Chapter 18
MALCOLM
The rough, splintered floorboards of the main stage dug mercilessly into my kneecaps, but I didn’t shift my weight.
I was hyper-focused on the heavy iron tracking guides of the grand drape, a specialized socket wrench gripped tightly in my right hand.
The stark white athletic tape binding my raw palms was already stained with dark streaks of machine grease and rust, the friction of the heavy tools sending a dull, constant throb of agony straight up my forearms. I ignored the pain entirely.
I welcomed it. It was a grounding, physical tether that kept my spiraling mind anchored to the gritty reality of the Ballard theater, rather than the terrifying uncertainty of my own marriage.
I knew Paige was due back from her morning supply run at any minute.
Last night, in the freezing dark of my ruined penthouse, she had commanded me to step out of the shadows and stand in the light.
She had demanded that “Mal” show up on her stage floor, effectively stripping away my ability to hide behind the anonymous veil of a neighborhood volunteer.
But I had no illusions about what that command meant.
I fully expected her to treat me with the same rigid, guarded, ice-cold distance she had maintained for the last twelve months.
I braced myself for the razor-wire edge in her voice, the defensive crossing of her arms, and the agonizing reality of being in her physical space without being allowed to touch her.
The heavy, brass-handled doors at the back of the auditorium suddenly groaned open, cutting through the ambient noise of the room.
I stopped turning the wrench. My shoulders went entirely rigid beneath my faded gray t-shirt. I slowly lifted my head, my gray eyes tracking through the dim lighting of the house until I found her.
Paige walked down the slanted concrete of the center aisle, a heavy canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder.
Her dark hair was slightly damp from the relentless Seattle rain, curling wildly around her face, and her cheeks were flushed from the cold.
I gripped the handle of my wrench so tightly my knuckles turned white beneath the tape, bracing my chest for the heavy, suffocating wave of her suspicion and anger to hit me the second she spotted me on her stage.
But as she reached the front row and her dark eyes locked directly onto mine, the impact never came.
Instead, the very oxygen in the cavernous room seemed to shift, fundamentally altering the atmospheric pressure pressing down on my lungs.
Paige didn’t freeze. She didn’t cross her arms over her chest like a physical shield, and her jaw didn’t lock into that familiar, defensive line of absolute hostility.
The heavy, iron-clad armor she had worn like a second skin for a year had completely, inexplicably softened.
She stopped at the edge of the wooden apron, letting the heavy canvas tote bag slide off her shoulder onto a velvet seat.
She looked down at me—at my grease-stained clothes, my taped hands, and the heavy tools scattered across the floorboards—and her expression was entirely open.
She looked relaxed. She looked almost... at peace.
I stared at her, my heart giving a violent, erratic kick against my ribs.
I had absolutely no idea what had transpired during her morning errands in the city.
I didn’t know what had caused the unyielding ice in her eyes to melt into something so raw and deeply observant.
All I knew was that the heavy, suffocating weight of her suspicion had entirely evaporated from the room.
She was looking at me not as a hostile, invading corporate force, but as a man.
“The secondary tracking rail is jamming on the stage-left pull,” she said, her voice completely devoid of the sharp, biting edge that had been breaking my heart for months.
It was calm, professional, and remarkably warm.
“Do you think you can level the iron guide before the actors arrive for the spacing rehearsal?”
I swallowed hard, forcing my paralyzed vocal cords to function. “I can have it leveled and secured in twenty minutes.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, a faint, genuine softness touching the corners of her mouth before she turned to coordinate the incoming lighting crew.
For the rest of the morning, the agonizing, invisible wall that had separated us completely vanished.
For the first time since my empire had swallowed me whole, we were operating in the exact same light, working side-by-side in the open.
There were no corporate buffers between us.
There were no executive assistants, no board meetings, no frantic international phone calls pulling my attention away from her face.
There were no shadows left for me to hide in.
I stayed on the stage floor, moving from the tracking rails to the heavy wooden set pieces, handling the brutal mechanical fixes right beside her while she directed the chaos of the room.
The proximity was a beautiful, agonizing form of torture.
I could smell the faint trace of vanilla and rain on her skin whenever she stepped close to inspect a reinforced joint.
I could see the exhausted, dedicated fire in her eyes as she solved three technical crises at once.
“Mal, I need the crescent wrench,” Paige called out, kneeling beside a stubborn rolling prop cart that had blown a caster wheel.
I walked over, pulling the heavy steel wrench from my tool belt. I crouched down beside her, the denim of our jeans brushing against each other. I handed her the tool, and as she took it, her bare fingers slid directly over the rough, taped surface of my knuckles.
A sharp, electric jolt shot straight up my arm, settling hot and heavy in the center of my chest. Paige didn’t flinch away as if she had been burned.
She didn’t instantly withdraw her hand to reestablish a physical boundary.
Her fingers lingered against mine for a fraction of a second, her dark eyes flicking up to meet my gaze, holding my attention with a quiet, burning intensity that made the breath completely back up in my throat.
“Hey! Less staring, more lifting!”
The loud, unapologetic bark echoed across the stage, shattering the charged silence between us.
Rachel, our formidable, fiercely protective volunteer coordinator, came marching out from the stage-right wings.
She had a thick clipboard pressed against her hip and a pencil tucked behind her ear, completely oblivious to the intense emotional gravity she had just interrupted.
“Mal, I don’t care if the director is pretty, we don’t have time for you to be making heart-eyes on the clock,” Rachel scolded, pointing a stern finger directly at my chest, treating me like I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore instead of a billionaire developer.
“I have a delivery of fifty-pound sandbags sitting on the loading dock, and you are the only one with enough muscle to haul them up to the fly gallery before noon. Move it, big guy.”
I blinked, thoroughly stunned by the absolute utter lack of deference.
For five years, people had practically bowed when I walked into a room.
Men in bespoke suits lowered their voices and scrambled to accommodate my every command.
Now, a woman in a floral cardigan was aggressively ordering me to haul dirt.
Before I could even process a response, a sound broke through the air that brought my entire world to a grinding, spectacular halt.
Paige laughed.
It wasn’t a polite, professional chuckle.
It was a genuine, sudden, breathless laugh that bubbled up from the very bottom of her chest, a bright, beautiful sound of pure amusement that she couldn’t contain.
She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she watched me get verbally dressed down by the neighborhood coordinator.
The sound of that laugh hit me with the devastating force of a physical blow.
It had been over a year since I had heard her genuine amusement.
I had starved her of joy for so long that I had almost forgotten the exact, melodic frequency of it.
Hearing it now, directed at me without a single trace of bitterness or resentment, felt exactly like water hitting the cracked, parched throat of a man dying of thirst.
“I’m on it, Rachel,” I managed to say, my voice thick with a sudden, overwhelming emotion as I stood up, unable to pull my eyes away from the brilliant, laughing woman kneeling on the floorboards. “I’ll haul the weight.”
The brutal, back-breaking labor of carrying the heavy burlap sandbags up the spiral iron staircase felt like absolutely nothing. The lactic acid burning in my shoulders was entirely neutralized by the echoing memory of my wife’s laughter.
As the late afternoon bled into evening, the frenetic pace of the theater finally began to slow.
The stage manager called the dinner break over the main audio monitors, and the massive cast and crew immediately began to filter out through the lobby doors, rushing out into the neighborhood to grab food before the evening run.
The chaotic noise of the auditorium drained away, leaving behind the quiet, intimate hum of the dormant stage lights and the distant ticking of the building’s ancient heating system.
I stood near the heavy velvet curtains of the wings, using a rough rag to wipe the dark machine grease from my taped hands.
I watched Paige standing at the center of the stage, quietly organizing her script notes on her clipboard.
She was completely alone, bathed in the warm, amber glow of the ghost light.
My heart began a slow, heavy, thunderous rhythm against my ribs.