CHAPTER 3
Three Years Apart
The brick came through my window twenty minutes after sunset.
Lars moved before the glass finished breaking.
One second, he was standing beside my kitchen counter arguing with Naomi over the phone. The next, he had me on the floor beneath him, one arm braced over my head while shards of glass rained across the hardwood.
The brick struck the opposite wall.
A framed photograph crashed to the floor.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
My cheek pressed against Lars’s chest.
His heartbeat hammered beneath my ear.
The scent of his cologne mixed with dust, cold air, and the faint metallic smell of blood from where a piece of glass had sliced the back of his hand.
Outside, tires screeched.
Someone shouted.
Then came the fading roar of an engine.
“Are you hurt?” Lars demanded.
“I don’t think so.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I’m not hurt.”
His body remained over mine.
Heavy.
Warm.
Protective in a way that should have comforted me and instead made something ache behind my ribs.
Three years apart, and my husband still knew exactly how to cover me with his body.
He lifted his head.
A shard of glass had caught in his pale hair.
I reached up before thinking and removed it.
His eyes found mine.
The room went strangely quiet.
Not truly quiet.
Alarms were beginning to sound in the hallway. My security system repeated a warning from somewhere near the entryway. Naomi shouted my name through the phone lying beneath the table.
But between Lars and me, everything narrowed.
His mouth was inches from mine.
The bruise beneath his eye had darkened. His lower lip was still split from the fight at the arena. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest against mine.
He looked at me the way he had in the courthouse photographs.
Not exactly.
Back then, his eyes had held wonder.
Now they held hunger, anger, grief, and eight years of things we had never finished saying.
“Lars,” I whispered.
His hand tightened against the floor.
Then his expression closed.
He pushed himself up and pulled me with him.
“Get your coat.”
“What?”
“You’re leaving.”
“This is my apartment.”
“It has a broken window.”
“It had a broken window yesterday.”
“Now someone has thrown another object through it while you were inside.”
I looked toward the brick.
White paint covered one side.
Black letters had been scrawled across it.
LEAGUE WHORE.
Beneath that, someone had drawn a crude noose.
My stomach turned.
Lars saw it.
The stillness that entered him was worse than shouting.
He crossed the room, picked up the brick, and stared at the words.
“Put it down,” I said.
He did not move.
“Lars.”
His fingers tightened.
Blood from his cut hand smeared across the paint.
I had seen him angry hundreds of times.
On the ice.
In hotel rooms.
In the kitchen of our Minneapolis apartment when we still believed every argument could be solved before bed.
But this was different.
This anger had nowhere to go.
There was no man in front of him to hit.
No body to drive into the boards.
No penalty box where he could sit until the violence passed.
Only a brick in his hand and hatred written for me.
The apartment door flew open.
Two members of the security team rushed inside, followed by a building manager and a police officer.
Lars turned on them.
“How did someone get close enough to do this?”
One of the security officers glanced at the broken window.
“The object came from the alley.”
“You were watching the alley.”
“We had an officer stationed at the front entrance and one monitoring the garage.”
“So you were not watching the alley.”
“Mr. Halvorsen—”
“You had one job.”
I stepped between them.
“Stop.”
Lars looked at me.
“He is not the one who threw it.”
“He failed to prevent it.”
“So did you.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
His face went blank.
A muscle moved in his jaw.
I regretted it instantly.
Not because it was entirely untrue.
Because I knew exactly where it would cut.
“Lars,” I said more softly.
He placed the brick inside an empty evidence bag the officer held open.
Then he looked at the security team.
“She is coming with me.”
I started to object.
The officer interrupted.
“That would be advisable, Ms. Grant. We cannot guarantee the building is secure until we review the footage.”
My phone was still on the floor.
Naomi’s voice carried from it.
“Aaliyah? Aaliyah!”
I picked it up.
“I’m okay.”
“What happened?”
“Someone threw another brick.”
“Another?”
“The first was last night.”
There was a pause.
Then, very calmly, Naomi said, “You failed to mention that.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“You did not want the lawyer in the family to know someone had committed a hate crime against you?”
“I was handling it.”
“Mhm. Clearly.”
Lars took the phone from my hand.
“She is staying with me.”
Naomi’s face appeared on the screen.
“Mhm.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“I need you to stop making that sound.”
“I need your people to stop almost getting my sister killed.”
“Agreed.”
That silenced her.
Only for a second.
Then her eyes narrowed.
“Where are you taking her?”
“My penthouse.”
“Is anyone else there?”
“Security.”
“I meant women.”
“Naomi,” I snapped.
Lars’s expression did not change.
“No.”
“Any women’s clothes?”
“Yes.”
My head turned toward him.
Naomi’s eyebrows rose.
Lars looked at me.
“They are hers.”
I stared.
Naomi made a softer sound this time.
Not quite mhm.
More like surprise she refused to admit.
“You kept her clothes?” she asked.
“They belong there.”
“We have lived apart for three years,” I said.
Lars handed the phone back to me.
“I know how long it has been.”
He walked toward my bedroom.
I followed.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“You do not know what I need.”
He opened my closet.
His gaze moved across the rows of blouses, suits, dresses, and shoes.
Then he reached for my overnight bag on the upper shelf.
Of course he knew which one.
He had bought it for me after my first national assignment.
Brown leather.
My initials stamped near the zipper.
“You need clothes for three days,” he said. “Your laptop. Medication. Chargers.”
“You forgot underwear.”
“I know where you keep it.”
My face grew hot.
He looked at me.
For one dangerous second, the corner of his mouth moved.
Then he opened the second drawer of my dresser.
I crossed the room and slammed it shut.
“I can pack my own underwear.”
“I have seen them before.”
“Eleven months ago.”
His eyes darkened.
The air shifted.
The last time we had slept together had been after a league charity event in Chicago.
I had attended as press.
He had attended alone.
We had spent the entire evening pretending not to watch each other.
Then he had appeared outside my hotel room at one in the morning, tie undone, anger radiating from him because some executive had placed a hand too low on my back.
I had let him inside.
By sunrise, I had left without saying goodbye.
We never discussed it.
Lars’s gaze lowered to my mouth.
“Do not,” I said.
“I did not say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“No.”
“You had the look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get before you say something that makes me want to slap you.”
His eyes traveled slowly over my face.
“You never slapped me.”
“Do not sound disappointed.”
He picked up the overnight bag.
“I would rather you use your hands on me for something else.”
My breath caught.
There he was.
Not the cold hockey star.
My husband.
The man who used to murmur filthy things into my ear during formal dinners while keeping a perfectly blank expression.
The man who knew exactly how much pressure to put into his voice before my body betrayed me.
I took the bag from him.
“Get out.”
“We are leaving together.”
“Get out of the bedroom.”
He moved toward the door.
Then stopped beside me.
Close enough that his shoulder brushed mine.
“You still use the perfume I bought you.”
“I liked it before you bought it.”
“You wore it on our wedding day.”
“It was the only perfume I owned.”
“You wore it the night in Chicago.”
I tightened my grip on the bag.
“That means nothing.”
He leaned closer.
His breath touched my ear.
“It did not feel like nothing.”
I turned.
He was already walking away.
I hated him.
I hated him so much that my hands shook while I packed.
Lars’s penthouse occupied the top two floors of a glass tower overlooking Boston Harbor.
I had been there only twice.
Once when he first purchased it six years earlier.
Once eleven months ago, after Chicago, when I followed him home and spent the night pretending the three years between us had never happened.
The elevator opened directly into the living room.
Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the dark water below. The city spread around us in silver light, traffic crawling through the streets like glowing veins.
The furniture was modern and severe.
Gray stone.
Black leather.
Steel.
Nothing soft except the cream throw blanket folded over the sectional.
My blanket.
I had bought it at a market in Minneapolis because Lars complained his apartment looked like an expensive prison.
He had teased me for choosing cream.
Then carried it through three cities and four contracts.
I stepped out of the elevator.
The penthouse smelled like cedar, coffee, and him.
Security checked every room before leaving us alone.
Lars locked the elevator.
“You can take the bedroom.”
“I’ll use the guest room.”
“No.”
“You have six bedrooms.”
“I have one bedroom.”
“You have one room you sleep in. There are five other rooms with beds.”
“They are guest rooms.”
“I am a guest.”
His expression hardened.
“No, you are not.”
I looked away.
He picked up my bag.
I followed him down the hallway.
The bedroom door stood open.
Nothing had changed.
The same dark wood bed.
The same gray sheets.
The same photograph on the dresser.
I stopped.
It was a picture of me sleeping in his college apartment.
My hair covered half the pillow. One bare shoulder peeked from beneath a white sheet. Morning light stretched across my face.
I remembered waking to the click of his old camera.
I had threatened to break it.
He had kissed me until I forgot.
“You kept that out?” I asked.
Lars set my bag near the dresser.
“It is my photograph.”
“What if someone saw it?”