“You want to bury your head in the sand, fine. I can’t. I’m sorry about Capital Confessions. I never meant to hurt you. If I could take it back, I would. But this is my fight and there’s nothing you can say that will ever change my mind. He drew that line in the sand when he played a role in destroying any chance of happiness I had. So this is all I have. And I won’t give it up for anyone. Not even you.”

I saw Kate as she had been as a little girl, flashes of us playing, the few times I could rope her into having a tea party with me, me helping her get ready for her first date, watching her try on wedding dresses after Matt proposed. Holding her on the floor of her dorm room while her heart broke.

It felt like I was losing my sister with every second that passed, but the truth was, I’d already lost her a long time ago.

I struggled to keep the tears in, dug deep to get the words out.

“You’re my sister. If there’s ever a moment that you need me, you call me and I will come. I love you. I will always love you. I would give my life for you. And if I could take your pain away, I would.” My voice thickened with unshed tears as hurt stabbed me over and over again.

“I’m not going to stand by and watch you get yourself killed. I can’t. You’re so wrong if you think you only have your revenge to live for. You have people who love you. You have me. But you’re doing everything you can to self-destruct, and I can’t support that.

“You think I’m burying my head in the sand because I’m ‘letting our father win,’ but what you don’t realize is that he’s already beaten you. He’s already won and he always will, because he plays by his own set of rules where he doesn’t care if he takes everyone around him down as long as he stays on top.

“I’ve lived twenty-three years in this world, and I can’t do it anymore. I want peace. I want to be happy. That’s winning, Kate. That’s beating him at his own game. That’s how you honor people who loved you and wanted the best for you. Matt would have gladly given his life for you, would have sacrificed anything to make you happy. He wouldn’t want you to make his death about destroying yourself. And he wouldn’t want you to risk your life.”

My gaze stopped on Jackie. “Tell her how well revenge worked out for you. What you almost lost. I’m not wrong.”

She nodded.

The tears kept coming and it took everything I had to keep them from falling. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t fix Kate, couldn’t bring Matt back, couldn’t make my father a good person. And I’d never failed to be there for Kate, but I couldn’t stand by her for this. I could only pray that one day she would realize that she was throwing any chance of happiness away.

And that she’d realize it before it killed her.

“I love you.” A tear slipped past my defenses, dripping down my cheek. “If you call me, I’ll come. You know that, right?”

She nodded, her eyes red.

I wrapped my arms around my little sister, holding her close, the love I felt for her eclipsing everything else. The older sister part of me that had always looked out for her screamed to lock her in a room and never let her out. To do anything to protect her. But I couldn’t protect her from herself. There was no rehab for the kind of hatred that burned in her now. She’d shut down for three years, and nothing I’d done since that time had broken through.

It was up to her now.

I let her go.

Gray

I opened the front door and froze.

Blair stood in front of me, some version of Blair I’d never seen before.

Her eyes were red, her makeup streaked. Her clothes, her hair, everything about her seemed disheveled, like she’d just been dragged through the bowels of hell.

Rain fell around her, and she stood on my doorstep without an umbrella, her hair soaked, her clothes plastered against her small frame. She trembled.

“What happened? Are you okay?” I opened the door all the way. “Come inside. You have to be freezing.”

“No.”

“Blair—”

“I’m not staying. I just left Kate’s. She was behind the Capital Confessions article.”

Shock slammed me. I’d never considered her sister. I couldn’t even imagine the pain she must be in.

“I came to apologize to you for having your name dragged through the mud,” she continued. “It never would have happened if you hadn’t been involved with me. You didn’t deserve to have your career trashed again and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care about my career, Blair. I care about you. I don’t give a fuck about what people say about me. But I care when it hurts you.”

She gave me her contempt with her flashing brown eyes. “I am so fucking sick of people moving me around like they’re playing chess and I’m a fucking pawn. So sick of people telling me how I should feel, or what’s best for me, or making decisions without consulting me. And you know what, it’s my own fault. I should have stood up for myself a long time ago.”

I blanched as she hurled fire at me, each word hitting my heart.

“I love you. I will always love you. It will always be you. But I’ve watched my sister spend the last three years of her life destroying herself because she lost the love of her life, and maybe it makes me weak, but I don’t want to be like that.

“I’m willing to fight for us, but I can’t do it if I’m fighting on my own. And I won’t fight you. I want to be happy. I want to have kids. I want a future with a man who will treat me the way I deserve to be treated.”

She gave me an image of a future I’d barely dared to dream of.

“If you can’t see that I choose you, that I don’t care about your past, if you can’t love me enough to put your past behind us, then you were right all along, you don’t deserve me. I’m not asking you to change. Not asking you to give me more than you’re able to give. I’m just asking you to give me your heart and trust that I would never do anything to hurt you. But I can’t give you the life you deserve, the life we deserve, if you don’t trust me. And I’m all out of plays here.”

She leaned forward and placed her lips on my cheek and I froze, caught off guard by the motion and the feel of her body close to mine again.

She pulled away and met my gaze.

“I wanted it to be you. I still want it to be you. But if it’s not, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life being miserable because I lost you. I deserve a family. A husband. Children. I’m not going to give that up. I’m not going to settle.” Her voice shook and tears fell down her cheek. “I will always love you. But I can’t keep waiting around for you to love me. I deserve more.”

She did. She deserved the world.

She gave me one last look, and I couldn’t help but feel like she was memorizing my face, and then the light that I’d seen in her eyes every time she looked at me flickered out.

“Good-bye, Gray.”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but watch her walk away, until she was nothing more than a blur I could barely make out through the tears that rained down my cheeks.

Chapter Twenty-six

The Senate Armed Services Committee met today . . .

—Capital Confessions blog

Blair

I scoured Capital Confessions for a week. My name didn’t show up once. I finally sent Kate a text thanking her for keeping my name out of the press. She didn’t respond.

I walked through the halls of the law school, the weight of dozens of stares trained my way. I’d been a little notorious before, thanks to my father and my family’s position in D.C., but apparently having sex with a professor put you on a whole other level entirely.

I’d stopped caring somewhere along the way.

I walked to the disciplinary hearing, my head high. I’d thought I’d be more nervous, as a kid I’d always been terrified at the idea of getting into trouble; I’d never even been to the principal’s office. Here I was going to face an eight-member panel of my peers and two faculty advisors who would decide my academic fate, and not even a tremor.