23. Dani #3
"Once tomorrow morning to tell you I haven't slept, and once tomorrow night to tell you I've made it through a day. I won't ask you to come back. I won't ask you anything. The two texts are for me, not for you, but you'll see them."
"Okay."
"Hartley."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
"I should have told you."
"You said."
I stood up. I closed the laptop. I picked up my bag from where I'd left it on the chair at the end of the island that morning.
My laptop was already in it. I'd packed it at six forty.
He hadn't noticed when he came in that the bag was packed, because the bag was packed the way I always packed it, full but invisible, the way I'd been raised to pack a bag.
I came around the island.
He stayed where he was on the stool.
I stopped beside him. I put my hand on the side of his face.
I had not, in three weeks, put my hand on the side of his face. I'd touched him in many other places in many other rooms. I had not done that one yet.
I did it now.
"You're going to be okay," I said.
"I know."
"You're going to be okay because I'm going to be okay, and we're going to figure this out, and I'm taking a night because I take nights when things this big happen, and I'm coming back."
"Okay."
"I love you."
I had not said the words yet.
I hadn't even known they were coming out of my mouth until they were out of my mouth.
He froze.
I had to stand there in his kitchen for the rest of the time it took him to take in the words I hadn't realized I was going to say, and we both stood there in the new room of those words for what felt like a long time and was probably four seconds.
"I love you, Hartley," he said.
"I know."
"You knew."
"I knew."
"How long have you known."
"Possibly since the conference room. Definitely since the second interview. Officially since the kitchen on Friday night."
"Officially."
"Officially."
I took my hand off his face. I picked up my bag. I went to the front door.
He did not follow me. He'd figured out, probably four seconds after I'd said Brynn's, that the not-following was the correct version of the leaving, and he did the not-following, and the not-following was, possibly, the second-most loving thing anyone had ever not done for me.
I let myself out. I walked to the SUV. I drove down out of the hills.
The valley came up below me. The city lit up.
I drove to my best friend's penthouse with the words I'd just said to a man on a stool in a glass house ringing in the cabin of the SUV around me, and I thought, with a clarity I hadn't previously had, that I'd said the thing because the thing had been ready to be said.
I had not planned to say it.
The body had said it.
The body had been carrying it a while.
I'd spent twenty-six years training my body not to say things it had been carrying, and the body had finally said one, and it had said the right one, on the right night, to the right person, in the right kitchen.
I drove. I did not cry.
I'd told a man I loved him for the first time in my adult life and I was about to spend the night at my best friend's penthouse with a glass of wine, processing the size of the life I was about to walk back into in the morning, and the man I'd said it to was at his kitchen island doing the same thing.
We were going to be okay.
I'd told him we were going to be okay, and I'd said it before I'd said the bigger sentence, and standing in his kitchen with my hand on the side of his face I'd believed both of them all the way down.
I drove.
The city came up to meet me.
I went to my best friend.
Brynn poured the second glass before I'd finished telling her, which was how I knew it was bad. Brynn rationed wine on a weeknight like a field medic.
"Say the number again," she said.
"Six percent."
"Of."
"The team. Your mom's team. Through three holding companies and a footnote I almost didn't open."
She set the bottle down. Didn't say anything for a second, and the not-saying-anything was its own thing, because Brynn always had something. She looked at the middle distance the way you look at a column of figures that just stopped adding up.
"That absolute vault of a man," she said finally. Some anger in it, some awe, and no effort to sort which.
"You're not mad he didn't tell you?"
"I'm a little mad. I'm going to be a little mad for maybe a day.
Then I'm going to be over it, because it's Jett, and I have never once managed to stay mad at Jett, and I quit expecting myself to.
" She drank. "He's owned a piece of my mother's company since 2022 and sat at her Thanksgiving table and passed me the potatoes.
I should be furious. I'm mostly impressed he kept his face straight. "
"Are you telling her?"
"Mom signed the part that touches the team.
She knows the slice she needs and she's chosen not to know the rest, which is the most Victoria thing a person can do.
" She tipped her glass at me. "Two Caldwell women sitting on the same secret about the same man.
Apparently that's the family business now. "
I almost laughed. First thing in two days that came close.
She watched me not-quite-laugh, and something in her settled, like she'd finally gotten the reading she'd been after all night.
"Here's the thing. I've been waiting till you put the glass down to say it." I had not put the glass down. She said it anyway. "You're not actually angry, Dan."