20. Alex #2
“Phone. Watch, if it records anything. Anything at all that leaves this room leaves it in your head, and even then, there are limits to what you’re allowed to repeat to anyone, ever, for the rest of your life. Most of what’s in there is redacted for exactly that reason.”
Her eyes hold mine, unblinking.
“There’s a camera on that room. I will know if you try to photograph a single page.”
“Understood.”
The word comes out clipped, stripped of everything except the effort it takes to hold myself together in front of a stranger who already thinks less of me, but it is not less than what I currently think of myself.
I empty my pockets.
Mel finally releases the folder.
For the first time since I called her, something in her expression changes.
Something closer to pity. I don’t want it. “Emma was trying to tell you.”
“I know that now.”
“No,” her voice is quiet. “You don’t.” She opens the door.
“But you will.”
I don’t know how long I’m in there. Time stops mattering somewhere in the first few pages. There are black bars across half of what I read. Names removed. Locations obscured. Sections I am not permitted to know even now.
It doesn’t matter.
There is enough.
More than enough.
Enough to take ten years of certainty and turn every piece of it over. Enough to make me understand what Belle meant every time she told me she couldn’t explain. Enough to make every accusation I threw at her come back in my own voice.
Enough to know what she gave up.
What she carried.
What she did for Danny.
For me.
For my family, to keep us safe and alive.
What it cost her to do it. And what I did to her when she finally came back within reach. I sit there until the words blur.
Then I read them again.
Because some punishments should be repeated.
I know the exact moment I come back out, because Polanski is on his feet before the door’s even fully open, already reading whatever’s on my face and clearly not liking what he finds there.
Mel takes the folder from me, and for a moment neither of us speaks.
“Hartley.”
I stop.
When I turn, some of the hardness has left her face. “I’m sorry.”
That nearly does me in.
I nod because I do not trust my voice and walk away before she can say anything else. Polanski catches up with me in the hall.
“Boss. What’s wrong?”
“I’m a bastard.”
It is the only part of the truth I can say out loud without losing whatever control I have left.
“Alex.”
He almost never uses my first name. I look at him.
“What was in the file?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
The answer comes without thought.
“I have to get back.”
“To Dallas?”
“I have to get home.”
I call her the second we’re back in the car.
Straight to voicemail.
I call again from the tarmac, and again in the air, and every single time her voice tells me to leave a message, something in my chest tightens another degree past where I thought it could go.
“Come on, baby, please pick up.”
Nothing.
I look at the messages waiting from her.
Alex please answer.
The call wasn’t what you think.
Please come home and let me explain what I can.
What I can.
Yesterday I saw those words and decided they proved she was hiding something from me. Today they mean exactly what she said. She was trying to give me every part she was allowed to give.
I call again.
Voicemail.
I call Frank instead.
“She’s fine, boss. At home.”
I let myself breathe for the first time since I walked out of that room.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Steven?”
“Building security has coverage.”
“Keep her there.”
A pause.
“Sir?”
“I’m coming home.”
I end the call and the rest of the flight feels endless. I imagine what I am going to say. There is no apology large enough. No language that gives back the months I spent punishing her for saving my life.
I can tell her I know.
I can tell her I believe her.
I can tell her that if she never forgives me, I will still spend however long she allows making sure she understands that none of this was her fault. Or she never ever has to forgive me.
I can get on my knees.
I probably should.
By the time we land, I’ve called her a dozen times.
Straight to voicemail.
I stare at the screen and start giving myself reasons. Dead battery. Broken phone. She’s angry and refusing to answer.
Fine.
I’ll take any one of them right now.
I’m calling her name before the elevator doors have fully opened.
“Belle?”
Nothing.
“Belle.”
Vanessa comes around the corner at a jog, hands up like she’s trying to slow down a car.
“Hey, whoa, Alex, slow down. Who’s Belle?”
I grab her by the shoulders, gentler than the urgency in my hands wants to be.
“Emma. Where’s Emma?”
“Emma?”
“Yes.”
“I saw her just after noon, but not since.” Vanessa’s brow furrows. “I figured she went grocery shopping or something. Isn’t that basically a housekeeper thing?”
The word hits me hard enough that I nearly flinch.
Because I gave it to her.
I’m already moving past Vanessa, down the hall, into a room that should be empty and orderly, and isn’t.
Drawers hanging open.
Clothes pulled from the closet and left where they fell, one sleeve still trailing off the edge of the bed like she dropped it mid-motion and never looked back.
The contents of her bag cover the mattress.
No sign of the cat anywhere, no sign of her, and my whole body goes cold. My hands aren’t steady when I reach for the nearest drawer. I don’t know what I’m looking for.
I just need them to be doing something other than shaking.
She’s taken almost nothing.
That’s the part that stops me longest, standing in the doorway cataloging what’s missing instead of what’s there.
No suitcase.
Most of the clothes I bought her are still here. Even her own clothes, the ones she brought with her.
Shoes.
Everything.
Then I see the table.
The photograph is still there, the little horseshoe magnet beside it.
Left behind.
I stop.
She carried them for ten years. Through every name, every town, every life she had to build while running from the people who wanted her dead and trying to keep Liam alive.
And now she has left them here.
I understand with a clarity that feels like being struck that she didn’t take a single piece of me with her when she walked out that door this time.
My fingers close around the magnet. It feels absurdly small in my hand.
Final.
Something catches the light near the wall.
Her phone.
I pick it up from the floor, screen shattered corner to corner, dark and dead in my hand.
“What have I done?”
I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Vanessa’s voice answers from the doorway behind me.
“Why does it feel like you’ve left a lot of things out, Alex?”
I turn around.
At least one person in this apartment deserves the truth, and Vanessa has done nothing to deserve another lie.
“Vanessa. I’m sorry. I can’t marry you.”
She goes very still. “Is this about Emma?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. Her gaze shifts toward the room, then returns to me.
“I swear I was picking up on something; I just didn’t realize it was this serious.” She laughs, short and humorless, already talking faster than she was a second ago.
“My grandmother told me men like you end up having affairs eventually, and I’d just have to learn to live with it. I didn’t think it would happen before the wedding even got planned, but I guess that’s still technically ahead of schedule for something.”
“Vanessa.” I say her name gently, trying to slow her down.
“No, no, it’s fine, really. It’s not like we were madly in love or anything. It was always more of an arrangement. I knew that going in.”
She’s still talking, faster now, the words tripping over each other.
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to tell my grandmother I failed at this too.”
“You didn’t fail at anything.” Something in my chest twists at the wobble in her voice.
“If this is anyone’s mess, it’s mine. Entirely mine.”
Vanessa looks down at the ring. “I knew it was an arrangement.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t expecting romance.”
“You still deserved honesty.”
Her eyes lift.
That shuts her up for the first time.
“I should have given that to you before I brought you here.”
She exhales.
“Well. That would have been useful.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her gaze slides past me toward Belle’s empty room. “You love her.”
It isn’t a question.
“Yes.”
The answer comes more easily than anything else today. Vanessa closes her eyes for a second.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve said that.”
“It doesn’t make it enough.”
“No,” she pulls the ring from her finger.
I look at it. Then at her.
“Keep it until you’re ready to deal with all this.”
“I’m not keeping your engagement ring.”
“Return it tomorrow. Throw it at Edward. Sell it. I don’t care. You don’t have to deal with it this second.”
That earns the faintest twitch of her mouth.
“What can I do?” I ask. “Whatever you need.”
“Can you just—” She stops, breathes, and tries again. “Can you help me get away for a while? I don’t want to go back to Seattle right now.”
“Anything.” I mean it more than I’ve meant almost anything I’ve said all day. “Take my jet. I’ll have Camille handle whatever you need, the hotel, as long as you want it.”
I take a card from my wallet.
“This is my lawyer’s card. Sebastian will take care of anything that comes up in New York. Press. The agreement. Your family. Whatever you need.”
She takes the card, still not quite looking at me. “You don’t have to do all that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Alex—”
“I have to find her.” My voice breaks on the last word. “Camille will call you.”
Vanessa looks at my face.“Go.”
I go.
Frank meets me at the elevator before I’ve even finished dialing him.
“She’s gone. She left. Where the hell were you two?”
It comes out as a bark, sharper than I intend, but I don’t have the patience left to soften anything right now. He doesn’t flinch.
“We’re already on it, boss.”
The concierge hasn’t seen her leave. Neither has the doorman. Steven is already pulling camera feeds while Frank starts moving building security into positions they should have been in hours ago.