Chapter 33
Caleb lets me know when he arrives in New York, and since I’m freeing up my time here, I’m more than happy to pick him up.
“Hey, Leo,” I say in greeting when his private pilot passes us.
He smiles, gives me a thumbs-up, and heads off, already on his phone with someone.
“Nice flight?” I ask my friend.
“Always.” Caleb grins. “The best.”
Instead of heading to my apartment that’s so empty that it feels as clinical as a warehouse, I drive him to the penthouse he has yet to sell.
“I’m not sure if I’ll sell it,” he says when I ask about it. He’s spending so much time in Colorado, he can’t possibly need all this space. Even when Lauren travels with him, this place is huge.
Unless he’s already thinking past marriage and counting on kids, starting a family.
I sigh, bothered that I want that to be my life sooner than later, without being any closer to having it.
“I wouldn’t mind downsizing. I really don’t see a need to come too often.” He glances at me. “I’m not retired yet. Like you.”
I smile. “It feels good.”
“Does it?” he asks seriously. “I love Lauren. I do. I love Marian, too. She’s the mother I never had, but Thatcher Metal Works is my family legacy, and I don’t want to stop working yet.”
“And you shouldn’t. You do you.”
He chuckles as I park. “And you doing you means selling the company you built up since you were eighteen?”
“Like I said, it feels good. I’ll have more time to focus on my foundation work. I’ve never needed the money.” I was born into it, like Caleb was. “I’m fine with taking a step back and going for what makes me happy.”
Aubrey. Aubrey makes me happy, but how the hell do I go after her if she won’t love me back?
“Working doesn’t make you happy?”
I shrug, wishing this elevator would go faster. I’ve found I don’t like them much after being in Colorado and hiking. Being stuck in a metal box feels so confining. “It does.” And I know I won’t stay retired, not completely.
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I just did. In hindsight, part of it was because I don’t want to be identified by it. There’s more to me than my wealth.”
“Sticking it to Johanna?” he guesses.
“No.” I shake my head. “She’s out of my life, man. She doesn’t impact me anymore.”
“Well, I’ll be the first to say we should go into business together then.”
I raise my brow at him as he enters his penthouse.
“I mean it. I could really use your help in Colorado.”
“With the bed-and-breakfast?” I ask as he sets his bag on the floor and checks his mail. We all pitched in at Marian’s house. It didn’t feel like a job, not like my career of managing properties did, but it didn’t strike me as mere chores either.
“No, that’s more of Lauren’s forte. She’s content to run it with Marian or to learn how to alongside her design work. I meant the bigger things like purchasing properties and flipping them.”
That makes sense. That’s my specialty. Like the motel they’re revamping into apartments in Frisco. “What would that entail?”
“Same thing you’ve always done, but making it local. Bring your expertise from here and apply it with me in Colorado.” Caleb sets the mail down, finished with skimming it, and faces me again with his hands in his pockets.
“Or are you glad to be back in the city and away from the crappy reception up on that mountain?”
I roll my eyes. “No.” I miss it. I’ve been missing it.
“Aubrey’s staying. She got the teaching job.”
I swallow hard. Any words I might have been working to share get stuck in my throat.
“She’s moved out of the bed-and-breakfast, though,” he adds.
I hate being watched this closely when he brings her up, so I turn and meander through his lifeless penthouse. It hurts too much to even think about her, and I still suffer with the weight of guilt. I should have fought harder for us. I should have spoken up more, and clearer. I should’ve done so many things differently, but I know that ship has sailed.
“She moved into the apartment the former teacher left behind. It’ll be easier for her to get to the school that way, especially in the winter. You know how bad Meadow Lane is.” His chuckle irks me. “Remember how you both raced up the road that first day and—”
“Don’t.” I wish my retort didn’t sound so broken, but I can’t help that. “Please, don’t talk about her. I can’t. Not yet.”
Caleb opens and closes his mouth, holding back on whatever he wants to tell me. Then he shakes his head slowly and sighs. “Are you leaving?”
I shrug. “I could get a drink.” It doesn’t sound appealing though. Neither does food.
“I need to stop somewhere. Want to come?” He stretches but makes no move for the door. “I don’t want to call for a driver.”
“Sure. Where are we going?” I don’t mind his company, even if he’s determined to remind me of the greatest woman I ever lost.
“A store.”
I raise my brows as we step out of his home that’s not a home anymore. “That’s not vague.”
“You’ll see.” He’s cryptic about it, but I trust that he’s got a plan. We head back out to my car and get back in. When he gives me directions to Fifth Avenue, it’s not a clue I can follow yet.
He’s restless on the drive, and I can’t tell if he’s impatient to get there. Clearly this errand is important if he’s eager to cross it off his list first thing after his arrival. He’s just gotten here and he’s obviously eager to get to this store.
When he suggests where I should pull over, I do and park. We exit the car, and I notice he’s still agitated, twitching his mouth and glancing at me.
Then he stops on the sidewalk, forcing the wave of so many pedestrians to part and flow around the obstacle of us standing in the middle.
“Aubrey’s a mess, dude.”
I exhale long and hard. That’s why he’s been so fidgety on the ride. I told him to shut up about her, and he’s got something he needs me to hear. Where I’m the quiet one, he’s overly vocal sometimes.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He grabs my shoulders and grips hard to shake me once. “But you still have a chance.”
I twist away and resume walking forward, hoping he’ll take the lead in wherever we’re going instead of beating this topic down even more. If I had a chance, I would’ve flown out there immediately. If Aubrey and I still might have an opportunity to be together, I’d be eager to hear her out and listen to what she has to say. But she hasn’t reached out at all. She hasn’t contacted me once to give me any impression that she’s eager to be with me again. Until she gives me a signal, all I can do is assume she’s done with me.
“Dalton.” He rushes, weaving around people to reach me. “Wait.”
To talk about this anymore? No. The heartache is too raw. “No. She doesn’t want me—”
“She does.”
A glimmer of hope threads through my stubborn thoughts. What if she does? Caleb wouldn’t lie to me, not about this. What if Aubrey’s not over me? He wouldn’t pull a prank like this and mess with me.
“I know she does.” He takes the lead, guiding me where he wants to stop.
“Has she told you?”
“I haven’t asked directly.”
So much for that hope. “Has Lauren?”
“Yeah. And she’s told me. Not in many words. She wouldn’t betray her trust like that. It’s not her thing to share. But I have it on her good word that she’s a mess. Crying. Upset. Moody. I saw it for myself, too, in the weeks before she got the job and was offered the apartment. Until she moved out of the Goldfinch, I saw how down she was, and I hated that I didn’t know what to say or do. You’re both so stubborn.”
We’ve arrived. He stops outside a storefront I recognize. I know where we are because it’s similar to the place I went to over a year ago when I was stubborn in a different way, when I was stuck in my stupidity in thinking the wrong woman could be my future.
Just like I’d done back then, Caleb is here at a jewelry store.
“Here?”
Caleb smiles, looking through the window. “Yeah. I want your help picking out a ring for Lauren.”
Damn, he’s really serious about this. He’s not a guy to say he’ll do something and never follow through. I really figured they’d wait until the house was further along and closer to completion.
“Sure, man. I can do that.” I open the door for us to enter.
“I figured since you went through it already. Even though it didn’t pan out with Johan—”
“You know what? Maybe we should just make it like in Harry Potter. No one ever says her name again.”
He tosses me a glance. “Because it hurts to hear her name?”
“No. Because I’m sick of hearing about my mistakes.”
“You don’t want to talk about Johanna—and that’s smart, really. But then you don’t want to talk about Aubrey either…”
Hearing about Lauren’s take on her friend is changing my mind. Caleb is telling the truth as well. I know it. I don’t want Aubrey to suffer and feel bad, but if she is, it has to be a sign that she’s feeling the same deep and consuming loss that I am.
“She’s really taking it badly?”
He nods, browsing the ring cases. It’s dim in here, but the lights on the jewelry are precisely aimed to show off every angle and curve of the metal and gems. This might take a while. I know Caleb will debate and insist on perfection for Lauren.
“She is.”
“But she hasn’t reached out to me at all. If she’s regretting how we ended things, why can’t she tell me?”
He scoffs. “Why can’t you tell her?”
I shake my head. “I did. I put myself out there. I told her I loved her.”
“And she didn’t?” Caleb dismisses the rings to peer at me seriously. He’s that good of a friend. If I’m hurt and showing it, he’ll come to my defense.
“No.”
“But do you think she feels the same? I won’t make excuses for her, but with all the loss she’s suffered in life, maybe she’s cautious.” He holds up his hand when I open my mouth to reply. “Which isn’t fair to you, or any smart way to handle this. But maybe it’s more of a work in progress for her, not a done deal of a closure.”
I cross my arms and narrow my eyes. “From what you saw, from what Lauren said, you honestly think she’s not over me?”
He chuckles, turning back to the rings. “Hell no.”
I smile, letting that thread of hope thicken and course through me.
If Aubrey’s not over me…I stew on it. I can’t get the idea out of my mind for the whole two hours Caleb debates and struggles to pick a ring.
“She’s been engaged before,” I remind him. “She probably had a huge-ass, hideous ring that she had no say in.”
“I know,” Caleb agrees.
The saleswoman snaps her fingers behind the counter. “I think I’ve got something else to consider then. Not smaller, but not huge-ass.”
Caleb chuckles as she takes off to find it. “Another contender? I’ll never pick one. Maybe I should show her a variety and let her choose from them.”
“That’d ruin the whole getting-on-one-knee-with-a-box thing.” I frown as I speak, spotting something in a case across the aisle.
A darker gem captures my eye. It’s the same vibrant blue as her eyes, and I instantly recall the fire and sass every time we bickered. When we came together, though, the deep azure sparkled and glittered with adoration and…love.
I pray Caleb is right. That confessing her love is nothing but a work in progress. If Aubrey only needs to get there to feeling the same, to admitting it out loud, I’ll be there.
“I’d like that, please,” I tell another salesperson. I don’t hesitate. I don’t debate and belabor making a choice like my friend is. As soon as I saw that ring, it hit me.
It’s perfect.
Maybe it’s presumptuous of me. Maybe I’m losing it, swinging from insistence that it’s over to the polar extreme of the opposite, wanting to buy a ring for her.
But it’s the one. She’s the one. Even though my chances of ever being with Aubrey again feel so slim, it’s something. If this small chance pans out to be something lasting and real, then without a shadow of doubt, I’ll marry her. If she’s with me on this, I will make her mine.
Might as well be prepared.