I bolted for the east wing, heart slamming against my ribs. What if someone else had got to those letters before Chrissy? What if she never got to read them?
The hallway was a disaster with pictures knocked crooked on the walls, and a side table overturned with its lamp smashed. The study door was pried open, frame splintered like it’d been shouldered in.
Inside, dust motes danced in the dying light, the room reeking of old books and violation. Desk drawers yanked out, papers scattered like fallen leaves. Books pulled from shelves, spines cracked open as if someone had rifled through for hidden compartments. My breath came short.
If the letters were gone?—
There. On the blotter, weighed down by the brass paperweight was a folded sheet of paper. I rushed over to it and snatched it up, unfolding it with shaking hands, taking in Chrissy’s neat, familiar handwriting.
Ben, Henry?—
I came back. I found the letters. I read them. All of them.
I don’t know where you are or what’s happening with Lucia, but I’m worried. About her. About both of you. Please be safe.
I’m not ready to forgive everything yet. I don’t know if I ever will be. But I needed you to know I heard you… really heard you.
If you get this, please find a way to let me know you’re okay.
—Chrissy
The words hit me like a lifeline in a storm. She’d come and read every raw line I’d poured out in my letter. She was worried for Lucia, for Henry, and for me. I hadn’t expected that, but I should have, knowing the way she always put others before herself. She wasn’t sure she could offer me full forgiveness, but it felt like an opening anyway. It was a chance, and a chance was far more than I’d expected to have with her after she’d told me that she never wanted to see me again.
My chest tightened, hope clawing up through the regret. She heard me. That was more than I deserved.
I fumbled for my phone, pulling up her number, the one I’d memorized from the files I should’ve burned years ago… files I never should have compiled in the first place, if I was being honest. It rang once, then straight to voicemail, her voice bright and steady: “This is Chrissy. Leave a message.”
Did her phone service block unknown numbers? Did she have an app filtering her calls? Or was it just bad luck that the call went straight to voicemail? Whatever the reason, it twisted the knife deeper.
She needed to know Lucia was safe, tucked away with Henry, and that we were okay. But a voicemail wouldn’t cut it, not after everything I’d done. She deserved to hear it from me, face to face. I pocketed the note, my mind racing. The lodge felt smaller now, somehow suffocating with the wreckage staring back at me. I had to do more than call, more than write. I had to show her I was all in.
One of the contestants — I couldn’t remember her number — had griped about the overgrown rose garden out back during the Game, calling it a ‘tangled eyesore’ that ruined the property’s ‘aesthetic’. I’d dismissed it then, too wrapped up in my own schemes to care. Now, though? It sparked an idea.
Roses were wild, thorny, and beautiful, just like Chrissy. They could hurt or heal, much like the love I’d hidden behind my lies and surveillance. I needed to make a grand gesture, not just give Chrissy words on paper. What if I filled her world with roses? What if I showed her I was willing to bleed for this, over and over again, as much as it took to make things right between us?
I grabbed pruning shears from the garden shed, the metal cold and heavy in my grip. Somehow, the roses were still blooming, even after the ice storm, almost like magic. Logically, I knew that one of the groundskeepers or landscaping staff had likely covered them and used heat lamps on them, probably on Henry’s orders, to keep the ice storm from killing them.
The jungle that had once been my mother’s favorite rose garden, her domain when father came up here to hunt, was a riot of vines twisted over trellises long since rotted, blooms spilling wild in red, pink, white, their scents thick and heady in the damp air. Thorns snagged my gloves as I cut, pricking through to draw pinpricks of blood. Fitting, really, that each stem was a reminder of the pain I’d caused her. I worked methodically, ignoring the fire in my ribs, filling crate after crate until the truck bed overflowed with vases I’d snagged out of the greenhouse, all filled with roses. Red for the passion I’d buried underneath my need for control. Pink for the admiration she’d earned without even trying. White for the clean slate I wanted to beg her for.
Sweat soaked my shirt despite the chill in the air, the roses’ thorns leaving scratches on my arms like penance. This wasn’t just flowers. It was me, raw and exposed, harvesting from the place where I’d schemed to win her. Where I’d almost lost her forever.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I wiped blood on my jeans and answered.
“Stonewood.”
My house manager, Harris’s, voice crackled through the line, crisp and efficient as ever.
“Sir, I’m just reaching out to confirm the estate preparations at Ashgrove. The house has been deep-cleaned, renovated where necessary, and is move-in ready. The solarium is also wedding-ready… if needed, and the officiant is on standby through the twenty-fourth.”
I leaned against the truck, catching my breath.
“Make sure he stays on standby, but I feel like I should warn you. Everything’s still up in the air.”
A subtle pause, like he was noting every word.
“Understood, sir. May I ask the nature of the uncertainty? For planning purposes, of course.”
I hesitated, thorns digging into my palm as I gripped a stem too tight. No way I’d breathe a word to anyone about the killings in the barn. Only Henry knew that secret, and he’d help me keep it buried deep. But the rest...
