Chapter 166

Ariston sat on the sofa across from Lucette , barely listening to everyone’s chatter. The stilted conversation he’d had with Antonios out on the steps replayed in his mind.

It had been strange and unsettling to see his brother again, standing there in front of their childhood home, remembering the death of both of their parents, a decade of hostility and suspicion between them... Ariston had felt himself tense, his hands balling into instinctive fists. He’d seen from the set of Antonios’s jaw and his narrowed eyes that he felt the same.

They could clear the air, they could forgive the past, they could say they were moving on, but the reality was that memories still clung. They still held power. And if he couldn’t move past things with Antonios, how could he with Lucette ?

He wanted to tell her he loved her, wanted to trust that what they had was real and lasting. But the memory of her last rejection still had the power to hurt. To make him stay silent. They’d had just over a month t