Chapter Thirty
ARIA
I hear the front door a little after eight.
Not loud. Just the quiet click of it opening and shutting somewhere below me, followed by footsteps crossing the foyer.
Relief hits so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
He's home.
I set my brush down too quickly, wipe my hands on the rag beside the sink, and head for the studio door before I can think too hard about what I'm doing.
I probably have paint on my wrists. I definitely have paint on my wrists.
I don't care. Whatever has been wrong for the last two days—the dead texts, the absence, the cold spot where he used to be—he's here now.
Which means we can finally talk.
By the time I reach the landing, he's halfway through the foyer below.
Suit jacket still on. Tie loosened. One hand resting on the edge of the entry table like he's holding himself there by force.
"Everett."
He looks up.
And immediately, something inside me goes still.
Not because he's angry.
Because he isn't.
Because his face is wearing that careful, polished expression I used to see from the other side of his desk—the one he puts on right before he tells a room full of executives exactly how things are going to go and expects them to accept it.
I know that face. I used to schedule meetings around that face.
I make myself keep moving.
When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I try for normal. I try for the woman who was painting upstairs five minutes ago and not the one who's been checking her phone every eleven minutes for two days. If I'm being honest, I don't think I pull it off.
"Come upstairs," I say softly. "I'm sure you want to get out of that suit. We can talk after you get comfortable."
His expression doesn't change.
"No."
The word hits harder than it should.
My brows pull together. "No?"
"I'm not staying long." He straightens from the table, but the motion looks stiff—almost uncomfortable—like his whole body is resisting being here. "I need to get back into town tonight."
Something cold slips down my spine.
Then he says, "I just came out to tell you the good news."
Good news.
The words should lift something in me. Instead they make everything sharper. Because nothing about him looks relieved. Or lighter. Or even certain. His shoulders are locked too tight. His jaw is set. This is a man who moves through rooms like he owns them—which, to be fair, he usually does.
Right now he looks like a man forcing himself to stand still.
I stare at him.
"What good news?"
He exhales once through his nose.
"The trust is willing to release us from the arrangement."
For a second, I don't understand what he just said.
The sentence lands in pieces.
Release.
Arrangement.
Like we're discussing a lease. Like some contract term got shortened and now we're both supposed to nod and be reasonable about it.
I blink at him. "What?"
"The marriage clause is satisfied enough that they're willing to let us unwind it now." His voice is even. Careful. "We don't have to stay in this for the full year."
I just look at him.
And this is the part that throws me the most—Everett is not a man who says things he doesn't mean. He's too precise for that. Too controlled. He doesn't throw words around. He places them. Every single one.
So if he's saying this, he means it.
And yet everything about his body looks wrong for the words coming out of his mouth.
His shoulders are too tight. His hand flexes once against the edge of the table. His jaw is set the way it gets when he's holding something back.
"What are you talking about?" I ask.
"The arrangement is over, Aria." He says it gently, like gentle is going to help here. Like gentle is a thing that exists for what he's doing to me right now. "This is a good thing."
I stare at him.
A good thing.
I almost laugh. It dies somewhere in my throat before it makes a sound, which is probably for the best because I think it would've come out unhinged.
"I don't understand."
He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out papers.
Of course there are papers. This man would file paperwork for his own funeral. He'd probably also notarize it.
He sets them on the entry table beside him.
"The estate stays with you," he says. "Brookhaven is taken care of. You're not tied to this anymore."
I look at the papers, then back at him.
"So what," I say softly, because I need to hear him explain the absurdity out loud, "you'll live in the penthouse and I'll live here? How does that make any sense if we're getting divorced?"
"I won't be living here."
That answer comes too quickly.
Too cleanly.
Like he rehearsed it in the car.
"The estate would sit empty otherwise," he says.
"If you stay, you have the studio. You have a place for your father when he's ready to leave Brookhaven.
" His gaze holds mine, and there's something almost desperate in it—like he needs me to understand this part more than any other part. "Use it, Aria. You earned it."
That hurts more than I expect it to.
Not because he's ending it.
Because he's making it sound sensible. Managed. Like he's handing me a severance package with great benefits and expecting a thank-you note.
"You asked me to stay," I say quietly.
His eyes close. Just for a second. But I see it.
"That doesn't change what this started as."
The words hit hard enough that I have to look away.
I stare at the staircase behind him instead. The polished wood. The warm light. Upstairs, the painting I finished two days ago is still drying on the easel—the aisle, the arch, him standing at the end of it in all that light. The one my hand painted without asking my brain's permission.
He doesn't know about that painting.
He's never going to know about that painting.
"You built me a studio," I say.
"Yes."
"You built my father a place to live."
"Yes."
"And now you're standing here telling me this is over like you're giving notice on an apartment."
His jaw tightens.
"It's not like that."
I look back at him.
"Then what is it like?"
For the first time, he hesitates.
That should comfort me. It doesn't.
Because if he's hesitating, then he knows how this sounds. He knows how impossible this is from where I'm standing, and he's saying it anyway.
"We had a good time," he says at last, and his voice is lower now. Rougher. "It wasn't all bad, was it? It was... beneficial. For both of us."
There's something in his eyes when he says it.
Not warmth. Something worse.
Hope.
A small, desperate hope that I'll agree with him. That I'll let him turn this into something survivable. That I'll nod and remember it kindly and not hate him for it.
And that is the part I can't make sense of.
Why would he care how I remember this if he's ending it the first second he's allowed to?
My throat tightens so fast it actually hurts.
"Right," I say, because it's the only word I can get out. "Beneficial."
He says my name quietly. "Aria—"
"No." My voice is thin now. Not angry. Just hurt. "No, I'm trying to catch up."
He goes still.
I take one slow breath. Then another.
Do not cry. Do not cry in front of this man while he's handing you an exit interview.
"Because two days ago you were in my bed," I say, and even that comes out softer than I mean it to. More wounded than accusing. "A week ago you were kissing my ring in the owner's box. You asked me for longer. You built all of this." My eyes burn. "And now you're telling me it was... beneficial."
His whole body locks.
For one second—one—I think he might say something real.
He doesn't.
"It got more complicated than it was supposed to," he says.
I shut my eyes.
Complicated.
That is somehow worse than if he'd said none of it mattered. Because complicated means it did matter. Just not enough to keep trying.
When I open my eyes, he's still standing exactly where he was. Like if he moves an inch he won't be able to finish what he came here to do.
I hate that I can see the effort in that.
I hate it because it keeps this from being simple.
If he were cold—truly cold—I could hate him cleanly.
I could call Penelope and say he's a sociopath and she'd say I'll bring wine and Cammy would say something devastating about his tie and we'd turn him into a villain story over a bottle of something expensive.
But he's not cold. He's standing in front of me trying so damn hard to do this that every line of his body is fighting the words coming out of his mouth.
That's not a man who doesn't care.
That's something else entirely, and I don't know what to do with it.
"Was any of it real?" I ask.
The question comes out so quiet I almost wish I could take it back.
He looks at me for a long moment.
Then he says, carefully, "What mattered was that we both held up our end of the deal."
I try not to notice that he didn't actually answer the question.
Because that's the worst part. Not that I believe him—I don't. His body has been telling a different story since I walked downstairs. The stiffness in his shoulders. The way he won't take off his coat. The way his hand keeps flexing like he wants to reach for me and won't let himself.
Nothing about him matches what he's saying.
And Everett doesn't say things he doesn't mean. That's who he is. That has always been who he is.
So which am I supposed to believe—his mouth or the rest of him?
I nod once because I have to do something.
Then again.
Because if I don't move now I'm going to start crying in front of him, and something in me still needs to keep that much. Just that much.
"Okay," I whisper.
His brow tightens. "Aria—"
"No." I step around him. "I get it."
I don't. Not really.
Nothing about this makes sense.
But I understand enough. Enough to know that standing here asking for another explanation is only going to humiliate me further.
Enough to know that whatever happened in France and in this house and in his bed lives differently in me than it does in him.
Enough to know that the home I'm standing in is about to become the most beautiful severance package on earth.
I should put that on a pillow. Live, Laugh, Severance Package.
I look down at the ten million dollar wedding ring and then pull it off.
"Here, you’ll probably want this back."
"No," he says, too quickly for a man who’s fast tracking our divorce. "Keep it just in case you need to pawn it for something."
"Pawn it? A ten million dollar ring? Are you insane? What would I need that kind of money for?"
"I don’t know Aria but keep it just in case. Call it insurance, just keep it."
I can’t believe he won’t just take this boat anchor, like he’s taking this marriage. But what I do know is that I can’t keep standing here listening to him make zero sense of this.
I get three steps past him before his hand closes around my wrist.
His fingers warm and familiar, the same damn hand that traced my hip in the dark last week.
We both freeze.
I turn my head just enough to look at him over my shoulder.
"Don't," I say softly. "You don't get to touch me while you're doing this."
He release me instantly but I see the moment that he realizes I’m not longer his to touch freely like he used to.
I walk away before he can say anything else.
Across the foyer and up the stairs.
I don't run. I want to. But I don't.
By the time I make it into the bedroom, I'm shaking hard enough that I have to brace one hand on the dresser.
The room smells like him and that makes this so much harder.
Because I slept in his damn shirt last night and the sheets still carry him and this whole house is a monument to a man who just called me beneficial.
I hear the front door open and then shut behind him, the car revving up as it backs out of the driveway. And then I let myself cry.
Not the pretty kind. Not the single-tear-rolling-down-the-cheek movie version. The kind that folds you in half and doesn't leave room for pride or dignity or anything except the sound of your own breathing going wrong.
And even through the tears, even through the confusion and the humiliation and the ache of everything he would not say, one thought keeps circling back:
He didn't just leave me.
He made damn sure I’d be still stuck in a world where I can’t forget him.