Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires, #2)(7)

I’d spent years trying to convince myself that Skye was out to use anybody to get what she wanted. Now I didn’t know what the hell to think. It had been a lot easier when I hadn’t known she’d left a final letter. I’d been able to write her off as a woman who valued money over anything else.

Not that I’d ever forgotten her.

I still remembered what it had been like to be the first man she’d ever had, and I couldn’t forget the feel of her tight, virginal body taking me inside her. I’d fallen for her hard and fast that summer, even though I’d already been a man, and she had just barely been an adult.

Maybe that was why I’d gotten so damn enraged about any other guy touching her. She’d been mine. Only mine. And I didn’t want any other bastard looking at her, much less touching her.

“She was barely eighteen, Aiden,” Seth pointed out. “And we all knew that her mother was a crazy woman. Maybe she needed a way out.”

You already had enough mouths to feed.

She’d said that. Could it be that she’d at least thought about staying with me?

“She said her mother forced her to marry Marco,” I told Seth. “That she didn’t have a choice.”

Seth sent me a skeptical look. “She had a choice. She could have found a way out, even though it sure as hell wouldn’t have been easy. This isn’t the Dark Ages. Maybe she thought it was the only way out of the loony bin back then, but it wasn’t.”

“Her mother really was certifiable,” I said angrily.

Skye’s mother had been involved in her cultlike church in San Diego for years. She’d joined when Skye’s father had died of cancer. Her daughter had only been five years old.

“I didn’t know Mrs. Weston very well, but she did tell me I was going to hell a couple of times,” Seth answered drily.

“I think she thought everybody was going to hell except members of her church.”

“Like Marino?” Seth questioned.

Marco Marino had been a member and a founder of the wacky religious cult. That’s how Skye’s mother had met him and the crime family who were supposedly upstanding members of the religious organization.

“I wish I had that goddamn letter,” I said gutturally.

I wanted explanations.

I wanted to know exactly why Skye had left, and what she was thinking when she had.

I wanted to find out if she’d ever given a damn about . . . me.

Maybe it was old news, but Skye and I had never really closed our relationship. She’d just . . . left.

“If it makes you feel any better, I regret getting rid of the letter, Aiden. I really do. It was instinct.”

I looked at Seth, and he did look pretty repentant, and regret was something I rarely saw in my brother’s expression.

Yeah, I got it. Maybe I would have wanted to protect him, too, if our positions were reversed. The Sinclairs watched each other’s backs. Always. We wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t. We’d all parented each other—badly, sometimes. But we’d done our best to make sure our siblings weren’t suffering.

“Anything else you want to confess?” I asked bitterly.

“Nope. That’s about the only shitty thing I did to you that I can think of right now,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t think it mattered before. But you’ve never really put Skye behind you, have you? In all these years, I’ve never seen you serious about any other female.”

“Fuck!” I grumbled.

Yeah, I’d always wanted to see Skye Weston as just a small part of my history. But ever since she’d come back to Citrus Beach with her daughter in tow, I’d wondered what in the hell had happened between the two of us. She’d been fine on the day I’d left for a two-month fishing job. We’d been planning all the things we wanted to do together in the future, and damned if I hadn’t been missing her already the minute I’d left. She’d haunted me throughout that two-month job, and I’d been counting the days until I could get back to her.

But how could I have ever known that Skye would be gone when I got back home?

I finally answered Seth’s question. “I don’t think I ever got over her.”

“Then ask her why she left,” he suggested. “You don’t need a letter. She’s here.”

Maybe so, but Skye had a history of running, just like she’d done tonight. “I tried. She seems to think she has a reason to be angry. That’s why I wish I had read her letter. I have no idea what she’s mad about. I didn’t leave her. She left me.”

“Try again. Get her someplace where she can’t run away. I don’t think you’re ever going to move on until you get your questions answered. I wish I hadn’t destroyed that letter. I wish that you would have had those answers years ago.”

I nodded. “I have to know.”

Seth grinned. “How long are you going to stay pissed off at me?”

I probably would have punched him out if my siblings and I hadn’t learned very early on that we couldn’t afford to have one less ally. Growing up, we’d been taught not to alienate each other, even if we were furious with one of our brothers or sisters. All we’d had was each other. And Seth and Noah were protective of me since I was younger than they were.