Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DW
I got to meet EW and his wife. He married up.
DDW
Didn’t we all?
SW
I think that’s the Wright men’s superpower. Good to know you’re one of us, EW
DW
Mei Lin is almost as attractive as my wife. Way better looking than MW’s.
MW
I’ll tell Leila you said so.
DW
Bro! What happens in the group text stays in the group text.
SW
BTW, their wives are twins. And mine is more beautiful than both of them.
That remark earned thumbs-downs from Derrick and Michael, and a little haha from Daniel.
Ethan added a thumbs-up to the messages that’d come through in the last hour. Someone—Michael, Gavin?—had given the guys his actual phone number, not the burner phone’s, so he wasn’t missing anything.
He was searching for a funny comeback, but nothing felt funny at the moment. He’d married up, no question. It seemed Mei Lin had just figured that out.
Standing at the windows, he stared out at the tarmac and the brown hills beyond. The cold radiating off the glass was fitting, all things considered.
Mei Lin didn’t want to stay with him. After everything—after he’d flown across the world, nearly gotten himself killed, probably lost his job—she didn’t want him.
Gavin was on the phone, probably booking a hotel room for Ethan. Not that his father should pick sides in Ethan’s marriage, but if he’d had to, he should’ve picked Ethan’s.
Just one more betrayal in a lifetime of them. His wife wasn’t loyal. His father wasn’t loyal. And yes, he got Gavin’s point about not forcing Mei Lin to stay with him, but he could’ve made it a little harder for her to leave.
Ethan pressed his forehead to the glass and closed his eyes.
How had this gone so wrong, so fast?
“You can be right about everything,” his mother used to say, “or you can be happy. You get to choose.”
She’d told him that more than once, usually after he’d dug in his heels about something stupid. But what was wrong with being right? Being right made him happy.
Usually, anyway. This morning, Mom’s advice landed.
He’d been focused on defending his timing, his reasoning, his perfectly sound logic for not telling Mei Lin about Holly when she’d asked. But he hadn’t owned his misrepresentation of the truth.
Okay, fine. His lie.
He needed to ask for forgiveness.
Lord, help me get it right this time.
He turned and crossed the lounge to Mei Lin, who hadn’t moved from her seat. Her hands were folded in her lap, her shoulders straight. She seemed to hold herself like that—very still and very stiff—when she was upset.
The terminal door swung open, and a tall man in a heavy black coat stepped inside. The driver, probably.
Gavin waved Ethan and Mei Lin over.
“We need a minute.” Ethan didn’t wait for his father’s agreement, just moved to stand in front of Mei Lin, his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for her. “Could I talk to you?”
She nodded, and he sat in the chair beside her.
“I should’ve told you about Holly at the hotel in…wherever we were. I can come up with a thousand good excuses for my behavior, but…I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to admit that, while you were in prison, I was—”
“Ethan.”
“I’m going to call her, I promise. But it’s Saturday, and she’s probably still asleep, and—”
“Ethan.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry too.”
He must’ve heard wrong. “For what? You didn’t do anything.”
“I overreacted. It wasn’t fair.”
Maybe, but… “I don’t understand. You were furious.”
“Jealous, I think.” The barest smile crossed her lips. “I shouldn’t have made it into something it wasn’t. I trust you to talk to Holly when the time is right.”
He was so confused. If Mei Lin wasn’t angry… “Then why are you leaving me?”
She slid her hand over his on the armrest. “I’m not leaving you. I’m asking for some space.”
“I’ve had enough space, Mei Lin.” He didn’t mean for so much emotion to fill his words. “I don’t want to be away from you.”
“I feel the same way,” she said gently. “But I don’t know who I am. Those years changed me. And they changed you. We need to know each other before…” She glanced down. “I think it will be easier if we’re not sharing a bed.”
He processed that. She wasn’t leaving him. She was attempting to move back into their marriage slowly. Which…could it go any slower? They’d been married for six years and he could count on two hands the number of times they’d been intimate. Felt slow enough to him.
“I see what you mean.” Sharing a bed was its own kind of torture if they weren’t going to do more than sleep. Even so, he wanted to be near her. “Lu Feng is still out there.”
She winced. “He doesn’t know where I am.”
“Until he’s in custody… Sweetheart, I won’t be able to rest if I’m miles away. Whatever house Gavin has set up for us, can we both stay there? I’ll give you all the space you want. I won’t push. But I can’t be across town.”
“I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want him to have any more impact on my life.”
“He will, though, until he’s caught.” Ethan softened his voice. “We can share the space. We’ll pretend it’s an apartment building, and we live down the hall from each other. We can have dates.”
A laugh slipped out of her, and she covered her mouth.
The sound loosened the knot in his chest. “We can have meals together. I assume there’s a kitchen. I’ll cook for you.”
“You’re a terrible cook.”
“I’ve learned.” He brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “I could walk you to your door after our date and kiss you goodnight, if you’ll let me.”
Her cheeks pinked. “What if there’s only one bedroom?”
“I’ll sleep in the barn.”
Her gaze flicked to the windows. “It’s too cold for camping.”
“Anything to be near you.”
“You are crazy.”
He grinned. “Crazy in love.”
She searched his eyes, and he held his breath until she nodded. “We can try.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then backed away. “Oops. I guess I shouldn’t do that.”
Her smile was shy. “I’m not complaining.” She didn’t let go of his hand as they crossed the room.
Gavin and the other man had stepped outside and were talking beside an SUV with Maine plates. They both turned when the door opened.
“Ethan, Mei Lin. This is Asher Rhodes,” Gavin said. “Cici’s fiancé.”
This wasn’t just a driver but an almost-family member. It meant something that Gavin had called him, and that he’d come. Ethan shook Asher’s hand. “Glad to meet you.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you.” Asher had dark-brown hair and light blue eyes. His voice was deep, his expression serious.
“Asher’s a bodyguard.” Gavin shifted to face Mei Lin. “He’ll be staying with you until Lu Feng is in custody.”
There went another bedroom. Ethan smiled anyway. He’d sleep on the floor. He’d sleep on the porch. He didn’t care.
He opened the car door for Mei Lin, waited until she was settled, then closed her door before speaking to his father, his volume low. “We’ll both be staying at the house.”
Gavin’s face broke into a smile, and he clapped a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Well done, son.”
Ethan leaned in. “But not together. So…am I going to be sleeping on the floor?”
Gavin’s only answer was a laugh.
From the backseat, Ethan peered through the windshield as Asher maneuvered the SUV along a narrow driveway that wound through a pine forest. They’d been climbing for the last half hour, high enough that his ears had popped.
The higher they went, the colder it must be outside. The snow had started in patches where no sunlight could reach. Now, it covered the ground and the gravel beneath them.
Through the trees, a house came into view. It rose two stories of stone and timber against a white-gray sky. There was a pond on one side, dark gray at the edges but white in the center where ice and snow floated.
Mei Lin leaned beside him to get a better look through the windshield. “Whose house is this?”
Gavin twisted to face her. “It belongs to my company. It’s a perk for employees and business partners.”
Asher parked in front of a garage. “Wait here.” He got out, tapped a code into the door, then disappeared inside.
“He’s already been here,” Gavin said. “Turned on the heat and checked out the security.”
“Thorough,” Ethan said.
“He saved Cici’s life. He works for me now. Wright Industries is building an elite security division, and he’s putting it together. He’s an impressive kid.”
Ethan wondered how Asher would feel about being referred to as a kid.
A moment later, the man returned and opened Mei Lin’s door. “All clear. I’ll tell you the key code, but I don’t want you going anywhere without me.”
Mei Lin said, “Okay.”
Ethan climbed from the other side. “Yes, sir.”
Asher’s lips tipped at the corner but didn’t turn into a smile. Maybe smiling was against the rules.
Inside, the door opened to a foyer with a study off one side. Straight ahead, a wall of glass ran the whole back of the house.
Mei Lin stepped in beside Ethan, muttering something in Mandarin.
“Have a look around,” Gavin said.
That seemed to be all the invitation she needed. She slipped off her shoes and started moving.
Ethan removed his shoes as well before following her into the great room.
The living area to the right had a stone fireplace that climbed two stories to a ceiling crisscrossed with cedar beams. The kitchen on the left had an island larger than Ethan’s bed in his apartment back in Virginia.
A small table surrounded by four chairs was tucked into an eating area near the windows.
Beyond the glass, the hill dropped off, giving them an expansive view of other mountains and a green valley. In the distance, miles away, a white-capped mountain rose, this one higher than the tree line.
Mei Lin stood beside him, staring. “It is beautiful.” A moment’s pause, and then she returned to her tour.
Ethan followed.
She popped her head into the study, which had another fireplace, then walked down a hall lined with framed photographs of the view in different seasons. She opened a door at the end of the hall, and Ethan spied a garage where a pair of snowmobiles took up one bay.
She closed the door, smiling at him as she passed down the hall again.