Chapter 35 Andrea
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Andrea
The estate looked bigger than I remembered.
We pulled up in the late afternoon, the sun cutting low across the front of the house, and I sat in the passenger seat staring at it through the windshield.
The last time I was here I’d been happy.
Reading in the library, sleeping in his bed, stealing kisses in the kitchen while coffee brewed.
Falling in love with a man who was about to break me.
The stone facade and the tall windows and the ridiculous fountain in the circular drive all looked exactly the same, which felt wrong because everything else in my life had changed since I last walked through that front door.
I’d been a different person then. No baby, no heartbreak, no three months of rebuilding myself from the ground up in my grandmother’s house.
The woman who lived here before was in love and didn’t know she was about to lose everything.
The woman sitting in this car was pregnant, cautious, and very aware that the walls she’d built were the only things keeping her upright.
Finneas parked and came around to open my door. I rolled my eyes but let him do it because my back had been aching since hour three and getting out of cars at twenty weeks pregnant required more core strength than I currently had.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
“If it’s the library, I’ve seen it.”
“It’s not the library.”
“If it’s your bedroom, absolutely not.”
“It’s not my bedroom, Andrea.”
“Just setting boundaries.”
He almost smiled. I almost let myself enjoy it.
He led me around the side of the estate toward the east wing, which used to be storage rooms and an old conservatory nobody touched.
The path was gravel, lined with hedges, and I could hear barking before we rounded the corner, not one dog but several, a chorus of different pitches that made me stop walking.
“Finneas, what...”
“Just come see.”
He opened the door and I walked in and stopped.
I barely recognized it. Professional kennels with clean bedding lined one wall, the floors under my shoes were warm, heated, and through a glass door at the back I could see an outdoor run with grass and shade trees.
There was a medical room off to the side with an exam table and equipment I recognized immediately because my mother had the same setup in her clinic in Whitebrook.
Stethoscopes, an otoscope, a scale, shelves of medications organized by type.
Dogs in the kennels, healthy, calm. Cats in a separate room with climbing shelves and window perches. A rabbit hutch through a doorway to the left.
Then a German Shepherd came barreling out of the nearest open kennel, tail going so hard his entire body swayed with it, and I knew him before I saw his face.
“Buddy?”
I dropped to my knees on the warm floor and he crashed into me, licking my face, pressing his head against my chest, whining like he’d been waiting months for exactly this.
His coat was thick and shiny, he’d filled out completely, his ribs invisible under muscle and healthy weight.
I buried my face in his fur, held on, and something in my chest cracked because the last time I’d seen this dog he was malnourished, flinching at loud noises.
“Hey buddy,” I whispered into his neck. “Hey, I missed you.”
He whined again, shoving his nose under my chin, and I laughed even though my eyes were wet because I was five months pregnant on the floor of a heated kennel hugging a dog and this was apparently my life now.
“You adopted him,” I said. My voice came out thick.
“And a few others. Mary helped pick them out.”
I lifted my head. “How many?”
“Six dogs, four cats, two rabbits.”
“Twelve animals, Finneas.”
“Thirteen if you count the hedgehog.”
“There’s a hedgehog?”
“Mary was persuasive.”
I looked around the wing again. The kennels were spacious, the outdoor run had actual grass, the medical room had proper equipment.
This wasn’t a rich man’s pet corner. This was a facility.
A real rescue facility built inside a mansion by a man who once glared at a foster dog for sitting too close to me on the couch.
“You don’t even like animals.”
He was leaning against the doorframe watching me on the floor with Buddy, his arms crossed, that expression on his face I still couldn’t name. “I was jealous of them. They got your attention and I didn’t. It was petty.”
“It was extremely petty.”
“I’m aware.”
“You were jealous of dogs.”
“And a cat, once. The orange one you fostered for a weekend. It slept on your chest and I almost lost my mind.”
I laughed. The image of Finneas Kingsley, Lycan King, CEO, seething with jealousy over a tabby cat was too much. He watched me laugh with Buddy in my lap and his face did something soft that made me look away.
“You built a shelter,” I said.
“I built you a shelter.”
He walked me through the rest of it. A supply room stocked with food, blankets, medications organized on labeled shelves.
An office for the veterinarian he’d hired, a woman named Dr. Patel who started next week.
A grooming station with a raised tub and a drying area.
A laundry room for bedding with a washer big enough to handle the volume.
Every room was finished, stocked, ready.
He hadn’t cut corners anywhere. The kennels had individual ventilation.
The cat room had heated window perches. The outdoor run had a covered section for rain and a patch of soft dirt for the dogs to dig in.
I touched things as I walked through, opening cabinets, checking supplies, running my hand along the exam table.
Everything was right. Not just expensive, but right, the way my mother’s clinic had been right because she understood what animals actually needed.
“Mary consulted on the layout,” he said, reading my face. “She spent a week going back and forth with the contractor about kennel sizing and airflow.”
“You got Mary that involved?”
“She volunteered. I mentioned what I was building and she took over the entire design process. Peter helped with the outdoor run.”
“She never said a word to me. Not once, in all our phone calls.”
“I asked her not to.”
That landed. He’d asked Mary to keep a secret from me, and Mary, who told me everything, who couldn’t keep a surprise birthday party quiet for more than forty-eight hours, had done it. That meant she believed in whatever he was doing enough to stay quiet about it.
“How long did this take?” I asked.
“A few months. I started after you left.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
“You told me once that you wanted to adopt animals but you couldn’t.
Your hours were too long, your place was too small, and you said if you adopted one they’d be lonely while you were at work.
And you said you wouldn’t be able to stop at one anyway.
” He shrugged. “This way you don’t have to choose.
You can have as many as you want, there’s staff to help when you’re busy, and they’ll never be lonely because they have each other.
After what happened, I guess I wanted to have a piece of you in me in some way, even when we’re apart. ”
My throat tightened. He was right. I’d told Fin that, sitting on my porch one night after returning a foster to Bonalisa.
I’d cried about it, about how unfair it was that loving animals meant knowing you couldn’t give them what they deserved unless you had more space, more time, more everything.
And he’d sat beside me with his head on my lap and listened.
“So basically you built an elaborate trap,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Fill the place with animals I love so I can never leave.”
His mouth twitched. “That would be brilliant of me if it were true.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s not. But I’m writing it down for future reference.”
I shook my head but I was smiling and we both knew it.
Then he opened a door at the far end of the wing and I walked through and my throat closed.
A reading nook. Not a corner with a chair.
A room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a deep window seat with cushions and a soft blanket folded at one end, warm lighting that made the whole space glow amber.
The shelves were stocked with romance novels, dozens of them, organized by author, and on the middle shelf I could see a familiar set of spines.
There was space on the floor beside the window seat. Dog-sized space.
I touched the window seat cushion. Ran my fingers along the book spines. Picked up one of the novels, held it, put it back. My eyes were burning, my jaw tight. I was not going to cry in front of him again because I’d already done that at the ultrasound and a woman had to have limits.
“This is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. So much for limits.
“It’s yours. All of it. The whole wing, no conditions. I hired the staff, I’ll fund everything. If you want to run it, it’s yours. If you just want to sit in here and read, that’s fine too.”
“No conditions,” I said.
“None.”
“Even if I never forgive you.”
“Even then.”
“You’d fund an entire rescue operation for a woman who might never take you back.”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“Probably.”
I looked at the room. At the window seat. At Buddy, who had followed us in and was sniffing the cushion like he was assessing the thread count. At the shelves full of books I loved, in a room built because I once told a dog on a porch that I wished I could help more animals.
He remembered that. A throwaway sentence I said to Fin years ago, sitting on my front steps after returning a foster animal, crying into his fur. He remembered it, held onto it, and turned it into this.
I walked to the window seat and sat down. The cushion was soft, deep enough to sink into, and the window looked out over the back garden. Buddy followed me and lay down on the floor beside me, resting his chin on his paws. The space was exactly the right size for him.
“You measured this for a dog,” I said.
“I measured it for Buddy specifically. Mary sent me his dimensions.”
“His dimensions.”
“Length, height, preferred sleeping position. She was very thorough.”
I pressed my hand against my mouth because I was either going to laugh or cry and I wasn’t sure which. Both, probably.
“Thank you,” I said. “I mean it.”
That night the estate was quiet. The dogs were settled in the kennels, the cats asleep on their perches, and I was standing in the second-floor hallway between two bedroom doors with my hand on my belly and my heart doing things I hadn’t authorized.
Finneas was behind me carrying my bag. He set it down in front of the guest room he’d prepared, the door already open. Clean sheets, fresh towels, a vase of peonies on the nightstand. The room was warm, the bed was made, everything new and untouched.
“This one is yours,” he said. “Mine is down the hall.”
I looked at his door, maybe thirty feet away, then back at mine.
Thirty feet. The last time I lived in this house there were zero feet between us because I slept in his bed with his arm around my waist and his heartbeat under my ear.
Now there was a hallway and two closed doors and a co-parenting arrangement I set the terms of myself.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay.”
He carried my bag inside and set it on the bed. “Extra blankets in the closet. The bathroom has everything. If you need anything...”
“I know where the kitchen is, Finneas.”
“Right.” He paused. “There’s also a bell system if you need something in the middle of the night. One of the staff...”
“If you installed a bell system for me, I will find it and I will destroy it.”
His mouth twitched. “It was already here.”
“Mmhm.”
He stood in my doorway filling it up the way he filled every doorway, shoulder to shoulder, and I could see the effort in his face. The wanting. His eyes moved from my face to the bed behind me and back to my face and his jaw was tight with the discipline of staying where he was.
I remembered what it was like to have him cross that distance. His hands in my hair, his mouth on my throat, the weight of him pressing me into the mattress. I remembered and I filed it away and I did not think about the thirty feet of hallway between us.
“Goodnight, Andrea.”
“Goodnight.”
He pulled the door closed behind him. I listened to his footsteps down the hall, measured, slow, like he was giving himself time to turn back. His door opened at the far end. Closed.
I sat on the edge of the bed. The peonies on the nightstand smelled sweet. Nothing in this room was his except the flowers, chosen because he knew they were my favorite.
The baby fluttered against my palm. I closed my eyes and saw the reading nook, the warm light, the window seat with space for a dog beside it. All of it built by a man who listened to every word I ever said, even the ones I whispered to a stray on a porch at midnight.
“I am in so much trouble,” I whispered to the dark room.
Thirty feet between our doors. Co-parenting only. The walls were holding.
Barely.