16. Alex #3
I have been so consumed with Belle, Edward, Vanguard, and everything falling apart around us that I have barely allowed myself to think about her.
I haven’t spoken to her in months. She won’t take a call from either of us unless it starts with we’re leaving the company and coming home, and since neither of us has ever been able to give her that, what’s left is stilted holiday calls and birthdays, hers, mine, Danny’s.
Come home to the ranch.
Find something that doesn’t make you miserable.
Every call ends with some variation of the same thing.
Call me when you boys find your marbles.
Then she hangs up.
“Mom loves Belle,” Danny says.
I look at him.
“She never blamed her the way we did.”
No, she did not.
Even when I raged. Even when Danny was in the hospital.
Mom refused to say Belle’s name with hatred.
“She’d be overjoyed we found her.”
I can already picture my mother seeing Belle again: the stunned silence, the tears that will come right after, followed by enough food to feed half the neighborhood and questions neither of us is ready to answer.
“She would.”
Danny studies me. “So what now?” he asks.
I lean back. “I step down. I’ll talk to Edward myself.”
His face stills. “Alex.”
“I mean it.”
“You built Vanguard.”
“I can build something else.”
I look at him directly. His eyes narrow. “If you’re willing to meet the clause, you should take the seat. You’d run this better than I ever did.”
“And if I can’t?”
I know what he is asking.
“If you want it, and if it is what you really want, do what you have to do to take the position.”
He says nothing.
“You’d be better at it anyway.”
That gets a reaction.
“Oh, so I’m not a glorified accountant anymore?” A smile starts at one corner of his mouth. He smiles so little these days that seeing it brings back a version of my brother I thought disappeared in the fire.
I grin. “No. You’re still a glorified accountant.”
“Fuck you.”
“But you’re the best bean counter I know, and that happens to be exactly what this company needs at the top of it.”
His smile widens.
“High praise.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Then the humor fades.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“You worked your ass off for this company.”
“I know.”
“You can really just walk away?”
I don’t answer that with words. I let him look at whatever’s on my face for a second, and whatever he finds there is answer enough, because he doesn’t ask again.
Danny nods once.
“All right.” And somehow that seals it.
I feel lighter.
With Danny back in the building, work suddenly moves the way it used to. We spend the rest of the morning dividing everything between us.
He takes half the stack off my desk without asking. I hand him three files; he was always better suited to handle anyway. We split calls, sign approvals, and clear more before lunch than I managed alone in two days.
The difference is almost insulting.
By early afternoon, my desk is visible again.
More importantly, if we keep this division going, I can go home earlier than I planned today.
And tomorrow.
And every day after that.
Eventually, when the deadline runs out and I step down for good, I can stop structuring my life around a company that exists mostly because grief and rage needed somewhere to go.
Belle and I can decide what comes next.
A real life.
Not a penthouse truce with stolen nights. This strange halfway point where she lives with me but neither of us has admitted what happens when the arrangement ends.
I find myself thinking about Riverside Falls.
About whether she’d want to go back, even just to visit.
Mom might actually forgive us both for disappearing from her life if I arrive with Belle beside me.
Whether Mom might finally cook one of her real dinners if she saw Belle standing in that kitchen again.
“I want to take Belle to see Mom.” I tell Danny once we’ve mostly cleared the desk and sent Camille out for coffee.
Danny looks up from his laptop.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He leans back. “You should take Liam too.”
That catches my attention.
Danny keeps going.
“The more I see Belle and learn about the life she built as Emma, the less any of the old theory makes sense.”
I say nothing.
“She did a hell of a job with Liam.”
Something in his tone shifts.
Pride.
“He’s a great kid. And a ridiculous player. That scholarship is more of a win for the university than it is for him.”
“You’ve watched him?”
Danny looks up.
“Yeah.”
“At practice?”
“Game.”
I stare.
“You went to his game?”
“His first one.”
Every word of it lands like a hit I don’t get to flinch from. I did that. I kept her from watching her own brother pitch. I made her miss it, week after week, because I decided her guilt outweighed her right to be in the stands for the one only family she had left.
I kept her away because I was too angry, too suspicious, too determined to control every piece of her life.
Danny does not notice what is happening in my head because he has apparently transformed into an overly proud Little League father.
“No rookie gets that kind of spot that quickly. His mechanics are good, but it’s the way he reads the field. He’s thinking ahead before the pitch even?—”
“Danny.”
He stops.
“You went to his first game.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Sofia wanted to see Diego and Liam play. Flying was easier than letting her drive herself into another county.” Danny continues reading his file as though that statement is normal.
“So. Sofia.”
“Don’t start.”
I lean back. “I haven’t said anything.”
“She’s helping with liaison work in Pinehaven.”
“Right.”
“She is.”
“I believe you.” I hold up both hands.
I have absolutely no leg to stand on here. If it is time for another Hartley brother to experience the proud tradition of denial, who am I to stand in the way of that?
He can keep his delusions. “Do you know when Liam’s next game is?”
That makes him look up again.
Slowly.
Then his mouth curves. “I’ll send you the schedule. Planning to take her?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s earned it. She raised that boy on her own for ten years, and she deserves to sit in those stands and watch him play like everybody else’s mother does.”
“She does.”
Danny closes the file. “She should see what she built.”
My chest tightens.
“Liam was so happy when Sofia showed up. Imagine what he’ll do when he sees Belle.”
I already can. And I hate myself a little more for keeping that from both of them.
Something in his voice softens further. “He recognized me, you know. Gave me a hug the second he saw me. I don’t think she ever told him what we’ve been putting her through.”
“I’m surprised Belle told him who you were.”
“She obviously didn’t tell him how we’ve spent the last few months tormenting her.”
“I know.”
“And after seeing them together…”
He shakes his head.
“How could she hurt anyone?” His smile turns faint. “Saint Belle.”
I reach across the space between our chairs and ruffle his hair the way I did when we were kids.
Danny bats my hand away immediately. “Fuck off.”
I laugh.
He fixes his hair with an annoyed swipe.
For the first time in years, it feels like the ghosts have finally loosened their hold on us.
We cannot erase what happened, and I do not think either of us should try, but maybe we can stop living inside it and find a way forward.
Edward is the only thing still hanging over us, and for once, I am willing to let that problem wait a few hours.
When we finish, I call Frank.
He answers over enough background noise that I have to pull the phone slightly away.
“Where are they?”
A pause.
“Currently heading to dessert stop number nine.”
Danny looks up.
“Nine?”
I put the call on speaker.
Frank sounds tired.
Belle doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, takes her coffee black most mornings, no interest in anything overly rich, which doesn’t surprise Danny in the slightest. Sofia, apparently, is a different story entirely.
I open the drawer for the Aston keys and stop. The ring boxes are sitting beside them. I stare at them for a moment, then take the rings out, slip them into the inside pocket of my jacket, and toss Danny the keys.
It’s time I made some decisions.
“Take mine.”
He catches them. “What are you driving?”
“I’ll go back with Belle and Frank.”
Danny gives me a long look. Then his gaze drops to the keys.
“Your Aston.”
“Try not to scratch it.”
“You know I own cars.”
“Not that one.”
He rolls his eyes.
We leave the office together. Downstairs, I slide into the passenger seat beside my brother and let him drive.
A ridiculous amount of work is finished. For once, the company does not feel like a chain around my throat.
Danny is here.
My mother may soon get both her sons back, whether or not she knows it.
Liam has another game coming. And this time Belle will get to see it; I will make damn sure of it.
And somewhere across Dallas, my Belle is being dragged from dessert shop to dessert shop by a woman who apparently considers sugar a competitive sport.
I think about this morning, about Belle asleep beneath me and the feel of her hair against my mouth, and for the first time I let myself picture what might come after all of this.
I spent ten years building a life around everything I lost. Maybe I can finally start building one around what came back.
Danny turns onto the main road, and I look through the windshield with no urge to be anywhere else.
We are going to collect my woman.