7. Victoria
VICTORIA
I knew we were close before Rhett even turned off the engine.
The willow trees gave it away. Long and sweeping, their branches dragging along the ground in the dark like something out of a dream I hadn't let myself have in a very long damn time.
I watched them through the passenger window as Rhett's headlights swept the curve of the driveway, and something in my chest did a complicated, unwelcome thing I didn't want to look at directly.
I bought this property on a Tuesday afternoon in April, sixteen years ago.
Ryan was supposed to be with me. He had a meeting that ran long, a parent-teacher conference he couldn't get out of, and so I'd walked through the estate alone with the realtor while Brynn sat in the car eating crackers and watching cartoons on my phone.
The realtor kept apologizing for the state of the place.
It had been a small museum for years, then empty for two more, and it showed.
Wallpaper peeling in the upper corridors.
Fixtures outdated. A smell of closed rooms and old carpet that the realtor kept trying to cover with cheerful descriptions of square footage and potential.
I bought it anyway.
Because of the goddamn willow trees.
They lined the western edge of the property in a long graceful row, and when I stood beneath them that April afternoon with my heels sinking into the soft grass and Brynn's little voice carrying from the car, all I could think was Ryan is going to love this.
He was a man who needed green things around him.
Grew up in a city apartment and never quite got over the absence of trees.
Kept plants on every surface of our house and mourned them personally when they died.
The willow trees alone would have made him fall in love with this place on sight.
He never got to see them.
He was gone within two years of the closing. And I kept the estate the way I'd kept a lot of things. Maintained but not lived in. Present but not touched. Too full of something I didn't have a damn word for to ever do anything useful with.
Rhett put the car in park.
I didn't move.
“Miss C,” Rhett said quietly.
“I know.” I reached for the door handle. “I'm fine.”
I wasn't fine.
I was sitting in my own driveway in the middle of a crisis that had everything to do with my daughter and not one single thing to do with me, and somehow all I could think about was a Tuesday afternoon in April.
A realtor apologizing for peeling wallpaper.
A row of willow trees that Ryan Caldwell never got to stand beneath.
I got out of the car.
The night air hit me, cool and carrying the smell of fresh grass from the rain we'd had earlier that week.
The wind moved through the willow branches overhead, that soft sound that had lived in the back of my memory for seventeen years without me ever quite meaning to keep it there.
Brynn was already moving ahead of me toward the front door, Coach's hand at the small of her back, her shoulders hunched the way they only got when she was trying her damnedest not to cry in public.
My daughter was hurting.
That was the only damn thing that mattered right now.
I straightened my spine. Squared my shoulders. And followed them inside.
Everything moved in a blur after that. I didn’t register anything else until I felt something cool blowing against the nape of my neck, and I came back to myself in a room I recognized immediately.
Of course Rhett had put me in this one.
It was the largest of the guest rooms, or it had been designated as a guest room in my head in the years since, because calling it the master suite felt like something I hadn’t earned the right to do yet.
I had picked out the four-poster bed myself.
The chandelier. The crown molding had been my specific request to the contractor, an ornate pattern I’d seen in a magazine and circled in pen and handed over like it was the most important decision I’d ever make.
Ryan would have teased me for caring so much about crown molding.
I stood very still in the center of it and breathed.
I stood in a very opulent bedroom that was practically the size of my damn living room.
My tired eyes took in the ornate crown molding and the chandelier hanging tightly from the ceiling.
I turned toward the French double doors cloaked in heavy blackout curtains that I knew led out to the terrace.
The plush carpet beneath my feet had clearly been replaced since I last sent someone in to maintain the place.
My heels sank into its softness, and had my ankles not been trained over a multitude of years to withstand any surface in my heels, including ice, I would’ve probably rolled and busted my ankle on that carpet.
It wasn’t until my eyes swept over the four-poster bed and roamed toward the bedroom door, however, that I realized I wasn’t alone.
“Rhett,” I said, caught off guard, as I watched him leaning against the doorframe.
I heard my daughter sniffle in the distance, and the hairs on the nape of my neck prickled.
I heard Coach’s murmured voice floating through the air as Rhett pushed off the doorframe and started a slow walk toward me.
His shadow loomed in front of him, his body illuminated by the warm white light of the hallway.
And as he crossed the dark of the massive guest bedroom, lit up only by the light from the hallway and the slivers of light streaming through the blackout curtains, I drew in a deep breath.
I let out an equally heavy sigh.
“Hey there, Miss C,” Rhett said as he came to a stop in front of me.
I stared at his chest as I heard my daughter’s sniffling stop.
I heard Coach’s murmured voice overpower the tears, until eventually, I no longer heard Bry crying at all.
Even though Coach was the exact reason why we were in this fucking mess, I was thankful that he could at least dry my daughter’s tears. Even if he was the reason for them.
No, it’s not Coach’s fault. It’s the media’s fault.
“Don’t worry, Miss C,” Rhett said as he reached over and brushed his thumb along my cheek, “it is kind of his fault.”
I didn’t even try to hide my shock as I whipped my face up to his. I ripped my hair out of its bun and shook out my limp, straight hair. I gathered it at the crown of my head, moving my hands through the twisting motion for my locks, and effectively pinned it back to my head just like I always did.
But all it did was make Rhett chuckle. “You know, you’re a lot easier to read than you realize.”
I snickered. “Then stop looking.”
He smirked as he moved closer to me. “Not a chance.”
His body blocked the light from the hallway as he crossed the room toward me.
He stood in front of me, his massive form blocking my sight of the bedroom door.
I felt the pad of his thumb slide across my cheek once more.
The warmth damn near took me out at the knees.
However, I didn’t even realize another tear had escaped down my cheek until I felt him brush the wetness away.
However, when his finger lingered a little too long around the edge of my lips, I shook my head softly.
“We can’t do this, Rhett,” I whispered.
He tilted his head. “Do what?”
My face fell flat. “Don’t give me that. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
His smirk grew. “I don’t have the faintest idea, Miss C. Why don’t you give me a hint? I do love a good puzzle.”
“This,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I swatted his hand away. “All of it. The looks. The names. Cornering me in my office. Interjecting yourself. Hanging out—”
He simply shrugged, but his crystalline blue eyes sparkled with delight. “We haven’t hung out in months, Miss C. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My nostrils flared as I looked away, and I found myself gazing toward one of the blackout curtains. If I pulled it open, would there be a reporter standing there on the balcony? Just waiting for me to open the curtains so they can snap a picture of my fucking face?
I felt a warm, reassuring grip on my chin. It tugged my attention back to Rhett, and I hated the way my shoulders relaxed when I looked up into his face.
This was wrong.
All of it.
“We will get through this, all right?” he said, his voice dipping an octave as he towered over me. “I know you don’t believe me. I know your mind is running away from you.”
I scoffed and pulled my chin from his hand, taking a few steps back. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“I know you’ve been carrying this grief for a long time.”
That whipped me back around to face him. “No, you don’t.”
He pointed at me. “And if that answer is any inclination—”
My voice grew stern. “No, I don’t.”
He tilted his head. “Yes, you do. It was written all over you months ago when I came to check on you. It’s written all over you now. Your mind is spiraling right now. Let me help.”
I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides, even as the words fell from my lips. “I’m not stuck in grief.”
His eyes flickered to my fists, and it forced me to unclench my hands. And when his eyes roamed back up my body, I knew I had to get out of there. I was cornered. Like an animal.
Like when the police called me that afternoon to tell me my husband had been shot dead.
“Anybody hungry?!” I called out as I stormed out of the bedroom, rushing past Rhett.
And even though he didn’t stop me, I felt those cold blue eyes on my back as I quickly left the room.
Thank fuck, the Willow Estate was massive.
Because I’d need some space if I was going to get my daughter through this disaster.