.
“He was trying to protect you.”