43. SIENNA
SIENNA
I'm pacing the front drive when I notice, again, the name carved into the stone pillar at the gate.
Cross Manor.
I laugh, once, under my breath at how pompous it sounds. Only Conrad would name it like that.
I keep pacing. The gravel makes an almost hypnotic sound.
At the end of the drive the house rises. Three stories of pale stone, the old fountain to the left with its dry edges, the garden to the right.
From out here it looks beautiful. A house anyone would be glad to call home.
I stop in front of the entrance and look at the door.
I used to stand here for a moment before going in. Trying to gather courage. Or just for readiness. The habit of making myself smaller before crossing the threshold, making myself the least possible version of a target.
I let myself feel what standing here does to my chest. The tightening.
The body memory that doesn't care how much time has passed.
I used to fight it. Press it immediately back down, function through it, refuse to let a building have that kind of reach over a grown person.
Now I just stand here and let it be what it is.
I understand why William wants to level it to the ground. It won’t erase the memories. It will not take away the scars. But it’s a visual memory that is just not there anymore
Last week, after the settlement papers were finally signed, I came here alone.
I walk through every room. It didn’t seem as big as I remember. The hallways seemed narrower.
I stood in Conrad's study for a full minute and felt nothing but tired, which surprised me. I'd braced for anger. For sadness. But all I felt was tired of carrying this in my chest.
And underneath the tiredness, slowly, something that started to look like an idea.
I’ve been thinking about what happened between me and the men constantly. Going back and forth on what to do.
Be cautious, protect my heart and try to move on.
Or follow my heart and see if we can work it out.
I keep getting almost to a decision. Then I wake up the next morning and find I've drifted.
I hadn't decided on any of the ways to go, until this morning when I discreetly watched from the coffee shop across from Adrian’s doctor’s office, the men fell into an embrace, that even from the distance I could see it was a relief hug of good news.
I wanted so badly to share that hug. To be part of that celebration.
But instead, I was alone. Looking from afar.
I start pacing on the gravel again. The waiting is making me nervous.
I hear a car park, doors slamming and hurried steps up the gravel of the driveway.
I come from the corner of the house and I see them there, with different degrees of emotion.
William is pale but eyes are shining.
Carter with his face set with determination.
Adrian looking at me with eagerness.
I walk toward them.
"Thank you for coming." I stop a few feet away. My hands are in my pockets. God, how do you start a conversation like this one. "When I texted, I didn't mean it to be straight away."
"It's best this way," Carter says.
He's right. If there had been time I would have changed my mind twice before they arrived.
I have no plan here, there was no time to prepare a coherent one like I though. So, I just follow my heart.
"In my life I have suffered a lot."
I look at William when I say it. Not to cut the others out but because he knows the specific thing I mean without me having to say it.
He holds my gaze and doesn't look away.
"But I never felt pain like the pain you caused me."
Adrian moves first. One step toward me, and then he catches himself and stops. His hands are open at his sides.
"I'm sorry." His voice is low and stripped, nothing smooth about it. Just the thing itself. "I'm so sorry."
"I know you are." I look at him steadily. "But knowing it doesn't make it hurt less."
His head drops.
I hate that. I hate that he is suffering.
"I'm not here because it stopped hurting," I say. "I'm here in spite of the fact that it still does."
I take a breath.
"I've had a lot of time to think. To go back over things." I look at Carter. He's watching me carefully, waiting. "About what you said to me once. That the worst thing that happened to you was also the best thing."
He nods, once.
"I can say the same." The tears are starting and I don't try to stop them.
Carter takes a step closer and begs with a pained look “Sienna, please don’t cry”
But I just let my tears fall freely. I am done hiding my emotions.
"Without knowing, you gave me the best gift. Freedom from an impossible situation."
I look at all three of them. "That doesn't make what you did right. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that when I look back, I don’t do it with regret or pain. And I want to be able to keep saying that."
I turn to William. He's been watching me the whole time. The house is at my back, and I know what it takes for him to be standing in this driveway.
"I know how much it cost you to come back here," I tell him.
He says nothing and just holds my eyes.
"I have something to show you," and I make a gesture for them to follow me to the back of the house.
The path runs along the side of the house. I lead them down it with my eyes on the grass and the overgrown beds.
When we come out into the back garden I stop and turn around.
I watch them see it.
The backhoe first, parked at the far end of the lawn. Then the piles of materials stacked along the garden wall. And then the crane, enormous and yellow and completely wrong against the old pale stone, the wrecking ball hanging still and heavy at its end.
"The reason I wanted this property so badly was because of the land.
" I look at the old trees at the far boundary, the space.
"I have a partnership with Greenhaven. We're going to expand here.
Make their program available to more people.
" I let that sink in. "I wanted the property, not the house itself. "
"And you were right." I look at William. "It's better to level it down. Clean slate. Start new."
My voice isn't steady and I've stopped trying to make it that way. "And I hope we can do that too. Clean slate. Start fresh. No lies. No secrets."
I take the final leap. My pulse is loud. Deep breath in.
"I love you."
The words are barely out of my mouth and Adrian is kissing me. Passionate. Heated. The kiss is urgent and unsteady, I can feel how much he's been holding back, how long, and he pulls away just enough to say "I love you so much" against my lips.
His voice is wrecked, raw all the way down, and I feel every word of it.
Then Carter's hands on my arms, drawing me toward him.
He doesn't rush. He tips my chin up and looks at me first, takes a real moment, eyes on mine and staying there.
When he says my name it's barely a sound at all.
"Sienna." Just that. And then he kisses me and it's slow and solid, and something in my chest that has been braced for a long time releases by one degree, then another, then another.
Then William.
His eyes are bright and wet and he doesn’t hide it. He kisses me achingly slowly, and there's grief in it and alongside the grief something that is beginning to change.
When we break apart I'm dizzy with emotions.
There's one more thing to do.
I reach into my pocket and take out the key. Hold it flat on my palm and look at Carter.
"You worked in construction," I think he sees where I’m going with this, "did you ever manage a wrecking ball? Because I figure we could start now."
He looks at the key. He looks at me.
He reaches out and snags the key from my hand.
The four of us walk toward the crane.