He saw it then, the anger she’d just barely held in check. The way her jaw clenched and her eyes flashed, edging out the fear. Forcing himself to swallow down his own rage, he touched her thigh. Right now, he needed to keep her calm and let her know he was on her side in this. “It’ll be okay, Ashlynn. We’ll get through this.”
She frowned, the grooves deepening between her eyebrows. “But it’s not okay. I was fired.”
He nodded and gave her thigh a light squeeze. “I know. I’m sorry. But it’ll be fine. Look at it this way. You were concerned about coming to Brazil with me, but now you don’t have to worry.”
His attempt at levity failed spectacularly. She shook her head and dropped her empty wineglass onto the table, shooting to her feet. From the anger flashing in her eyes, he thought she might throw it at him. “How can you say that? You know how much this job meant to me.”
He held up his hands and sat back on the couch, giving her space. “I’m sorry you lost your job, minha linda. I just meant that now we don’t have to hide anymore. We don’t have to keep things secret. I can tell the world you’re mine, and you’re free to come with me to Brazil.” He understood that losing this job was a blow to her, but there would be other jobs. She could still freelance. There had to be more to this because her anger was starting to turn on him, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was.
“Do you not understand how big this job was for me? Craig was going to hire me full-time. I know you’ve never had to worry about money, but I’ve spent my whole life worrying about it. This job would’ve given me security, a future. I worked hard for it, and it’s just . . . just gone now.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize how fast it had happened.
“I know it was important to you, but—”
“No. There is no ‘but,’ Leandro. It was important to me, and now it’s gone. Don’t you get that?”
He rose and tried to approach her, but she turned and stormed away from him so he stayed where he was. “Yeah, I understand. But I want to take care of you. You don’t have to worry about money. I’ll take care of everything you need.” He wanted to hold her, but he knew that was out of the question.
“That makes me . . .” She stopped with her back to him, hands on her hips, and shook her head, looking down at the floor. “What would that make me? I sleep with you so you can take care of me?”
“What? No! Jesus, Ashlynn, that’s not what I meant.” He ran his hand through his hair. He could feel her slipping away from him, but he wasn’t sure how to stop it from happening. “You’re with me now, and I’m with you. We take care of each other.”
“Well, I have a mortgage, and Kayla’s tuition will be due again soon.” She turned to face him, her face tight with anger.
“I’ll take care of that, minha linda. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”
She let out what sounded like a hollow laugh. “I’m not using you for your money.”
“I know that. I know. That’s why I want to give it to you. It’s not about the money, it’s about helping you.” He walked over to her and ran his fingertips over her hair. “Let me take care of you.”
“That doesn’t help my future, Leandro. Don’t you understand that I worked hard for my career? I need a job so that I can keep paying my bills, so that I can do something that I enjoy doing. So that I can have a purpose. I can’t just go live with you and give up everything I’ve worked for.”
He sighed and gripped the hair on the back of his head in his fist, frustrated that they were fighting when that was the last thing he wanted. And, to be honest, he was a little hurt that every offer to help her was being rejected. “I’m a little bit confused, amada. I don’t know what you want from me right now. I never said that I didn’t want you to work.”
“No, but you can’t just take care of me.”
“Okay, then tell me what I can do for you.”
“Nothing, Leandro. There’s nothing you can do that can make this better unless you have a fucking time machine. When word of this gets out, it could ruin my professional reputation. No one will want to hire me.” She started pacing and he took a step back to give her space. “This is my life. Don’t you understand that?”
“Don’t you want a life with me?” He clenched his fists at his side to keep from reaching for her. Everything she was saying sounded a lot like she didn’t want to make room in her life for him, and that hurt like a goddamn knife to his chest. “You said before that your life didn’t revolve around mine, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Your life revolves around mine; my life revolves around yours. We figure out a way to make them work together.”
“But I don’t know how to make it work in your world.”
And there it was. That was why she was so angry and fearful. Some of it was about the job, but a lot of it was about him and what had happened last night at dinner with his family. Or maybe this had been brewing before the dinner. Maybe she’d held on to her doubts even after they’d decided they were all in. For the first time, his own anger gave way to fear, because he didn’t know how to fight her doubts.
“Your world is so much bigger than mine. I feel like it’ll swallow me up and I’ll lose myself. It’ll be your life, your world, and I’ll find a tiny place in it and forget who I am.” She swallowed hard, her eyes wide and afraid.
He took a deep breath, choosing his words carefully so he wouldn’t set her off again. “We can figure it out together. My world isn’t as big as you think. You’re overreacting now because you got fired and you’re understandably upset.”
“Don’t patronize me. I’m upset, but I’m not overreacting. My whole life just got turned upside down, not yours. You’ll probably get a fine, and you’ll pay it without blinking, but I lost everything I’ve worked for, Leandro. I lost it! Everyone is counting on me. My mom, my sister. They both need me to keep it together, but I was so selfish. I wanted something I knew I shouldn’t have. I let you in and look what happened.”
A chill crept over his skin, pulling it tight. “I don’t understand. Are you trying to say this was a mistake? That I’m a mistake?”
She nodded, her eyes bright. “Maybe, yeah.” Then something seemed to click and her entire body stiffened with resolve. “Yeah. I think that’s exactly what this was.”
All the air in the room seemed to leave, taking all the sound with it, and there was only her standing across from him. Only she might as well have not been there for how alone he felt. As many times as he’d felt like an outsider in his own family, he’d never once felt as isolated as he felt right now. “We aren’t a mistake.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat and her eyes narrowed. He saw a tiny chink in her armor as a flicker of the fear that pulsed beneath her anger threatened to claw its way through. “I love you, Ashlynn.”
But her voice was surprisingly strong when she said, “No, you don’t.” She paused, and when she continued, her voice was softer. “I know that you think you do. But you don’t.” And then even quieter. “And that’s for the best.”
“Ashlynn . . .” Despite himself, he reached for her, but she swung her arm away. He needed to hold her, to remind her how good he made her feel, and they could put this outburst behind them. Despite what she said, he knew she was overreacting to being fired, and he didn’t fucking care. He’d let her heap her anger down on him as long as she remembered he loved her and that maybe she even loved him, at least a little. “You don’t mean that. You can’t tell me how I feel. You’re angry, that’s all.”
He reached for her again, following her as she backed up until she brought her hands up and said, “No!”
He stopped short, reminded of how she’d held off Jason in the parking lot. She was looking at him that exact same way, as if he was nothing to her. It was at that moment that he realized she meant it. She wasn’t simply taking her anger out on him. “What are you saying?”
“You should go.”
He took a few steps back, needing the space to deal with the nearly overwhelmin
g pain in those words. “You don’t mean . . .” But she did mean it. He could see the resolve in her eyes. “Fuck. Just like that? You say it’s over, and you think you can forget what we had that easily?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her shoulders dropping, making him want to pull her into his arms and beg her to stop what she doing to them. “But I need space. I can’t do this with you anymore. It’s . . . you’ve taken over my life and I have to figure things out on my own.”
“No, you don’t. I’m here with you, and we’ll figure things out together.”
She shook her head, and he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with her. “Go.”
“Fine. I’ll go. But you remember this: I love you, Ashlynn Fields. You can tell yourself I don’t if it makes you feel better, but you’ll be wrong.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Eu te amo. This isn’t over.”
The silence dragged out between them, and if he’d held any hope that she might reconsider, she snuffed it out when she said, “Go. Please.”
He turned and walked out her door with anger pulsing in his chest where his heart used to be. Sometime in the space between her telling him to go and his next breath, he’d figured out who might’ve taken that damn video. The one person who had hated the idea of Leandro and Ashlynn from the beginning. He needed to find Thiago.
21
AS LEANDRO RACED home, weaving through traffic, his suspicion only grew. It grew so fast that by the time he pulled into his driveway, he’d have bet a million dollars that he’d find a copy of that video on Thiago’s phone. Thiago was the only one who’d been against his relationship with Ashlynn from the very beginning. Leandro never would’ve thought his friend would stoop to something so underhanded, but it made too much sense for him to ignore his gut feeling. If someone else from the WFC had been at the restaurant, Leandro would’ve seen them.
Thiago had motive and opportunity, but there was more. Ashlynn had mentioned that someone had sent Darcy a photo of them dancing in Miami. Thiago had been in that club in Miami with them. All he would’ve had to do was pull out his phone and snap a picture. At the time Leandro had been too focused on Ashlynn to care who’d sent the damned thing. But this was too far. This was fucking with their lives. Ashlynn had lost her job. Then she’d turned around and fucked up their relationship, and Leandro wasn’t going to rest until he knew who was responsible.
He was so angry that when he walked into the house he had tunnel vision. He took the stairs two at a time, his gaze on Thiago’s closed bedroom door. It was barely noon, so Thiago would still be in bed nursing a hangover. As usual.
Leandro pushed open the door so hard that it swung back and bounced off the wall. Thiago wasn’t in his bed, but it didn’t matter because Leandro saw his phone on the bedside table. He picked it up, dialed the pass code, and opened the video app. The very first video was Ashlynn and Leandro standing on Le Cirque’s balcony. He pressed play and watched as he told her that she made him a better person, that he loved her. Rage mixed with sadness as he watched, causing pressure to squeeze his chest, making him want to roar and let it all out.
That moment had been for them and them alone. He clenched his teeth near the end, where he said dirty things to her and squeezed her ass. No one except Ashlynn was supposed to hear those words. Not Thiago. Not Craig Darcy. A sick feeling churned in his stomach as he realized the video could be all over the Internet by now. Strangers could be listening to him say those words to her, watching him touch her. He deleted the video and scrolled through Thiago’s photos until he found the one from the club in Miami. He wasn’t even surprised it was there, and then he deleted it too.
“Leo?” Thiago stood framed in the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand, his gaze jumping from Leandro to the phone in his hand. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Leandro’s teeth were clenched so tightly that his jaw ached. “You took a video of Ashlynn and me and sent it to Craig Darcy.”
Thiago’s eyes went wide for a second, but then he grinned and shrugged, walking into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I did what I had to do. You didn’t leave me much choice.” He set his coffee mug down on the bedside table and leaned back against a pillow.
“What the hell does that mean?” Leandro asked, struggling not to yell.
“It means you were letting that girl lead you around by your dick. You weren’t yourself with her around. She was bad for you, and you couldn’t see it.”
“Goddammit, Thiago!” Leandro broke, throwing the phone across the room so hard it hit the wall with a loud cracking sound. Thiago sat up, as if just now realizing how angry Leandro was. “She was good for me, but you hated her from the beginning. What did she ever do to you?”
“She took you away from everything you loved.” Thiago stood and started counting off on his fingers. “You stopped racing, you stopped going out, the guys never see you anymore. She turned you into an old man. Even your mom could see it. She hates her.”
“My mom hates her because she doesn’t come from money, not because she’s bad for me.” His mother had never given a damn about what was good for him.
Thiago shook his head like it didn’t matter. “Whatever. In time you’ll see that I’m right and I did you a favor. When you’re balls deep in another lingerie model, you’ll thank me.”
A chill prickled up Leandro’s spine, tightening his skin. It was like he was seeing Thiago for the first time, seeing him as he really was. This wasn’t the man who was like a brother to him. This was a stranger. Or maybe it wasn’t Thiago who had changed. Maybe Leandro had changed so much that he no longer fit into the life he’d left behind.
Had he ever been like Thiago? Shallow and so self-absorbed he couldn’t see how he ruined lives? The thought nearly staggered him, sobering him from his anger. The life Thiago described sounded awful, meaningless, and petty. Leandro didn’t want it. He wanted Ashlynn. He wanted late nights on the couch eating popcorn and watching old movies. He wanted to take her to that tiny restaurant in Paris that he loved. He wanted to create a new life for himself. With her.
He didn’t want lingerie models and strippers. The very thought of fucking another woman made his stomach turn. It felt wrong. He didn’t want the racing and the nightclubs either. Not without Ashlynn. They’d only been temporary distractions from the emptiness inside.
“I want you out of here, Thiago.” He put his hands on his hips, resisting the urge to throw Thiago out himself.
Thiago raised his hands in an elaborate shrug. “I get that she’s hot, but don’t let good pussy blind you. There’s plenty more out there.”
The sound that came out of Leandro was something between a growl and a roar. It tore out of his chest as he rushed Thiago. His breath came out in a whoosh as Leandro backed him into the wall, knocking over the table and sending the coffee spilling onto the floor. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“You’re the asshole,” Thiago shot back, pushing against Leandro’s shoulders and bringing his knee up.
Leandro blocked his knee and punched him in the ribs. “You got her fired. She broke up with me because of you.”
“Good! I’m glad she broke up with you. You don’t fucking need her. She’s a bitch.”
Leandro hit him again. Thiago brought his arm up, and Leandro jumped back, narrowly missing a punch to the throat. “Don’t fucking talk about her. You don’t have the right.”
“I’ll talk about her all I want. She’s a whore who was using you.”
Leandro punched him right in his loud mouth. With the catharsis of that hit came clarity. “Fuck you. I want you out of my house. If anyone is using me, it’s you. Twenty thousand here. Ten thousand there. She hasn’t asked me for one thing. But you, you’re just a fucking leech. You don’t want me to be with Ashlynn because you know she sees right through you.”
Thiago sneered, blood turning his teeth red. “I’m your brother, man. You’re really going to throw me out over some pussy? I’ve been
here for you, no matter what. Where’s that bitch now? She’s not here. You have a fight in less than a week, and look what she did to you.”
Leandro punched him again. His wrestling coach, who must’ve been downstairs waiting for him, came rushing in and jumped between them, pushing Leandro off before he could get in another hit. “You betrayed me, Thiago. You’re not my brother. I don’t know when it happened, but you changed.”
“You changed,” he shot back.
Leandro couldn’t even deny it, because he had changed. He now saw Thiago for who he really was. Only he suspected it went far deeper than the video to Darcy. Just after Christmas, Thiago, who was always low on cash, had come home driving a brand-new Rolls-Royce Wraith. He’d said it was a Christmas present, and Leandro had assumed Thiago’s family had bought it for him. Now he suspected he knew where it had really come from.
Leandro allowed the coach to hold him back as he pointed to where the broken cell phone lay on the floor. “If I look at that phone, will I find my sex tape? You took it and sold it?”
Thiago didn’t even try to deny it. He shrugged. “Hey, I did you a favor, man. You were on TMZ and Entertainment Tonight Us Weekly put you on the cover. People know about you now because of me.” He hit his chest, looking proud of himself. “You should be fucking thanking me. You tell me I’m a leech, but you’re an ungrateful prick.”
“You ruined their lives. Those women caught so much shit for that.”
Thiago laughed. “Emilia says she’s doing okay. She has a new career in adult entertainment now. Pays a lot better than modeling bikinis.”
Leandro frowned. “You talk to Emilia?” She was the model he’d been casually dating. It had been her hotel room that they’d gone back to, and she’d invited the other women to come there. “Wait . . . did you plan that with her? You planned to record us and sell the video?”
Thiago’s grin confirmed it. “You always were a little slow. Don’t worry, she got her cut and I got mine. Even you came out ahead. Win-win.”
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