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“You left me. Why take this piece of me with you?” I don’t get it. As far as I knew, he cut all ties with me. He told me straight up the night he left that he’d never see me again. He meant it. Only the ghost of him was left to haunt me, and haunt me it did.
He straightens his spine and hovers over me, the heat from his body a sweltering furnace of acrimony.
“I let you go,” I snap. “I didn’t try to chase you, and I never planned to change your mind because I knew I’d never be someone you’d miss. So why’d you do this?” Everything about us was tragic from the start. I thought my love would be strong enough to help, to cure, and to fix. But it wasn’t, and when I told him I loved him and saw his reaction, I knew no matter how much I loved him, it would never be enough to make him love me back or get him to stay.
But this? I didn’t expect this.
And maybe I’m making too big of a deal about it. Maybe it is simply that he liked the design and nothing more. Only it’s everything, down to the smallest detail. He could have designed a house similar to what I showed him, but he didn’t. He built my dream house, and if I don’t know why… if he doesn’t tell me that I at least meant something to him back then, I might go insane.
I growl out in frustration when he still doesn’t tell me, and I decide maybe he’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t know his answers or dig into his mind. What difference will it make? The outcome will remain the same. Only I’m still about to go insane over this, and I need distance. Now.
I plow past him, jabbing my shoulder into his arm as I do.
“Do you need me to show you which room is yours?”
“I designed the fucking house, Lenox. I know my way around.” I start to storm up the stairs, only to stop when I reach the top, needing to say this now because I never got the chance, and if I don’t tell him, I’ll burst with it. “I didn’t need you to love me back. I just needed to know I was more than a warm body to you, and when you left, you made me feel disposable. That’s what hurt the most. It wasn’t even that you didn’t love me back. It was that I was nothing to you. Two years, and I was nothing.”
“You weren’t nothing, and you weren’t disposable to me.”
I laugh bitterly, tears stinging my eyes, and I hate him for them. I hate that even after six years apart, he can still make me cry.
“No? You sure fooled me.” I flip around and stare down at him from above. “If I wasn’t, then what was I to you? Just tell me that. Even if you tell me nothing else and we go back to hating each other or simply co-existing like two strangers in this house, just tell me that.”
Woodenly, he stares up at me, and I watch the inner debate unfold across his face. “I wanted to build you your dream house. Even if I didn’t think you’d ever get to see it.”
With that, he walks off toward that room with the touchpad door, and for a few minutes, I just stand here, his words ruminating around my brain like they’re trying to set up a permanent residence. I wanted to build you your dream house. Even if I didn’t think you’d ever get to see it. Fucker was right. What good did that answer do me? All it did was poke at the scars he left behind, and I won’t allow those wounds to be reopened.
Shaking that off, I look around the second floor. God, this place is massive. Far, far too big for one man. Especially a man like Lenox, who strikes me as the keeps-to-small-places type. I designed it so that the master sat in the largest room, taking up the entire space over the garage, and so I go in the opposite direction, tracking all the way down the hall to the last bedroom.
There are a lot of windows in here. The one straight ahead of me has a view into the woods, and the ones on my right comprises a wall of glass overlooking the lake. The room itself is minimal, with a king-sized bed, two nightstands, and a long cobalt blue settee in front of the bank of windows that overlooks the lake. It’s absolutely stunning, and I feel a pinch in my heart that I wish would just up and die already.
I try not to think about what he just said, and I certainly don’t allow myself to analyze it. Instead, I go into the massive marble bathroom and take a very long shower. By the time I come out, my things are in my room, my laptop bag on the bed, and my suitcase in the walk-in closet. He waited till he heard the shower to do all that for me. So avoiding each other is going to be the name of our game, and it’s finally one I’m down for playing with him.
I set myself up as best as I can in here, and eventually when my stomach starts to grumble, I go downstairs to find the door to what I presume to be his office shut.
Perfect.
Alice comes trotting up to me as I start to explore my way through the fridge, pantry, and cabinets and find not a whole lot. “Ugh. Men. They never have the necessary staples, do they? If we’re going to be friends, you have to alert me when your master comes out of his Batcave. I realize that might be childish, and I know he’s your people, but I don’t care. Deal?”
She gives me a sniff and a nudge at my leg that I take as a blood oath.
“Good stuff. We can chill then.” I rub the top of her head, and she nuzzles into me.
I make myself an omelet for lunch and eat it at the counter by myself, scrolling through my phone. I have a feeling this is going to be my life for the foreseeable future, and I realize I’m okay with that. I don’t need company. I can do this new life and find my own path on my own.
Even without the man who says he built this house for me, all the while thinking I’d never see it.
Chapter Eighteen
I’ll admit, he’s better than I gave him credit for. My eyes scan my bottom right monitor, watching as either he or someone he’s hired strike commands on the dummy phone I created for them to hack while I spin the red rose between my hands. They’re weeding through my email, but the only ones they’ll find are shop-related ones. Purchasing orders, website updates, and customer inquiries. Yawn.
I lean back in my chair, stare at the rose in my hands, and then twist my left wrist until I see the new matching rose tattoo my wedding band will sit over after it’s healed. My breath quickens every time I look at it.
You are deserving, Lenox Moore. Every bit as much as Zax was, if not more. If you love Georgia, which I suspect you do since you look at her like she’s your universe, then don’t let that go simply because you didn’t do right by her once. Don’t stand in your own way when you can have everything.
Even when this ends, she’s permanent to me. I know that now. She always was.
She’s my beauty, and I’m her beast.
