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That doesn't help.

If anything, it makes her angrier.

"Good," she snaps. "Then we're making progress."

I rake a hand through my wet hair and try very hard not to notice that I'm half-naked and she's trying very hard not to notice that I'm half-naked and we have had exactly zero successful conversations in this much exposed skin.

"Just sign the papers, Aria," I say, because apparently I am determined to die on the stupidest possible hill. "Then I'll be out of your hair so you can live your life."

Her face changes.

The fury doesn't leave. It deepens.

"Live my life?" She repeats softly. "It would be a hell of a lot easier to live my life if my soon-to-be ex-husband didn't keep giving me things that make it impossible to move on."

I go still.

"The house. My father's care. The estate. All of it." She takes a step toward me. "You don't get to act like you're setting me free while tying knots behind your back."

"So that's why you're staying in Cannes?" I ask, the jealousy getting there before the wisdom. "To get away from me? Is that what this is about?"

She stops. Stares at me.

Then says, very clearly, "I'm not answering your question until you answer mine. Why are you here?"

The pool water drips down my back in cold lines.

I can hear the ocean beyond the walls.

Can hear my own breathing.

Can hear the exact second when I realize there is no version of this conversation that ends without me saying the thing I should have said months ago.

But first, because I am still me, I do the practical thing one last time.

"To get you to sign the papers," I say. "Otherwise everything I did was for nothing and the trust can go back on the deal."

Her eyes flash.

"The deal where you gave up your inheritance to save your family and my father?"

Every muscle in my body locks.

"Who told you that?"

"Sienna."

Figures she would get involved when it’s none of her business.

"She also told me nobody wanted you to do it." Aria's voice cracks on the last word, just barely. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me what all of this really was? At least then I could have understood why you threw us away."

"I didn't throw us away—"

"Yes," she says, and the hurt lands under the anger so clearly I almost can't look at her. "You did. And you did it without ever giving me the option."

I scrub a hand over my face.

"My siblings would have lost their inheritance. Your father would have lost Brookhaven. All because I trusted someone I shouldn't have."