Chapter Twenty-Three
EVERETT
The villa looks different when you know you’re leaving it.
As if every room has quietly collected evidence against me while I wasn’t looking, and now I’m expected to walk back through it all without noticing what it became.
The suitcase won’t close.
I stare at the offending corner of a shirt sleeve—possibly mine, possibly hers. I can’t tell anymore because at some point over the last few days our clothes stopped respecting drawer assignments—and press the lid down harder.
It springs back up like it’s staging a revolt against me.
"You have to sit on it."
I turn to find Aria leaning in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower we took together, cheeks still a little flushed from when I took her against the shower tile, one of my T-shirts hanging loose over a pair of linen shorts.
Her satchel is already slung over one shoulder.
The portfolio case with her canvases rests beside her foot like something precious enough to travel armed.
"I do not need to sit on it," I say. "It’s a structural issue."
She crosses the room, hip-checks me out of the way, and drops her full weight onto the suitcase lid. It compresses shut instantly. She flips both latches with infuriating ease, then stands and pats the top once like it’s a particularly stupid dog that has finally obeyed.
"Well, look at that. Structural issue officially solved."
I catch her around the waist before she can walk away.
A laugh breaks out of her as I pull her back against me, and then I kiss her because apparently leaving France has made me more possessive, not less. Or maybe I was always this far gone and only needed privacy and a villa to stop pretending otherwise.
When I pull back, she’s looking at me with that soft, dazed expression I still haven’t learned how to take without feeling it somewhere in my ribs.
"What would I do without you?" I ask.
She glances at the now-closed suitcase, then back at me. "You’d probably spiral immediately and stop eating and sleeping. And somehow end up with bangs."
"That seems dramatic… I’d never get bangs."
She chuckles. "You’re right. What was I thinking? You’re far too responsible for a drastic new hairstyle." Her mouth curves. "You’d probably just make Jeremy solve it and then pretend you had it handled the whole time."
Then she shifts in my hold, looking past me toward the open cases on the bed. "I should finish packing the art supplies before we leave."
I let her go, though not very far.
She moves to the chair by the window where her brushes are laid flat in a row and the tubes of paint are sorted with the same unconscious precision she used to bring to my desk.
One by one, she slides them into the roll case Gabriel insisted she needed.
Then she lifts the first canvas and wraps it carefully in tissue paper, smoothing the corners with both hands.
I lean against the bedpost and watch her.
Two weeks ago, I walked into this villa with a contract wife and a plan to spend most of our honeymoon working from behind glass doors.
I’m leaving it with something I don’t yet know how to name without sounding like a man who has already lost control of the narrative.
Her gaze lifts.
"What?" she asks.
"Nothing."
"That look means it isn’t nothing."
"You seem very sure of that."
"I worked for you for six months. I know a thing or two about your tells." She folds another layer of tissue over the painting. "And you’re easy to read when you don’t think anyone’s watching."
The room goes quiet after that, but it’s the kind of quiet I’ve gotten used to with her. The kind of quiet that doesn’t mean space is building between us. More like the opposite.
She packs the second canvas next. This one she pauses over longer.
Her fingers linger on the frame before she slides it into the portfolio case, then lets out a quiet sigh.
"Is something wrong?" I ask.
She exhales slowly. "No. I’m just trying to figure out how this place managed to feel real so fast."
She’s right. I feel it too.
The villa should still feel staged for a fake married honeymoon. A beautiful lie with expensive towels and room service.
Instead, it became the first place in years that felt anything close to honest with myself and what I want.
"That’s because it was never really about the villa," I say.
Her eyes lift to mine.
"No?"
"No."
She studies me for a second. "You know, there are moments when you accidentally say something that sounds almost romantic."
"I try not to make a habit of it."
"Of course not. That would be terrible for your brand."
"You have no idea. My competitors would eat me alive."
That gets a quiet laugh out of her, but I can still feel the thought moving underneath it.
I feel it too.
Because France was easy in all the ways that mattered.
No boardrooms. No penthouse that made my wife feel like she had to dim herself to fit inside it.
No trust board breathing down our necks looking for us to slip.
No six a.m. calls about media optics and acquisition schedules and whether one of our divisions is on fire again.
Seattle will be the real test. Not a test about whether I want her. That I decided a long time ago. Now it’s whether I know how to build a life that doesn’t make her miserable for choosing me back.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Doug.
I pick it up and glance at the screen.
On schedule, sir. West wing crews finishing final electrical and paint touchups tonight.
It’s one in the morning in Seattle, but that’s why Colston’s construction division is the best in the business. They stay on a project until it’s done. If anyone could make a miracle happen on short notice, it’s them.
Aria is bent over zipping the portfolio case. She doesn’t notice that I’m texting a project manager about something I’m having done at the house for her.
I type back one-handed.
Ready by tomorrow morning?
The three dots appear almost immediately.
Yes, sir. Cleanup crew at six. Plastic down before eight tomorrow.
Perfect.
Thanks for getting this done on short notice.
I pocket the phone.
The west wing bedroom with the north-facing windows will be finished by morning. Hardwood floors sealed against paint. A deep utility sink. Custom shelving. Enough light to make a woman who loves color stop in the doorway and forget what she was going to say.
And next to it, through the connecting hall, an apartment with a physical therapy room already fitted for Henry.
It’s not a someday promise. A real place for her to paint—for her father to be close and get the care he needs once they finally release him in a couple of years.
A future with walls around it to protect us for outside forces and she doesn’t know any of that yet. I want her to walk into it completely finished so she can see the vision I have. Not as a construction zone. Not as a plan. As proof.
That’s the thing about love languages. Mine apparently comes with contractors and invoices because I still don’t know how else to show a woman I intend to keep her. Or maybe that’s the more honest fear under all of this.
Not that I don’t want her enough. It’s that I do.
And I still don’t know whether wanting her and choosing her will be enough to keep her here once real life starts pressing in again.
She straightens and brushes her hands together. "Okay. I think that’s everything."
I look around the room. "You checked the drawers?"
She gives me a look. "Unlike you, I know how to leave a place without abandoning half my wardrobe."
"You found one sock behind the nightstand."
"I found two, actually. I was being merciful."
I nod once. "That was kind of you."
Her mouth twitches. Then she picks up the portfolio case, and I take it from her before she can protest.
"I’ve got it," I tell her.
"I can carry my own paintings."
"I’m aware."
"Then why are you carrying them?"
I hold her gaze. "Because I want to."
The answer stills her for half a second, and then she lets me take the case without another word.
The drive to the airstrip is quieter than the drive down was. Aria watches the coastline through the car window like she’s trying to memorize the light well enough to keep it. I let her have the silence because I know what this place became to her. Maybe even more clearly than she does.
By the time we board the jet, she seems quieter about leaving. It’s not resignation exactly. Just tucked back inside herself a little.
She takes the window seat and pulls out her sketchbook once we level off.
I open my laptop. Sixty-three unread emails.
I stare at them without opening a single one.
Board deck revisions. Penelope wants a meeting. Legal says urgent, which in Legal’s case means they’ve been ignoring it long enough that it’s now my problem. Zayne forwarded something with the subject line READ THIS BEFORE YOU LAND, which guarantees I won’t read it until at least Tuesday.
A text pings on my phone. It’s from Sienna: I hope your honeymoon was restful. Congrats on securing the France club with Pierre. Let me know when you’re back. We need to talk. Privately.
Privately?
It’s not as if most of our conversations are public. We’re usually discussing confidential mergers and acquisitions. So the fact that she’s specifying that she wants a private meeting has me considering the possible subject matter she wants to discuss.
Whatever it is, it will have to wait.
I glance over across from me where Aria is sketching. I know what she’s drawing before I lean forward enough to see the page.
Her mother’s apartment from memory. The balcony, and the curling ironwork… and the flowers spilling over the railing.
Her hand moves as she draws line after line like the image already exists and she’s only uncovering it.
I close the laptop.
The emails will still be there in an hour. In two. Even in ten.
I only have one wife.
The word lands differently now than it did on the wedding day.
My phone buzzes again.
Doug.