Had known it since my mother had made me promise to avoid Adam. And even as I had, I’d seen the disbelief in her eyes. She’d known I’d fall into temptation, had known it and had accepted it, because she understood.
If anyone did, it was Genevieve, and, in her own way, she was trying to protect me.
From myself.
And from love.
“I think she wanted to know why Nanny hadn’t been in touch.”
“She didn’t just think she passed on?” he queried softly.
“No. She was young, don’t forget. She’d have been fifty-three this year.”
“Holy crap, she had your mom young, didn’t she?”
“That’s the culture for you.” I gripped the headphone wire in my hands and twisted it, made loops of it around my fingers.
“I think you should tell me what this curse is.”
“Genevieve made me promise to stay away from you. She said that the Kinkades are gifted with talents that make us unique, but each gift is a double-edged sword, I guess.”
His brow puckered. “The healing—why you turn to ice in the aftermath.”
I dipped my chin. “Exactly. That’s how I know she’s right about everything she said, Adam. Something is given on one hand, but taken away with the other. Balance.”
“Why would your family be given the gift of knowing who you’re supposed to be with if you’re not supposed to be with them?”
I thought back to what she said and knew, point blank, he wasn’t going to believe what Mom had shared.
Why would he?
He was rational.
He was logical.
He wasn’t Roma.
But me? I was, even if it was only faintly. I knew what we could do in our family. Knew, even more, to fear it.
Still, he needed to know. More than that, he needed to realize I believed she was right. “She said that there was a Kinkade who, long ago, was so accurate with her predictions that Fate decided to punish her for knowing too much.”
His brow puckered. “You can’t be serious.”
Not a question. A statement.
I closed my eyes and tipped my head back against the seat. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s why I didn’t bother explaining, I just got the hell away from Boston the second I could.”
He stared at me, his hands clenched into fists, before he whispered, “That’s why you left me?”
“There wasn’t much to leave, Adam,” I ground out. “You were living with Maria, raising a kid together. We had that one night, but I knew that was all I was ever going to get from you—”
“Until Cain was released. You had to know that was as long as this shitshow was going to carry on—”
I shrugged. “I never thought you’d divorce.” And I hadn’t. I’d thought Anna would make sure he and Maria were tied together forever—Jose was a donor to her campaign fund, after all.
“You were wrong. I sacrificed enough years for that bastard. No way in hell did I go into that marriage thinking it would be forever.”
“You never told me that.”
“I-I just thought you knew,” he spluttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “I thought it was obvious.”
I happened to notice the tremor and was surprised by it, even as I accepted the truth of what he was saying—he really had thought I’d know that.
“You told me the statute of limitations is—”
“Yeah. But once he was out, there’d be no worrying about that, would there? I just had to keep the peace until then, and I did.”
“He was released last year, wasn’t he?”
He nodded and answered my silent question. “I was going to do this then. But after the Olympics...and the Coronavirus.” He blew out a breath. “It just shifted my timeline by a year. I wanted you to have this. I didn’t want to get in the way, Thea. I know how much energy and effort you dedicated to your training. I knew you wouldn’t have a spare moment for me anyway, so I let you do what you needed to, and I bided my time.”
My jaw worked as I ground my teeth at his arrogance. Even if, truly, he deserved it, because he’d been right, hadn’t he?
The second he came for me, told me about a divorce, I was here with him, about to spend a couple weeks alone with him—and I highly doubted that time would be spent with us spring cleaning.
“We can’t be together. Not long term,” I told him.
“Fuck that, and fuck the curse, and fuck your mother. I don’t give a shit about some goddamn claptrap. I