Chapter 4
Chapter Four
LIVIANNA/LILY
Now
Shady Spaces & Ghost Notes
Something in this conversation slips through the cracks, and I let it.
Jaxon’s eyes twinkle as he peers at me across the table. “How do you know that?”
The question lies between us. I let it stay there for exactly two beats before deciding I’m not the one who lets things vanish.
“I just know.” The admission is honest and insufficient, and I’m aware of both the moment it reaches the air.
“How?” He tilts his head, studying me. It’s like a quiet knowing that he can wait as long as it takes.
From the back of the bakery, cool air rolls through in a slow, easy current. The staff joke around and bring a certain excitement to the atmosphere. It’s the kind that softens the corners of a room.
“Honestly, Jaxon. I don’t know, but I don’t need to. I know in my bones that you’re not a person who gets frightened.”
He holds back a smile…I think.
I drag my spoon through my parfait without purpose because staring at him too long gets uncomfortable, like standing too close to a fire.
For a few seconds, he appears younger, less guarded around the edges, before his composure slides back into place as if it were never gone.
“You’re something else, Livianna.”
“So I’ve been told.” I rest my spoon across the bowl and leave it there. I can’t taste it, but I understand I need the nourishment. “Now stop stalling and give me something I asked for.”
He releases a heavy sigh, and both his palms press flat against the table. His posture shifts as if he’s deciding what he’ll give and what he won’t.
“She ordered the same coffee everywhere we went. No matter the city, no matter the country, whatever language she had to work through to get there, it was always the same order. And she always took five minutes to decide that’s what she wanted, but it was always the same.”
An unnamed pull starts in the center of my chest. It’s not recognition or memory, but warmth that arrives without a category attached. It’s rootless and impossible to trace back to its origin.
“What did she order?” I wrap both hands around my cup.
His gaze drops to my coffee and stays there, longer than the question warrants.
“A hazelnut latte.” He rests back against the booth.
My heart squeezes, but then my stomach twists. I placed that exact order minutes ago without a second thought. It was out of habit.
Under the table, I trace the band of my engagement ring in a slow, absent circle as I consider why my body is responding this way.
I swerve to release the unease flowing through me. “Did you two travel a lot?”
“When we had time.” He peers out the window and must get lost in thought.
“Jaxon?”
“Yes?” He shakes his head as if he’s erasing something from his mind. “I apologize. I was just remembering a vacation we went on.”
“Where did you go?”
“Mexico.” He turns his drink as he speaks. “We rented a house outside of Tulum for a week. Just us, the jungle, and the Caribbean right outside the door.”
I scoot forward, aching to hear the rest. Why I’m so drawn to this story makes little sense, but I go with it anyway. It’s been working for me so far since I lost my memory. Maybe it will this time, too.
“Tell me everything, Jaxon. What was she like there? Away from everything?”
He stares at me for a little too long, but then a grin takes form. “She was different there. Not different as if she had become someone else. Different, like she became more.”
“More what?”
“More herself.”
“How so?”
“She woke up before me every morning and carried her coffee out to the terrace. I’d come out an hour later and find her already three chapters into whatever self-help book she’d brought with her. Her feet would be tucked up under her, and her hair would still be wild from sleeping.”
The picture he paints is so specific and so tender that my throat tightens around nothing I can name. A flicker of a memory strikes at the very corner of my mind, too fast and too faint to hold. I toss it to the side, knowing I can’t force anything to come.
“That’s beautiful, Jaxon. She sounds…” A tear wells in the corner of my eye. I suck in a breath and refuse to be emotional about people I don’t know. “It sounds like she made you really happy.”
“She did.” A quiet longing settles across his face.
“But what nobody would’ve guessed about her is that she cried at sunsets over the ocean.
Every evening. Without fail. She’d stand on the terrace, and the second the sun dropped below the water, her eyes would gloss over, and she would say how beautiful it was. ”
“Did you ever tease her about it?”
“Never.” His eyes twinkle. “I love that about her.”
I take note of the present tense he used. “That’s sweet.”
“What?”
“You just said you ‘love that about her,’ like she’s still here. I find that…comforting.”
“It still feels like she’s here.” He chokes on the last word.
I send him a kind smile. “I’m sure that helps.”
“Believe it or not, where we are now, I just wish I could let her go.” He holds the cup between both palms and considers me for a moment that stretches past comfortable.
I rewind his comment. He just said where we are now. I want to call him out on it, but I don’t want to bring him any more pain. He’s obviously stuck in the past.
“Jaxon, I’m sure she would want you to find love again.”
He laughs under his breath. “I wouldn’t be too sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She wouldn’t want anyone else to be with me. Trust me. She enjoyed having me to herself.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, she didn’t need to.” He takes a sip of his coffee.
“How come?”
“One time she barged into my penthouse way past midnight, dragging her chaos all over the hardwood floor, demanding I lose my other ‘companions.’ Little did she know I had never taken on another relationship of any kind. Not from the day we got together.”
“Not one?”
“No, not one.”
I consider that while I finish my yogurt. We eat and drink for a minute in a natural kind of quiet, but his admission has me spinning in my thoughts.
Curiosity gets the best of me. “Did you ever tell her she had nothing to worry about?”
His eyes fill with something that seems a lot like regret. “No.”
“Why not?” I sit straight with raised eyebrows and a fire in my belly that I don’t understand. Maybe I’m fighting for all romantic partners out there. “I’m sure that’s something she would’ve wanted to know.”
“Livianna, I don’t know why I never told her. I guess I thought she knew.”
“How could she if you didn’t tell her? There’s more to it, Jax.”
A small smile forms at the corner of his lips, but then his jaw tightens. “All right, I didn’t say anything because telling her would have meant admitting how much she could’ve hurt me. And I wasn’t prepared to give her that kind of power.”
The heat in my stomach climbs higher. “So you protected yourself at her expense.”
“Not even close.”
“Then how would you describe it?” I fold my arms over my chest.
He takes a slow breath and releases it through parted lips. “It’s hard to explain, Livianna.”
“Try me.” I nod once, daring him.
He turns his head, then brings his gaze back to mine.
“I’ve had to run all my life. I couldn’t stop to take a break.
Ever. My relationship with her meant the world to me, and I was trying to protect it.
I didn’t want an argument over something that wasn’t there to spoil any of our time together, so I showed her instead. ”
That loosens a thread that was pulled tight. “Even so, she deserved to know.”
“She did. I should’ve communicated that to her, but I seriously thought she knew by how much time we spent together. There wasn’t space to be with anyone else.” His shoulders lower. “I only wanted her, and I showed her that every day.”
“But why not say the words?”
“I don’t know why?” He stares at me across the table with a sadness hanging in his eyes.
Chill out, Livianna. He’s in mourning, and you’re acting like he’s on trial. I push my bowl aside, but the tension stays with me.
“That’s heartbreaking.” I mean it more than I can account for. “I’m sorry. For both of you.”
He dips his chin slightly, absorbing the sympathy without accepting it.
“Can I ask you something, Jaxon?”
“Anything.”
“How do you think she knew? Even without you saying it?”
He seems to consider that for a long moment. Then his entire stance drops.
“I’m sure she would’ve loved to have had me say the words to her.” He swallows hard. “The truth is, Livianna, I fucked up with her more than I’m willing to admit to anyone else but you.”
The fire in my belly softens into something raw and aching that radiates upward through my sternum and lands at the base of my throat.
“Why are you okay with telling me?”
“Because…” He turns his cup without drinking from it. “Like I’ve told you. We were close, and I’d love it if we could rebuild that.”
Callum flashes on the screen of my mind. “I’m not sure I can do that.”
“Right.” He nods slowly. “I didn’t think so.”
“I mean, we can be friends, but the closeness…” I shrug, knowing I can’t give that to him. “Closeness seems like something reserved for a significant other.”
“You don’t need to say anything else.” He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his gentle palm, then it’s gone.
The warmth stays longer than the touch itself, and somewhere underneath it rests something unresolved.
He pulls back and checks his phone. “I should get back to the office.”
I guess he’s done with this conversation. It makes sense. I basically gave him shit over his dead girlfriend.
Jesus, Livianna. What is wrong with you?
We wander back to work in silence. Normally, that would bother me, but I have an inkling that I’ve overstepped Jaxon’s boundaries today. I’m just so curious about him. I don’t know why I’m drawn to his past relationship, though.
And with that, I stew in emotions I can’t quite solidify. I know I push too hard sometimes.
Who am I kidding? I’m known to be tenacious.
We reach the building’s glass doors. Jaxon’s already scrolling on his phone before we push through, and the gesture tells me his mind has moved on even if mine hasn’t.
The city noise cuts off behind us, and the lobby swallows us whole with its cool, indifferent air. We wait for the elevator while I use the time to count the floor tiles, which is infinitely safer than examining what just happened over coffee and yogurt in that bakery.
The elevator opens, and we step in. Jaxon presses our floor and slides his phone back into his suit pocket.
“Thank you for this morning.” I rest against the back wall. “For coffee and a snack.”
“Anytime.”
The doors open to our floor. Jaxon lets me out first, then follows. My throat has a massive lump blocking my apology for taking that conversation too far.
“Jaxon.” I glance at him. “She was lucky. I’m sorry you lost her, but the years before that sound like they were worth everything.”
He gives me a kind smile. “They were. I’ll treasure them always.”
There’s a slight French accent to the word treasure, and it makes my stomach spin.
What the hell?
My cheeks heat. “I won’t push you like that again. I’m just…curious about you.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Why do you sound surprised?”
“I’m just not that interesting.”
A quiet laugh escapes me. “Says the most mysterious man alive.”
Back at my desk, the morning sits differently than it did before coffee, treats, and a man who memorized his girlfriend crying over sunsets.
I pull a fabric swatch from the pile near my drafting table and turn it over in my hands without purpose. The weave is dense and expensive, and my fingers know that even if the rest of me is still somewhere I’ve never visited on a terrace in Tulum.
A knock at the door pulls me back to the here and now.
I glance that way. “Come in.”
Ella steps inside with a tablet pressed to her chest and her reading glasses pushed up into her hair. “Do you have two minutes?”
“Sure.” I set the swatch down. “What can I help you with?”
“The timeline for the fall collection.” She joins me and turns the device toward me. “We’re running tight on the material order window if you want delivery before the photo shoot.”
I study the dates on the screen. “Have the order pushed to Friday. That gives us the buffer without rushing the supplier.”
“That works.” She types the update in. “Also, we have a company meeting on Friday. Will you be there, or should I handle it?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Great. I’ll send you the agenda after my assistant gets it done.” She tucks the tablet under her arm. “Anything else?”
“Actually, yes.” I gesture to the chair across from me. “Do you mind sitting for a few minutes?”
“Of course not.” She sits and gets comfortable. “Is everything okay?”
“Yep.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Shoot.”
“How well do you know Jaxon?”
Ella seems to consider the question for a second. “Not well at all. All he ever talks about is business. Why?”
“I’m super curious about him, and it doesn’t make sense.”
“Makes sense to me.”
I pull my eyebrows together. “How so?”
She lifts a shoulder, shrugging. “He’s been helping you for years. There’s an unspoken bond between you two, and he was the catalyst for Lehlani Rose Designs.”
“He was?” It just falls out of my mouth, so I backtrack and pretend to be witty. “I’ve always thought I was behind that.”
She laughs. “You know what I mean.”
I wish I could tell her I don’t, but she thinks I only have short-term memory loss.
I giggle and do my best to cover up my slip. “Did it ever seem like anything other than business between him and me?”
“No.” She shifts in the chair. “Anytime I’ve worked with you two, he’s been focused only on what the task at hand was. Other than taking a break to get some food, you guys never spoke of anything other than the company.”
“Did he ever seem…personally invested? And I don’t mean in Lehlani Rose Designs. I mean, did he ever seem interested in me?”
Ella’s quiet for a moment. “There were times I thought maybe you two had more than a work relationship, but I figured out that couldn’t be true.”
“How?”
“I stopped by your office to say goodnight, and you were on the phone. Jaxon was out of town, and you were making plans for ‘sexy time’ with a man you were chatting with. I waited for you to hang up, and then I gave you a hard time about it.”
“Really? And Jaxon wasn’t around? Huh?” A heaviness covers me, and I don’t know why.
Yes, I do. Deep down, I wanted my secret lover to be Jaxon. I coil into myself. Jaxon Crowne might be handsome, but I have no business letting my mind go there.
“No, Jaxon wasn’t around. At the time, you told me he was in Paris.” Ella stands as if she’s getting ready to leave. “What’s this about, Livianna?”
I blow out a puff of air. “I guess I was seeing someone before the accident, and I can’t remember him. Ella, I’m driving myself nuts trying to figure out who he is. Why hasn’t he checked in on me?”
“I don’t know why he hasn’t reached out, but…” She flashes me a proud smile. “I do know his name.”
My eyes widen, and I jump to my feet. “What is it?”