The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)(82)

Benedict dragged his hands over his hair. “No, it doesn’t. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t. Their relationship has nothing to do with—” He cut himself off, immediately disproving his own denial.

“With your immediate assumption that I was guilty?” she charged. “With your fervent willingness to believe the worst of me?”

“Our situation was, is, completely different.”

“Then ask yourself something. Why is it that you presume she trapped him? Was your father not in attendance during their dalliance?”

“Of course, but—”

“Were you not in attendance during our dalliance?”

“Of course! But—”

“But what? It’s always the woman’s fault, never the man’s?”

“I—”

“You’ve spent your entire life believing one version of the truth, that your father was the victim. Have you ever looked at things from your mother’s point of view? Have you ever considered that she was the one who ended up trapped that day?”

His mother, trapped? Something cold snaked across his skin and raised the hair on his arms. He pictured his mother over the years, regal and icy. But had she really been that aloof, or had it simply covered a sadness he’d never considered?

Irena held herself rigid before him, but her hands shook at her sides. “I hate what she did to you, Benedict, the way she abandoned you. There is no excuse for it. But I also ache for her. She had to spend her entire life inside a cold, cruel marriage with a heartless man who hated the very sight of her, despite the fact that he once desired her enough to convince her to throw away the dictates of society, to risk her reputation, and to huddle in dark corners with him.”

His stomach began to eat itself.

“She had to endure his disdain the way she once enjoyed his affections. What were his intentions toward her during those escapades if not to marry her?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, voice hoarse with shame and dread, not only for what he’d never considered before but for new revelations that were surely to come next.

“Yet he hated her when that was the outcome,” Irena continued. “And she is the one you blame.”

Desperation pushed him forward. “I was wrong about you and your intentions and have admitted as much. When Lord Melvin told me the truth about how we got caught—”

“That’s the point, Benedict!” she yelled, her elevated voice so uncharacteristic that his skin jumped atop his bones. “You needed to hear it from someone else to believe I was innocent of deceit! Just like you needed to hear it from me that perhaps your mother was not the schemer you’ve always believed.”

Irena shook her head. “Have you ever considered for one moment that when my mother walked in on us, I was just as trapped as your mother?”

Trapped? By becoming married to an earl? No, it had not occurred to him. Why would it? He’d been raised from birth to believe he was one step short of being a god, that a woman would do anything to marry him. That she would, in fact, lie or cheat to secure his hand and his title.

But Irena’s words had the effect of a blindfold being torn from his eyes, and the world looked different from this vantage point, from her vantage point.

He’d been an active participant in their rendezvous. He’d initiated them, for God’s sake. But she alone carried society’s cross of shame. She alone suffered the wrath of the ton. She alone had been branded a schemer.

Reality was far different.

Their dalliances hadn’t been his secret.

They’d been hers.

Dear God, he’d been her dirty little secret. Her whirlwind rebellion against a society she despised. He was an earl, and being forced to marry him had ruined her bloody life. He’d forced her into ball gowns and waltzes. He’d tossed her into a viper’s pit of gossip and scorn, foolishly believing his title alone would be enough to rescue her.

A strange, hysterical laugh burst from his chest, the kind that made him double over and brace his hands upon his knees.

“Look at me, my lord.”

Benedict sucked in a breath and stood. The stony expression that greeted him did not ease his sense of dread.

“I’m leaving,” she said.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX




Gavin sprouted a line of sweat on his forehead like he was facing down a Cy Young winner.

“Thea, listen.”

“Oh my God,” Thea groaned. “What is it? What are you hiding in the closet?”

“Something that w-will require some explanation, but if you’ll just let me—”

Thea had stopped listening. She was headed for the stairs.

Okay. Calm. Think. Gavin dug his phone from his pocket and called up the group text of the guys. “Code red. Books discovered. Need help.”

He checked on the girls, told them to stay put on the couch, and took off after her. “Thea,” he called, hoping the panic in his voice was not as noticeable as it sounded to his ears. He walked into the guest room just in time to see Thea drag out one bag of books and sit on the floor.

She looked up, brows furrowed. “Books?”

Gavin shrugged. “Yeah. Um, books.”

“This is what Liv was talking about.”