Chapter Twenty-Four
ARIA
I wake up to the sound of water running.
The shower. His shower, in the house that feels different this morning after he carried my bags past the guest room and said for longer.
His side of the bed is empty. The sheets are still warm where he was.
His side of the bed is empty, though it hasn't been for long since the sheets are still warm from him being in them.
I stretch and blink at the ceiling.
This is home. At least for the next year.
The shower is still running, and then I smile at the thought that I should make the most of living with Everett.
Then I get up, strip off the underwear I slept in, and walk naked into the bathroom, steam hitting me as I ever the space.
Behind the glass, facing the water, head tipped back, broad shoulders slick with water. Every line of him feels unfair this early in the morning.
I open the shower door.
He looks over his shoulder. His eyes drop—unhurried over my naked body, from my face down the length of my body and then back up.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning."
I step in behind him. The water is hot, the steam thick, and his skin is warm and slick when I press my chest to his back and slide my arms around his waist... Then lower.
His breath shifts.
My hand wraps around his hard length. Already ready for me, because apparently his body knows what mine wants before his brain catches up. I stroke once, slow, and feel him thicken even harder in my grip. I do it twice more, and then his head tips back.
"Aria."
"Mmm." I press my mouth between his shoulder blades and stroke again. Tighter this time.
His hand closes over my wrist. He's not stopping me.
"As much as I want to fuck my wife in this shower," he says, his voice low and rough, "I have something to show you."
I go still.
"Now?"
"Now." His thumb traces a circle over my wrist. "Trust me. We’ll get back to this."
I release him reluctantly, making sure he feels exactly how reluctant in the drag of my fingers, and he turns around. Water streams down his chest. His eyes are dark. The evidence of what I was doing to him is still very obvious between us.
"This better be good," I say.
His mouth shifts into a smirk.
"It is."
We step out. He wraps a towel around his hips, then reaches past me for the T-shirt hanging on the back of the bathroom door—his, soft gray, worn thin. He pulls it over my head himself. Tugs it down over my shoulders, my breasts, my hips, until it falls to mid-thigh.
His hands stay on the hem for a second, thumbs brushing my bare thighs.
"I want you in only this all day," he says.
Heat pools low in my stomach.
"That can be arranged."
He drops the towel and pulls on a pair of black boxer briefs. Nothing else before taking my hand.
"Come on."
He leads me out of the bedroom and down the hallway, and I follow—my hand in his, my body still humming from the shower, my eyes completely incapable of looking anywhere except the man walking in front of me.
He keeps stealing peeks over his shoulder as if making sure I’m still there, even though my fingers are wrapped between his.
His back is a landscape. Broad shoulders. Narrow hips. Muscles shifting under damp skin with every step. The boxer briefs sit low enough on his body to feel like a deliberate act of provocation.
I’m staring and I don’t even care if he notices.
He turns into the west wing corridor—the one that was blocked off last night by opaque plastic sheeting—and stops.
The plastic is gone and the hallway is open now with gleaming wood floors that look as though someone just applied a new sheen to them. There’s still a faint smell of cleaner and sawdust and paint in the air, like someone polished the place only hours ago.
"The crew came by at six," he says. "Final cleanup."
"A final clean up for what?" I ask.
"You’ll see. I hope you like it."
My stomach flips at the idea that Everett did something that sounds very permanent that he hopes I will like.
At the end of the hall is a closed door. He stops in front of it and then turns to me.
He’s standing there in nothing but black boxer briefs, looking like the version of him I got for the last half of our honeymoon. The version of him that I think only his siblings have ever seen.
"I started this the day after I saw the painting," he says.
The painting that Gabriel hung in the gallery? The faceless man in a suit standing at the penthouse window. The lonely billionaire. Whatever is behind that door is a decision he made after seeing it. Its the same night we consummated our marriage.
"The gallery employee talked about the artist," he continues.
His voice is even, but his jaw is tight.
"She said the artist was gifted. That she didn’t seem to know it yet.
" He pauses. "I already knew you were talented. But standing in front of that painting—seeing myself through your eyes—I understood you’d been burying something extraordinary. Something that comes to you as easy as breathing and you’ve been suppressing it for too long. "
"You agreed to live in my world for a year," he says. "But I want you to have something of your own inside it. Something that’s just for you."
Then he opens the door. The room is flooded with light and I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing.
The entire north wall is glass from floor to ceiling, facing the grounds, the trees, the water beyond. Morning pours through it—silver and even and kind. The kind of light painters spend their lives chasing.
An easel stands in the center of the room.
A real one. Heavy, beautiful, and meant to be used.
There’s a rolling cart nearby already stocked with supplies, shelves along the back wall, with flat files, stacked canvases of different sizes, a drafting table by the window, and a deep sink in the corner.
Everything I would need. Everything I never thought I’d have.
The room soars upward into a second story with a spiral staircase that leads up to a lofted storage area with a seating space and even more light. It feels less like a room and more like an entire art studio.
My hand comes up to cover my mouth.
"The windows face north," he says behind me. "For consistent light. The ventilation is separate from the rest of the house if you work with oils. The floors are sealed under the wood, so if you ruin them, it won’t matter."
He’s giving me logistics, facts and specs, because I know it’s the only way he knows how to say, "I was thinking of you and everything I can give you to make you happy."
Because that’s how Everett says the things that matter when the real words are too exposed to survive his mouth.
I turn slowly, still trying to take it in.
"Everett, I can’t believe you did this for me."
He holds up a finger. "There’s one more thing."
He crosses to a second door on the far side of the studio—one I assumed was storage—and opens it.
It isn’t storage. I see the inside of a living room and open kitchen.
It’s an apartment.
I walk through the door to find a bedroom, a sitting area, a small kitchenette, a bathroom with wide doorways and grab bars, everything accessible and thoughtful and bright.
Through the far window, the same silver morning light spills across the floor.
There’s another room… a gym but the equipment looks specialized.
He did this for me? So that I could live separate from him.
I stare at it. "I don’t understand. What is this for?"
"I talked to Henry's physical therapist and got the specs on what he would need in a home gym so that they could work on his daily routine here," Everett says from behind me, voice careful now.
"But when he’s ready to leave Brookhaven, if you wanted him closer during the transition…
" He pauses. "He wouldn’t have to live in an apartment alone.
He could be here… where you can keep an eye on him. "
My lungs forget how to work.
He built my father an apartment.
Connected to my studio.
In his house.
The man who signed a one-year contract with me built a home for my father.
I turn around slowly, the tears already filling my eyes but I don’t want to cry, I just want him to wrap me in his arms and kiss me.
He’s standing in the middle of the studio with his hands at his sides, expression open in a way that tells me he’s braced for the possibility that this is too much.
The tears are falling because there’s no way to hold this back any further. Everett always knows what I need before I ask. He anticipates every dream that I could never imagine on my own.
"You did this," I say, and my voice barely works. "You built me a studio."
"You needed space to paint."
"Everett."
"It’s just a room."
"It’s not just a room." I cross to him, stopping close enough to see the slight shift in his breathing. "You saw the painting and started construction the next day."
"The day after."
I shake my head as if one day makes no difference. "While we were still in France."
"Yes."
"While you were sleeping next to me and never said a word."
"It was supposed to be finished before we got back." His jaw tightens. "The timeline was aggressive."
I stare up at him.
This impossible, maddening, quietly devastating man who will not say I love you but will build a studio from scratch in a week because he saw a painting I made of him and decided my talent deserved a home, even though the painting hurt him deeply.
I hurt him and he built me a studio for it.
Something of your own inside my world. That’s what he said.
I reach up and take his face in both hands, his skin is warm in my hands. His jaw is tight under my palms.
"Thank you," I whisper. "For seeing me. For making a place for me when you didn’t have to. This wasn’t part of the deal."
His expression cracks. Just barely. Just enough.
His hands come to my waist.
"Sometimes plans change," he says.