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She paced the floor in her room, unable to be still, or sleep, or breathe. She might come out of her skin if she didn’t talk to someone, but there was no one.
The old anger called like that ex who never quite manages to lose your number. It was as comforting as her best worn pair of sweatpants, the hoodie she pulled on when she was too cold with missing him. It had started to pill from being washed so much, but it had holes for her thumbs in exactly the right places, and she could hide her whole head in it so she didn’t have to see the light when the world got too bright. She’d pulled that anger up into herself so many times in the past years that it had rewritten her DNA, had dyed her internal monologue a dull red and given her, instead of rose-colored glasses, bloodred garnet ones that painted her world like Dorothy’s emerald glasses in Oz.
She was done being who she was with it, but she didn’t know how to disentangle it from herself anymore. She had been wearing it like the Venom suit and its power had altered her; she couldn’t go back to being plain Eddie Brock now. She found her restless feet taking her upstairs, to the top floor that used to belong to Cass. It was now a guest suite, recently vacated by her relatives. Miriam had decorated it with the million tchotchkes Cass left behind, kept it draped in tulle and white twinkle lights and feather boas so that walking into it felt like Cass might appear at any moment, beturbaned, waving a jeweled hand while telling a story about her wild life.
Hannah looked around now in the moonlight and hated all of it. She’d spent all her life thinking Cass saved her, but all that time, Cass had been destroying the person Hannah needed to survive. She picked up a vintage ceramic reindeer with crystals in its antlers that had the interlocking filigreeC’s from the wrought-iron gates out front, which stood for both Cass Carrigan and Carrigan’s Christmasland, painted on its side in gold. It had been part of an early promotion for the Christmasland Inn, in the sixties. Guests who stayed left with a reindeer collectible. Hannah had loved it as a child; she and Miriam had played make-believe with it up here a million times.
“This will be yours someday. You have to protect the legacy I’ve left you,” Cass told her over and over.
Her rage exploded out of her at the memory, and she threw the reindeer as hard as she could against the wall. Instead of shattering, it bounced. A scream erupted out of her, and she fell to the floor.
She’d been so mad at him for leaving without her, for abandoning her here with her fear when she found she couldn’t leave. She’d been furious that he’d walked out on their marriage rather than wait for her to be ready to go with him. But she’d never been mad at him for wanting to see the world, build his career, find himself separate from Carrigan’s. She’d been jealous, because she didn’t have a self separate from Carrigan’s. She’d wanted him to have the wide, amazing, international career he’d dreamed of. It’s why, in the end, she’d told him not to come back, so he wouldn’t get trapped here, by them.
She was mad at her anxiety for keeping her locked up in this tower instead of letting her see options, explore possibilities. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t. When she thought about leaving Carrigan’s, she imagined all the things that could go wrong if she wasn’t here to keep everything together, her vision got small, she forgot how to breathe, and she ran from it. This place had saved her from her parents’ life that had made her miserable, though they hadn’t meant it to.
She’d needed to save it.
She was mad that her brain made her see the whole world in black and white all the time, so it always seemed like there was an emergency to be solved, and she had to be the one to solve it, alone, right now. She was mad at falling in love with the one person who knew her best, because when things had gone wrong between them, she’d lost her person. She had Noelle, but she’d lost everything she’d built with Blue over decades because she couldn’t stop herself from falling for him. She was mad as hell that their love swept over them and consumed her and left her so powerless and changed. Ironic that she’d fought so hard not to be taken over by their love but had opened the door and invited her anger in, and in the end it had done the same thing. Made her less herself, less free.
She had been mad at everyone and everything, but never at Cass. Never, for an instant, at Cass. Now, sitting on the floor in Cass’s rooms surrounded by the tacky glittery crap Hannah had always loved so much, her body didn’t have room for any more rage. She was going to have to give some of it up. She wanted to refuse to process anything Levi had told her, because she didn’t know who she was if Cass wasn’t her savior, but she knew in her heart she needed to let go of her anger at Blue or it was going to kill her.
He’d left because he had to, and she’d stayed because she had to, and they’d cut each other to ribbons trying to escape the hurt of that inevitability, but neither of them had been wrong.
She’d held on to this anger, fed it so she could get through, but now she had to work with him, had to do the most important event of her career by his side, so she needed to find some measure of peace.
Maybe these dates were a good thing, for more than just the divorce at the end of the tunnel. Maybe she could learn how to be around him again, without spinning out every time. Find some closure, so when he went away again, he wouldn’t take any of her with him this time.
Stop being mad at Levi without getting back together, she wrote in the Notes app of her phone.And dust under Cass’s bed.
The Davenport team blew in like a monsoon the morning before the engagement party, sudden and inescapable. Wedding planner, photographer, governor’s social media manager, mother of the bride, several people whose jobs Hannah had not caught. All of them were arrayed in the kitchen, talking to Blue about the menu for the next day.
The warm delft blue of the kitchen glowed in the yellow light, and Levi looked…damn it, he looked perfect. He had that “haunted misfit fundamentally unable to make good choices” look, the kind of misunderstood antihero who made people contort themselves into pretzels to redeem him.She wanted to vomit.
He was standing behind the island, a towel over his shoulder and an apron around his waist, talking animatedly to the wedding planner about hollandaise, which he’d been trying for a decade to convince anyone who would listen was about to have a comeback. She could recite his hollandaise TED Talk from memory. His hair was defying gravity, reaching upward toward the sky in a way that seemed structurally unsound. His beard was trimmed neatly in contrast, and something about that contrast was annoyingly appealing. Everyone in the inn who liked men, at all, was making heart eyes at him and sighing under their breath while hanging on his every word.
This is what’s waiting for him in the world, she thought. He can’t stay cooped up here, where he’s known, once the adulation leaves. He’ll go where he’s adored instead. What would stop him?Not boring me with my day planners and spreadsheets and clipboard.Not the type A hometown girl who knows him inside out.Who’s always so fucking difficult. Who can’t make her feet leave this damn hotel, even if she wanted to.
Which she did want to. Shewantedto be able to go to all the places he’d been, as an adult, able to make her own agenda and see the things she wanted to see. She wanted to choose where she was, instead of letting her anxiety choose for her. And she was getting there, slowly, with her therapist and medication. She could get farther afield now than she could a year ago. Partly because Cass was gone, so the catastrophe her anxiety was trying to prevent had already happened—her staying hadn’t prevented the worst, and somehow that had loosened her ties a little. But not fast enough for Levi. Not fast enough to let her go with him when he inevitably left this time.
She wanted to snarl at all of them, tell them he was taken, not just married but claimed in a way almost no one ever got to be, belonged to her in ways they wouldn’t even begin to understand. It defied logic, and common sense, but some not-small part of her wanted to yell at all of them to get out of her inn and stop flirting with her hot husband.
“This is the most I’ve ever liked him,” Noelle said, coming up next to her. She looked at her best friend, surprised.
“Aren’t you mad at me?”
“Yeah, I’m pissed as hell, but I’m not going to give you the silent treatment. I’m not a child,” Noelle huffed.
“Or the Noelle of six months ago who totally gave Miriam the silent treatment?” Hannah pointed out.
Noelle shoved her hands in her pockets and scowled. Oh, her best friend was so very much like her husband.
“This”—Hannah gestured at Levi—“is, like, everything you hate about him times eleven.”
“Nah, he’s brooding seriously, but it’s because he’s actually seriously passionate about food, which is kind of refreshing.” She waved at where he was flipping a frying pan in his hand, like a pitcher tossing a ball up. “He’s not being manipulative or whiny. He’s comfortable in his skin instead of trying so hard it makes my skin itch. Also, he talks to everyone…like they’re people. I’ve never noticed that before.”
“What are you talking about?” Hannah asked, surprised out of her reverie. “How else would he talk to them?”
“I mean, he doesn’t talk to women differently than he talks to men. He doesn’t talk to production assistants differently from directors. I can’t figure out…”Noelle cocked her head, watching him. “He actually speaks to everyone as his equal. It’s making me reevaluate my life and I hate it.”
