Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

“You mean other women?” she asked, and a brief burst of jealousy flared inside her at the prospect of him with other women. Of course, he hadn’t been celibate over the years, but the thought of him with someone else was like a hot poker jabbing her flesh.

He ran a hand across his jaw, shaking his head. “Just people in general. My brother Ryan, and even Shan for a while. They wanted me to visit her, but I just couldn’t.”

“Do you think it’s because you were closest to your father, or just because that’s simply how you feel?” she asked as the plane began to level out, nearing its cruising altitude.

“Probably both.”

“Do you think that will ever change? Your feelings for her?”

“I don’t see how it could. Unless she was found to be not guilty,” he said with a scoff, as if that were truly impossible.

“Is there a chance of that happening?”

“Not a chance in hell, as far as I can see,” he said, then cocked his head, studying Annalise’s expression as if he were looking for answers to an unspoken question. “I believe there are other people who are also responsible, but I don’t believe she’s innocent. So I don’t see how I’d ever think of her as a mother again.”

“Are you okay with that?” she asked quietly.

“Are you okay with that? With me feeling the way I do?”

She nodded resolutely and ran her fingers across the back of his neck. “Of course. It’s your life. It’s your choice.” The tension seemed to lessen in his shoulders as she touched him, and she was struck with a memory as crisp as the images in front of her—a phone call, years ago, a couple months after she’d left Vegas and returned to France. It was one of the few times she’d heard him shed tears. His mother had just been found guilty of murder for hire, and had said her good-byes to her family before she was taken away in the bus to prison. He was choked up, and it had shredded her to hear him recount the day. But her emotions were nothing compared to what he was feeling at age seventeen with a family pulverized by tragedy. The pain had started to fade from his voice over the next few calls and letters, and he’d told her, “Talking to you is one of the few things that makes me feel okay.”

Okay.

Such a small, flat word. But it was all he wanted, and it was enough. To feel okay. Somehow, she’d given that to him. Perhaps she was doing the same now, helping him see that it was indeed okay to not want to be his mother’s son.

“You sure?” he asked, and his voice was laced with nerves, like he desperately needed her reassurance.

She cupped his cheek and spoke confidently. “Yes. You’re a man without a mother. And it’s okay to be that way. It’s like she died, too, and your mourning for her just took a different shape.”

His eyes locked onto hers, and he relaxed further. “Sometimes I wondered if I was too hard on her. Too angry. Too unforgiving. But then she admitted to Ryan that she did it. I don’t need to forgive her.”

“Some things are unforgivable. Obviously, this is one of those things,” she said, letting her hand drift down from his face to rest on his leg. “Do you still miss your dad?”

“Sure. Of course. But you get used to it. It becomes part of your life, doesn’t it? The missing,” he said, as the flight attendants unbuckled and began to move about the cabin.

She nodded, and though he hadn’t said her husband’s name, she knew what he was getting at.

“Do you miss Julien?” he asked. Point blank. Direct. The elephant in the room.

She swallowed, her heart rising up to her throat and sticking there. “Sometimes I do,” she admitted quietly, looking down at the armrest, the inflight magazine, the screen on the back of the seat in front of her. Then she gazed into Michael’s eyes, clear and fixed on her. “But not right now.”

The crackle of the speaker interrupted their talk as the attendant announced that they were free to turn on computers and other approved devices. Neither she nor he made a move to do so.

Instead, they talked. They talked as they flew over Colorado, then Kansas, past Illinois and Ohio, through water and club soda, through the afternoon lunch service, and through the movies that others watched. He told her about his family, catching her up on his brothers and sister. She remembered them all from when they were younger, and she savored every detail he shared. His sister’s pregnancy was going well, and she was expecting a baby boy; Ryan was engaged to a beautiful philanthropist who made him happier than Michael had ever seen him; and his youngest brother, Colin, had started up a serious relationship with a social worker who had a teenage son. She loved the details, ate them up like fine, dark chocolate, as she pictured the Paige-Princes—now the Sloans—in their new lives, healing from the damage that had ripped them apart years ago.

“What about you?” she asked, meeting his cool blue gaze. “They all sound so happy. So settled. Are you happy, too?”

The corner of his lips curved up, the barest lopsided grin. “I’m happy now.”

Now.