Chapter Seventeen
Foster Boyd - Rules for Life
No seconds. Distractions will destroy you.
Boyds do not have weaknesses.
Sometimes, you have to break all the rules.
Foster stood in the shower while the water poured over him. Buffy had gone to sleep by the toilet, so he didn’t have any reason to get out. He just stood there. The water had long gone cold, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered. He knew nothing gold could stay.
And she was the most gold he’d ever found in another person. It was probably for the best. If she hadn’t left, would he have had the wherewithal to make her go? She’d removed the problem—the distraction—and he was better off in the long run. Even if the short term was sheer hell, he’d probably be grateful that she went someday.
Some distant day.
But not today.
The knock at the bathroom door didn’t matter, so he didn’t move. Probably it was Connor. The fucking traitor. But how could he blame Connor for how it all played out? Foster banged his head against the shower wall, punishing himself for his abject stupidity. He’d known that his brother would find Natalie irresistible and had thrown her in his path for just that purpose. If anything, he should give Natalie a bonus. She delivered.
She delivered him right into a heaven he’d never imagined for a while, but now she was gone.
“Please, at least cover yourself. I don’t want to see if we’re identical in that area, not if I can help it,” Connor said from the other side of the door.
“Then don’t come in,” Foster suggested.
The door was slammed open. “You’re talking to me again?”
Foster glanced at him. They’d shared so much over the years, but he could’ve done without sharing Natalie. “Go to hell.”
Connor came in and sat on the toilet. “I wasn’t coming on to her,” he said.
Foster snorted. How could he resist her? Natalie was so damn vibrant. From her wild hair to those too-blue eyes, she was just gorgeous on the outside. And on the inside? What woman would come stay with a man after he admitted he wasn’t wired for commitment? What woman would stick by him, even when he warned her he couldn’t promise forever? What woman would allow him to bind her to the bed and still be the kind of person who would wake up with a smile and a sweet kiss before saying good morning in that sleep-husky voice he already missed?
He missed her laugh. He missed the way she rolled her eyes at the way he talked. He missed the way she came up with her rules and tried to make the world around her make sense, even when things like the press could never make sense—not to anyone.
He missed Natalie. And he didn’t believe for a minute that his twin wouldn’t have seen her for the treasure she really was.
“For one, I’m literally not over Margo yet. So even if I were attracted to Natalie, which I’m not, I wouldn’t have done that. Secondly, you’re my brother, dickhead. Do you think I can’t tell how you feel about her? Do you think I can’t feel the hole burning in my chest because your heart is aching?” Connor was staring at him, and Foster looked back.
He didn’t believe in mystical twin bond kind of things, but he did remember the time Connor broke his arm…and how his arm had gone numb and then ached like a bitch that day. Could Connor possibly, even on some psychosomatic level, be feeling the pain of knowing that Natalie had gone and wasn’t coming back?
No way in hell, because if he could, he wouldn’t be walking around and talking like everything was normal. This particular ache was too big to function around. It was crippling Foster.
He looked away from his brother, but he did finally turn off the ice-cold water. Shivering violently, he moved to get out of the shower. His brother offered him a towel, looking away. “Seriously, cover that thing. Please.”
Foster would have smiled, if there weren’t a giant burning hole in the middle of his chest.
He walked naked, other than the towel, into the bedroom before falling face first onto the mattress. Buffy jumped up on the bed, too, her weight dipping the mattress seconds before her large black head nudged at his. Giving up, he crawled the rest of the way onto the bed before laying on his side to pet the animal. He’d have dog hair stuck all over his body, but it was better than worrying poor Buffy. She was a good girl, deserved better than Foster.
He wondered for a second if that was why he accepted Natalie leaving so easily. She deserved better than a man who couldn’t promise her more than one day at a time. She deserved someone like Connor, who could take care of her and not worry about things like distractions or business. She was golden. She was light. He was married to his work.
Why had he tried to convince himself otherwise?
Her pillow still smelled faintly of her, all sweet and cool because her warmth wasn’t in the bed. He pulled the pillow to his face so he could inhale her, at least for however long as her scent lasted.
Connor had moved to the windows and was looking out absently.
“You don’t want to talk about her, do you?” Connor asked.
Foster didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Not when she was gone and he was stuck there, without her.
“It is a shitty time, but it has been on my mind a lot lately. You know, because we’re adults now. Dealing with adult problems and all of that. But, anyway, you know it wasn’t our fault that our parents died, don’t you?”
Foster buried his face deeper into the pillow. Usually, his brother avoided the topic. They both did. They didn’t talk about their parents before the accident or after, pretending most of the time that it hadn’t happened or it didn’t hurt them.
But it did. They weren’t old enough to lose their parents. Well-meaning relatives and hired help—it wasn’t the same as their mom and dad. It wasn’t the same, and all they’d had left was each other. People felt bad for them, their eyes so damn sad when they looked at the twins, that Foster could remember his teeth aching, he was gritting them so hard. For a long time, he was pretty sure that both he and Connor reveled in the chaos they could cause, because at least while the press was reporting about how one or the other of them got into a barroom brawl or got busted by an angry husband, they weren’t talking about how those poor boys lost their parents at such a young age. Tragic. Simply tragic.
Replaced magically with scandalous. Simply salacious.
He wasn’t sure about Connor, but he knew for himself he far preferred them gossiping about him to them pitying him.
Connor spoke again, into the silence of whatever memories they individually had of the man and woman who once loved them most over everyone else in the world. “I have dreams sometimes. Of what things would’ve been like if they hadn’t died. I just want you to know, if you ever want to talk about all of it, I’m here. We’ve shared everything else. I don’t feel you should have to carry that weight alone anymore. I don’t want to hide from what made us who we are.”
But Foster didn’t want to talk about the past. It was gone, and it shouldn’t be able to hurt them anymore.
Control. Foster prized control, and this was something he had the power to control.
Silence stretched in the room. Finally, the gentle snores of the black lab started, and Connor laughed slightly.
“She always does that,” Foster admitted. “Every time she falls deeply asleep. Oddly enough, it is really comforting. Reminds me I’m not alone, you know?”
Connor stared at him for long moments, that dark mirror to Foster’s own face. “Yeah. You’re never alone, brother. You never have been.”
With that, he left Foster to his thoughts. Foster knew he could call him back, but he didn’t want company. Not right then. He needed to think things through.
He didn’t have control when they were kids, but he had it now. He’d worked damn hard to refine that control and put it into every aspect of his life. Well-ordered, planned out, precise.
That was why he didn’t usually like to be touched during sex. It made him feel trapped, as if he’d lost the very regulation he worked so very hard to achieve over his body and life. When they were kids and he couldn’t save his parents. He couldn’t protect Connor…
Back then, things had spiraled into chaos and he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it.
He pinched his eyes closed. If he thought about it for too long, the darkness would eat away at his self-control. Better to think of the gold.
But she’d left him. Natalie didn’t understand all that happened, and he hadn’t been able to tell her. It wasn’t his secrets to share, after all. They were Margo’s secrets and Connor’s secrets…
But Connor would have fixed that. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that his brother would have talked to her. Tried to make her see reason. Just like Foster had gone to Margo, hoping to talk some sense into her when it came to Connor.
Boyds didn’t do things twice—unless they couldn’t live without the thing after they tried it once.
Boyds didn’t have weaknesses—except they did. Or at least he did. He could write a whole book and have the entire damn thing just be a list of his weaknesses.
Boyds needed new rules. Ones that mattered. He had a feeling, if he could find a way to win back Natalie, she could help him come up with new rules. Hell, she’d already given him ten.
Scrabbling to his feet, Foster walked barefoot out to his office. There, on his desk, lay the ten little rules that his image consultant drew up to tell him how to renew his public image for the sake of Boyd Cosmetics. Sitting down, he took a pen and the list and set to work. Maybe there was something he could do to control this particular situation after all.