18. Alex
Alex
Danny leaves with Sofia in the Aston, and Frank brings Belle and me back to the penthouse.
She disappears toward the shower almost as soon as we step inside, calling over her shoulder that she smells like bakeries and coffee.
I let her go.
That takes more restraint than it should.
The sound of water starts down the hall while I am still taking off my jacket, and for a moment I stand there listening to it, already imagining her beneath it, hair darkened with water, the warm line of her spine?—
I turn toward the study.
There are things I need to do before Belle comes anywhere near me.
One of them is Edward.
I close the door and call Seattle before I can decide there is a better day for this conversation.
There will never be a better day.
Edward answers almost immediately.
“Alexander.”
“I’m stepping down.”
I do not soften it.
For once, his silence does not feel manufactured.
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
“You built that company from a construction business that could barely cover payroll.”
“I remember.”
“You spent ten years turning it into something that will outlive you, and now you intend to hand control to a board because a succession clause bothers you?”
“I’m done with Hartley Holdings.”
His breathing changes. I picture him sitting in that enormous Seattle house, one hand closing over the head of the cane.
“Do you hear yourself?” He is unable to mask his disbelief.
“I know what I’m giving up.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Daniel?”
“He can take whatever role he wants. He is more than capable of running the company.”
“Daniel likes numbers.”
“Danny understands the company better than anyone in it.”
A small pause. “You included.”
“Yes.” Saying it costs me nothing. That would have been impossible a few years ago. Maybe even a few months ago. Now it is simply true.
Edward shifts tactics.
“Does this have anything to do with that girl?”
My fingers stop against the desk.
“The Mitchell girl.”
Something ugly enters his voice.
“After all this time.”
Belle is alive. Barely a hallway away. Edward has no idea. He is grasping at straws.
He still thinks of her as a twenty-year-old who disappeared into nowhere, perhaps alive somewhere, perhaps dead. He does not get to know differently until Belle and I have had the conversation we keep postponing.
Whatever future we have, if we have one at all, belongs to us before it belongs to my family.
“She ran away,” Edward says. “Or she died. God knows where she ended up. You spent a decade chasing a woman who made her choice perfectly clear.”
My jaw tightens.
“She is the reason my son is in the ground before I am, Alexander.”
“Careful.”
“And after everything she cost this family, you are still enough of a fool to dismantle your own life for her memory.”
I grip the edge of the desk. The old anger should rise easily. Some of it does. But it no longer has the certainty it used to. Polanski keeps finding pieces that do not fit. And every time I pull at what I believed for ten years, another part of it comes loose.
“You don’t know what happened.”
“I know my son died.”
“So do I.”
“And she lived.”
I close my eyes.
“She will destroy you,” Edward says.
His anger and outrage washes over me. And I am ashamed to say it still calls to a small part of me. I have ten years of learning to undo. It is not going to happen in one night.
“She already did once. You are going to spend the rest of your life letting a ghost do it again?”
“She has nothing to do with this conversation.”
Edward laughs once. “Your silence told me plenty before you said a word.”
I should end the call. Instead, I say, “Maybe we were wrong about her.”
The line goes very quiet. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“You found something about Belle Mitchell?”
I immediately regret saying anything at all.
Edward hears too much.
“Alexander.”
“I called to tell you I’m stepping down.”
“And I am asking whether the woman who disappeared ten years ago has anything to do with that decision.”
“No, and I’m telling you not to interfere.”
“You inherited your father’s worst weakness.”
My hand closes. “Stop.”
“He spent his life confusing sacrifice with love. Look where it put him.”
“I said stop.”
Edward continues anyway. “You can dress obsession in whatever noble word you like. It will still take everything from you if you let it.”
I end the call.
The silence afterward feels clean. For several seconds, I stand there with the phone still against my palm. Then the water stops down the hall. Every argument I had ready for Edward becomes irrelevant.
Belle comes out of the bedroom with damp hair, bare legs, and one of my shirts hanging loose around her.
I am sitting at the edge of the mattress, trying hard not to stare at her.
Her eyes move over my face. She walks straight to me. Her fingers brush my shoulder.
I catch her hand before she takes it further.
“I need to talk to you.”
The humor leaves her face.
“About what?”
I look at her standing between my knees. There are a dozen ways to begin. I could tell her about Edward. The board and its clauses.
Frank’s latest findings about her uncle.
Danny.
The fact that somewhere between wanting revenge and waking with her wrapped around me, the plans for the rest of my life changed without asking permission.
Instead, I say, “The future.” Belle goes very still. “And what comes next.”
Her eyes flick away. Only briefly, but it bothers me.
“We should,” she says.
“Yes.”
She twists one of the buttons on my shirt. “Tomorrow?”
“Why tomorrow?”
“I’m tired.”
“You spent the day eating dessert.”
“I watched Sofia eat dessert. There’s a difference.”
“Belle.”
Her gaze returns to mine. “Tomorrow morning,” she bargains. Something in her voice asks me not to push.
“We’ll talk properly. No interruptions. No rushing.”
I study her.
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
She says it quickly. Then leans down and kisses me.
I should stop her.
I know that even while my hand slides around the back of her neck. Her mouth opens above mine, and the conversation we were supposed to have disappears with alarming ease.
This has become our brand of cowardice. When words become dangerous, we reach for each other. Belle climbs into my lap. Her legs settle around my hips. I pull back enough to breathe.
“You said you were tired.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Convenient.”
She kisses the corner of my mouth. “You object?”
“No.”
Not even slightly.
She has been like this lately. Hungry in a way that feels almost restless. There is nothing coy about the way she wants me. She reaches first. Pulls me closer when I slow down. Watches me as though she is afraid to miss any part of it.
Tonight is worse.
Or better.
I cannot decide.
Her hands move over me without settling, my shoulders, my hair, my face. She kisses me as though there is something urgent behind it.
I catch both sides of her face.
“Belle.”
Her eyes open.
Golden hazel, darker now.
“What?”
“What is going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
She looks at my mouth. “I want you.”
“You have me.” The words leave before I consider what they mean.
Something shifts behind her eyes. Then she kisses me again. Hard enough to end the question.
I let her.
Tonight, apparently, we are both willing to hide.
We fall back onto the bed, and whatever space remained between us disappears.
Later, when the first desperation has burned itself down, Belle lies with her cheek against my chest while my hand travels slowly over her back. Her breathing begins to settle.
Then she turns her face toward me and kisses the center of my chest.
I look down.
Again.
We reach for each other as though neither of us knows how to stop.
By the time exhaustion finally wins, Belle is curled into me so tightly I can barely move without disturbing her.
I do not want to.
She sleeps almost immediately.
I stay awake.
At first, I only watch her.
Her hair spreads across the pillow, warm copper showing beneath the brown dye where the light catches it. Her mouth is swollen from kissing me. One hand rests over my ribs, fingers slightly curled as though even asleep she needs some point of contact.
The sight should calm me.
Instead, memory opens beneath it. Belle in Riverside Falls during the days before she vanished. I had forgotten how much she sought me out. Or maybe I remembered it differently.
She came to the construction site carrying coffee. She found reasons to come by the ranch.
Stayed later.
Touched me constantly.
Pulled me into empty rooms, the back of my truck, any private corner we could find.
At twenty-two, stupidly in love and certain that our future was already decided, I thought it meant she finally wanted me as badly as I wanted her.
I remember being absurdly pleased with myself.
Only afterward did I understand what those days might have been.
Goodbye.
My hand stops against her spine.
No.
Belle sighs in her sleep.
My chest tightens.
The last few days replay themselves.
The way she waits for me.
The way she throws herself at me the second I come home.
How reluctant she seems to let me leave the bed.
Tonight.
Tomorrow.
Always tomorrow when the conversation gets too close.
Why does this feel like before?
Panic comes quietly at first.
A pressure behind my ribs.
Then harder.
I tell myself losing her once trained me to see abandonment where none exists. I tell myself she is here.
Asleep.
Holding me.
I tell myself we have been rebuilding something, whether either of us is brave enough to name it or not. My body believes none of it. An empty studio flashes through my mind.
I think of the painting she never finished, the house after she was gone, the ten years I spent looking for her. Then I look down at Belle beside me, and one thought cuts through everything else.
What if I wake up tomorrow and she’s gone again?
I slide carefully from beneath her. She makes a small sound and reaches blindly toward the warmth I leave behind. For a second, that almost puts me back in bed.
Instead, I cross the hall.
Bee watches me enter Belle’s room. She lifts her head from the chair with the expression of a disappointed supervisor.
“Not now.” Her eyes narrow.