She looked at him with a stricken expression, shaking her head. “I didn’t tell you when I thought they just needed time. I have been trying to rack my brain about what is best for everyone—”
“You mean what is best for him.” The words barreled out of him on a wave of emotion that suddenly he had no control over. “Because everyone and everything else is secondary to you.”
“This whole week...I’ve never felt more alive, I’ve never been happier. How dare you taint it with your ridiculous accusations?”
She sounded so uncharacteristically ferocious that Nikos stilled, his heart thundering loudly in his ears. Her gaze blazed with pure fury. “Then why didn’t you...”
Tyler stepped out from behind the wall. Fierce emotion flooded through him, washing away the hurt, the anger, and he stood shaking in its wake.
Theos, what was happening to him?
Lexi clamped his fingers tight, refusing to let him retreat. “I know how much she means to you, Nikos. I... The moment I learned what Venetia was proposing, I have been going crazy with worry. I spent all morning trying to contact Tyler. I begged him to come clean with you.”
He couldn’t look away anymore. Their gazes met and the depth of feeling there rocked him to his toes. No one had ever considered his feelings before in his life, no one had ever wondered if he was in pain, that he could hurt and bleed just as anyone else, that he wanted to be loved and cherished and even protected.
Not his father, not Venetia and not Savas.
Until, one day, he had stopped feeling at all. He had turned himself into stone, starving everything else but his ambition. And he hadn’t even realized until Lexi had showed up.
This feeling...it was gratitude, it was fear, and it gripped his body and wouldn’t let go. But as warm and excruciatingly real as it was, he didn’t want it. The only thing he understood, the only thing he could handle was his desire for her.
Nothing more.
“I care about Venetia,” Tyler said, approaching him, his eyes welling with emotion. “And I don’t know how to say no to her without hurting her, Nikos. But I can’t marry her like this, not when I don’t remember her, not when I have messed up every important relationship I’ve ever had.” He took a step closer to Lexi and planted his hands on her shoulders, as though drawing strength from her.
Nikos had the most atavistic urge to push his hand off Lexi, to tell him that he had no rights to her. That she belonged to Nikos now.
There was such a ringing clarity to the thought that Nikos fisted his hands to not follow through on it.
“I trusted Lexi’s word that Venetia’s well-being is important to you, too,” Tyler said in a gruff tone, “that you can find a way out of this without hurting her. I know you want me out of her life, but all I want is her happiness, Nikos. Venetia might very well hate me for this.”
“Nikos? Please say something. This is the only way I could think of to—”
Nikos nodded, not trusting himself to say anything right. He didn’t know what was right or wrong right now. Only that the expression in Lexi’s eyes—concerned, expectant—would stay with him forever. He held the answering desire in him at bay through sheer will.
“Where is my sister now?”
“At the inn. She was getting overexcited about the wedding tomorrow, and extremely anxious about not telling you, so I suggested she take a sleeping pill and take it easy for tonight. She is out like a light,” he said with a wince.
Nikos nodded, once again surprised. Whether Tyler loved Venetia as he claimed or not, Nikos couldn’t know. But he could clearly handle her well. “Go back to the inn now,” he said, considering several scenarios one after the other. “Don’t say a word to her about being here. I will be there in the morning at the inn. I was this close to locating you both anyway.”
“And the wedding?” Tyler asked.
Lexi had been right. His sister was stronger than he had given her credit for. “I will convince her to not go through with it. For now. Which means I have to give her my blessing about you.”
Lexi looked up at him. “Do you?”
He gave in to the urge and tugged her to his side, unable to keep himself from touching her. Her apparent happiness at the very thought, the depth of her goodwill toward two people who had caused her immense hurt, it was hard not to be transformed in a little way by it.
“I won’t ask you to leave immediately,” he said finally, meeting Tyler’s eyes. “My sister has already suffered a lot. I don’t ever want to see her hurt.”
Tyler met his gaze unflinchingly. “Neither do I. Nor do I want to marry her until I remember everything, until I’m worthy of her. All I ask is that you give me the chance to try.”