Chapter 23 #2
After a while, Bennett pushed himself to his feet, his frame cutting off the light from the island. “I’ll leave the light on over the island,” he said. “In case you decide this is more comfortable than the guest bed.” His gaze flicked to Moose. “Looks like you’ve already been claimed.”
Moose thumped his tail once without opening his eyes.
“Goodnight, Aubrey,” Bennett said.
“Goodnight,” she replied.
She watched him disappear into the shadows of the loft.
A moment later, the faint creak of the landing drifted down, followed by the soft murmur of his radio.
Moose snored, a low, reassuring rumble beside her.
Aubrey let her head tip sideways against the back of the couch, fingers still curled in the dog’s fur.
She stared up at the shadows near the window.
The note.
The words flashed through her mind.
Her breath caught.
In the shock of Burke's announcement, she'd forgotten about it completely. But now it came rushing back. She hadn't told Bennett.
She hadn't told Burke.
At the time, she'd dismissed it as intimidation. A bitter warning from Red Stephens. A disgruntled employee furious that a Philadelphia executive was suddenly calling the shots.
But Mabel hadn't died of a heart attack.
Someone had smothered her.
A cold dread settled in the pit of her stomach.
The note hadn't been about the winery at all.
It had been about her.
Go back to Philadelphia... while you still can.
Bennett stepped into the master bedroom and quietly closed the door behind him.
He hadn't looked back. If he had—if he'd let himself take in the sight of Aubrey curled on his sofa, her hair a mess against the leather and Moose stretched protectively beside her—he wasn't sure he would've made himself walk away.
His hand lingered on the handle.
After a moment, he turned it again and eased the door back open a few inches.
The low, gravelly rasp of Chris Stapleton spilled softly from the speaker on his dresser, a slow, blues-soaked track about cold whiskey and old regrets curling through the room. Outside the wall of glass, the ridge dropped away into a black abyss beneath a dusting of stars.
Bennett sat on the edge of his mattress, elbows braced on his knees, staring blindly down at his left hand.
Slowly, his right thumb found his wedding band. His calloused skin caught the edge of the smooth gold, turning it once, twice, feeling the familiar drag of metal against his finger.
He’d worn it every single day since Claire had slipped it onto his hand in a sun-drenched chapel in Napa.
He’d worn it through the brutal haze of chemo appointments, through the hollow finality of the funeral arrangements, and through the reckless move east. For six years alone on this mountain, that ring had been his anchor—a quiet vow to the dark that his heart was permanently off the market.
He'd never once seriously considered taking it off.
He closed his eyes, grip tightening on the band until the gold bit into his skin. He could still feel the static charge of Aubrey’s presence downstairs, could still smell the faint, citrus warmth of her perfume threaded through the air of his house. It was a live wire under his skin.
Vanessa had been comfortable. Safe. A distraction born of mutual need and years of shared history—two people who'd found familiar shelter in the dark. He respected Vanessa. He cared about her.
But he’d never once caught himself imagining a future that extended beyond the next morning. She'd never made the ground tilt under his work boots. She'd never turned his blood to liquid heat.
This woman was dismantling him. Aubrey Langford was affecting his whole system in a way no one had since Claire—reaching straight through the walls he’d built out of grief and forcing him to feel a fierce, unyielding hunger that terrified him.
The memory of the Drift Bar kiss flashed behind his eyelids, uninvited. He remembered the feel of her mouth beneath his, the way her carefully constructed facade had shattered for three reckless seconds beneath the glow of the patio lights.
Taking it off felt like a betrayal he wasn’t ready for.
Leaving it on while he lingered in doorways and on balconies, fighting his own unyielding control to get close enough to taste her, felt like its own brand of dishonesty.
Claire would have laughed at this house.
The thought came out of nowhere.
She’d loved old things. Historic hotels. Vine-covered stone walls. Places with stories soaked into the wood.
Aubrey had walked straight to the glass and stared at the view.
Bennett stared into the darkness.
For six years he’d acted like loving Claire and wanting a future were mutually exclusive. Lately, he wasn’t so sure.
Vanessa had never made him question the life he’d built after Claire. Aubrey was tearing straight through it.
“Jesus, Mabel,” Bennett muttered into the quiet, his voice a rough, tired rumble beneath the music. “You really did leave me a mess.”
He lay back on the mattress fully clothed, one arm thrown over his eyes while his fingertips rested lightly on the band pressed against his chest.
He stayed awake for a long time, chest rising and falling in steady swells as he listened to the silence below—listening for creaks, for footsteps, for anything that didn’t belong. For six years, the empty space on the other side of his bed had felt endless.
Tonight, it didn’t.