Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
STEFAN
I woke to an empty bed. The sheets were cold. Amelie had been gone for hours. I lay there doing the worst arithmetic of my life. How many hours it took a bed to go this cold, and whether she’d stayed awake beside me, listening for my breathing to change so she could leave.
I decided, lying alone on my staged side of the house, that there was only one solution to my dilemma—effort.
I’d been absent. I’d been gone for weeks.
Of course, things were strange. You couldn’t vanish for weeks and walk back into the center of a family as if you’d only stepped out for milk.
They’d moved on. The math of it was so plain and so brutal.
You leave a space empty long enough, and something grows into it.
Something had grown into mine. Every hour, my family was moving farther away from me, and I could no longer afford to wallow in my pain.
Instead, I’d do what my mother used to do when we needed reminding that we were a family who loved each other.
I’d cook.
It used to work when we were broke and running on love. I had no idea if it worked in reverse. My mother used to say you could tell a loved house by the smell of its kitchen.
I sidled out of my bed and into the kitchen, cracking eggs while Dan was juicing oranges beside me.
A tower of pancakes for Bella, eggs two ways because the twins could never agree on scrambled or sunny-side up, fresh juice, the cinnamon rolls for Amelie that took two rises and I’d timed so they’d come out of the oven warm.
“Are we celebrating anything special?” Dan asked, sliding the second tray into the oven. He was confused by my sudden culinary interest after being away for so long.
“It’s our first family meal since I got back.” I was arranging strawberries by size like it mattered. Like anyone would notice. “Everything has to be perfect.”
“It will be,” he said in the tone of a man who didn’t have much at stake.
I set the long table in the bright room. Food, family, and noise. The kind of morning you remembered. The kind Amelie loved.
I was surprised when the doorbell rang, and I found Matt, Marcus, Will, Lucy, and Ruby standing at the door.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice. Why would they come over uninvited and on such an important day, no less?
Ruby blinked. “Kai invited us to brunch. You didn’t know?”
Kai invited them. Of course, he had. It had become abundantly clear that my new life and friends were causing a rift between my wife and me. He knew it and was exploiting it. Anger wove through me, but I tamped it down. I refused to let him spoil today.
They moved past me and made themselves comfortable in the dining room before I could protest. I stood there holding my own front door open like a doorman.
“Have you seen the bench ads?” Lucy was already pouring herself coffee. “Placement’s even better than the mock-ups. The whole town’s going to know your face by next month.”
“Great,” I said, and couldn’t locate a single feeling to go with it. “So, Kai invited you?”
Matt was holding up the cinnamon rolls and giving them a sniff. “Yup. Since you’re too rude to invite your friends.”
I knew he was teasing, but my insides were frozen. Things were still raw with Amelie. She would react poorly to Ruby after what happened in Beirut. I didn’t want to rub salt in a fresh wound and worsen things between us.
“Actually, now isn’t the best time,” I started carefully. “This is my first meal with my wife and siblings in weeks. I want to keep it to just family.”
I thought they’d apologize for interrupting time with my family and make themselves scarce. Instead, Matt and Will merely raised their eyebrows. Marcus pretended not to hear me and left to use the restroom. Lucy went back to her coffee, entirely unbothered.
The most shameless response of all came from Ruby. “Take it up with Kai,” she said easily. “He invited us. He should be the one to tell us if he no longer wants us here.”
I frowned. What kind of friends blatantly disregarded your request to spend time with your family?
None of them had the decency to care that this was my home, too, and I didn’t want them here.
For the first time, I questioned their sincerity.
It was dawning on me that other than partying and doing drugs, my friendships with these people were entirely superficial.
“Today’s just not a good day,” I tried again. “I’ll invite you guys to the next brunch.”
“But Kai texted us, asking us to come over,” Ruby countered. “He just wants to get to know your friends. It’d be rude to leave.”
Great. I couldn’t even kick them out because they were Kai’s guests, not mine. He invited them, and I knew he had done it on purpose. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he often used my friends and work to distract me from my family. Did he think I was stupid and wouldn’t catch on?
Then again, catching on changed nothing. Technically, Kai never took a single thing from me. He just kept handing me things—the magazine, the private jet, celebrity friends, my picture on the bus bench—until my hands were too full to hold anything that mattered.
I considered confronting him to ask why he invited them. Then I told myself to focus on making the best of it with my family instead. Unfortunately, they were late.
The kids finally arrived, but only after I sent the nanny three times to make sure they didn’t stay on Kai’s side of the house.
Kai and Amelie arrived last, holding hands. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees when my gaze landed on their joined hands. It was a display of his possession. A declaration that she was to stay by his side. He had only come to brunch to establish that she belonged to him.
Resentment for Kai bloomed in my chest, but I knew I had to keep my cool.
Antagonizing him would only work against me when the entire household was Team Kai.
I had taken my family’s love for granted, and now I was walking on eggshells to win it back.
Pissing off their favorite person wouldn’t earn me points.
Their love for him was blatantly evident.
Jamie’s whole face opened when Kai approached the table.
August straightened like a soldier whose general had entered.
And Bella shrieked—an actual, joyful shriek, the kind I used to get—and launched herself at him and was caught and swung up into the air like she weighed nothing.
I recognized the feeling that went through me then, and I didn’t like what it said about me. I was jealous of a man for catching my sister. Not for his money, his name, or his stature, just for the catching. For being the one she ran at without braking.
Bella’s arms locked around his neck. “Why weren’t you home when I got back from school?”
I hated that she expected him to be home when she no longer demanded that of me.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Once upon a time, I felt weighed down by my family’s expectations.
I’d dreamt of a life where nobody was waiting on me for anything.
I had gotten exactly what I’d wished for, and it was killing me.
“I had to go to LA for work,” Kai told her lightly.
“Did you bring me back a gift?”
“Of course.”
I watched Bella beam at him and felt something in my chest tear.
Unable to watch them, I turned to face Amelie. I desperately wanted to ask why she left last night, though I feared I already knew the answer. It was because he had come home and she preferred his company over mine.
I clenched my fists at my sides even as I filed my inquiries away. Now wasn’t the time to tackle the issue. Today was about showing Amelie that I could be a great husband again. Then she’d want to stay the night with me.
I smiled through the pain. “Good morning, Am.”
“Morning,” she mumbled, averting her gaze. For a moment, I wondered whether Kai had told her not to look at me. Or perhaps she didn’t want to piss him off by showing me favoritism.
What kind of wizardry had Kai done to my family? They were looking right through me and dancing to his tunes.
Despite my apprehensions, Amelie showed no signs of disdain upon seeing Ruby.
I didn’t even have the chance to explain that I didn’t invite her.
Amelie merely moved on without thinking and greeted the rest of my friends.
She didn’t act angry, sad, or passive-aggressive.
In fact, she didn’t seem to care at all, whereas before she would’ve been jealous of Ruby.
I’d have gotten on my knees for a flash of the old jealousy.
That was a form of wanting. What she gave Ruby was the mild, pleasant nothingness, the same attitude she’d adopted toward me.
Amelie had become utterly indifferent about our relationship ever since Beirut.
Something broke in her after seeing me with Ruby, and I had no idea how to put it back together.
And that scared me more than words could describe. If she felt nothing for me, what did that mean for our marriage?
I shoved the thought away. No. We could get through this. I had once told Amelie that not even God could separate us. I’d been resentful of Kai, pegging him as the villain keeping me from my family. But I realized now that blaming him didn’t do me any good.
I needed to fight for my family.
“Bella,” I said, patting the chair beside mine, lightly, like it was nothing, like my heart wasn’t doing something humiliating in my throat. “Come sit here. I want to hear about your friends in school.”
Bella looked at the chair. She looked at me. She was seven. She had no cruelty in her at all, which was somehow worse, because what she did next she did without a flicker of meanness.
“I want to sit next to Kai,” she said, and went and climbed into the chair beside him.