12. Alex
Alex
Home has become the one place I cannot stand to be. I leave before Belle wakes and return only after her bedroom door has closed for the night, packing every hour in between with enough work to keep me from thinking about why I’m avoiding her.
Meetings stacked from seven in the morning until nine at night, site reviews I could delegate, calls to Singapore that could have been handled in an email.
I take everything Christopher puts in front of me and ask for more until my calendar has no gaps wide enough for me to think about the woman living down the hall.
Christopher stopped asking whether I wanted breathing room after the second day. Now he just finds somewhere to put the next meeting.
Camille, my assistant, has filled the week with every meeting I kept pushing aside because there was never enough time.
Time is all I have now.
She stopped asking if I wanted them rescheduled and simply started filling the gaps. Now the calendar runs wall to wall, without a scrap of white space left anywhere for me to stop and think.
The arrangement would almost work if my mind stayed in the room with the rest of me.
It does not.
Danny’s chair sits empty at the far end of the conference table. He should have returned from New York eight days ago. Instead, every approval he would normally catch before it reaches me has joined the pile already waiting on my desk.
Christopher places the Pinehaven construction package in front of me.
“Mr. Hartley, legal flagged the latest revision before it went back to the vendor.”
I look down at the signature page and find my name already sitting at the bottom in black ink.
For a second, nothing seems wrong. Then my eyes catch on the revision code in the corner, and I stop.
This is the old version. I flip back through the pages to make sure I have not misread it, then reach for the next document in the stack.
My signature is on that one too. I check the code again, slower this time, and feel my jaw tighten.
“Only to the vendor. Spencer caught it before their counsel reviewed it. They’ve agreed to disregard that version, but they want the withdrawal confirmed in writing.”
“Do it.”
He slides a prepared letter in front of me and taps the signature line. “This is all they’re waiting on.”
I read the letter once, put the pen to paper, and sign. By the time I reach the end of my name, I am pressing hard enough for the nib to score the sheet beneath it. I feel the drag through the paper and ease my grip, but not before Christopher notices. His eyes flick to my hand and away.
No one comments.
Later, one lender asks whether I am comfortable with the revised exposure cap. The figure is right there in front of me, underlined in my own handwriting, but my attention has slipped somewhere else.
“Seven.”
The word is out before I realize what I have said. My fingers stop against the edge of the brief.
Across the table, Christopher reaches for the document between us without making a show of it. “Mr. Hartley, the approved threshold is six, subject to quarterly review.”
His tone stays even, pitched low enough that it sounds like a clarification rather than a correction. He is giving me room to fix it without letting everyone on the call know I have just misstated a number I approved myself.
I look down at the figure I had underlined myself.
Six.
There is no excuse for getting it wrong.
“Correct. Keep it at six.”
Christopher gives a small nod and moves on. Someone starts talking about the next provision, another voice joins in from the speaker, and pages turn around the table. I sit there staring at the number six while the rest of the conversation carries on without me.
Cold coffee sits beside my hand. An analyst on the other side of the glass looks toward my office before quickly returning to his screen.
Danny would have caught the contract before his signature ever touched the page, and he would have remembered the threshold without Christopher having to step in and correct him.
There have always been two of us carrying this company. Even when Edward was still teaching us how costly a mistake could be, Danny saw the detail I missed, and I saw the one he did.
Now he is in New York.
And I am sitting in Dallas signing the wrong documents because some part of my mind is two miles away wondering whether Belle will ever speak to me again.
I close the folder.
“Next.”
I do not turn on a light. I drop my keys on the counter, loosen my tie, and open the refrigerator more out of habit than hunger.
Belle has left food inside, containers stacked neatly on the shelves with small notes stuck to the lids.
I scan them without much interest until I see the plate on the bottom shelf.
Cinnamon rolls.
I pull them out and stand there with the refrigerator light spilling across the kitchen.
The icing has sunk into the spirals in exactly the right places.
Too much cinnamon in the center, edges baked darker than the middle.
My mother used to make them this way every Sunday.
She has not made them once since my father died.
No one asked her to stop. She simply did, and none of us ever asked her to start again.
I had been hungry when I walked in.
I am not anymore.
The little note Belle stuck to the plate comes away beneath my thumb as I shove the rolls back into the refrigerator and close the door harder than I mean to. The sound cracks through the empty kitchen, then everything silent.
I stay there anyway.
Ten minutes, maybe more, standing in my own kitchen in the dark with a scrap of paper crushed in my fist and absolutely no reason not to go to bed.
Then Belle’s door opens.
I go still.
She comes down the hallway in the dark and walks straight into the kitchen without noticing me near the far counter. She takes a glass from the cabinet, fills it at the sink, and drinks. I should say something. Her name would be enough.
I do not.
For days we have managed to live in the same penthouse without having an actual conversation.
I leave before she wakes. She disappears into her room before I come home.
Anything that needs saying gets reduced to a Post-it on the coffee machine, a note beside a food container, a few words left where the other person will find them without either of us having to stand in the same room.
Belle finishes her water and sets the glass in the sink. Before she turns back toward the hallway, her eyes drift toward my office.
The door is open. Empty.
Then she looks at my bedroom.
My breath stops.
She takes one step toward it.
Just one.
Then she hesitates.
I grip the edge of the counter and watch her stand there, staring at my closed door as though she is arguing with herself.
For one stupid second, I am waiting for her to keep walking.
Waiting for her hand to reach the handle.
Waiting for her to give me one excuse to forget every sensible decision I have made since New York.
She turns around.
A few seconds later, her bedroom door closes.
The lock clicks.
I let out the breath I have been holding and look down at the note crushed in my hand.
She has been avoiding me as hard as I have been avoiding her.
But tonight she almost came looking for me.
I smooth the paper with my thumb, fold it once, and put it in my pocket.
Danny calls the next evening from New York. By the time we finish going through the weekly updates, he has spent fifteen minutes telling me about work Spencer could have wrapped up three days ago.
“Zoning counsel wants another traffic study,” he says. “Spencer has it covered. I’m staying until they sign off on the revised package.”
“Must be some paperwork.”
A beat passes. Danny knows exactly what I mean, and he sidesteps it. “There are still a few things I need to deal with.”
“With Spencer.”
“Yes.”
“In New York.”
“That is generally where Spencer works.”
I lean back in my chair. “How convenient.”
“Fuck off.”
The corner of my mouth almost moves. Almost. “When are you coming back?”
“When I’m done.”
We both know the project stopped requiring his presence days ago. We both also know Sofia is still in New York.
Danny clears his throat. “Enough about me. How are things there?”
“Fine.”
“Alex.”
“I’m working.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
I glance toward the window. Dallas has gone dark outside, and my reflection looks as tired as I feel, tie loose, shirt wrinkled, running on too little sleep for too many days.
“I’m handling it.”
Danny exhales through his nose. “You sound miserable.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m serious.”
Silence hangs on the line for a moment before he says, “When we started this, I thought it would be simple. The hardest part was supposed to be finding her.”
My hand stills over the papers on my desk.
“The plan was simple. Find her, get the truth, and if she’d done what we believed she had, make sure she answered for it. Prison, consequences, whatever came after, we were supposed to get our answers, close the door on those ten years, and move on.” His voice lowers. “That was it.”
“And?”
“None of this looks anything like the plan anymore.” Another pause.
“We went into this expecting to hurt her, Alex. I’m not pretending otherwise.
But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like revenge and started looking like three people finding new ways to bleed over the same ten-year-old wound. ”
I say nothing.
His voice drops. “I don’t like what this is doing to you, Alex.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
“I know what you wanted from this. I wanted it too. But I’m watching you run yourself into the ground because you can’t stand being in the same room with her, and somehow we’re further from done than we were when we started.” He pauses. “That wasn’t supposed to be the outcome.”
My jaw tightens.
Danny continues before I can cut him off. “I’m not telling you what to do with Belle. God knows I’m in no position to give anyone advice right now.”
“You worried about me now?”