Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
By the time I hear her heels on the cement surrounding the pool, my shoulders ache and my lungs are burning and the panic has been reduced to a manageable roar.
I stop at the far edge and look up.
She's standing there with her arms folded over her chest, still in the gold dress, hair looser now, makeup slightly smudged at the corners like she rubbed at her eyes and then thought better of it.
She looks furious. And beautiful. And done with me.
"You know," she says, "I left my own opening while patrons were still there just to come deal with you flying to France with annulment papers. Do you have any idea how insane that is?"
I drag myself out of the pool and stand there dripping onto the concrete.
"Yes."
Her brows shoot up.
"You agree?"
"I'm beginning to."
That doesn't help.
If anything, it makes her angrier.
"Good," she snaps. "Then we're making progress."
I rake a hand through my wet hair and try very hard not to notice that I'm half-naked and she's trying very hard not to notice that I'm half-naked and we have had exactly zero successful conversations in this much exposed skin.
"Just sign the papers, Aria," I say, because apparently I am determined to die on the stupidest possible hill. "Then I'll be out of your hair so you can live your life."
Her face changes.
The fury doesn't leave. It deepens.
"Live my life?" She repeats softly. "It would be a hell of a lot easier to live my life if my soon-to-be ex-husband didn't keep giving me things that make it impossible to move on."
I go still.
"The house. My father's care. The estate. All of it." She takes a step toward me. "You don't get to act like you're setting me free while tying knots behind your back."
"So that's why you're staying in Cannes?" I ask, the jealousy getting there before the wisdom. "To get away from me? Is that what this is about?"
She stops. Stares at me.
Then says, very clearly, "I'm not answering your question until you answer mine. Why are you here?"
The pool water drips down my back in cold lines.
I can hear the ocean beyond the walls.
Can hear my own breathing.
Can hear the exact second when I realize there is no version of this conversation that ends without me saying the thing I should have said months ago.
But first, because I am still me, I do the practical thing one last time.
"To get you to sign the papers," I say. "Otherwise everything I did was for nothing and the trust can go back on the deal."
Her eyes flash.
"The deal where you gave up your inheritance to save your family and my father?"
Every muscle in my body locks.
"Who told you that?"
"Sienna."
Figures she would get involved when it’s none of her business.
"She also told me nobody wanted you to do it." Aria's voice cracks on the last word, just barely. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me what all of this really was? At least then I could have understood why you threw us away."
"I didn't throw us away—"
"Yes," she says, and the hurt lands under the anger so clearly I almost can't look at her. "You did. And you did it without ever giving me the option."
I scrub a hand over my face.
"My siblings would have lost their inheritance. Your father would have lost Brookhaven. All because I trusted someone I shouldn't have."
"You think everything is your responsibility."
I drop my hand.
"What?"
"Every mess. Every consequence. Every time something goes wrong, you just take it." She's not shouting anymore. That's worse. "You carry all of it because that's what your mother trained you to do, and you never once thought to ask me to help you carry it."
I try not to let that land.
It lands anyway.
"It's my fault this happened," I say.
"No." She shakes her head. "It isn't your fault that Jeremy is a bad person. It isn't your fault that he used access and leverage to get ahead."
"He only had access because I gave it to him."
"That still doesn't make it your fault."
"It made it my problem."
"And that," she says, stepping closer, "is exactly the issue."
I look at her.
Really look at her.
And something in me just... stops fighting.
"I loved you from the first day I saw you."
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
Aria goes completely still.
I should shut up. I should find something calmer. Something more controlled. Something more worthy of the moment.
Instead I keep going, because I am apparently done being careful.
"You were at your desk in the Hawkeyes office arranging your pens by color." My voice sounds wrong. Rougher than I want. "Your hair was falling out of that bun you used to wear. You kept tucking it behind your ear."
Her lips part.
I step toward her.
"I had my own building. Six floors of reasons not to be there. And I spent six straight months finding excuses to work out of the Hawkeyes office because you were in it." One short, humorless laugh. "I told myself it was synergy. Visibility. Whatever corporate lie sounded less pathetic."
"Everett—"
"No." My voice roughens more. "Let me finish. Because if I stop now I'm going to lose my nerve and I have done enough damn losing."
She goes quiet.
"I loved you before France. Before the studio. Before I knew what to do with any of it." My throat tightens. "I married you because I thought it would save us both. And I sent you away because I thought it would save everyone else. Not one part of that changed what you are to me."
Silence.
She wipes at her face with the heel of her hand.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"Because I thought if you knew the whole truth, you'd stay out of obligation. And I couldn't do that to you."
Her chin lifts.
"You idiot."
"Probably."
"No," she says, voice shaking. "Definitely."
And then she kisses me with no warning or hesitation. Just her mouth on mine. And I stop thinking.
I kiss her back. My hands find her waist. Hers fist in my wet shoulders. And something about the way she holds on — tight, like she's afraid I'll disappear again — cracks the last of it open.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard.
She rests her forehead against mine.
"I needed to know," she whispers.
"I just told you."
"I know." Her mouth trembles. "But I think I knew before you said it. When you walked into the gallery looking like you hadn't slept in a week."
I pull back enough to look at her.
"And you love me?"
She gives a shaky little laugh.
"That's what the gallery showing was for."
I blink.
"Falling in Love in Cannes," she says. "What exactly did you think it was about?"
The answer is too humiliating to say out loud.
Her expression softens when she sees it on my face.
"That was about me?" I ask.
"Yes."
Something in my chest actually hurts.
"How did you know I'd show up?"
Her hand slides up to my jaw. "Because you always do," she says. "Even when you're terrible at explaining why."
Then she pulls back just enough to say, "There's something else."
The shift in her face makes my whole body tense.
"What."
She takes a breath, then another as if trying to pick the right moment to tell me.
"I'm pregnant."
Everything stops. I stare at her.
Pregnant.
My child.
Our child.
And the first thing out of my mouth — because I am exactly who she thinks I am — is, "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
Pain flashes across her face. Not because of the question. Because she expected it.
"Because I needed to know that you came here for me," she says quietly. "Not because the baby made it your responsibility."
I step into her space immediately. Both hands on her face.
"I do love you."
"I know that now."
"No. Listen to me." I hold her gaze. "I loved you before this. Before France. Before any of it. And I would have gotten on that damn plane whether you were pregnant or not."
Her eyes close for one second.
When they open, something in them has finally settled.
I press my forehead to hers.
"We're not going home," I say.
She blinks. "What?"
"I'm serious." I pull back enough to look at her. "We stay here. In France. You can paint. I'll figure out the rest. If we stay, maybe the trust doesn't get to touch this."
"Everett—"
"I'll find work. I'll build something. I don't care if it's elegant. I don't care if it's Kauffman enough."
She stares at me with an expression I can't read.
"You want to stay in France," she says slowly, "and start over."
"Yes."
"With no plan."
"I'll have one by morning."
"That is the most Everett Kauffman sentence anyone has ever spoken."
A laugh catches in my throat. Rough. Surprised. The first real one in weeks.
Then her hand slips to the ring still on her finger.
"You could take this," she says softly. "Use it. It would set us up."
I shake my head immediately.
"No."
"Everett—"
"The ring is yours. For you and the baby. If anything ever happens."
She opens her mouth to argue.
"I'll make it work on my own," I say. "I don't need the ring to take care of my family."
Her eyes fill all over again.
"You don't have to prove anything to me," she says. "You already have."
I kiss her. Slower this time. Taking my damn time about it, because I've earned that much.
My hands are at the zipper of her dress before I've fully decided to move them. Her fingers are dragging up my chest, and I am halfway to carrying her toward the bedroom when my phone starts vibrating in the pocket of my discarded trousers.
I ignore it.
It keeps ringing.
Aria laughs breathlessly against my mouth. "That feels ominous."
"Everything feels ominous."
It stops. Starts again immediately.
I let out a low curse, grab the phone, and answer without looking.
"This better be good."
Christian doesn't waste a second.
"The legacy clause."
I stop moving. Aria's hands are still on my chest. My own hand is still fisted in the fabric of her dress.
"Am I supposed to know what that means?"
"No," Christian says. "Because it wasn't in the original trust. It was an addendum Conrad made months before his death. Genevieve dropped it off in my office without a single word. Apparently Sienna got to her first."
I look at Aria.
She's watching my face now, trying to read whatever just changed in it.
"I'm still not following," I say.
Christian exhales sharply through the phone.
"The legacy clause protects future generations from losing their inheritance because of prior ones. If a child is conceived during the first year of a qualifying marriage, the parent retains their inheritance for the purpose of passing it down."
I stare at the pool tiles at my feet.
Then at Aria.
Then at nothing.
"Say that again."
"It means," Christian says, voice breaking on something that sounds dangerously close to relief, "that if Aria is pregnant, your inheritance has to be reinstated. The trust can't cut you out if doing so severs the next generation from Conrad's line."
Silence.
Aria's breath catches.
"You're protected now," Christian says. "The trust can't touch your share if it has to pass to your child."
For one second, none of it feels real.
Not the pool. Not the villa. Not the woman in front of me with her hand on my chest and my child inside her.
Aria's hand slips into mine.
Christian says something else. Maybe. I'm not hearing it.
Because the only thing I can process is that she chose me before any of this. And I got on a plane before I knew about any of it.
The rest is paperwork.
I bring the phone back to my ear.
"Make it official," I say.
Christian laughs once. Short, stunned, wrecked.
"Already working on it."
I hang up.
Aria looks at me, eyes wide.
"Well?" she asks.
I step into her space, put both hands on her face, and finally let myself smile.
"Ready to go home and fight a trust board?"
Her mouth curves.
"With you?" she says. "Anywhere."
I kiss her again.
Because I've spent the last month pretending I could survive without this, and I am done being that stupid.