Chapter 37
BELLE
Ididn’t mean to end up at Eleanor’s.
My van just . . . turned like it knew where to go before my brain did.
I knocked once before walking in.
“Anyone home? Eleanor?”
“Belle?” Eleanor’s voice floated from the kitchen.
I followed it. She was at the counter with Alex beside her, leaning back against it like he belonged there, which, I realized with a small pang of fondness, he did.
They both looked up when they saw my face.
“Uh-oh,” Alex said gently.
That was all it took. I sank into one of the kitchen chairs.
“I think I broke my marriage,” I muttered.
Eleanor didn’t react dramatically. She just pulled out the chair beside me.
“Start talking.”
I glanced around.
“Where are the kids?”
“Mel and Becca kidnapped them,” Eleanor said lightly. “Sleepover.”
“For both of them?” I asked.
Alex rubbed the back of his neck.
“We’re . . . experimenting with alone time.”
The realization hit me.
“Oh my God,” I said, standing halfway up. “I am not crashing your date night. I’m so sorry.”
Eleanor reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me back down.
“Sit.”
“But—”
“Sit,” she repeated.
Alex nodded. “We’re not fragile.”
“You’re a new couple with little kid free time,” I insisted.
“And you’re spiraling,” Eleanor replied. “We’re talking this out.”
So I did. I told them everything. About the company.
About the retirement home. About him saying he had no intention of divorcing me.
About him buying my independence out from under me in the name of protecting me.
About the way my chest had felt when he said it was real for him.
And the way my stomach had twisted anyway.
When I finished, the kitchen was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator.
Alex spoke first.
“I get where he’s coming from,” he said.
I blinked. “Of course you do,” I said.
He smiled faintly. “No. I mean—I understand the instinct.”
“Which one? The rich man takeover instinct?”
He smiled and gave his head a little shake. “Definitely not the one. Just the fix-it instinct.” Eleanor snorted softly. Alex ignored her. “When you’ve failed people before,” he continued, his tone gentler now, “you overcorrect.”
I looked at him more carefully. “You think that’s what this is?”
“I think he probably lives with a low-level fear of losing things he loves,” Alex said. “So when he sees a threat, he eliminates it.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to be part of the elimination strategy,” I said.
“Right,” Alex agreed. “But intention matters.”
I crossed my arms. “So does impact.”
“Absolutely,” Eleanor said.
Alex nodded.
“You’re not wrong to want stability that isn’t entirely dependent on one person,” Eleanor said.
Finally, someone said it cleanly.
“But,” he added, “sometimes it’s okay to trust people.”
I huffed out a breath.
“I trusted someone once,” I said quietly. “My dad trusted his memory.”
“That’s not the same thing,” Alex said gently.
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” Eleanor cut in firmly. “It’s not.”
I looked at her. “You didn’t even ask for help when you were living in that van,” she said.
My spine stiffened. “That was temporary.”
“That was dangerous,” Eleanor corrected.
“I was fine.”
“You were not fine,” she snapped. I had never seen Eleanor angry, and to my surprise, I think she was.
Alex stayed quiet.
“You were brushing your teeth in gym bathrooms and pretending it was aesthetic,” Eleanor continued. “You were eating leftover muffins from the coffee shop and calling it intermittent fasting.”
I winced.
“You could have stayed here or in the extra room at Becca and Mel’s.”
“I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“You weren’t.”
“I didn’t want to owe anyone.”
Her expression softened slightly.
“You don’t owe friends for surviving.”
Silence.
“You were basically homeless,” she said, gentler now but no less firm. “And you didn’t tell us.”
“I was handling it.”
“Handling it alone,” she corrected.
That landed.
Alex leaned forward slightly.
“If this blows up,” he said calmly, “you don’t end up in your van.”
I swallowed.
“You end up here,” he continued. “Or at Mel’s. Or with Robin. You have a safety net now.”
I hadn’t let myself think of that because independence had always meant no net. Just me and whatever I could carry.
“You’re not alone anymore,” Eleanor said softly.
“And if he does turn out to be a controlling nightmare,” Alex added, “we’ll help you bury him.”
Eleanor elbowed him.
He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
A small, shaky laugh escaped me.
“You’re falling in love with him,” Eleanor said quietly.
I didn’t deny it. “But love isn’t supposed to feel like a takeover,” I said.
“No,” Alex agreed. “It’s supposed to feel like a partnership.”
The word settled into me. Partnership. Not rescue. Not absorption. Not dependence.
“I don’t know how to build that with someone who can buy entire companies before lunch,” I admitted.
Eleanor reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Then tell him that.”
“And if he doesn’t get it?”
“Then you walk,” she said simply.
The clarity of it steadied me. I felt like I had found my footing again.
I sat there long after the words stopped bouncing around the kitchen.
It all rearranged something in my head.
“I think I see it,” I said slowly.
Eleanor tilted her head. “See what?”
“I’ve always been like this.”
“Like what?”
“Hyper independent and borderline feral about it.”
Alex smiled faintly. “That’s one way to put it.”
I ignored him.
“It didn’t start with Raph,” I continued. “It started when I was a kid.”
The memories came easier than I expected.
Dad at the kitchen table with a stack of envelopes.
Bills spread out like puzzle pieces. He’d hum while he sorted them, distracted by whatever engine he’d been tinkering with that day.
He always made sure there was money. There was always food.
We weren’t poor in the way people think of poor. We just . . . drifted.
The power would get shut off sometimes. Not because we couldn’t pay, but because he forgot. Late notices would pile up because he set them somewhere “safe.” And somewhere along the way, I started keeping track.
At first, it was little things. Reminding him. Then it became bigger with logging into accounts. I was balancing spreadsheets in high school to make sure the light stayed on instead of going out.
“It fell to me,” I said quietly. “All of it. The remembering. The planning. The anticipating.”
Eleanor’s expression softened.
“He was loving,” I said quickly. “He was wonderful. He just . . . needed someone to steady the edges.”
“And that became you,” Alex said gently.
I nodded.
“And I think I got used to being the steady one.”
The one who didn’t need. The one who handled it. The one who never relied too heavily on anyone else.
“Maybe I’m not just independent,” I murmured. “Maybe I’m afraid of what happens if I’m not.”
Silence settled softly around us.
Eleanor reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. “That makes sense.”
“It also might mean I push away help even when I need it,” I admitted.
Alex leaned back in his chair. “Independence is a strength,” he said. “But if it’s armor all the time, it gets heavy.”
I let that sink in.
Maybe I had been wearing armor for so long, I didn’t know how to take it off without feeling exposed.
“Do you love him?” Eleanor asked quietly.
The question didn’t hit like a bomb. It landed like truth waiting to be spoken.
“Yes,” I said.
No hesitation. No calculation. Just yes. Because I did.
It was him. It was his ridiculous calm and intensity. But that also meant it was his need to fix everything because, once, he hadn’t been there. He listened when I talked about Dad. He built me shelves in his library without making it feel like a transaction.
It was real.
And that realization steadied me more than anything else had tonight.
Eleanor squeezed my hand. “Then the question isn’t whether you love him,” she said. “It’s whether you can build something healthy with him.”
I nodded slowly. “I still feel weird about the power imbalance,” I admitted. “That hasn’t magically disappeared.”
“You’re not wrong to see it,” Alex said.
“But it doesn’t mean you run,” Eleanor added.
I exhaled. “I think I need to go back, but not tonight,” I said quietly. “I just need to figure out how to say it without it turning into another corporate acquisition.”
They both laughed softly.
I ended up crashing there.
Eleanor made up the couch even though I insisted I could handle a blanket. Alex turned off the lights and muttered something about feral independence on his way upstairs.
Lying there in the dim living room, I stared at the ceiling.
I loved him. That part was clear. I wanted him. Also clear. But love wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
I needed to know I wouldn’t disappear.
I needed to know I could stand beside him, not behind him, not underneath him, not absorbed into his world.
And I needed to know that if I ever did fall, it wouldn’t be back into a van alone, pretending it was freedom.