London

I finished my shift at the hospital then walked home. I was running late because I had a date that night, and I’d barely have time to do anything with my hair or makeup. As soon as I walked through the door, I took a quick shower and managed my hair as best as I could. Then I left my apartment again and walked to the pizza place where we were meeting.

Will and I were set up by mutual friends. I’d heard nothing but good things about him, but I’d never met him in person. Instead of feeling nervous like I usually did on a first date, I didn’t feel anything at all.

I walked inside and saw him sitting in a booth, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He had dirty-blond hair and light-colored eyes, looking handsome but with a distinct boyish charm. He smiled when he saw me, a dimple in each cheek.

He was cute, but I didn’t feel that thrill shoot down my spine.

I walked over to him and extended my hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

He shook my hand. “You too.”

I took a seat across from him and studied the menu. “So what are you thinking?”

“That you’re very pretty,” he said with a smile.

A chuckle formed in my throat, but I didn’t let it escape. “I meant about the menu. What are you going to get?”

“Hmm…” He eyed the choices on the wall. “I’m not picky. I’ll eat anything.”

“Ditto.”

“You wanna split one, then?” he asked. “How about the supreme?”

“I like the way you think.”

He winked before he went up to the counter and ordered.

The second I was alone in the booth, my face fell and my thoughts turned to the man I hadn’t stopped thinking about. Crewe was always on my mind, and even when I was asleep, he was in my dreams.

I thought I would have forgotten him by now, but I hadn’t. I finally had my life back, the kind of freedom I’d gone six months without having, but it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would. I found myself missing the stone walls of the castle, the comfortable bed I used to sleep in every night, and the view from the bedroom window. I missed listening to Crewe brush his teeth before bed and watching him shave in the morning when he got out of the shower.

Now I felt empty inside.

There was no excitement in my life, just the same mundane routine I did every day. On my days off, I spent time with my friends, but most of them were busy studying for their exams. I didn’t have any family, so there wasn’t anyone to open up to about my struggle.

I wondered if Crewe still thought about me.

Will returned with our number on a stand and two sodas. “It’ll be fifteen minutes.”

I tried to push Crewe out of my mind, but that was almost impossible to do when I was with other men. I hadn’t slept with anyone, but I still felt like I was betraying Crewe in some way. And I felt bad for my dates since they were constantly being compared to the man I’d slept with for the past six months—a duke. “I hope my stomach can manage it.”

“I can order some breadsticks or something.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said quickly. “It’ll ruin my appetite if I eat now.”

“Yeah, me too.” He stared at me and faltered, unsure what to say to keep the conversation going.

Crewe and I never had that problem. We wouldn’t speak for hours, and that was perfectly fine. It was comfortable, actually. “So, you’re an accountant?”

“Yeah. I’ve been working at my dad’s office, but I’m gonna open up my own soon. Just wanted to get a few years of experience before I did that.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“You’re a physician assistant, right?”

I nodded.

“You gonna start medical school again in the fall?” He knew exactly why I dropped out of the program to begin with. Some of the other men I dated treated me like fragile glass, damaged goods. Other men were brave enough to date me, but they had their guard up the whole time.

I didn’t appreciate being looked at like that, like there was something wrong with me. While Crewe shouldn’t have kidnapped me, our relationship was consensual. I had the power to say no whenever I wanted. None of my dates would understand that because I didn’t want to discuss my time in Scotland. “That’s the plan. But I like what I do now.”

“Sounds like a good gig. Plus, you’re getting paid.”

I nodded. “It is nice to buy food and shoes—those are the two things I can’t live without.”

He chuckled, but it didn’t seem genuine.

I was already bored, and we hadn’t even gotten our food yet. None of the guys I met were interesting. They were all the same—educated, nice, and predictable. They lacked the attraction and passion Crewe possessed. Crewe was dark and dangerous, but in a good way. He had infinite layers to his persona, layers I’d never had the chance to peel back. He could make an entire conversation out of a simple look.

He never bored me.

As each week passed, the truth became clearer. Crewe was supposed to leave my thoughts, but his presence only grew in my mind. When I was alone in bed at night, I hardly slept because I missed his powerful body next to mine. My thighs squeezed together because I missed having him between my legs. I even touched myself and thought of him as I did it.

It was getting harder to deny the obvious—that I missed him.

A lot.

Will made small talk about our mutual friends and told me a bit about his family.

I nodded along without really listening, wishing I were home in my apartment with my vibrator—thinking about Crewe. I missed the way his scruff used to rub against my collarbone as he kissed my neck. I missed the way that same facial hair would rub against my inner thighs when he kissed me between my legs. I missed his big, manly hands all over my body, the way they would grip my tits as he fucked me at the edge of the bed.

“Are you alright?” Will stared at me with both eyebrows raised.

I had no idea what he just said. I was zoning out, picturing Crewe’s perfectly chiseled body on top of mine. “Yeah, I’m fine. For a second, I thought I left the stove on in my apartment…but I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

Will bought my story and continued talking about his aunt, a professor at NYU.

I went back to thinking about Crewe.

Over a month had come and gone since I saw Crewe get carried away on a stretcher. I knew he survived the ordeal and he was going to be okay, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about him. I hoped he was making a good recovery, that he wasn’t drinking too much, and that he wasn’t more bitter and angry than he was when we first met.

I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t think that would go over well. The circumstances hadn’t changed between us, so there was nothing to say. There was nothing to fix. I just hoped these feelings would go away.

Unless I really did love him.

Did I?

I was home on a Saturday morning when Joseph called me. We talked here and there, but never about anything that happened with Crewe. Our mutual anger hadn’t dwindled, but we put that aside because all we had was each other.

“Hey,” I said into the phone.

“What are you doing?” He spoke with a dead voice that was calm, borderline tired.

“Sitting on the couch watching TV in my pajamas.” Nothing I wore was as comfortable as Crewe’s t-shirts. I wished I’d gotten to take one home with me.

“How’d your date go?”

There wasn’t much to tell. “Okay. We had pizza then went our separate ways. I don’t think he’ll call me again.” And if he did, I would turn him down. There was no chemistry, no interest whatsoever. I felt like I was having dinner with a brother more than a possible lover.

“That’s too bad.”

I wasn’t too disappointed. “What are you up to?”

“My plane is about to land in New York.”

“Really?” A smile formed on my face even though I was still mad at him.

“I’m doing business in town. Was hoping I could see you.”

“Sure. You wanna grab lunch?”

“How about I pick something up and bring it to your place?”

I forgot that he was living a criminal life like Crewe. Crewe hardly went out meals. In fact, we’d never been on a real date. He probably had to lay low at all times. “Yeah, sure. I like Chinese.”

“That makes two of us. I’ll pick it up on the way.”

I showered and cleaned the apartment before he arrived. There was no evidence that I looked like hell, usually sitting on the couch with two open bags of potato chips. I vacuumed and destroyed all signs of my laziness. If he’d witnessed it, he would definitely crack a joke or two about it.

When he knocked on the door, I opened it and let him inside. Normally, I would hug him right away, but the memory of what he did to Crewe was still heavy in my mind. He nearly killed the man I spent half a year with. I wouldn’t forget that anytime soon. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He carried the plastic bag of food to the table. “You wanna eat now?”

“Sure.” I opened my wallet and pulled out some cash. “How much do I owe?”

“Shut up and eat.” He sat down and pulled out the two trays of food and chopsticks.

I opened mine and began to eat, unsure what to say to him. It was the first time we’d been alone since he dropped me off at the airport a month ago. We talked on the phone, so he knew I had a job and a fairly normal life. “This is good.”

“It’s awesome. I haven’t had Chinese in nearly a year.” He scarfed down his food, grabbing large chunks of food between those two small sticks.

I hadn’t had it in just as long.

“So, how are things going?”

“Good. I really like my new job. Everyone is nice.”

“That’s cool. Your friends are glad to have you back?”

“Yeah, but they walk on eggshells all the time, like if they say the wrong thing, I’ll lose my mind.”

He watched me as he chewed his chow mein, the stubble along his chin thick because he hadn’t shaved in a while. Joseph and I didn’t share a lot of characteristics, but we had the same eyes—green like our mother’s. “They’re just being sensitive. Can’t blame them for that.”

“I know. But no matter how many times I tell people I’m fine, they don’t believe me. They tell me I need therapy.”

“Therapy isn’t a bad idea.”

“I don’t need therapy,” I said coldly. “Crewe treated me well.”

He shook his head. “I’m not a therapist, and I can tell you have Stockholm syndrome.”

“I do not,” I snapped. “Crewe always gave me a choice. He never made me do anything I didn’t want to do. Everything between us was consensual.”

“Except your freedom.”

“Well…” I didn’t have an argument against that.

“The guy kidnapped you. End of story.”

“It’s not black and white, Joseph.” I stirred my food with my chopstick, suddenly losing my appetite. “I cared about Crewe. He cared about me. If I had the chance to talk to him about everything, he probably would have let me go.”

“Doubtful.”

“You don’t know him the way I do.”

“And I’m glad I don’t.”

I stared at my brother and felt my rage come to the surface. “I told you not to hurt anyone. I told you not to shoot Crewe.”

“His men fired first. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Because you were ambushing his castle with guns and tanks.”

He shook his head. “They still fired first. And I wasn’t planning on shooting Crewe until I looked at him… Then the anger took over.”

“He didn’t deserve that.”

“And I didn’t deserve to have my sister kidnapped for six months. You just lost your mind in the process.”

“I didn’t lose my mind, Joey. Crewe is a good man.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Have you heard anything about him?”

“What do you mean?”

“How’s he doing? Is he working again?” The doctor told me he would live. I just hoped that meant he would live a normal life.

“As far as I can tell, he’s back to normal. I haven’t seen him with my own eyes, but I hear he’s still running the scotch business with Ariel and taking care of his royal duties like the douchebag that he is.”

I shot him a glare. “Don’t talk about him like that.”

He met my fire with his own. “What the hell is wrong with you? He stole you from your bed in the middle of the night and kept you as a prisoner. As in, he broke international law. Why are you protecting him?”

Joseph would never understand. No one would ever understand. “It was more complicated than that. Crewe and I had a relationship…we were friends. We were close.” There were no words to describe what we had. I wasn’t even entirely sure what the two of us shared.

Joseph set down his chopsticks in the center of his food and looked at me, his expression hard. It was a stare he’d given me countless times as we were growing up. It usually meant he was pondering what he was about to say. “London…did you love this guy?”

I told Crewe I loved him, but I thought it was just an act. I was tricking him into caring about me, being an actress in a play. But maybe those words weren’t meaningless. Maybe I meant them from the bottom of my heart. “I…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he whispered. “The fact that your answer isn’t a simple no is concerning to me.”

“It’s concerning to me too.”

He’d hardly eaten his food, but he pushed it aside like he was finished with it. “London, I don’t understand, and I’ll never understand. I tried to make it right with Crewe by doubling the amount of money I owed, but he took you anyway. I’ll always hate that man for the way he stabbed me. But…I’m trying to have an open mind about this. I just don’t understand how you can care about a man who took away all of your freedom. Help me understand.”

“I can’t…it’s complicated.”

“Well, try anyway.”

There was a lot of graphic content that would make Joseph upset, and I couldn’t mention that. It would just make us both uncomfortable. “I hated him in the beginning. I fought him every chance I got him and put up a wall that he couldn’t penetrate. But when he said he was going to sell me to Bones…I did what I had to do to stay with Crewe. So I slept with him.” I didn’t look at my brother as I told the story. He probably wasn’t looking at me either. “I think that’s when everything changed. I think that’s when Crewe began to soften. He kept me for himself. And if I’m being honest, I enjoyed being with him.”

Joseph turned his gaze out the window, like he wasn’t listening at all.

“As time went on, we got closer and closer. We started to trust each other. And then it became a routine…a comfortable one. Crewe always treated me with respect, took care of me, and listened to me. He didn’t feel like my captor anymore. Honestly, I miss him and that castle.”

Joseph rubbed his jaw. “You miss him now?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve been on a few dates, and I don’t feel anything. All I can think about is him. I can’t stop thinking about the way we left things. I can only imagine how angry he is…how much he hates me. But I wonder if he misses me as much as I miss him.”

Joseph sat back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He released a quiet sigh of irritation. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. But Crewe never laid a hand on me while I was his prisoner. He never took me against my will. The most he ever did was raise his voice when I annoyed him. Honestly, I was safer with him than anywhere else in the world. I know I shouldn’t feel anything for him, but it doesn’t change the fact that I do.”

“Well, I think you answered my question.”

“What question?” Talking about Crewe made me forget why we started talking about him in the first place.

“That you love him.”

It was hard for me to focus at work on Monday. I worked in the emergency room and helped out the physicians with patients with moderate illnesses. I had a lot of patients with pneumonia and one or two diagnosed with sepsis. The weather was changing in New York, and people were catching colds left and right.

I filled out chart after chart, and during my downtime, Crewe came back to my mind.

Did I love him?

I’d been so focused on playing him that I didn’t realize how much my feelings had developed. I just assumed it was lust because the sex was good and he was handsome as hell. I didn’t think anything more serious could develop under the circumstances.

But clearly, it had.

I’d been in New York for over a month, but I wasn’t happy at all.

I was just miserable.

The only place I wanted to be was in that castle with that scotch-drinking man. I missed the bed I used to share with him. I missed the courtyard with all the roses. I missed the way he kissed my hairline when he was being particularly affectionate.

I missed everything.

When I got off work, I met Joseph for coffee because he was still in town. Since he was all I had, I felt obligated to tell him what my plans were. He was the closest thing I had to a best friend too, despite what he did to Crewe.

“What’s up?” He carried his venti coffee to the table and sat down.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…”

“That’s never good.” He sipped his coffee, wearing a black leather jacket with a gray t-shirt underneath. He definitely didn’t look like an insurance salesman.

“I think I’m going to go to Scotland.”

He gripped his coffee on the table and stilled like a statue. “What?”

“They have an open position in Edinburgh at the embassy. And while I’m there, I can talk to Crewe about everything—”

“You’re going back to Scotland to tell Crewe you want to get back together?” he asked incredulously.

“I guess.” I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to apologize for being responsible for the death of his men, for being the reason he was shot. I wanted to feel him in my arms and know he was okay. I hadn’t stopped thinking about it, having nightmares about it.

Joseph shook his head. “I know bossing you around is a waste of time, but don’t bother.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you think Crewe is gonna welcome you back with open arms, think again.”

“I doubt it’ll be with open arms, but—”

“And he might kill you.”

That was one thing I knew for certain would never happen. Even when he was bleeding out onto the floor, he cooperated with Ariel to protect me. I was the reason why he was shot, but he still put me first.

I knew he really loved me.

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” I said with confidence. “I don’t know how he’ll react, but it won’t be violently.”

“Even if you’re right, he’ll never take you back. You embarrassed him, lied to him, and humiliated him in front of all of his men. If the past has taught you anything, it’s that Crewe always gets even. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t forgive you for what you did and move on.”

“It’s not like he’s so innocent.”

He chuckled. “Trust me, he doesn’t see it like that.”

His warning didn’t change anything. If I didn’t speak to Crewe and at least make an attempt, I would think about it forever. I would live in regret for not knowing what could have happened. “I’m going to do it anyway and hope for the best.”

Joseph didn’t hide his look of disappointment. His enemy captured me as payback, and now I wanted to go back to him. It was something he couldn’t wrap his brain around. “You want me to go with you?”

“No,” I blurted. “That’ll just make it hostile. I have to go alone.”

“Are you sure?” he pressed. “I can wait by the road. Who knows what his men will do to you.”

“They won’t hurt me.” Crewe made his orders very clear. Even when he didn’t owe me anything, he still looked after me.

“How can you be so sure?”

If I loved Crewe after everything he put me through, then he still loved me. That was something I believed. “I just am.”