Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Furniture delivery confirmed. Henry’s apartment fixtures in. Therapy equipment arrives by seven a.m.
I glance up.
Aria is still drawing, lower lip caught lightly between her teeth while she shades the edge of the balcony.
I type back quickly.
Good work.
Then I pocket the phone again before she looks up.
Hours later she falls asleep somewhere over the Atlantic with the sketchbook still open on her lap and the pencil loose in her fingers.
I ease it from her hand, slide it into the spine of the book, and set the whole thing on the empty seat beside her. She shifts in her sleep but doesn’t wake.
I know I should work, but instead I sit there in the hum of the engine and watch the clouds drag past the window and think about Seattle.
About Monday.
About whether being the man my company needs and the man my wife deserves are actually incompatible or whether I’ve just spent years using work as an excuse not to find out.
Eleven thousand people depend on Kauffman Enterprises. I don’t take that lightly.
But I also can’t keep being only that man. The one who sleeps in an office, misses dinner, and calls a penthouse home because he doesn’t know what else to do with a life that has no room in it for softness. I can’t be that man if I want her to stay.
Seattle greets us with pale sun, a cold edge in the air, and the kind of clean blue sky that makes the city look more innocent than it is. We don’t get too many of these days.
The town car is waiting on the tarmac by the time we step off the jet.
Aria blinks against the light, portfolio case tucked against her side, and I have the sudden, irrational urge to turn around and get back on the plane before any of this can be tested. I know what we can be in France… I don't know how it all works here yet.
Instead I open the rear door for her and wait until she slides inside before following.
The driver pulls away from the private airfield and Aria watches the city pass for a minute, then turns toward me. "Can I ask you something?"
"You can always ask me anything."
Her expression says she’s trying not to smile. "You never answered me earlier."
"About what?"
"Where you want to live."
I lean back into the seat. "I already told you. The estate."
"No. You told me where I wanted to live."
"That wasn’t the question."
"It is now."
I look at the woman who painted herself back to life in France and now sits across looking more rested and at ease than I have seen her in the entire seven months I’ve known her.
Then I give her the truth because I’ve never been one to see the point in lying and if I want to build a life with her, I’m going to have to share more of myself than I ever have with anyone else.
"I want to live wherever this still feels like us when work starts again."
I continue before she can say something that makes this harder. "The estate gives us a better shot at that."
"So you’re thinking strategically."
"I’m always thinking strategically."
"Even about me?"
I turn to look at her, making sure she hears the words. "Especially about you."
She goes quiet at that as if she’s still not grasping that I’m trying to make her my priority.
Then she says, "That sounds like a lot of pressure."
"It’s not a flaw in this case. High stakes aren’t always bad."
"No," she says softly. "I guess they’re not."
The rest of the drive passes as she stares out the window and I respond back to emails. As much as I want to stay in this moment with her, I still have an entire company counting on me.
Then the compound gates open and we’re home.
Though it’s the first time in my life I can truthfully say anywhere has felt like home, and it’s only because I’m bringing her here. She’s what makes anywhere feel like home.
The waterfront stretches out silver-blue beneath the low Seattle sky. The slate paths are still a little damp from an earlier morning rain, I assume. The other seven houses on the estate rise where they always have, each one exactly where memory left it.
Colston’s closest to the water.
Archer’s half-hidden in the trees.
Everly’s glass monument to ego and event planning.
And my house at the center.
The driver turns toward it and slows. The front door opens before we stop and then Everly appears, stepping out the front door. I should have figured she’d be the head of the greeting committee when we got here.
Behind her is Zayne, because in this family, boundaries exist mostly so someone can vault over them.
If I didn't know better, I’d say that twenty plus years of Conrad Kauffman keeping us apart has caused some level of separation anxiety where no one can seem to go a day or two without bombarding into each other's lives.
I should be grateful for this though, because without the last five years of learning how to deal with real relationships like these, I’d be too far off to have ever resembled a man Aria could stand to spend a single night with, let alone a life.
Christian comes after them, at least looking faintly apologetic about being part of this ambush.
"I told them not to make a scene," I say flatly.
Aria glances at me. "You knew they’d be here?"
"I know my family. They can’t help themselves."
By the time I get out and come around to her side, Zayne is already halfway down the front steps.
"There they are," he announces to no one who needs the update. "The newlyweds return from Europe. Did you bring scandal? Illicit vineyard photos? A tiny French baby?"
Aria nearly chokes on air.
Christian elbows him hard enough to be satisfying.
Everly, to her credit, ignores all of them and goes straight for Aria, stopping just short of physically grabbing her.
"How was it? You look like you have that honeymoon glow, and a gorgeous French Riviera tan to match."
"I got a little bit of a tan," Aria says. Then she glances back at me. "Not as much as Everett, though."
"Oh right, the sunburn," Everly winces a little. "The photos looked rough."
"Got a little distracted, did you there brother?" Zayne says, slapping my shoulder.
I glance over at Aria. The distraction in question, who was wearing a bikini that day by the pool at the paparazzi, trying to keep my distance before I screwed everything up and slept with her again like we had the night before.
That feels like a whole different time and space than it is now.
"Yeah, something like that," I say and Aria gives me a knowing smile.
Then Everly’s gaze flicks to the luggage, the portfolio case, the garment bags, and something more perceptive moves through her face.
Everly sees it, because she sees everything. The difference in me that I can’t quite name but can feel.
"You’re staying here?" she asks.
Aria glances at me before answering. "Yes."
Everly’s eyes widen with excitement. "Perfect. Matteo already doubled his grocery order when I told him you were coming back today."
"I didn’t agree to that," I say.
"You were in France. Your authority had a customs delay. And you’re welcome, because now there’ll be actual food in the house and your wife might stay. I cannot go back to being the only woman in this sausage fest family. I refuse."
Zayne reaches for one of the bags. "What the hell did you bring back in this thing?"
"That," Aria says, "is art supplies and if you drop it, I’ll help Everly hide your body."
Zayne blinks. Then grins. "She really is one of us."
"I hope so," I say.
Christian takes the second case more carefully and glances at Aria. "Welcome home."
The words are simple, but they land in a way that feels real for the first time in my life, and I don’t miss the way she stills for half a second before she answers.
"Thanks."
Then Levi claps me once on the back and heads for his side of the property, while Christian herds Everly out in front of him as if marching her back to her house before she can ask six hundred more questions about France, marriage, or whether Aria is already pregnant.
Archer never came over to the house, though he might still be in Seattle, or somewhere completely different, knowing him. Security takes him all over.
He texted after the car pulled in:
Everything good?
I replied:
Yes.
He sent back:
Good.
From Archer, that’s the way he shows he cares—by checking in on your safety.
Wes, Colston and Levi could be anywhere but I’m glad they’re anywhere but here.
Then the front door shuts behind the last of them, and the foyer goes quiet.
Aria is standing in the entryway of my house when I turn around. I guess it’s our house now. She has her satchel over one shoulder and her eyes moving over the space.
"Your family is…" she starts.
"A lot."
"I was going to say wonderful." She looks at me. "But also a lot."
I pick up the bags the driver left just inside the door. Both of hers. One of mine.
She watches me.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Taking these upstairs."
"I can carry my own luggage. You’ve already done a lot."
"I know you can, but I’ve got it."
I start up the staircase and she follows.
Down the hallway, past the second guest suite—the one that was hers on our wedding night, with its own bathroom, its own closet, and a door that closes. A door that would have put distance between us back when distance still felt necessary.
I walk right past it.
Halfway down the hall, she stops.
"What’s that?"
I follow her gaze.
The west wing corridor is blocked off by opaque plastic sheeting taped from floor to ceiling. Behind it is the faint smell of fresh paint and sawdust. Through the landing window, a construction dumpster is still visible down on the service drive.
"Renovation," I say, and keep walking.
"Of what?"
"A room that needed updating." I shift her bag to my other hand. "It should be finished by tomorrow."
She looks at the plastic for another second, curiosity all over her face, but she doesn’t push. Probably because I’m already ten feet ahead of her and clearly not offering more.
Her footsteps slow behind me as I stop in front of the master suite.
My room.
I set her bags down and turn. She’s standing three feet behind me, looking at the door, then at me.
"What do you think," I ask, "about staying with me?"
Her eyes search my face. "For tonight?"
"I was hoping for longer."
"I suppose, this is what we discussed, right?" she asks.
The question hangs there between us.
"Yes, but that was in France, on our honeymoon. This looks different in the light of the French Riviera. Now we’re here and you can change your mind Aria. I’m not going to push you to do anything you’re not ready for."
And I know what the safe answer is. The answer that protects both of us from the thing that started in a pool in Cannes and stopped pretending in an alley in Villefranche.
I don’t give her the safe answer.
Then her face does something I want to memorize and keep—her eyes saying yes before her mouth catches up.
"Okay," she says softly. "For longer."
I nod once.
Open the door.
Carry her bags inside.
And for the first time in my life, the house I built because it made sense doesn’t feel like an asset or a strategy or a place to sleep between meetings.
It feels like a place to build something… with her.