Chapter 29
Isabelle
The vineyards blur past the window in shades of bronze and amber, autumn turning Napa Valley into something out of a postcard.
Margot's driving us back from SFO, about twenty minutes from Solstice now, after our whirlwind trip to New York that accomplished exactly nothing except confirming I don't want to cook Michelin food for the rest of my life.
I should be thinking about prep for tomorrow.
The pop-up is back on after the break, and there's inventory to check, mise en place to organize, the service to mentally walk through.
The team will have handled most of it, but I need to review everything, make sure we're ready, get my head back in the game.
Instead I'm sitting here trying to decide what the hell I'm supposed to believe about Alex.
My father called me right before our flight back to California, his voice tight with satisfaction as he told me that Alex had taken his offer.
Two and a half million dollars to walk away from me, and Alex apparently took it.
Shook my father's hand, agreed to the terms, signed preliminary paperwork, the whole thing.
"You see now what he really wanted," my father had said, his voice dripping with vindication. "I'm sorry you had to learn this way, but better now than later. He was always after the connections, the opportunity. This just made it explicit. At least now you can move forward without him."
I'd told him to go fuck himself and hung up, which felt good for approximately thirty seconds before the doubt started creeping in.
"The whole thing is just crazy," Margot says for probably the third time since we left SFO, and I can't blame her for the repetition because I've been cycling through the same five thoughts on loop too.
"I know." I press my forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching vineyards roll past. "I can't stop running it through my head. What my father said versus what Alex texted."
Margot was with me when I got the call, sitting beside me in the gate area at JFK, watching my face go from confused to shocked to absolutely furious in the span of about ninety seconds.
She gave me a discreet fist pump of encouragement when I told my father to go fuck himself, which I'm pretty sure scandalized the family sitting two rows over, but I didn't care.
My father actually thought I would see some light after learning about this arrangement, that I'd come crawling back to New York with my tail between my legs, grateful he'd protected me from the chef who was obviously only after my connections and his money.
As if him paying someone off to leave me wasn't a thousand times more insulting than anything he'd accused Alex of doing.
"And Alex didn't say anything else?" Margot asks again, glancing over at me before returning her eyes to the winding road. "After those texts, I mean?"
I shake my head, pulling my phone out to look at the messages again even though I've already read them approximately two hundred times.
Alex: I know you're going to hear something that sounds bad. Your father made me an offer and I took it. But it's not what you think. I need to explain in person. I love you. This changes nothing between us.
Alex: Trust me. Please.
Short, cryptic, completely maddening. I didn't have it in me to respond because what am I supposed to say? Hey, so my father says you took millions of dollars to dump me, cool cool cool, totally normal day?
I'm confused and full of doubt, and Alex was supposed to be my safe place, the one solid thing in all this mess. He was the person I could trust when everything else felt unstable, and now even that's been pulled out from under me.
According to my father, Alex should still be in Dark River now, banished from Napa and from me, already planning how to spend his payout. Sent home with his signed agreement and instructions to forget I exist.
I stare out the window, watching vineyards and the Napa River pass in autumn-muted colors, trying to figure out how everything got so supremely fucked up. Just over a week ago I was maybe the happiest I'd ever been, and a good part of that was because of Alex.
Margot glances over at me, her expression worried.
"Are you sure you want to go straight to Solstice?
You can stay at my place in town tonight, give yourself some time to process before you have to face anyone.
Order terrible takeout and drink wine and watch bad TV until you figure out what you want to do. "
I shake my head, forcing myself to sit up straighter. "No, but thank you. The pop-up starts back up tomorrow and I need to prep this afternoon. Check deliveries, get the walk-in organized, make sure the team is ready. Maybe it'll help me figure out what to do next. Cooking usually does."
"Are you going to call Alex?" She asks. "Hear what he has to say?"
I shift in my seat, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them.
"Yes, but I think I need to cool off first. I'm so pissed at my dad right now, and at Alex for taking the money.
Like what, he expects us to pretend we broke up while actually staying together?
And should I even go back to New York? Do I want to? Everything feels so confusing."
She reaches over and squeezes my knee briefly before returning her hand to the wheel. "This is a lot. Like, an objectively insane amount of family drama and financial manipulation and romantic chaos all at once. You're allowed to not have answers yet."
We crest over the last hill before Solstice and the estate appears below us in all its glory. The vineyards stretch out in perfect rows, the leaves turning rust and deep burgundy in the afternoon light, and the stone building sits at the center of it all like something from a European postcard.
Margot pulls into the parking area and my heart stops.
Alex is there.
Leaning against his rental car parked near the main entrance, his arms crossed over his chest, his whole body radiating tension as he watches the road. Waiting. For me, apparently.
"What the hell?" I say, my voice coming out strangled. "I thought he was supposed to be in Dark River."
Margot leans forward, squinting through the windshield. "Well, he's definitely here. Maybe he came back to explain?"
"Explain what?" My voice comes out bitter, sharp. "That two and a half million dollars was too good to pass up? That he's sorry but a restaurant mattered more? That it wasn't personal, just business?"
She pulls into a parking spot a few spaces away from his car and cuts the engine. Alex straightens when he sees us, his whole body going alert, and even from this distance I can see the intensity in his expression, the way he's focused entirely on me.
He looks unfairly good for someone who might have just destroyed my life.
Grey henley, dark jeans, his hair slightly disheveled like he's been running his hands through it, tall and broad and standing there in the late afternoon light like he's in a cologne ad.
A heartbreaker, as they say. I just don't know yet if he's about to break my heart or if he already did and I'm only now catching up to the damage.
And even with all the confusion, all the anger and hurt and doubt swirling through me, part of me wants to run straight into his arms. Wants him to tell me this is all a misunderstanding, that my father is lying, that the money doesn't mean what I think it means.
I want to feel his arms around me, solid and safe, the way they were every night when we fell asleep tangled together.
But wanting something doesn't make it real. And I've spent too many years wanting my father's approval to not know that lesson by heart.
Margot and I sit there in the car, staring through the windshield like the glass is the only thing protecting us from having to deal with reality.
"What do I do?" I ask quietly, not really expecting an answer, just needing to say it out loud.
"What does your gut tell you?" Margot turns in her seat to face me fully, her expression serious.
"My gut is confused and possibly nonfunctional at this point." I slump back against the seat, exhausted from the red-eye and the emotional whiplash. "Also slightly nauseous from airport coffee and existential dread, so not exactly a reliable narrator right now."
"Okay, then what does your heart tell you?" she asks gently.
I can feel tears threatening at the corners of my eyes. "My heart is an idiot who still wants to believe he has a good explanation for all of this. My heart wants him to be the person I thought he was."
"Hearts usually are idiots." She reaches over and squeezes my hand.
"But sometimes they're right anyway. Look, you're going to torture yourself trying to guess what happened based on incomplete information.
And between your father and Alex, one of them has a long history of manipulative, controlling behavior.
The other one doesn't. I'm not saying you should trust him blindly, but I think it's worth hearing him out before you decide anything. "
She's right. I know she's right. But knowing something intellectually and actually doing it are very different things.
I take a deep breath, then another one, then unbuckle my seatbelt before I can talk myself out of it.
We both get out of the car and Alex straightens immediately, his whole body going alert like a switch flipped. But he doesn't move from where he's standing. He just watches me, his hands dropping to his sides, patient and still. Waiting for me to come to him.
Margot walks around the car and pulls me into a quick, fierce hug.
"I'll be inside if you need me," she murmurs against my hair, her arms tight around my shoulders. "Text if you want me to come out here."
I hold onto her for an extra second, drawing strength from her unwavering support. "Thank you."