Chapter 42
Victor
Four Months Later
“This isn’t right,” Grace says as she uses a box cutter to open another box of books.
“Something wrong with the order?” I ask, stepping up behind her with the inventory list on a clipboard.
She blinks. “What? No. I’m saying that Lili not being here for this isn’t right. I miss her.”
My heart twists just a little, and I pluck the knife from her fingers and set it aside so I can turn her to face me. “I miss her too, butterfly. But we have to honor her request for space. She has a lot to figure out before she can rebuild her life.”
“Do you know where she is?”
I nod. “I’m keeping an eye on her from afar. She’s in Rhode Island”
That seems to make her relax a little, even brings a smile to her lips, and I wonder what that’s about.
But she turns back to the stack of boxes books before I can ask.
“I can’t believe this is really happening,” she murmurs as she pulls her own work from underneath the packing paper protecting the books.
I take it from her and turn it over in my hand. “It’s gorgeous, Grace. You should be so very proud.”
“I am, Sir,” she whispers. “I just wish we had everything else tied up in a neat little bow.”
She’s referring to Kara Lindon. It’s been months since the last flower delivery, and since then she’s been eerily quiet.
We know she’s still alive, but she’s covered her tracks, and doesn’t seem to be coming for Grace anymore.
Still, with the way this opening is being publicized by Trinity Novak and her team, I’m keeping a close eye on Kara’s activity.
I don’t trust her not to try something. We don’t have enough evidence to take to police and walk away from the matter, so we’ve kept it to ourselves for now.
But I don’t say any of that out loud. If she wants to talk about it, I will, but I’m still hesitant to put added stress on her when I don’t have to.
We spend the rest of the day unpacking boxes and arranging them on the bookshelves in the freshly painted and remodeled storefront.
Suddenly, I hear a loud squeal from the back room.
“What’s wrong?” I rush toward the sound, hand poised to draw my weapon if needed.
But she comes barrelling out into the store holding up a neon sign.
I had been wondering all day when she was going to make it to opening that particular box.
I’d snuck it into the stack first thing this morning without her noticing.
“Victor, it’s fucking perfect!”
The delicate purple neon letters twist in gorgeous calligraphy to spell out the name of the shop. The Butterfly Effect.
A small swarm of butterflies finish the piece. I take it gently from her hands before she breaks it in her excitement, and set it on the counter in front of the cash register then scoop her into my arms and kiss her hard. “Thank you for letting me contribute the name.”
“How could I not take your suggestion. It’s the perfect name for my bookstore.”
She sighs and spins around the room taking in the shelves that are slowly coming together. “My own bookstore. I can’t believe it.”
Then she’s hugging me again. I laugh and lift her off the ground enough to spin her once then plant her back on the ground with a solid kiss.
“You should go over to the club and start getting ready for tonight.”
I pat her ass as she slips into the back room to take the winding passageway through the back rooms of the shops to get to the club.
I don’t follow her right away.
Instead, I pull out my phone and make a phone call.
Lili
The knock comes at nine at night, three sharp raps that don’t belong to anyone on this stretch of coastline.
I know it’s him before I even reach the door. Nobody else pounds like they’re already annoyed I haven’t answered.
I open it anyway, arms crossed, because I refuse to let him see how fast my pulse just picked up.
“You could have called first.”
“I called four times.” Victor steps past me into the house like he owns it, which, considering how fast he tracked down a beach rental in Rhode Island, might not be far off. “You didn’t answer.”
“That was the point, Vic.”
He turns to face me, and for a second neither of us says anything. He looks tired. Not the kind sleep fixes, and I hate that some small, traitorous part of me wants to smooth it off his face with my hands.
“Grace misses you.” His voice doesn’t have the growl I’m used to. It’s flatter than that, worn thin. “I miss you. I’m done pretending four months of silence is what any of us actually wants.”
“I told you I needed space.”
“You needed space. You didn’t need to disappear.”
That one hits its mark, and my temper flares to cover it. “Don’t stand in my kitchen and lecture me about disappearing, Victor Serrano. I watched a man I married try to erase me for six years. Forgive me if I’m careful about who gets to decide when I come back.”
His jaw loosens. Not anger. Understanding, maybe, and it’s worse than if he’d yelled.
“You’re right.” He says it simply, no defensiveness in it at all. “I’m not here to drag you back. I came because Grace needs you at the bookstore opening, and because I needed to see your face instead of hear it through a phone.”
The fight drains right out of me.
“That’s not fair,” I mutter.
“None of this has been fair since the day you married that bastard.” He crosses the kitchen, slow, giving me every chance to step back if I want to. I don’t. “I’m not asking you to come home tonight, Liliana. I’m asking you to come to Grace’s opening. Two days. In and out if that’s what you need.”
I study him for a long moment, the salt air drifting in through the open door behind him. “You drove all the way out here just to ask me that?”
“I flew.” The corner of his mouth finally gives. “And no. I came because I missed you too much to keep doing this over the phone.”
I don’t remember closing the distance between us, but suddenly his hands are in my hair and mine are fisted in his shirt, and neither of us is talking anymore.
We don’t make it past the living room.
He backs me against the wall beside the bookshelf I’ve barely touched in four months, his mouth finding my throat, my jaw, the spot behind my ear that always undoes me faster than anything else he does.
“I hate every single day you’ve been gone,” he says against my skin, already working the button of my jeans.
“You have a terrible way of showing it,” I gasp, and then his fingers are in my pussy and I stop being able to form sentences at all.
He fucks me right there against the wall, one of my legs hooked over his hip, his hand fisted in my hair to keep my mouth exactly where he wants it. It’s rough and fast, and neither of us has the patience for anything slower.
“Vic.” His name comes out broken.
“I know, Spitfire. I know.” He doesn’t slow down. “Come for me. Then we’ll talk.”
I do, hard enough that my knees actually give, and he’s the only thing holding me up when it’s over.
We end up in my bed anyway, tangled together and too honest in the dark to stop talking even after the sex is done.
I tell him about the mornings I spend walking the beach trying to remember who I was before Phineas.
He tells me Grace cried the first week I was gone, then made herself stop, because she didn’t want to guilt me into coming back before I was ready.
“She’s stronger than she thinks she is,” I say against his chest.
“She learned it from you.”
I fall asleep before I can argue with that.
Victor wakes me before the sun’s up, tugging me out of bed by the wrist with a wickedness in his eyes I recognize instantly.
“What are you doing?”
“Sharing something with you.” He pulls me, naked and complaining, through the bedroom doors onto the balcony overlooking the water. The air is cold enough to raise goosebumps down my arms, and the sky’s just starting to go pink at the horizon.
“Victor, it’s freezing.”
“Then you’d better hold onto the railing.” He presses against my back, hard and warm, and the cold stops being my biggest problem.
“Here? Someone could see.”
“No one’s awake for another mile in either direction.” He bends me forward over the railing, one hand splayed flat between my shoulder blades, the other gripping my hip. “And I told you. I wanted to share the sunrise with you.”
He pushes into me slow this time, none of the desperation from the night before, just deep and deliberate while the sky changes color in front of us.
I grip the railing hard enough that my knuckles ache, and every thrust punches a sound out of me I can’t hold back no matter how many houses are within earshot.
“Watch it,” he murmurs against my ear, nodding at the horizon. “I want you to remember exactly what this looked like.”
I come with the sun still climbing, his hand clamped over my mouth to catch the sound, my whole body shaking against the railing while he follows right behind me with a groan he doesn’t bother muffling at all.
He leaves two hours later, showered and dressed and looking annoyingly put together for a man who spent half the night against a wall.
“Two days,” he says at the door, tipping my chin up with one finger. “I’ll have a car waiting at the airport.”
“I’ll be there.” And I mean it. I haven’t meant much of anything in four months.
He kisses me once, unhurried, like we have all the time in the world instead of a flight to catch. Then he’s gone, and it feels too quiet the second the door shuts behind him.
I don’t waste time missing him. I start packing.
The opening is in two days, and Trinity’s team apparently works fast, because by the time I’ve folded the last of my clothes into my suitcase, there’s already a text waiting with flight details and a hotel address in Vegas.
By the time the suitcase zips shut, I’m not even nervous. I’m just excited to see them again.
Four months of walking that beach did what it was supposed to do.
I know what I want now, and it’s Las Vegas.
It’s Victor and Grace. What I don’t want is a ring.
I’m never signing my name next to a man’s again, not legally and not ceremonially, and I just have to hope they can live with loving me on those terms.
God, I hope they’ll have me.
As I drive through the small town I’ve been living in, I make one last stop before heading to the airport.
Inside the small cafe bookstore combo, I look around for something to take to Grace.
A grin spreads across my face as I find the perfect thing and take it to the small counter at the side of the room.
“How can I help you?” the young clerk asks with a smile.
I slide my selection across the counter. “I’d like to have this engraved, please.”