Chapter 35
BECKETT
Laurel Bellamy has been a goddamn affliction since the second she walked back into my life, and even that feels like weak shit for what she’s done to my head.
Last night just killed whatever chance I had of pretending otherwise.
She kissed my hand, looked me dead in the eye and told me exactly what she plans to do once her name belongs to her again, then walked off like she hadn’t just fucked me six ways from Sunday without ever putting her mouth on mine.
I’m gone for her. No point bullshitting myself about it anymore. I could spend the rest of my life getting more of her and still die greedy.
I can still feel the weight of her tit in my palm and the heat of her ass against my cock; I’d been a fucking hair from forgetting every decent intention I had and bending her over the first solid surface within reach.
I’d been so gone by the time I got home I took a cold shower like that was going to do a goddamn thing.
It didn’t. Five minutes later I was thinking about her mouth again, imagining those lips wrapped around my cock, and ended up fucking my fist with her name on my tongue until I came hard enough to have to brace one hand against the fucking wall.
That woman has worked herself into every part of me. My head. My body. Whatever piece of a man people mean when they start talking about souls. She’s there too, and I’d happily die on that hill.
A throat clears across the conference table, dragging my head out of Laurel Bellamy and back into a Heartland transition meeting I’ve been attending in body only for the last several minutes.
Mara has one eyebrow raised.
I stare back at her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
I look down at the report in front of me and drag my dick, my head and the last scraps of my professional focus back to the matter at hand.
Heartland’s operations team has spent most of the morning discovering that an alarming amount of this company survives on undocumented knowledge, handwritten notes nobody can find and one terrifying woman named Denise who appears to know every renewal date since 2004 without consulting a computer.
She has already informed three executives that their filing system is “stupid,” rejected the temporary office assigned to her because the chair “looks cheap,” and become the one person in the building I’d rather not piss off during transition.
Grant, meanwhile, continues making himself everybody’s fucking problem. His calls to Heartland writers finally earn him a formal letter from our counsel instructing him to stop contacting people regarding a transaction in which he no longer has any contractual interest.
Better still, the letter comes from Heartland rather than Vale House, making his favorite theory—that I’m siccing corporate lawyers on him because I want his wife—a much harder pile of bullshit to sell.
Not that he doesn’t give it his best shot.
One of the writers forwards us a voicemail Grant left the night before, warning that Vale will “strip the place for parts once Bellamy’s deal is done.” The claim is horseshit, but the recording is useful as hell. Nashville telephone has finally done me the courtesy of attaching evidence.
Mara plays it twice before setting her phone beside her laptop. “He is deteriorating.”
“Don’t diagnose people we may eventually depose.”
“Doesn’t require a medical degree.”
The meeting drags on another forty minutes before Jonah leaves with operations and Mara follows him out, already arguing with somebody about document retention before the door closes behind her.
I sit there for a second in the sudden quiet, look at the mountain of work still waiting on my desk and do what I’ve wanted to do since I walked into the building.
I pick up my phone.
Beckett: How’s Nora?
Laurel: Alive. Pissed off. Eating vending-machine pretzels and threatening to sue Davidson County for emotional distress caused by the hummus. I believe her now.
A low chuckle leaves me, and I keep the phone in my hand longer than necessary, already looking for another excuse to keep her talking. At this rate, I might as well start kicking my feet under the desk.
After Laurel left last night, security and counsel filled in the rest. Sloane spent close to twenty minutes outside Nora’s writing room asking staff about Laurel and refusing to leave after Nora told her Laurel wasn’t there.
Given the temporary order already barring indirect attempts to reach Laurel, police treated it as a suspected violation rather than another celebrity shitshow somebody could package for TMZ.
They found Sloane later at her attorney’s office, processed her and released her under tighter conditions pending an expedited hearing.
Her mugshot was everywhere by dawn. I didn’t click it. Couldn’t give less of a fuck what Sloane Avery looks like under county fluorescent lighting.
Laurel and Nora are fine.
And Laurel is still having dinner with me.
The thought has been lounging in the back of my head all morning like a smug bastard with his feet on the furniture.
Lila sends me a picture of Theo holding twenty dollars and grinning through the gap where his front tooth used to be after she finally returns the duplicate game I bought him.
An hour later, she informs me that fractions are now “a scam” and Theo would like assistance before tomorrow’s quiz, provided I can explain them without doing what he calls the annoying uncle thing.
I’m about to answer when another message appears.
Matt: He means talking.
I’ve spent too many years letting work win whenever it came up against family. I promised Lila I’d stop doing that, and I’ve been keeping my word. So when Theo declares an academic emergency, I wrap up at the office and go over.
I find Theo stretched across the living-room rug with his workbook open between his elbows, pencils scattered around him and a deep scowl carved between his brows as he stares at a page full of numbers he clearly hates.
Evie is upside down on the sofa with her legs hanging over the back, humming to herself over a purple coloring page, and Lila is moving between the kitchen and living room with Mom on FaceTime, her phone propped against the fruit bowl on the island.
Theo shoves the workbook at me before I’ve even taken my jacket off. “I don’t get this one.”
“You haven’t written anything.”
“I know. I don’t get it.”
I sit on the rug beside him, and the problem itself takes maybe two minutes. The argument afterward takes longer because Theo can’t accept that three-fourths of twelve is nine when, according to him, “they could’ve just said nine.”
I explain that this would defeat the point of learning fractions. He looks at me like I’m the idiot.
Somewhere around our third attempt, Evie loses interest in coloring, climbs onto my back and loops her arms loosely around my neck.
She stays there watching Theo work until he writes down his next answer.
Then she leans close to my ear, her hair brushing my cheek. “He got that one wrong,” she whispers.
“He didn’t.”
“Oh.” She studies the page over my shoulder for another second, then whispers even softer, “Tell him he did.”
Theo looks up. “I can hear you.”
Evie immediately buries her face against the back of my neck, laughing, and I have to catch one of her legs when she starts sliding sideways. “You’re doing an excellent job helping.”
“I know,” she says into my neck.
Mom hears the whole thing through Lila’s phone and joins in, prompting Theo to complain that nobody is helping anymore and Lila to inform all three of us that she regrets having a family.
Matt walks past carrying laundry, catches my eye and keeps moving like a man who learned years ago that survival sometimes means refusing to participate.
By the time Theo finally gets the last problem right without looking at me for confirmation, he sits back on his heels, drops his pencil onto the workbook and grins. “So I’m done?”
“For tonight.”
“Yes!” He punches one fist into the air, then slaps the workbook shut like he’s just defeated fractions for good.
My phone vibrates on the coffee table as I’m gathering the pencils Theo has managed to scatter.
I glance at the screen and see Laurel’s name, and whatever she sent matters less than the fact that she sent it.
A smile tugs at one corner of my mouth as I read, and I’m halfway through answering when I realize the room has gone suspiciously quiet.
Lila is still holding the phone, except now she’s staring. Mom has noticed too; I can see half her face crowding the screen. Matt has stopped folding one of Evie’s tiny shirts, and even Theo looks up from the game he’s playing.
“What?”
Lila’s eyes narrow. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
Mom’s voice comes through the phone, bright with interest. “Is it Laurel?”
Heat climbs the back of my neck. I reach up without thinking, touch my face and realize too late what I’ve just confirmed.
Lila’s mouth drops open. “Oh my God. You’re blushing.”
“I am not.”
Theo looks at me with great concern. “Can old people still blush?”
Matt folds over laughing.
I point at my nephew. “Careful. I know where your Christmas presents come from.”
Evie pops up over the back of the sofa, studies me with grave concentration and announces, “Your ears are pink.”
Traitors. Every last one of them.
Mom is laughing now, Lila looks delighted, and there’s no point pretending I’m getting out of this with any dignity intact. “We’re having dinner.”
Lila lights up. “You have a date.”
“She called it dinner.”
Matt finally recovers enough to ask, “What are you calling it?”
I glance down at Laurel’s message again, and the stupid smile comes right back. “A date.”
Mom makes a pleased little sound. Evie wants to know if Laurel can come here, Theo asks, “Does she know you talk this much?” and Lila tells both children to stop interrogating me without making any real effort to stop them.
I should shut the whole thing down. Instead, I look at Evie and say, “Who knows. Maybe I’ll bring her over someday.”
The words feel different once they’re out, and I can see it: Laurel in this house, Evie talking her ear off, Theo asking her some invasive question no adult would dare, Mom loving her before she’s even finished saying hello.
Fuck. I’m smiling again.
Later, after Mom finally hangs up and Matt starts herding both kids upstairs, Evie makes me pinky-promise again that I won’t forget her concert. Once she’s satisfied, she follows Theo up the stairs.
Lila drops into the armchair across from me, tucking one leg beneath her. “Remember what I told you about Laurel.”
I do. Don’t make her my redemption project.
How do I explain that fixing Laurel has never been part of this? Whatever I feel for her is far more consuming than the satisfaction of being needed.
The teasing leaves her face. “There’s a difference between liking her and loving being useful to her when she’s hurting. Know which one you’re doing.”
I turn my phone once in my hand, Laurel’s messages still open on the screen. “I wanted her when she wanted fuck-all from me.”
Lila holds my eyes for another second, then gives a small nod. “Good.”
Upstairs, Evie shrieks, Theo yells her name, and Matt’s voice floats down a second later. “Beckett, come get one of these children before I sell both.”
Lila points toward the stairs. “Your turn.”
“They’re yours.”
“You’re closer.”
I laugh as I get up, but her question comes home with me.
∞∞∞
The expedited hearing happens without me.
My presence would turn a legal proceeding into a fucking spectator sport, and I’ve no interest in handing anyone another headline with my name shoved beside Laurel’s.
She goes with Evelyn and security; Nora attends as a witness. Sloane comes in through a side entrance with counsel and leaves under a final protective order that gives her far less room to play stupid games than the temporary one did.
No direct or indirect contact with Laurel. No showing up at her home, her known work locations or anywhere connected to her medical care. No using a third party to find her, contact her or pass along a message and pretending that somehow makes it less of a violation.
The complaint over what happened at Nora’s writing room remains separate.
Her attorney will fight it, and one hearing was never going to tie every loose end into a neat little bow.
What changes today is how much room Sloane has left to test the boundaries.
Not much. Another violation could bring criminal consequences on top of the civil order already hanging over her.
Her contracts move faster than the courts.
Mercer’s interim committee, now operating without Grant’s unilateral control, votes to negotiate an end to Sloane’s artist agreement rather than keep pouring money into an album with no distributor willing to touch it, no tour slot, no management team and a legal disaster attached to her name.
Ending the deal doesn’t erase what she owns or hand Mercer rights it never had.
Mercer keeps the masters it financed under the existing agreement and freezes the unreleased material until the accounting is finished.
Sloane keeps her songwriting interests, remains entitled to royalty accounting on anything already released and still owes whatever recoupable balance sits against the deal.
In plain English, the fantasy Grant sold her—that standing beside him made every door permanent—dies in a conference room full of accountants.
Her former management arbitration keeps moving. Bellemore’s demand doesn’t disappear. Neither do the mortgage, attorney fees, taxes or the expensive house she bought after her first major advance. She isn’t broke, but the career meant to keep financing that life has just taken a fucking nosedive.
Those are two very different problems.
The second is the one she can’t stop screaming about.
Laurel texts me when the hearing ends:
Laurel: Dinner still stands. Pick somewhere Grant would hate.
I’m grinning at the message when Jonah leans over my shoulder, reads it without permission and says, “Waffle House.”
“Get out of my office.”
He doesn’t move. “Come on. Nothing would piss Grant Mercer off more than his estranged wife eating hash browns with his least favorite man in Nashville.”
“This is why you’re CFO and not responsible for romance.”
Jonah starts walking backward toward the door. “So we’re calling it romance now?”
I throw a binder at him. He catches it, the bastard.
Christ, tomorrow night can’t get here fast enough.