Chapter 26 Benedict
Benedict
The jet’s descent rattles through my bones.
Eleven hours in the air, two at a stopover to refuel, and I’m no closer to calm than when I left Stockholm.
Aspen’s peaks rise like jagged teeth through the last blush of sunset, catching fire in the fading light.
“Home,” my pilot says cheerfully over the intercom.
It doesn’t feel like home.
Home would have been sitting beside Maddie, hearing our child’s heartbeat together. Instead, I was in boardrooms, shaking hands and making promises, convincing myself that building her an empire was the same as being a husband. A father.
It wasn’t. I remember Georgiana cussing me out after long nights at the office. I know it the second the wheels kiss the tarmac. I’m making the same mistakes, all over again.
Handed a second chance, I’m already digging its grave.
By the time the car threads up the mountain road, darkness has swallowed the valley.
The Bronson Estate glows warm against the shadows—golden windows scattered across stone walls, firelight flickering.
From this far off, to anyone else it would look welcoming.
To me, it looks like judgment. The feeling of relief when we take the turn that leads to my private lodge is as present as ever.
When we pull onto the drive, trees swallowing what little light is left, my shoulders finally start to loosen. The ache in my jaw, though, is persistent.
The doors open before I reach them. Hugh is there, steady as ever, his hand out for my coat. His eyes flick to my face, then away, respectful.
“She’s in the library,” he says quietly. “She had the appointment this afternoon.”
I stop halfway out of my shoes. “And?”
He hesitates. “Healthy. Strong. But… she was quiet after. Said she’d wait up for you.”
Quiet. Maddie doesn’t do quiet. Her laughter carries through rooms like music, irreverent and alive. For Hugh to call her quiet is to say she’s gone hollow. “Derrick?” I ask, wondering if my son, who still hasn’t left Colorado, has decided to poison my bride against me while I was gone.
Hugh takes a deep breath. “At the hot springs these last few days, with friends. We’ve weeded out the rest of the staff that he was paying to snoop, I think.”
Fear roosts like a crow in my chest. “Any idea what he was looking for?”
I don’t add the thought that has been nagging me since Hugh started uprooting Derrick’s games: that there’s a reason he was looking, something solid he wanted to find. Something that could ruin me.
I nod and brush past Hugh, my footsteps heavy on the stone floor. The house feels cavernous, every shadow pressing closer. Like it did right after Georgiana passed.
The library door is ajar. I push it open.
She’s there, curled in the armchair by the fire.
A book lies open in her lap, forgotten; it’s John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra, which makes my heart lurch with love for her.
The flames light her hair in shades of amber and gold.
She looks fragile, younger, as though the weight of this house has pressed her down into something smaller.
“Maddie.”
Her head lifts. The smile she gives me is polite, empty, the kind you’d offer a neighbor in passing.
“You’re back.”
The words cut. Not I missed you. Not thank God you’re here. Just you’re back.
I leave the suitcase by the door, close it softly behind me. “I am. And Hugh tells me the appointment went well.”
Her hand slides over the book, closing it, and she holds it against her belly as if it’s a shield. “We’re having a girl.”
The world stops.
For a moment, I can’t breathe. A girl. My girl.
“A girl,” I repeat, the word cracking in my throat. “She’s healthy?” A surge of love, fear, anxiety, regret washes over me. I should’ve been here.
“She’s perfect.” Her voice doesn’t tremble. It should be radiant with joy, but it’s flat, subdued.
I sink into the chair opposite her, elbows braced on my knees. My hands are shaking, and I lace them together to hide it.
My mind flashes back to another dim room, decades ago, when a nurse handed me Derrick’s first ultrasound. A blur of sound, a flutter of motion, and I’d been struck dumb with pride. I thought it meant I’d get it right, that love was enough to keep us whole.
And yet here I am. My son hates me. His mother is gone. And now another child is coming into this fractured house.
“That’s… Maddie, that’s incredible.”
She studies me, her eyes unreadable. “Is it?”
I flinch. “Of course it is.”
Silence folds between us, filled with the hiss of the fire. I want to cross the room, press my face into her hair, tell her I’m terrified and thrilled. But her posture is rigid, her expression carved from stone.
“You left me,” she says finally. Not accusing—just stating the truth. “You knew what today was, and you still got on a plane.”
“Maddie—”
“Don’t.” Her eyes flash, brown irises burning in the firelight.
“Don’t give me business and legacy and contracts.
I’ve heard all that before. None of it held my hand when the doctor turned the screen so I could see her.
None of it sat beside me when the room went so quiet I could hear my own heart. Meredith was there, at least.”
The words slice me clean through.
“You’re right,” I manage, my voice raw. “I should have been here.”
She lets out a brittle laugh. “That’s all you have?”
The dam breaks. “I went to Sweden for you.”
Her head jerks. “For me?”
“Yes. For us. For what comes next.” I stand abruptly, pacing to the window. Moonlight stretches out in silver plains, pure and untouched, mocking me. “Bronson Estates is consolidating. Every resort, every property under one events division. I want you to lead it. Starting with the Sweden opening.”
Her silence is sharp. I turn. She’s staring at me as though I’ve lost my mind.
“You left me,” she says slowly, “to set up… a job for me? Because carrying this child isn’t enough right now?”
“Not a job,” I snap, then lower my voice. “A future. Purpose. Freedom. You’ve planned events here with more grace than any manager I’ve ever had. You belong at the helm, Maddie. I didn’t just go for contracts. I went to secure a place where you could be more than my wife.”
Her grip on the book tightens until her knuckles bleach white, her features crumpling into a mix of confusion and realization. “You thought I needed a title more than I needed you?”
“I thought—” My words falter. “I thought if I gave you something that was yours, you wouldn’t feel trapped. That you’d see this isn’t just a contract.”
Her laugh is sharp, almost a sob. “Trapped? Ben, I don’t need Sweden. I don’t need a title. I needed you. At that appointment. Hearing her heartbeat. That’s what mattered.”
Her voice breaks on the word heartbeat. The sound guts me.
I drop to my knees before her chair, reaching for her hands. They’re cool, stiff in my grip. “I thought I was protecting you. I thought giving you more would mean something. I was wrong.”
Her eyes meet mine, glistening but dry. “You should have given me you.”
The truth of it burns. Derrick said something like it weeks ago, spitting venom about how Maddie would be lonely with me. I told myself he was bitter. But maybe he wasn’t wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, kissing her knuckles. The touch is reverent, but hollow. It is, without question, not enough.
She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t soften.
For a long moment, we stay like that—me on my knees, her staring past me into the fire. Finally, she pulls her hands free. “Thank you. For believing in me. For the offer. But it feels too little, too late.”
The words crush me more than any scandal, any market crash, any betrayal in a boardroom.
I stand slowly, my body heavy with regret. The fire pops. Maddie rises, book pressed to her chest like armor.
“I’m going to bed,” she says simply.
I watch her leave, the sound of her footsteps fading down the hall. At least she’s going to our bedroom, and not the suite she had for the first few weeks here.
Dinner goes untouched. I sit at the long table alone, a glass of whisky sweating in my hand, the watch on my wrist ticking past 11:45 p.m. The chandeliers blaze overhead, illuminating nothing but emptiness.
I should follow her. I should go to our room, fall on my knees again, beg her forgiveness. But I don’t. Because some part of me fears she won’t open the door, or won’t accept the apology.
Just after midnight, I slip into the room and stand just inside, listening as my eyes adjust. It’s quiet; the kind of quiet I craved once Georgiana was gone, as if I needed my own loneliness to echo back at me.
But now the silence of the house presses down, suffocating. It’s only in the next few moments that I hear Madeline’s breathing, slow and rhythmic, and start to see her form on the bed. She’s curled on her side, one hand on her stomach.
Alone.
Shucking my clothes off, not caring where they’re discarded, I strip down to my boxers and pad quietly to the bathroom to shower. She’s sleeping so deeply that even that doesn’t wake her.
Clean, I slide into the bed behind her, positioning myself to fit her curves. The warmth of her body softens something in me, and I realize in this moment that the loneliness I was feeding, letting grow, for years, is now an enemy.
I don’t want it anymore.
I want this. I want Maddie, asleep next to me, protecting our child even in dreams. The scent of her filling my lungs with each inhale and my fingertips ghosting over her bare thigh.
But Derrick’s strong, sure words bury like a thorn in my mind: There are things about her… things you don’t know.
I clench my fists against the sheets, but the fear won’t loosen.
And for the first time, I start to believe him.
I’m already losing her.