Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
KAI
I had never been inside the house—Stefan’s parents’ house.
Even though I had owned it for a while, I had only ever known it from the outside when I used to watch them through the window.
The polite distance of a man who had never been invited inside.
Tonight, my key turned in the lock as if it had always lived there, and I was finally inside, on the other side of the door.
I could have crossed it months ago. I’d held the deed, the locks, every legal right of entry, and I had never once used them, because taking possession before closing is what amateurs do. I didn’t break into things. I arrange to be let in, and then I never leave.
Amelie didn’t say much after arriving at the hospital. We left once Bella fell asleep, but not before Amelie asked the doctor to look at my wounds.
In the exam room, she had watched me carefully while I had let the silence sit.
She touched my split lip like it was the only casualty of the evening worth counting.
Her hands on my face told me everything her mouth hadn’t gotten to yet, and I sat very still and let the verdict be read into the record.
It was important that she come to the conclusion all on her own and she did.
She decided that staying in the same house as Stefan wasn’t in the best interest of the kids, and I pretended to be surprised when she suggested staying in their old home tonight.
Surprise was a courtesy I extended when a plan arrived on schedule.
It was the most logical solution. The children needed stability after what happened, and they’d be more comfortable in their childhood home over a hotel.
It was the reason I never sold this place.
Because once she ended things with Stefan, we needed a place where the children would feel safe.
I had carried this house on my books at a loss that never read as one.
Taxes current, roof sound, a housekeeper on retainer for rooms nobody used.
Every other asset I owned existed to appreciate. This one existed to be needed tonight.
Of course, I could’ve suggested kicking Stefan out instead of coming here, but I had refrained. A perverse part of me wanted to know what it’d be like to live on this side of the door for once.
Amelie moved through the house slowly, touching doorframes.
The house was half empty, but there was enough to make do for the night.
At the top of the stairs, she stopped in front of a door without opening it, and after a moment, she came back down.
I filed it away as that one being their old bedroom and something with claws sat up behind my sternum.
I wanted it unmade. Not redecorated but unmade.
The bed he’d shared with her, the walls that had watched, the doorknob that remembered both their hands, I wanted it all gone by sunrise.
One call to my assistant would have got the job done.
Two things kept my phone in my pocket. She hadn’t opened the door, so there was no need to execute a room your wife had already buried. And there were bigger concerns at play.
She knew everything now, and what she didn’t find out from Rose, Stefan had screamed it across my lawn. The girl in the story was her. The crash that killed both Stefan’s parents and mine. The financial crisis I had created for them so they’d accept my offer.
I stood in the half-empty kitchen and understood that I had negotiated with powerful men and had never once entered a room holding less leverage than this one. Then again, leverage was for negotiations, and this had never been one. Negotiations could end two ways.
Was she angry about the stalking? Possibly.
Did she have questions about what I’d done? Certainly, and I would answer them honestly.
Was it over between them for good? It’d better be. There was no room for negotiations where this was concerned.
Most importantly, was she still mine after the bomb Rose had dropped?
My wife grew up waiting in empty houses for people who never came home. You didn’t talk a woman like that into a marriage with words alone. So, I gave her the only thing that seemed to make her feel safe: actions. Someone who showed up when she needed them the most.
“Dr. Bower will call at nine with the lab results,” I said, setting my phone face up on the counter where she could see it.
“The overnight stay is only a precaution since we confirmed Bella didn’t ingest anything.
I gave the night nurses both our numbers, and we’ll be there before she wakes up.
I’ve arranged a follow-up for Thursday, someone Bower trained who’s better with children than he is. ”
Amelie stared at me with a blank expression.
“I think it’ll be good to get a psych evaluation done. Bella was scared and didn’t know what was happening. Better to have a child psychiatrist talk to her to process things.”
More staring.
“I’ll drive the boys back to school tomorrow after we see her. I think it’ll be best if Bella stays home for the week. I’ve already spoken to her teachers. The school will send us her assignments.”
She hadn’t blinked even once. What was going through that pretty head of hers?
“My assistant brought over groceries and put them away while we were driving. Everything else we need will be delivered within the hour. Mrs. Bea is ten minutes out with the twins. The utilities were never shut off, and the beds upstairs will be made as soon as the housekeeper comes over. I let her know we are staying here for the night, possibly a few nights.” I opened cabinets, taking inventory of the kitchen.
“I should start dinner. The boys never got around to eating—”
She crossed the kitchen and kissed me.
I had modeled ten thousand versions of this woman’s next move, and this one existed only in the file marked optimistic. She closed the gap between us. Her hands came up to my jaw—careful of the split lip—and for half a second, I kept my own hands at my sides.
Then, as if remembering, my hands snaked around her waist. She wasn’t putting on a ruse. I had watched her for years. I knew when she was faking her emotions and Amelie wasn’t faking a thing right now.
“Kai,” she said against my mouth. She pulled back far enough to look at me, and her eyes were wet and steady at the same time. “I love you.”
My hands stayed still. I had dreamt of hearing her say those words. I had rehearsed everything about this moment, but the believing. It turned out belief required no rehearsal when you’d spent years engineering every road that could lead her mouth to that sentence.
“I love you.” Not too. Mine wasn’t an echo, it held seniority. “But love seems mild for what I feel for you, Princess. It’s greater than love.”
Her breath caught. I kept going.
“And I need you to understand exactly what you just handed me when you said those words. It means it’s over between you and him.
I only agreed to share you because a fraction of you was worth more than the entirety of anyone else.
I will never share you again. Not with him, not even with his memories.
You don’t go back to him. You don’t think about him.
Ever. It’s over for good, and I’m not asking. I’m telling you what’s already true.”
“It’s over.” She pulled back to look at me. There was a wet streak down one side of her face, and she didn’t wipe it away.
“If I see him around you again, I swear—”
She put her hands over my mouth, and repeated, “It’s over.”
The rest of my sentence died behind her fingers, which was for the best. She wouldn’t have liked the ending.
She looked me in the eye. “It’s only ever going to be you, Kai. I promise.”
She put her arms around me and set her cheek against my chest, over the heartbeat that has belonged to her since before she knew my name and stayed there.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” she said quietly into my shirt.
My arms tightened.
“Stefan said the crash—” She stopped.
“It really was an accident,” I said. “No one was at fault.”
A breath of relief. “I believe you.”
“I never told you because I had no idea how to explain the coincidence.”
She nodded against my chest. I rested my chin on her hair, not admitting the worst of it.
My parents knew there was a woman—I’d been acting different for years—and finally took it upon themselves to investigate the matter.
My assistant had tipped them off about the unhealthy number of hours I spent at a college campus.
They had called me, confronted me about my self-destructive behavior over a woman who didn’t know of my existence.
They were concerned, like any loving parents, which had led them inside a car in bad weather.
They died trying to bring me back to sanity.
In doing so, they also brought Amelie to me.
They might not have known it at the time, even I didn’t know it.
Sleek ice made their car veer off, running Stefan’s parents’ car off the road.
Their deaths caused Stefan to become responsible for his siblings, which led to his resentment, and I finally saw an opening after years of trying to break through.
I took it without hesitating. Grief made some men gentle. It made me thorough.
And that was the entire fucked-up truth. As much as I hated admitting it, they died to bring Amelie to me.
And that sacrifice had never been as meaningful as she spoke the words I had waited years to hear. “I love you, Kai,” she said with her ear over my heart. “I believe you.”
We stayed like that, her breathing evening out against me, my hand moving over her hair with the carefulness of a man who had finally caught the thing he was chasing and was worried about it slipping through his fingers.
Outside, headlights swung across the window—Mrs. Bea’s sensible sedan, and two doors opening before it had fully stopped, and the sound of the boys arguing about whose fault something was. Amelie wiped her face with the back of her wrist and went to let them in.
And I did not tell her the conclusion I came to, the winter my parents died.
When I called myself a terrible son, sitting in the snow outside a gold-lit garden, I was being generous.
My mother and father died driving toward me.
Because their son had lost his mind over the one thing in this world he couldn’t buy.
They paid for this woman with their lives, and I was raised—by those exact people—never to waste an inheritance.