18. Alex #2
I find Belle’s bag. The same canvas duffel she arrived with, containing remarkably little for a woman whose whole life supposedly existed in Pinehaven.
I know where the cash is because I found it once already.
My fingers find the inner pocket, and the cash is still there. A thousand dollars, nothing to me, but enough to matter to her. The bills are old, folded so many times that the edges have gone soft.
Emergency money.
Running money.
There are plenty of innocent reasons to keep cash tucked away.
Belle has spent ten years living under another name, raising Liam alone and clearly expecting disaster to find her, eventually. If anyone deserves an emergency fund, it is her.
I take it anyway.
The choice makes me feel sick before I finish making it. I stand with the money in my hand, fully aware of what this is.
Control.
I know exactly what I am doing before the money even leaves my hand, and I hate myself for it. This is not protection. It is fear, dressed up well enough that I can pretend otherwise. Edward would approve. If someone has a way out, take it away before they use it.
I shove the cash into my jacket pocket.
If Belle wants to leave me, she can look me in the face and say it. She does not get to vanish while I am asleep and leave me searching for her all over again.
Tomorrow, we talk. No threats. No games. I tell her what I know, and she tells me whatever she can. After that, if she still wants to go, I will deal with it.
But I am not waking up to an empty bed again.
When I climb back in, Belle shifts toward me in her sleep and settles against my chest. I wrap an arm around her and stare into the dark long after her breathing evens out.
Morning makes the night feel more irrational.
Belle sleeps curled toward my side of the bed while daylight spreads gradually across the room, and what felt like instinct in the dark starts looking more like old fear wearing familiar clothes.
I should put the cash back.
I will.
After we talk.
The conversation needs a better opening than I went through your bag while you were sleeping.
Breakfast.
Breakfast seems safe. Normal. Something two adults can manage without dragging ten years of history into it.
Breakfast in bed seems even better.
That turns out to be ambitious.
The eggs weld themselves to the pan while I am buttering the toast. I turn to deal with them, forget the toast entirely, and smell it burning just as I knock a carton of blueberries off the counter. They scatter across the floor in every direction.
Bee appears from nowhere as though she has been waiting her whole life for fruit to rain from the sky.
“Don’t.”
She looks at me, then deliberately bats a blueberry under the cabinet.
The smoke alarm starts shrieking.
“Fuck.”
I am reaching for the ruined toast when Belle comes running into the kitchen wrapped in one of my sheets, hair everywhere, eyes wide with alarm.
She stops.
Her gaze moves from me to the smoking pan, the blackened toast, the blueberries rolling beneath the furniture, and finally Bee crouched under a stool like a tiny criminal.
Belle presses her lips together.
It lasts less than a second.
Then she starts laughing, bent over against the counter, one hand pressed to her stomach.
I glare at her.
“What did you do?”
“I made breakfast.”
“Then why does it feel like a war-zone?”
“I had it under control before you arrived.”
The alarm continues shrieking overhead.
Belle looks up at it.
“Clearly.”
I wave the dish towel beneath the detector.
“Can you help?”
“That depends. Are you going to admit you should have called me before disaster struck?”
“No.”
“Then suffer.”
She is still laughing when she crouches to retrieve blueberries.
Bee tries to steal one from her hand.
“Absolutely not.”
Belle looks at the cat. “You already live better than I do. You don’t need blueberries.”
I finally silence the alarm. When I turn, Belle is kneeling on the kitchen floor with the sheet gathered around her, chasing fruit alongside an annoyed cat.
The sound of her laughing does something to me I am not prepared for. This is what I was trying to find words for last night. Not sex. Not whatever obsession has kept me chasing her for ten years. This. Belle barefoot in my kitchen, wrapped in a sheet while I destroy breakfast.
I want mornings like this. I want stupid arguments over groceries, Liam’s games, my mother piling food onto Belle’s plate until she complains, Bee destroying furniture while I pretend it bothers me. I want all the ordinary things we never got the chance to have.
I crouch beside her to retrieve one of the blueberries.
“You were supposed to stay in bed.”
“You nearly burned down the penthouse.”
“The situation was under control.”
She looks toward the smoking pan. “Thomas Hartley would be ashamed of your breakfast skills.”
The mention of Dad does not hurt the way it usually does.
I reach past her for another blueberry and find her face only inches from mine. Belle smiles, still flushed from laughing, and the words almost come out. Everything I meant to tell her last night. Everything I want from whatever comes next.
Then she stands.
“Move.”
“What?”
“Let me save the eggs.”
“They don’t need saving.”
She looks into the pan. “You’re right. They need last rites.”
Twenty minutes later, breakfast is edible.
Barely.
Belle teaches me how to make another batch without turning them into building material. I manage toast when supervised. Pancakes somehow become involved, although neither of us planned them, and I end up with flour on one sleeve and butter across my wrist.
Belle has a streak of flour on her cheek. I reach over and wipe it with my thumb.
She looks at me.
The conversation sits there again. Waiting.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
Coward. I glance at my shirt. “I’m going to clean up.”
“Probably wise.”
“When I get back, we talk.”
Something crosses her face. Then she nods. “Okay.”
I kiss her forehead.
Her phone rings while I am washing flour from my hands. I hear it through the partially open bathroom door. Belle answers somewhere in the kitchen.
At first, I make no effort to listen. Then I hear her voice.
“I can’t keep this up.”
My hands stop beneath the water. Silence from the other end. Belle speaks again, tighter now.
“I can’t pretend anymore.”
My stomach turns. I shut off the tap.
“You said days.”
A pause.
“And it’s been weeks.”
Last night comes back all at once: Riverside Falls, the cash in her pocket, the way Belle kept reaching for me as if she were trying to memorize me, then asking to put off the conversation until morning.
Then:
“I want out.”
The words go through me cleanly. I stand completely still. I do not know who she is speaking to. I do not know what she has been pretending. I do not know what arrangement was supposed to last days and has somehow become weeks.
My mind supplies the answers, anyway. Because this is what it knows.
Belle runs.
Belle keeps things hidden until the moment she is gone.
Belle tells me she loves me with her body while planning an exit behind my back.
The rational part of me tries to speak. Maybe this is about something else. Maybe there is an explanation.
Maybe— Maybe— Maybe?—
I have lived on maybe for ten years. By the time I return to the kitchen, Belle has ended the call. She sits at the island with both hands around a mug.
She is not drinking.
“Who was that?”
She looks up.
“Just a friend.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know her.”
I wait.
Belle looks down at the coffee.
“It’s nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
Her shoulders tighten.
“Alex.”
“What’s her name?”
That gets her eyes back on me.
“Why?”
“Because I asked.”
I know I’m pushing this in the wrong direction. I should stop now, sit down with her, talk about breakfast, and say what I meant to say before fear got hold of me.
Instead, I hear myself say, “Why won’t you tell me?”
“There is nothing to tell. She’s a friend. You don’t know her.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“And I answered it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Her expression hardens. “I’m allowed to have people in my life you don’t know.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You’re acting like I need to submit a contact list.”
“I asked for a name.”
“And I said you don’t know her.”
The frustration I know too well pushes through the fear. This is how it always is with Belle—she gives me just enough to end the questions, never enough to let me any closer. I have had enough. I brace both hands on the island.
“One question.”
Belle stills.
I hold her gaze. “I want one honest answer.”
Something changes in her face before I even ask, and that alone tells me I am too close to whatever she has been hiding.
“How did you know to call me the morning Dad died?”
The color leaves her cheeks.
There it is.
“Alex—”
“How did you know?”
Her fingers curl against the edge of the counter. “Please don’t ask me that right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t—” she stops, swallows, tries again. “I will tell you. I promise.”
The word hits the last frayed nerve I have left.
“When?”
Her eyes shine. “Not yet.”
A laugh leaves me, short and bitter. “Right. Not yet.” I push away from the island. “Is that before or after you disappear again?”
Belle stares at me. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Disappear?” Real confusion crosses her face. “Alex, no. What are you talking about?”
I hate that I cannot trust what I see anymore. Hate that part of me believes her while another part is already bracing for an empty room.
“I have to go.”
I grab my keys.
Belle comes around the island after me. “Wait. Alex, I’m not going anywhere.”
I keep moving.
“Please.”
That stops me.
I turn, and she looks frightened enough that every instinct in me wants to go back, pull her against me, and believe whatever she says next.
That is exactly why I leave.
“I need air.”
I love her. That is the problem.
If I stay, I will let that love turn another half-answer into enough.
I drive with no destination.
The streets move around me while my thoughts keep doubling back on themselves.