Sweet Obsession (Nights Series #4)(11)

“What do you mean, this time around?”

Shit.

Luke nearly bit his tongue at his blunder. He wasn’t ready to admit the truth to Ash. Not yet.

Ash folded his arms across his chest as an uncomfortable silence stretched between them. “Or is it that you just want them for yourself?” he said between gritted teeth. “After all, you three haven’t fucked for like, what, five years?”

Luke’s heart twisted painfully before starting a heavy pounding against his ribs, the sound of his world crashing down around him a distant roar in his ears.

“What did you just say?” he breathed.

Ash ran a trembling hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Luke’s face anymore. When he blinked them open, the hurt and loathing in the steel-blue gaze pierced Luke’s soul like a knife.

“I saw you. The night I turned seventeen. Catherine called me to the mansion. She said she had a surprise in store for me.” Ash’s voice broke for a moment before he let out a bitter chuckle. “I guess she just wanted to flaunt your sick relationship in front of me, right?”

Rage flooded Luke. He stumbled off the barstool and walked over to the sink, fingers biting into the ceramic edge as he stared blindly out of the glass wall overlooking the rear garden, the fury coursing through his veins so great it threatened to drown him.

“You weren’t meant to be there,” Luke said, agony slurring his voice as the devastating truth finally sank in. “She promised.”

The terrible deception Catherine had inflicted on him five years ago suddenly made Luke want to vomit. But, more than her lies, more than the sick game she’d played with him, the fact that she’d deliberately called Ash to the mansion so that he could catch them in the act burned through Luke. He knew then that if he ever saw Catherine Bernardino in person again, he would likely strike her.

“Oh God. I hate that bitch!” Luke slammed his fist down on the marble top, his nails digging into his palm so hard he almost drew blood, the pain he’d inadvertently helped inflict on Ash a mistake he could never forgive himself for.



Ash’s entire world tilted to a stop at Luke’s words, his racing pulse skipping a beat. He widened his eyes.

Did I misread the situation that night?

Concern rushed through Ash in the next moment as Luke continued pounding the marble top with his fist, head bowed and shoulders shaking with rage while he ranted and cursed.

“Stop it,” Ash whispered, his voice raw with anguish. He moved then, his feet carrying him to Luke’s side, his hands rising to grab Luke’s wrist as the latter brought it down to the countertop once more. “Stop it!”

Luke froze, his beautiful face contorted in a mask of hate and self-loathing as he stared blindly at Ash, his amber eyes glittering.

Just as the night of his seventeenth birthday, Ash felt his heart break all over again. He knew then that he’d gotten it horribly wrong. That what had happened five years ago wasn’t as straightforward as he’d thought it was. That Luke hadn’t been having an affair with his aunt and uncle. That there was more to it than a simple act of sex.

There was only one person in this world who could tell him the truth.

Ash took a shaky breath and pressed Luke’s hand to his chest.

“Tell me, Luke,” he whispered. “Tell me what happened that night.”



Luke’s breath caught in his throat at the devastatingly haunting expression in Ash’s eyes.

Ash’s touch burned Luke’s skin, his heart thudding erratically under Luke’s fingers where they rested on his chest. The emotion blazing across Ash’s face was so bittersweet that Luke felt the walls he’d built around his own aching heart start to shatter and crumble.

Ash didn’t hate him. Despite what he’d witnessed the night of his seventeenth birthday, he didn’t loathe him, like Luke so justly deserved. Instead, the devotion and fondness Ash used to express to Luke with every smile, every word, every move he made when they were together in the past radiated off him in waves, a balm that soothed Luke’s fractured soul, a solace he thought he would never again find.

At that moment, Luke couldn’t have loved Ash more. He swallowed as he came to the agonizing decision he’d hoped to put off for as long as he could.

I have to tell him the truth. I can’t lie to him anymore.

Luke inhaled deeply and started talking.

Ash stilled when Luke told him what the PI firm had uncovered over the year the Bernardinos had custody of him. Ash’s eyes flared after Luke confessed his fears for his safety and admitted to the crazy deal he’d asked his lawyers to put on paper so he could buy the Bernardinos off and get them out of Ash’s life.

“How much?” Ash asked hoarsely after a stunned silence.

Luke blinked. “How much what?”

“How much did you give them?”

Luke hesitated. “Seven million.”

Ash gasped. Fury twisted his face in the next instant. His fingers bit into Luke’s hand.

“Those fucking assholes!” Ash hissed. He swallowed before taking a shaky breath. “And the sex?”

Luke closed his eyes briefly at Ash’s tortured expression.

“It was the one condition they had,” he confessed after a pause. “I—it was the only way I could get them out of your life.”