He hated the fucking thing.
He hated all the time he’d spent staring at it, hated the color of it, hated the idea that his mother—his mom had left it here along with all the other things she didn’t need. Left it here to rot.
The violence that had shaken his limbs at the hotel came rumbling back with a vengeance. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d picked the vase up and drawn his arm back. And he put all his force and all his anger into hurling it as hard as he could.
The vase hit the wall with a crash, shattering into ruin. A rain of jagged porcelain shards, crumbling into the carpet, and fuck. Just fuck.
He’d made such a mess of everything.
“Was that really necessary?” a voice asked out of nowhere.
He jerked his head up, flailing his arm to the side, getting his hand around a stray corkscrew that’d been left out. A figure was sitting up on the couch—the very one he’d just flung a vase over. Pulse rocketing, he reached behind himself, feeling along the wall for a light, flicking it up when his fingers connected with the switch.
He blinked hard against the sudden brightness, willing his vision to adjust. Once it had, he gaped. Set the corkscrew back down on the counter.
What the hell?
“Lexie?”
His sister arched her back, letting out an enormous yawn. “Long time no see, brother dearest.” She paused for a minute and sat up straighter. She blinked, then cocked her head to the side. “Dude. You look like shit.”
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
“Seriously, what happened to you?”
Rylan wanted to bang his head against the table, but he managed to restrain himself. Barely. “Could we maybe focus first on what the hell you think you’re doing here?”
“What”— Lexie looked around innocently—“in the dining room? Where else am I supposed to eat my dinner? Midnight snack? Is it closer to midnight in this time zone? I’m not sure.”
He rolled his eyes.
Once he’d more or less recovered from the heart attack she’d given him by showing up in his living room, he’d stormed off to the bedroom he’d been using as his own to wash his face and try to get himself under control. His sister had apparently taken advantage of the pause in conversation to order take-out.
Now she sat at the big, fancy dining room table he never used, dark hair tied in a knot on top of her head, bright pink pajamas making his already sore eyes hurt.
He gestured toward the croissant and lox and fruit she’d unpacked from the brown paper sack it had arrived at their door in. “Who even delivers croissants?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. Jerome can get you anything you want, though. Night or day.”
“Jerome.” The concierge down in the lobby. “How do you know Jerome?”
She gave him a look like he was an idiot. It wasn’t an expression he’d had directed at him in a while, but it was painfully familiar. “Mother and Evan and I killed an entire summer here one year.” She waved a hand at him. “But you wouldn’t remember. You decided to stay at Exeter or something, I think.”
Of course he had. He’d taken any excuse he could get not to go home back then. “You were, what? Fifteen?”
“Fourteen.”
“And Jerome was getting you anything you wanted, huh?”
“Within moderation.” Her eyebrow twitched upward. “Some things I preferred to handle internally.”
Rylan really didn’t even want to know.
He gave her a second as she tore off a piece of croissant, topped it with a bit of the salmon, and popped it into her mouth. The noise she made was borderline obscene. “You cannot get a croissant like this outside of Paris.”
Of course you could. There were five places he could name in New York alone. “Lex,” he finally said, out of patience. He’d come back here to lick his wounds, dammit, not deal with his sister. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I was trying to take a nap, right up until you decided you didn’t like Mom’s interior decorating.”
He didn’t take the bait. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
She rolled her eyes. “I graduated two weeks ago. If you read your email you’d know that.”
“So, what, you decided to celebrate with a trip to Paris? Here to find yourself or something?” The question came out sneering, but it threatened to strangle him.
“Ha-ha. Not all of us have time to travel for pleasure, you know.” She stabbed a bit of her fruit, then set her fork aside, narrowing her eyes as she stared at him. “Look, Thomas has been trying to call you. I’ve been trying to call you. The one time you actually pick up, you brush me off within about three seconds. It’s been a year, Teddy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want. Family gets to do that.”
He snorted. “Family.”
“Yup. Like it or not, that’s what we are.”
“And we’re supposed to, what? Band together and pick up the pieces our disgraced patriarch left for us?”
“Basically.”
“Well, I don’t want to.” He rose from his seat, feeling too caged in there at the fancy table in this ugly, fancy room. Feeling too caged in this conversation. Rubbing a hand over his face, he paced over to the wall, then flipped, putting his back to the plaster. “I wash my hands of the whole damn thing.”
“You washing your hands of me and Evan, too?”
“Evan doesn’t give a shit about any of this.”
“He will, someday, when he wakes up from the hippy dreamland he’s living in.”
That hippy dreamland being art school. Anger rose up in Rylan’s throat. “Why do you always have to dismiss what he wants to do with his life?”
“Because it’s not a real life! He should be part of the family business—”
“Not everybody wants to be you!”
Fuck. First it had been Kate, thinking about throwing away her passion because of whatever imaginary pressures she was facing to conform, and now it was this. It had always been this.
It had always been Lexie, striving so damn hard to be their father. Only their father hadn’t wanted a daughter for a CEO. He’d wanted a son. Evan had been too sensitive—too drawn into other things.
So Rylan had been the one to step up. He’d done what he had to do, for the family and the company, and for Lexie and Evan, too. Fighting for Lexie’s right to a seat at the table. For Evan’s chance to study whatever he wanted to at school. Fighting for everyone except himself, and he was tired, goddammit all.
He was done.
He glanced up at Lexie to find her staring at him, face stricken.
“Fuck it,” he mumbled under his breath. She’d never understood anyone who hadn’t had her drive.
He was almost to the door before she spoke.
“I don’t want anyone to be me.” Her voice was unusually soft. Just a little bit shaky.
He didn’t turn around, facing the hall as he said, “But you expect us all to want the same things you do.”
“I don’t. I just want you to care.”
“Well, I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Just because Dad got caught—”
“He didn’t just get caught. Christ, Lex, don’t you get it?” All the things he never talked about—the things he never even let himself so much as think about—were rising up, sticking in the back of his throat and dripping poison into his gut.
She threw her hands up. “No! I don’t, okay? I don’t get it. The whole thing made you so damn butt-hurt—”
“They took everything.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. He smacked his fist against the archway of the door and closed his eyes, pressing his brow to the back of his hand. “I gave my whole fucking life to Dad’s ambition.” His breath went short, his lungs tightening. “It was all I had, okay? Dad’s name and Dad’s company and Dad’s dirty money, and the name’s worthless now. Our family is worthless. The company is in ruins. All I have left is the money.”