I clasped my hand around his wrist, giving us yet another place where we were connected, wanting to show him his fear wasn’t true. I’d never been or would be Macalister’s.
“Before, I wanted to destroy him,” he admitted. “Not just him, but everything he has too. Take away his money, and his power, and his company—”
I finished the thought for him. “Everything he cares about.”
“Yes. And in that moment, where I thought you were his, it meant I’d have to go after you too, and I . . .” He searched for the right words. “I told you I wanted to take over my family’s company so badly, I wasn’t capable of caring about anything else. But, Marist, last night showed me I was fucking wrong.”
I was short of breath, but he was too, like this confession was taking everything out of him. It was how I knew it was true. He lied with ease. Only the truth was difficult for him.
“The way I feel about you wasn’t part of the plan. I’ve spent so long like this, not allowing myself to care, I wasn’t sure I was even capable anymore. Honestly, in the beginning, it didn’t matter who got hurt, just as long as it wasn’t me, and I got what I wanted.”
He’d told me this the night of our first date. “Because it’s win at all costs.”
“Yeah. I mean, it was.” His relentless stare held me tight. “Until you changed the game on me. All I’ve ever wanted was to run HBHC. Every decision I’ve made has been toward that outcome, all until you came along with your green hair and your mythology book, and that little gasp you made when I had you pushed against that bookcase. I heard that goddamn moan in my head for weeks after that night.”
Heat rushed through me and clenched my body so tightly I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.
“I want HBHC,” he said, “but now I’m wondering if I want you even more.”
He’d kept me walled off for so long, it felt like he’d just thrown open every floodgate, and it swept me away. “I think I need to lie down.”
“You’re already lying down.” A smirk flashed on his lips before he turned serious again. “I think I can get to the place where I can say it back, when we’re alone and you tell me you love me, but I’m not there yet.” Determination flickered in his eyes. “I don’t want to say those words until I know they’re absolutely true.”
I stared at him. “I know I’m on drugs, but are you too? I thought Royce Hale didn’t talk about his feelings.”
His smile was pained. “He does after he thought his fiancée might die and he didn’t tell her any of the shit he should have.” When he released me and rested his hands on the bedrail, my skin mourned the loss of his touch. His hands were spread wide, making his shoulders high and tight, while his head stayed tipped down toward me. “If you don’t want to say it anymore until I do, I get it.”
I ached for him and his banker’s heart. He thought of love like a transaction, like a currency. A thing that shouldn’t be given away without receiving something in return.
I softened my voice. “I'm not going to withhold how I feel just because you aren’t ready to say it back. I love you, Royce. If it helps, I tried really hard not to.”
He’d been so desperate to hear those words from me, and they landed with such an impact. The smile that broke on his lips caused a flutter in my chest.
“It does help. Thanks,” he teased.
I lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t always make it easy either.”
The glow in his eyes faded as he sobered. “No. I know I didn’t.”
Among other things, he’d sold me to his father for one hundred thousand shares.
Royce straightened and took in a deep breath. “I owe you an explanation, but it’s a much longer conversation than I think we should have tonight. Can we wait until both of us have gotten more than an hour’s worth of sleep?”
My pulse jumped. “You’re going to tell me what you’re planning?”
“Yes, Marist.” Conviction spread across his handsome face. “I’ll tell you everything.”
It came out breathlessly excited. “Okay.”
As he leaned back in to give me a final kiss, I hated Alice a little less. Sure, she’d poisoned me and left me for dead, but she’d also set off a chain of events that had given me almost everything I wanted.
I was out from under Macalister’s grip. My choices were my own again, and he’d been forced to retreat.
And Royce was finally letting me in, both on his feelings and his plan.
All that was left now was to take his heart and make it mine. He wasn’t sure if he loved me? I was going to make that happen. As his lips captured mine, it sealed his fate.
Look out, Royce. I’m coming for you.
THREE
IT TOOK TWO EXCRUCIATINGLY LONG DAYS before I was released from the hospital, and I wondered if the doctors worked with an overabundance of caution due to the ring on my finger. No one wanted to be the one to send a future Hale home too early and incur the family’s wrath if something went wrong.
But the toxins from the lily of the valley were finally gone from my system, my heartrate had returned to normal, and it seemed unlikely any complications were going to occur. I wasn’t excited about returning to the Hale house, but my desire to get out of the hospital suite and back to class was much stronger and overrode everything else.
We didn’t talk about Alice, other than Royce’s comment that she’d been banished from the house. Macalister had ordered her to move into the stables, which had been converted into a guest house a few years back.
He’d stayed true to our agreement. I hadn’t seen Royce’s father since we’d struck our deal. Perhaps Alice had gotten her wish, and she had all his attention now.
Leaving the hospital was an ordeal. I’d been brought clothes to wear by a stylist, along with a whole hair and makeup team to conceal the dark circles under my eyes and my sallow skin. When they were done, I looked every bit the part I’d been playing for the last five months. Outwardly, the fake Instagram version of Marist Northcott was ready to take the stage and reemerge into society. No one would see the grayish lines leftover from the IV that had been taped to my skin because they’d been scrubbed away.
Like the last three days never happened.
But they had. I was closer than ever with Royce as a result.
All the prep work to make me camera-ready had been overkill. Royce’s security team brought us down to the parking garage, loaded us into the back of a Land Rover, and we slipped out onto the streets of Boston before anyone noticed.
When the story broke that billionaire Royce Hale’s fiancée was hospitalized, the media had flocked to Mass General, hoping to score a picture of the concerned groom as he came and went from my bedside. The rumors were rampant, with accidental overdose leading the pack.
But the only media outlet that succeeded was Sophia Alby, and it was because we’d orchestrated the whole thing. We’d let her snap a close-up picture of our hands clasped on my bedside, the Wall Street Journal draped in his lap and the hospital bracelet dangling around my wrist. The image couldn’t have been more on-brand if we’d tried.