Chapter Twenty-Five
EVERETT
It’s been a week since we got back from France.
A week of waking up with my wife in my bed and pretending that still sounds temporary in my head when it no longer feels temporary anywhere else.
A week of working from the home office with the glass doors open while she paints in the west wing studio I built for her.
A week of hearing music drift down the hallway while I answer calls, of finding new smears of cobalt and ochre on the edge of her wrist at dinner, of watching the estate slowly stop feeling like a house I own and start feeling like a place we live.
She paints and I work from home more than I ever have. We eat lunch together when neither of us is pulled in opposite directions. We fall into bed at night and tangle into the sheets together like there was never a version of this house that held only one of us.
The strangest part is how quickly I’ve formed a routine with her in it.
It’s good.
Too good.
That’s the problem because for most people, happiness probably feels like relief. But when your brother, who’s also your lawyer, says that the board has been a little too quiet as of lately, every call, email or text message, could end something.
Jeremy hasn’t alerted me to anything unusual on his end of things as he’s taken up more responsibilities to be my eyes and ears at the Kauffman enterprise building.
If he had heard anything, he would have said something, though he’s been busy and our communication over the last week has been far less than usual with his new work load.
Tonight is the Hawkeyes’ first home game since we got back and it’s the first time we’ll be out in Seattle as a married couple since our wedding.
And I know the exact moment the estate stopped feeling temporary.
It wasn’t when Aria moved her brushes into the kitchen drawer she declared more logical.
It wasn’t when Matteo started setting out two coffee cups instead of one.
It wasn’t even when I woke up this morning and found one of her earrings on my bathroom counter beside my watch, as if her belonging here had become as ordinary as time.
It was ten minutes ago, when she stood in the dressing room off the master bedroom with one gold hoop in and one still in her hand and asked, "Is this too much for a hockey game?"
A hockey game.
As if she isn’t about to walk into the owners’ box wearing my ring and my name and the kind of quiet confidence that makes entire rooms reorient around her without understanding why.
"No," I say, tightening the knot of my tie. "It’s not too much."
She narrows her eyes at me in the mirror. "Are you sure? I can change."
I glance up. My gorgeous wife taking up every thought I have in my mind.
She’s wearing a cream sweater tucked into a black leather pencil skirt that reaches to her calves and tall boots, simple enough for game day, expensive enough that Everly would approve, and the ring on her left hand catches the light every time she lifts her arm.
Her hair is curled and in a high pony tail with soft strands shaping her face.
Her mouth is pink from whatever gloss she uses that I now associate with being kissed half to death in doorways.
"You look good," I say.
Her brows lift. "Only good?"
I take one step toward her. Then another as she watches me, Until I’m standing behind her at the mirror with one hand settling automatically at her waist.
"You look," I say carefully, because careful is the only way I ever seem able to say things that matter, "like I’m going to spend half the night watching other people notice my wife and regretting every social obligation that requires me to share oxygen with them. And if we don’t leave soon, it won’t matter what you’re wearing because I’m ten seconds away from stripping everything off you and telling Penelope that we hit traffic and won’t be making it so that I can spend the entire night inside my wife. "
Her lips part. There’s the faintest flush in her cheeks.
"Is that better?"
"That," she says softly, "was not very subtle."
"I wasn’t aiming for subtlety."
She turns then, her hands sliding up my chest and then her arms locking around my neck.
"I don’t know… I might like your idea better for the night," she says, catching her lower lip with her teeth and my cock twitches.
"You're going to turn into a big problem for me, aren’t you," I say.
"Why do you say that?" she asks, but she already knows exactly why.
"Because if you keep this up, I may never leave this house."
She grins like she won something, and we both know she did. She already preemptively just won every argument I could ever come up with to leave the house. All she has to do is bat her eyes and lick her lips, and I’m done for.
"Okay fine," she says, releasing her arms around my shoulders. "We should probably make an appearance before someone sends the police for a well-person visit."
"Good idea. God forbid they come around and hear some of the sounds you make when I have you pinned under me. Those sounds could get me locked up."
She chuckles and then reaches down for her bag, the small black leather one she brought back from France, and slips it over her shoulder. When she straightens, her fingers brush mine once, the contact brief and thoughtless and entirely too easy.
It’s become a pattern now. These little touches neither of us plans. Her hand at my back in the kitchen. My palm at her waist while moving around her. Her knee against mine at breakfast.
My phone buzzes against the dresser.
Christian.
I glance at the screen and ignore it for the moment.
"We should go," I say.
She nods. "Right."
The stadium hum with game-night tension as we walk through the back entrance with security clearing us up to the elevator that takes us to the private suites.
Staff nod as we pass. A sponsorship rep I vaguely recognize starts toward me, then thinks better of it when he sees Aria beside me and clocks that my tolerance for pregame small talk is low.
Good instincts.
Aria stays half a step at my side, neither clinging nor hanging back, and I feel the way people register her before they look away. She’s stunning, I already know that, and now she’s Mrs. Kauffman.
I should hate how much I like that. How dedicated to the cause to keep it there, attached to her first name.
When the doors open on the suite level, she steps out beside me like she belongs here, because she does .
The owners’ box door is already open.
Cammy spots Aria first and lets out a gasp loud enough to qualify as a public event.
"There she is."
Aria laughs before we even make it fully inside.
Penelope rises from the leather chair near the glass with more composure, but I can see the warmth in her face.
She’s in dark trousers and a Hawkeyes quarter-zip.
She was at the wedding. She knows how this story pivoted.
So does Cammy. None of this is news to them but it still feels like we’re introducing ourselves to everyone in a new way now.
Cammy gets to her first.
"Let me see it again," she says, already grabbing Aria’s left hand. "I know I saw it at the wedding, but everything was happening so fast."
Penelope steps closer, her eyes dropping to the ring with open appreciation. "It is somehow even more obscene in daylight."
"That’s exactly what I said," Cammy replies.
Aria glances back at me over her shoulder, as if checking to make sure I’m not far away. As if knowing where I am in case she needs reinforcements.
Penelope gives Aria a small smile. "How was France?"
The girls dive into Cannes, Paris, the museum… everything that took up the two weeks. I back away, giving them space… giving Aria the freedom to tell them anything she wants to.
I watch as Christian moves towards me, his gaze flicks to Aria, and his face softens just a fraction and then he turns towards me.
"Everett. A second?"
I know that tone.
Not urgent enough to alarm anyone else, yet not casual enough to ignore.
I step out with him into the corridor just beyond the suite. The game has started but it’s only the first period.
The door closes behind us, muting the arena noise to a low insulated roar.
"What is it?" I ask.
Christian checks that we’re alone before answering.
"The trust board has been quiet."
I stare at him. "That’s your update?"
"Yes."
"That doesn’t sound like an update."
"It is when they usually prefer pressure."
He slips his phone into his pocket. "No calls. No requests. No reach-outs through counsel. Nothing."
"That should sound like a relief. Maybe they bought the story."
He thinks for a moment looking past me at the Hawkeyes banner behind me. "Maybe…" his lips purse while deep in thought.
I look back through the glass inset in the door. Inside, Aria is laughing at something Cammy just said, head tilted, ring catching the light.
Christian follows my line of sight.
"Do you think it means something?" I ask.
"Not yet." He pauses. "I just don’t like silence from people who enjoy leverage."
A cold little thread pulls low in my gut and I hate that he’s right, because deep down, I’ve been waiting for more of a fight. We haven’t gotten one.
"Don’t let it ruin your night," Christian says, which in Christian language means I know it already has a little.
"Helpful."
"I just wanted to touch base with you. See if you’ve heard from Aunt Genevieve or anyone from the trust board. Maybe Jeremy or Everly have been receiving requests for proof from them?"
"Everly has said anything and Jeremy’s been busy taking on a bigger role. He hasn’t mentioned anything though."
He reaches for the suite door, then stops.
"For what it’s worth," he says without looking at me, "she seems very comfortable in there. Even if they do come back with a fight, I don’t think there’s anything they can prove."
Maybe.
But maybe has never been a safe enough margin when there’s this much on the line.
He glances back once, expression unreadable. "Just don’t get too comfortable."
Then he opens the door and walks back in.
I stay in the corridor for one second longer than necessary.
Inside the suite, Aria is still smiling.
Everything is right, and that’s the scariest place to be. I’ve lived long enough to know how rarely, for me, that stays untouched.
I put my hand on the door and go back in anyway.
Three full periods later, our guys win. The owner’s suite stays loud around us—plates of food, cocktails, easy laughter—but all I really notice is Aria. The way she looks happy here. The way she belongs more with every passing minute.
By the time the last of the players disappear down the tunnel, the arena has started to empty. The lights shift. The crowd noise fades.
Christian’s warning flickers once through my head.
If the trust decides to turn this into a fight, there’s too much at stake for me to leave anything to chance.
And that’s the problem.
Because she is beginning to feel less like something temporary in my life and more like the first real choice I’ve made in years that I would burn the rest down to keep.
I don’t say that.
What I do instead is lift her hand, press my mouth once to the ring on her finger, and murmur, "Come on."
Her eyes stay on mine for half a beat longer.
Then she lets me lead her out of the suite and back into the bright corridor, our hands clasped between us, the arena behind us, the night ahead.
And under all of it, quiet and unwelcome as a blade, is the certainty that happiness this good has never once felt safe.