After brushing her teeth with the provided toothbrush and paste and deciding that hospital lighting did awful things to a woman’s skin, she practically ran to him. The gripper socks didn’t grip as well as she would have liked. And they were ugly ducky yellow. And she didn’t care, because her heart sang with the knowledge that he would soon be close enough to touch.
She scrubbed her hands over her face to try and look awake, maybe even bright-eyed, for Adam. She’d hardly slept at all for the last two nights, so she knew she wasn’t dreaming. But when she saw Adam standing in the lobby, his hands in his pockets and his chin down, she thought she might be. The fact that this man, this brooding billionaire, was here for her was overwhelming.
Adam’s head came up at her sigh, his blue eyes troubled. “How are you?”
She sighed heavily, the weight of the world on her shoulders made lighter just because he was there. “I’m hanging in there.” She was about to fall into him, but chickened out at the last second because he hadn’t moved towards her. Her head pounded, trying to figure out what that meant. “What are you doing here?” she asked, giving him the perfect opening to tell her that he’d come for her, that he was there to hold her hand while she stared at beeping monitors and fought an exhaustion headache.
“I brought you a bag. Your textbooks are in there. I thought while you were here, you could study.”
Study. Change clothes. The gold dress hung in the bathroom and the mint-green scrubs were wrinkled.
She hadn’t even noticed the bag at his feet until he grabbed the strap and handed it to her. The weight of it was too much to add to her burden, so she let it drop to the ground with a thud. Every book she owned must be in that bag. Which meant he’d cleaned her out of his personal study. The thought was stark and cold, calculating, and in strong contrast to when he’d held her in his arms and pressed his lips to her skin. She’d felt cherished, like she was more than she’d ever been before simply by being herself. She wanted him to reach for her now, to pull her close, but his hands stayed out of sight.
She’d always been the one to initiate physical contact with Charles. Always—unless he wanted to make out. So she held back, because what she’d told Adam on the beach that day, about deserving better, meant she had to wait for him to make the first move.
He glanced around the empty room, his eyes never lingering on one thing for long. Bella didn’t blame him; the washed-out watercolor on the wall was depressing, and the fake plant on the coffee table had seen better days. The chipped furniture wasn’t inviting. Nothing about this room said “Rest from your troubles.”
Awkwardness filled the silence, and Bella shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “How are things?”
Adam bobbed his head. “Phase I is done.”
He said the words simply, easily, but they hit her with the weight of a sledgehammer. “Done? But the Bolt brothers weren’t due to move in until …” She trailed off, not really sure what the date was anymore. Jetton Bolt was supposed to move in with his three children, and Dexter Bolt … she sort of remembered an extension on his contract. Her head said it had only been a few days since she’d arrived at the hospital, maybe three or four? But her body said it’d been a month.
“Everyone’s in.” He shifted his feet. “And I had dinner with the head of the zoning commission last night. Phase II is a go.”
Bella studied him. His face was clean shaven, his hair shorter than it had been for the ball. And there was an air of detached coolness she hadn’t seen since the first day. He looked more like the Beast than her Adam at the moment.
The cogs in her mind began to turn. He must have finished the last of the walk-ins, gotten the signatures from the occupants before the moving trucks arrived, and he’d finished the project while she was here. Which meant … she was officially fired. Was that why he was being so cold? Because he had to fire her? “Why are you here?” she asked in a low voice, one she didn’t quite recognize. She rubbed her temples. The lack of sleep was making her cranky. Adam was the last person she should be taking her orneriness out on.
As she stood there watching him in all his perfectness, she realized that she had nothing to give him. Nothing. She didn’t have a trust fund—not that she felt Adam was that preoccupied with money. But still, if she listed Adam’s finances on one side of a page and hers on the other, the visual would be enough to know out right that they didn’t match.
And then there was his reputation as a lawyer. Adam was Seattle’s, if not America’s, best lawyer. He was the kind of lawyer that the White House called to consult with on a monthly basis.
And she hadn’t passed the bar yet.
Sure, being his student was amazing. She’d learned more in the time she’d spent with him in the library than she had in her time at university. But then again, that showed how much she lacked in comparison.
Adam ate dinner with politicians and movie stars. She ate yogurt from the plastic container and drank soda from a can.
They’d been in this little bubble of paradise where they were the only two people on the planet. With the contract fulfilled, the bubble had burst. She scrubbed her face again, sighing heavily. Doom and gloom seemed to have taken over her thoughts.
If he was surprised by her tone, he didn’t show it. “I came to deliver this.” He held out a long, skinny envelope. The kind that carried checks inside.
She eyed it warily. “What’s that?”
“Your father’s payment on the contract. The Cove was completed on time, just like he said it would be.”
Bella stared at the envelope. She didn’t want to take it. She wanted to tear it up and throw the pieces in his face. “You came to deliverpayment?” Her mind filled with twenty-three more questions, some which were difficult to put into words as her heart cinched tighter in her chest.
This felt an awful lot like a goodbye. The kind of goodbye that left cuts and tears on your heart.
He nodded. That little nod, the coldness of it, the finality, made something inside of her snap.
“Don’t you have people to do these things for you?” The acid in her voice surprised her, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself back from the edge. She loved Adam, and yet she was striking out at him because, because … because she was afraid that if she didn’t strike first, the Beast would. She snatched the letter from his hands.
His expression didn’t change. “I thought that would take away some of the stress … hospital bills.”
Tears built. All she wanted was for him to hold her, to tell her that life wasn’t fair but they’d face it together. Instead he offered her a slip of paper with a bunch of zeros on it. “Money can’t make things better, Adam. Money won’t drain the fluid from my dad’s lungs. It won’t make him sit up in bed and talk to me. You can’t just build a sandcastle and expect the world to right itself.” Hot tears fell, splashing against the ugly linoleum tiles at her feet.
