Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
GREGG
ONE MONTH LATER
Gregg’s Townhouse
Egerton Crescent, London, United Kingdom
How much a month can change the shape of your life, certainly not always making it lighter. The weight just seems rearranged. It feels like it simultaneously passed in a blur and has been endless.
On one hand, Dad is home from the hospital.
He was discharged about two weeks ago on strict orders of rest, a diet that's even more strict, and visits to a cardiologist who speaks to him like he’s both fragile and infuriating.
When I visited Ashcombe the day after he was discharged, he refused to see me, and tea spent with Mum was awkward to say the least. The house seemed quieter than usual, but not peaceful.
It felt restrained, as if anger had burned differently when mortality had been brushed against it.
But on the other hand, I’d been living in transit.
London mostly, where Wilmont is finally beginning to resemble something real instead of artist’s and architectural renderings on paper.
Steel frames have begun rising against gray skies, and most mornings I spend walking the site with a hard hat, traversing mud that already cost more per square metre than most people’s flats.
Architects argue about sightline and heritage preservation daily, and seem to always land back on redefining luxury.
I should feel triumphant, but instead I feel rather heavy.
Archeon still requires daily oversight, and I’ve found myself managing everything from contracts to staffing restructures, and of course managing Dad’s affairs.
I’m attending meetings as him and offering signatures he can’t give.
As son, I've been appointed as the buffer.
And of course, Kenneth couldn’t wait. After that explosive evening when I announced the decision that probably almost killed Dad, I found myself working on preliminary outlines for a project off the Champs-Elysées barely a week after Dad’s surgery.
My first fully independent imprint under their umbrella at Regal Crown.
My name alone, something that's not inherited.
That should exhilarate me. But instead, it exhausts me.
Tonight, for the first time in days, I’m home before midnight, and Julian met me with an incredibly perfect array of Indian takeaway.
Cartons and foil wrapped bundles are spread out across the kitchen island, their plastic lids sweating from heat, fogging slightly as we peel them back.
There’s butter chicken swimming in a deep orange sauce that's glossy and thick.
Inky and rich dal that's freckled with cream and cilantro, and a bright green chutney that looks aggressively homemade.
Julian scoops a piece of naan through the butter chicken and hands it out to me as if I've forgotten how to feed myself. “Eat,” he says gently. “You need actual food.”
I take it and place it down on my plate.
“You know,” Julian mumbles as he shovels a mixture of dal and rice into his mouth. “I found this place a couple weeks ago with Riley. It’s been on my mind ever since.”
I look up. “Riley? Like, Cameron’s Riley?”
“Mhm,” He nods, taking a second to chew and swallow. “Who else? She was here on a trip and I picked her up at her hotel. You know they stay at the Kensington Grand? Pretty posh!”
“Was Cameron with her?” I inquire too quickly.
“No, mate.” He pauses, and my face must show my internal feelings. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.” He sighs. “I guess I didn't want to add to your plate.”
“It’s alright.” But it isn’t. Not even remotely.
A beat.
“You know, you look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I concede, aware of the bags under my eyes and unkempt stubble. “It’s becoming a theme.”
Julian studies me for a few moments. “How much have you slept these last few weeks?”
“Define sleep.” I huff a small laugh, but he doesn’t smile back.
“It’s not just the workload, is it?”
I set my fork down with a clatter that I don’t quite mean to do, and the silence of truth sits between us before I speak it.
“It’s all of it. Everything,” I admit, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Wilmont, Archeon, Dad’s recovery, Kenneth and Regal Crown… every conversation feels like I’m juggling eggs.”
Julian nods, letting me continue.
“And… and on top of it all.” The words catch in my chest. “The one person who I want most to talk to…” I trail off.
Julian doesn’t need to ask who. “He hasn’t answered.
Hasn’t responded to any texts. I keep reaching for my phone anytime something happens,” I admit.
“When Wilmont went vertical. When Dad came home. When Kenneth finished my preliminary partnership draft.”
I laugh. Saying it all feels so hollow.
“I want to tell him these things. I want to hear his beautiful voice say my name again like it belongs to him. Because it does.”
Julian just looks at his hands.
“I miss talking to him,” I confess. “About anything and everything. I—I don’t even know if he’s alright.”
Silence carries so much weight, and his has been crushing.
“And the worst part is,” Julian’s eyes meet mine, “I chose him,” I say quietly. “In that study. In front of my family. And he still left.”
Not that I really blame him, though. But that is what’s unbearable. Because I would choose him again and again. Every single bloody time.
Julian clears his throat. “I don’t know what to say, aboki,” he says, pushing off the island and wrapping me in a firm embrace. “I don’t know what else to say other than to give it time. It’ll work out if it’s meant to.”
“Will it?” I sniff, pulling back slightly.
“Because the mad thing is, I was afraid for so long what would happen to me in this circle if this secret got out. And nothing has happened. I still have a job. There’s been zero damage control within Archeon.
The investors certainly couldn’t care less.
If anything, my career seems to be accelerating. ”
“It was all in your head, mate,” Julian agrees, tapping his finger to my temple.
“The only contention is with my parents,” I say. “And even then, I can’t even see where it lands. I suppose the worst thing would be Dad follows through on his threat when he’s well enough.”
Julian shrugs. “And that’s just something that time will sort out. But it will work out, just look at your societal standing compared to Celeste’s.”
“No.” I stiffen. “I don’t care to ever speak about that snake ever again.”
“Trust me, mate,” he presses, his mouth curling slowly. “You do.”
“And why is that? Why would I care to speak about the woman who took pleasure in destroying what I had?”
“Because in doing so she destroyed herself.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
Julian lights up, delighted I am behind and need catching up. “Oh, you haven’t heard anything, have you?”
I shake my head and help myself to some more naan.
“I don’t think you realize how many powerful people were there that night, and she grossly misread her audience.”
I blink.
“At least two major charities have removed her as patron,” he continues. “Publicly, too, with statements about diversity and equity being non-negotiable values.”
I feel my mouth drop open.
“And that chair position she was so smug and proud about? The arts preservation board?” He pauses for dramatic flair. “Gone. Ripped out from under her.”
For a moment, I don’t know what to feel. Shocked? Vindicated perhaps?
“She thought she was controlling the narrative,” Julian says softly. “Turns out she exposed herself instead.”
I lean back against the counter, processing it all.
It really was all in my head. The world didn't end.
My career didn't implode. The only thing I lost… was him. I had to make him see that he belongs by my side. That he doesn’t need to prove to anyone, least of all me, anything.
I would trade every upward trajectory just to make him see that.
It’s after ten when my surroundings grow quiet.
Julian has gone home, leaving a majority of the leftover food with me, stating, “You’ll forget to eat otherwise.
” I’ve showered, washed away the day, and now I’m propped against the headboard, pillows stacked behind me and the duvet half folded over my legs.
I’m exhausted, but not the kind the sleep fixes.
It’s that other kind, the exhaustion that lives behind your ribs.
The kind that hums throughout you no matter how still you lie.
I reach for the remote and the television glows to life, casting the room in cool light.
A scroll through an endless grid of films I won’t actually watch.
Action, drama, documentaries, something about chefs in Tuscany.
There’s that true crime series I’ve watched halfway through, but nothing holds my interest. I don’t even want to watch anything, really.
I just need noise, something in the background to fill the silence. Then my thumb pauses on the remote.
Titanic.
The cover image fills the large screen, the sunset behind Jack and Rose on the bow casts pink and orange shadows across my room. An epic love story that promises catastrophe from the start. How ironic.
I let out a slow breath and think back to what felt like only days ago when Cameron and I had tea that first time. It all comes back in sharp detail. The small table outside, the warm breeze catching his hair as he delved into his reasoning of why Jack had to die.
“What’s your favorite scene?” I had asked.
Something in him had softened, his mind drifting away briefly before answering, “When Rose is in the lifeboat and she jumps back onto the ship. That instant where she chooses love over safety.”
I smile faintly at the memory, and I hover a moment longer on the title card. This feels ridiculous and desperate, but it also feels like the closest I’ve been to him in a month. So I press play.
The opening notes begin to play soft and sweeping, and my bedroom fills with melancholy and ethereal vocals. I settle back into my pillows.
“I’m finally watching it through,” I whisper to no one and to him, and the screen flickers with the image of the cold ocean.
The credits haven’t rolled yet but I already feel undone, and I certainly didn't expect it to hit me like this. I think it's because I’ve been holding myself together so much these last few weeks, and somehow an almost thirty-year-old film has found the fault line inside me. Rose drops that absurd and obscene, fifty-six carat diamond into the ocean like it’s nothing.
I actually scoff through tears.
You’re telling me you carry that thing around for eighty years and just toss it? Into the sea? Your granddaughter is right there! She bathes you, chauffeurs you. She probably manages your estate. Give the woman the necklace!
But even as I’m thinking about it, I know that isn’t the point.
The camera pans across the photographs Rose brought onboard, her proof of a life fully lived. And I find myself irritated for reasons that make no sense.
Why was everyone doubting she was the woman in the picture? It’s clearly her…
And then there she is.
Riding a horse through the surf, the pier and roller coaster in the background. I let out a shaky laugh. “Oh boy,” I mutter to the empty room. Because suddenly it isn’t about the ship anymore. It’s about a person who refused to let tragedy define their entire existence.
Then the music begins to swell, slow at first and then rising, and I know instinctively that something is about to break me.
Something in my chest tightens, and I know what’s coming before I see it.
My body reacting before my mind does. The wreck of the Titanic appears out of the darkness, cold and skeletal, its decking collapsed over time, and then it changes.
The score lifts and blooms, and the ship begins to heal.
Metal straightens. Railings reform. Wood restores itself plank by plank.
The promenade floods with golden light where only black water lived moments before.
I sit forward without even realizing I’ve moved, as the camera glides past the faces of those who were lost, they stand along the grand staircase smiling, watching, and witnessing.
The music crescendos, that aching, soaring theme that feels like it’s been living somewhere in my chest for years without me noticing. And then—
Jack.
He’s standing at the top of the staircase, exactly as he was, young, unbroken, waiting all this time.
I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear slips past my jaw and hits the duvet.
Rose approaches him and the room feels smaller.
He takes her hand like no time has passed at all.
Like love doesn’t obey physics or oceans or death.
Applause swells around them from the gathered passengers, soft, reverent, and celebratory. Not for survival. Not for status.
For love.
They lean in, the final kiss gentle and timeless, as the camera circles them, and then fade to white. Not black. But white.
A blank horizon.