The Boundaries You Asked For Chapter 2

On the drive back, I pulled the bikini top from my pocket and tossed it to her.

She stammered out an explanation. “Last night wasn’t what you think. That guy is Lindsay’s brother, and I was drunk, nothing happened…”

I tore open an antiseptic wipe and meticulously cleaned my hands.

“Just drop me off here. Leo invited me for a poker game.”

Sienna swallowed hard, her voice softening. “I can pick you up when you’re done?”

“No need,” I said, pushing the car door open. “You do your thing.”

I didn’t want to know what that bikini had been through. I was just afraid of catching something vile.

A long, hot shower at Leo’s place and a change into the fresh clothes he’d laid out for me finally cleared the suffocating feeling in my chest.

Leo watched Sienna’s car drive off, then raised an eyebrow at me. “So, how’d the battle go? What was the score? Why didn’t you call for backup?”

I sank into the couch. “There was no battle. Scaring off the woman is one thing, but I can’t afford to scare off the money.”

That New Year’s Day, the Vaughn estate had been a war zone. Several of the elders had been so upset they ended up in the hospital. As I lay on the cold ground, it was Leo who finally showed up and bundled my mud-caked self into his sports car.

As he turned the key, he couldn’t resist a jab. “Living out your childhood dream at the Vaughn’s? Rolling around in a mud pit?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but tears came out first. “Leo, how did it get like this?”

He panicked, fumbling to wipe my tears, but he had no answers.

No one could have imagined Sienna and I would end up in such a toxic mess. We were childhood sweethearts, practically knew each other since we were in diapers. I’d worked my ass off to get into the same university as her, waking up before the sun and studying long after midnight, giving it everything I had.

The day I got my acceptance letter, my mom was amazed. “If I’d known you’d kill yourself studying for Sienna, why would I have spent a fortune on tutors?”

Everyone assumed that Caleb Reed and Sienna Vaughn were meant to be.

But just as we finally grew up, just as we no longer had to share a cheap slice of pizza from a food truck, she let go of my hand.

She despised her family for controlling her future, for forcing her to give up her dream of being a musician to inherit the family company. And that resentment peaked when I agreed to our engagement.

Back then, I was too blinded by my own happiness, too thrilled at the thought of finally marrying the girl of my dreams, to notice that the love in her eyes had long since vanished.

After the engagement, she was never home. I’d wake up to my phone flooded with “updates” from well-meaning friends. Sienna just dropped a fortune on some new model. Sienna was surrounded by people at a yacht party. Sienna threw herself another wedding party somewhere else…

Those messages were like mold in a damp season, impossible to wipe away completely.

I used to scream, chase her for answers, go insane, making a spectacle of myself for everyone to see.

All it earned me was Sienna’s deepening disgust.

“Can’t you have some boundaries? You don’t like it? Fine, go tell my mother to call off the engagement!”

Leo accurately described our relationship as less like a married couple and more like a rebellious teenager and their desperate mother. One was trying to escape, and the other was clinging on for dear life.

I thought I would be tangled up with her like this forever. But one day, in the middle of a fight, I just got tired.

Brothers don’t need words; a single look is enough. Seeing my unusual calm, Leo asked softly, “So, what’s the plan?”

I took the warm water he offered. “The London project. My family and the Vaughns have invested a lot. I’m going to oversee it myself.”

“For how long?”

“Three years, for now.”

He slung an arm around my shoulders, reluctant to let me go. “We’ll party hard before you leave. My treat.”

I grinned and punched him lightly in the chest. “You’re not getting off that easy.”