Page 107 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend
“This is your home,” said Conor. He’d turned and was staring at me from the other end of the path. “I don’t have the right.”
I stood still. Conor’s clothes were wet from the water. I could see him, in the pale blue light of the Falls, his enormous shoulders heaving as he looked at me. I looked at him then and knew that I could only say the truth, the things I really believed. I no longer had the energy to lie. To make things up, to hide myself, to pretend I was anything other than the messed-up, confused woman I’d always feared I’d become.
“You’re right,” I said. I planted my feet in the ground, feeling my legs shake, feeling my stomach turning over itself with butterflies. No one knew how to hurt me like Conor. No one had ever done anything as bad to me as what he’d done. And yet…
“I know I am,” I said.
“But you’re also wrong,” I said. “I just…I don’t know you. I just don’t know you at all. Who are you?”
Conor stared at me, his eyes narrowing. “What does that mean?” he said. “You know who I am.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I don’t. I used to think I did. After that night—when you told me the truth—I thought I knew. But now I realize that none of it makes sense.”
“Laura,” said Conor sadly, and I saw him turn to go. But I couldn’t let him just go. And I knew that nothing in the world would be worse than watching him leave without telling him the truth.
“What you did was cruel,” I said. “And manipulative. Deceitful. But you’re not cruel, Conor. You were good to me. Even when you knew who I was, what I’d done. Why?”
“Why?” said Conor, as if the word was strange and unfamiliar. Did he even know what had made him do it? What had made him conceal his whole personality, lock his life away in a secret room, as if that life itself was a dangerous thing that could ruin the one he’d invented?
“You don’t know, do you?” I said.
He hung his head, and turned back to face me. “Because I love you,” he said quietly.
His voice echoed, but the words were almost lost under the groaning noise of the water. “I love you.”
I felt my heart go still then. Not faster, but slower. Around me I could hear the small echoes and footfalls, the sound of tiny rocks. The cliff chipping away, bit by bit, as water eroded it and battered it smooth, just as it had been doing for thousands of years and would for thousands more to come.
“Love me?”
“I love you, Laura. I always have done. Ever since the moment I saw you. Ever since…since this whole, screwed-up thing began. And I knew when you left that I would never stop loving you.”
“No,” I whined, and felt my jaw clench, as I sobbed a little. “That can’t be. You can’t—”
“But I do. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said, breathlessly, saying it as quickly as possible so that I wouldn’t have to think about it. Not because it wasn’t true. I knew I loved him, this man before me whose face had been a mystery for so long.
Conor turned and looked out at the water coming down in front of us. His voice got deep and quiet, almost a whisper. I stepped closer to hear him.
“When I was in the Navy,” he said, “I saw combat. We were pinned down. My squad retreated. But I was stuck. Trapped,” he croaked, his voice emotionless as he pronounced the word. His voice wasn’t the voice of Conor or the voice of Lucien now, but something else, lovelier and lighter somehow.
“I was in an enemy position,” he said. “I’d been clearing out a bunker. But I couldn’t fall back. I thought my best option was to stay in cover, keep fighting. Push ahead. That’s when it happened. The insurgents we were fighting…one of them set off an explosion. It pulled apart the bulkhead door. The noise…I can’t even.”
I was closer to him now, so close I could see his limbs shaking, as he recalled the terrifying moment. The thing that all servicemen fear the most. The thing they know they might be called upon to do for their country, but few rarely see. The moment he faced death.
“A shard of it,” he said, pulling his hand across his body, “cut me. Before then I’d always thought that if I didn’t like it, if I didn’t want this, I didn’t always have to pretend. I could leave, I could serve my tour, I could come find you. I could come back to you and say, ‘I’m here, it’s me, Conor, and I still…’” He leaned back against the stone, his back to the wall, watching as the Falls tumbled down to the bottom, a hundred meters beneath us.
“After that,” he admitted, “I knew I could never come back. That Conor was…gone. I thought he was. I was…I felt like the old me really did die that day. Even if I survived.”
“What happened?” I said.
“They came back for me. The squad,” he said, “pulled me out of there. I was awarded the Medal of Honor. But from that day,” he said miserably, “I was on my own. And it was fine. I was used to it,” he said. “I liked it,” he added. “I never had to rely on anyone again. Not my teammates. Not my friends. Not my family. And not,” he said, “the girl who broke my heart. The girl I loved.”
He looked at me. “I knew I could never love you again,” he said, “if only I pretended. Only I couldn’t. Because Laura, that day you walked into my house…”
My lip was trembling. I had no words. There weren’t enough to thank him for his sacrifice. Or to tell him how wrong he was. That Conor was maybe the bravest person I’d ever known. And I understood now why he’d done what he’d done.
To survive.