Chapter 20 Donovan
DONOVAN
Three days after the ice cream trip, I’m in my office at eleven at night reviewing financial reports that should have been done yesterday.
The estate is quiet. Dad’s been in Denver since this morning, handling the hospitality acquisition. Kai’s probably asleep, or pretending to be. Samantha’s been working late most nights, pushing herself harder than necessary on the retail strategy.
I want to go to bed. But numbers need reconciling, and offshore accounts don’t balance themselves.
My phone buzzes with an email from our Miami contact when I hear it—a crash from somewhere below. Glass breaking. Then a sharp gasp that makes my spine straighten.
The wine cellar is directly beneath my office.
I’m moving before I finish the thought, taking the stairs two at a time.
The cellar door is open. Lights on. And Samantha’s on the floor surrounded by broken glass and spilled wine, her hand pressed against her opposite forearm while blood seeps between her fingers.
“Don’t move.” I’m across the room in seconds, kneeling beside her. “Let me see.”
She pulls her hand away slowly, and the cut is deep. Not catastrophic, but enough that it needs immediate attention. The wine makes it look worse than it is, red mixing with red.
“I was trying to reach the top shelf,” she says, voice shaking. “The bottle slipped, and I grabbed for it and—”
“Stop talking. Let’s get you upstairs.”
I help her stand, careful to avoid the broken glass. Her arm is still bleeding steadily, dripping onto the stone floor.
My office is closest. I guide her there, sit her on the leather couch, and grab the first aid kit from my desk drawer. “This is going to sting,” I warn, pouring antiseptic over the wound.
She hisses through her teeth but doesn’t pull away.
There’s one tiny piece embedded near the edge, and I remove it with tweezers before applying more antiseptic.
“You should’ve called for help instead of trying to reach it yourself,” I say, wrapping gauze around her forearm.
“I didn’t want to bother anyone.”
“Bleeding out in the wine cellar would’ve been more of a bother.”
She laughs weakly. “Fair point.”
I secure the bandage and sit back. “How do you feel?”
“Stupid. Clumsy. Like I need a drink.”
“You were getting a drink. That’s how we ended up here.”
“A different drink. One that’s not all over the wine cellar floor.”
I consider her for a moment. She’s pale, shaken, and there’s something fragile in her expression I haven’t seen before.
“Wait here.”
I go back to the wine cellar and grab a bottle that didn’t meet its demise. Something good but not precious. When I return, she’s still sitting where I left her, staring at her bandaged arm.
I pour two glasses and hand her one.
“To not bleeding to death,” I say.
“That’s a terrible toast.”
“You have a better one?”
She thinks, then raises her glass. “To surviving our own stupidity.”
“Better.” We drink, and I settle into the chair across from her. “What were you doing down there anyway? It’s almost midnight.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Thought wine might help.” She takes another sip. “What were you doing awake?”
“Working. I’m always working. Someone has to keep this operation running while my father builds empires and Kai causes chaos.”
“You make it sound like you don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t. Not really.” I lean back. “Plato said the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Replace public affairs with family business, and you have my life philosophy.”
“So you see yourself as the good man keeping evil at bay?”
“I see myself as the pragmatist keeping everything from falling apart.” I swirl wine in my glass. “Someone has to care about the details while everyone else focuses on the big picture.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Being the only one who sees the cracks. The only one holding things together.” She drinks. “That’s exhausting and lonely.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I pour more wine instead.
We drink in silence for a while. She’s starting to relax, color returning to her face. But there’s still tension in her shoulders.
“What’s really keeping you awake?” I ask.
“What makes you think it’s something specific?”
“Because you were in the wine cellar alone at midnight, reaching for expensive bottles.”
She laughs, but it sounds hollow. “You’re too observant.”
“Occupational hazard.”
Another long silence. She finishes her second glass and holds it out for a refill. I hesitate.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I need this tonight.”
I pour.
“I feel like I’m drowning,” she says quietly, staring into her glass. “Like I’m underwater and everyone else is on the surface and they can’t hear me screaming.”
“Why are you drowning?”
“Because I’m not who everyone thinks I am.” She drinks. “I’m not this capable, confident person who has her life together. I’m barely holding it together. Every day I wake up and put on this mask and pretend I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re only human.”
She looks at me with eyes that are too bright. “Or maybe a fraud?”
“There’s a difference between imposter syndrome and actual fraud.”
“What if I can’t tell the difference anymore?”
I set down my glass. “Samantha, what’s going on?”
“Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.” She’s on her third glass now, drinking faster than she should. “I’m under so much pressure. From other people’s expectations, from myself. And I feel like I’m lying to everyone, including myself, about who I am and what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know! That’s the problem.” She’s getting drunk now, words slightly slurred. “I thought I knew. I had this whole plan for my life. But now everything’s different, and I don’t know if what I wanted before is what I want now or if I’m just confused because everything’s happening so fast.”
I move to sit beside her on the couch. “Slow down. You’re not making sense.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore.” She leans against me. “I came here thinking I knew exactly who I was and what I was doing. But now I don’t know anything. I don’t know if I’m a good person or a terrible person or just a confused person who’s in way over her head.”
“You’re not a terrible person.”
“How do you know? You don’t know everything about me.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t.” Tears start falling, mixing with wine-flushed cheeks. “You don’t know what I’ve done, what I was planning to do. What I might still do.”
I pull her closer, and she buries her face in my shirt. “What were you planning to do?”
“Nothing. Nothing…”
“Samantha—”
“I’m so tired.” Her words are barely coherent now. “I’m so tired of pretending. Of lying. Of trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not.”
She’s drunk. Really drunk. And whatever she’s trying to confess, she’s in no state to do it coherently.
“Come on.” I help her stand. “You need to sleep this off.”
She tries to walk but stumbles. Without thinking, I lift her into my arms, carrying her bridal style. She wraps her arms around my neck and presses her face against my shoulder. “Don’t leave me,” she whispers. “Please don’t leave me alone tonight.”
“I won’t.”
I carry her through the hallways to her room. She’s light in my arms, fragile in ways I didn’t expect.
Her room is dark. I kick the door closed and carry her to the bed, laying her down carefully.
“Stay,” she says, grabbing my shirt. “Please stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I remove her shoes and pull the blanket over her. Then I lie down beside her, fully clothed, on top of the covers.
She immediately curls into me, head on my chest, arm across my waist.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “For being here.”
“Get some sleep.”
Within minutes, her breathing evens out. She’s passed out, the wine and emotional exhaustion finally pulling her under.
I lie there in the dark, aware of her weight against me.
My chest feels tight. Not painful. Just…different.
Wrong. No, not wrong. Unfamiliar.
I’ve never done this before. Never held a woman while she slept. Never let anyone curl into me like this. Sex, yes. Intimacy during sex, sure. This vulnerable trust?
Never.
And the way my heart is beating right now, steady but somehow louder, like it’s trying to tell me something I don’t understand.
I extract myself carefully, making sure she’s deeply asleep before I slip out of her room. I need to talk to someone who might understand what the hell is happening to me.
I find Kai in his room, awake and scrolling through his phone.
He looks up when I walk in. “It’s one in the morning.”
“I know what time it is.”
“So this is either a business emergency or a personal crisis.” He sets down his phone. “Which is it?”
I close the door behind me. “Personal. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“That’s concerning coming from you.” He gestures to the chair. “Sit. Talk.”
I sit, then immediately stand and pace. “I need you to explain something to me.”
“Okay?”
“What does it feel like to be in love?”
Kai blinks. Then grins. “Holy shit. Are you serious right now?”
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He tries to compose himself. “You’re asking me what love feels like?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you asking me and not Dad?”
“Because Dad’s answer will be philosophical and unhelpful. I need practical information.”
Kai leans back against his headboard. “Okay. Love. Let me think.” He’s quiet for a moment. “It feels like your chest is going to explode. Not in a bad way. Just like there’s this pressure building, and you can’t quite catch your breath.”
“That sounds like a heart attack.”
“It kind of is. But in a good way.” He grins. “You think about her constantly. Even when you’re supposed to be thinking about other things. She just pops into your head, and you’re smiling like an idiot.”
“I don’t smile like an idiot.”
“Yet. Give it time.” He’s enjoying this too much. “You want to be near her all the time. And when she’s happy, you’re happy. When she’s sad, it physically hurts you.”
I think about Samantha crying in my arms. About the way my chest tightened when she said she felt like she was drowning.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“Oh, you’re in deep.” Kai’s grin widens. “This is about Samantha, right?”
“Obviously.”
“So what happened?”
I tell him about finding her in the wine cellar. The blood. The drinking. The crying. The way she clung to me and begged me not to leave.
“And now I feel…wrong. Not bad. Just different. Like something shifted and I don’t know what it is.”
“That’s love, brother.” Kai says it like it’s simple. “Welcome to the club.”
“I don’t want to be in the club.”
“Too late. You’re already a member.”
I sink into the chair. “This is going to complicate everything.”
“It already has.” He’s still grinning. “But for what it’s worth, she’s worth it. And you deserve to feel this.”
“What if she’s hiding something? What if whatever she was about to confess tonight changes everything?”
“Then we’ll deal with it when it happens. But right now, you’re in love for the first time in your life. That’s not something to be scared of.”
Except I am scared. Terrified, actually. Because I’ve spent thirty years avoiding this exact feeling. Avoiding vulnerability and attachment and the kind of emotional dependence that makes people weak.
And now I’m feeling my heart beat in ways I don’t understand, and all I want is to go back to her room and hold her while she sleeps.
“How do you handle it?” I ask. “The feeling.”
“You don’t handle it. You just feel it.” Kai shrugs. “It’s messy and complicated and sometimes it hurts. But it’s also the best thing you’ll ever experience.”
I stand. “I should go.”
“You’re going back to her room, aren’t you?”
“She asked me not to leave.”
“Yeah.” Kai’s smile is softer now. “You’re definitely in love.”
I don’t argue. I head back to Samantha’s room, slipping in quietly.
She’s exactly where I left her, curled on her side, breathing deeply.
I lie back down beside her, and immediately she shifts toward me, seeking my warmth even in sleep. This time when she settles against my chest, I wrap my arm around her.
My heart is still beating wrong. Still doing that unfamiliar thing that Kai says is love.
I don’t know if he’s right. But as I lie here with Samantha sleeping peacefully in my arms, I find I don’t care what it’s called.
I just know I don’t want to be anywhere else.