"I'm sorry." His voice is low and stripped, nothing smooth about it. Just the thing itself. "I'm so sorry."
"I know you are." I look at him steadily. "But knowing it doesn't make it hurt less."
His head drops.
I hate that. I hate that he is suffering.
"I'm not here because it stopped hurting," I say. "I'm here in spite of the fact that it still does."
I take a breath.
"I've had a lot of time to think. To go back over things." I look at Carter. He's watching me carefully, waiting. "About what yousaid to me once. That the worst thing that happened to you was also the best thing."
He nods, once.
"I can say the same." The tears are starting and I don't try to stop them.
Carter takes a step closer and begs with a pained look “Sienna, please don’t cry”
But I just let my tears fall freely. I am done hiding my emotions.
"Without knowing, you gave me the best gift. Freedom from an impossible situation."
I look at all three of them. "That doesn't make what you did right. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that when I look back, I don’t do it with regret or pain. And I want to be able to keep saying that."
I turn to William. He's been watching me the whole time. The house is at my back, and I know what it takes for him to be standing in this driveway.
"I know how much it cost you to come back here," I tell him.
He says nothing and just holds my eyes.
"I have something to show you," and I make a gesture for them to follow me to the back of the house.
The path runs along the side of the house. I lead them down it with my eyes on the grass and the overgrown beds.
When we come out into the back garden I stop and turn around.
I watch them see it.
The backhoe first, parked at the far end of the lawn. Then the piles of materials stacked along the garden wall. And then the crane, enormous and yellow and completely wrong against the old pale stone, the wrecking ball hanging still and heavy at its end.
"The reason I wanted this property so badly was because of the land." I look at the old trees at the far boundary, the space. "I have a partnership with Greenhaven. We're going to expand here. Make their program available to more people." I let that sink in. "I wanted the property, not the house itself."
"And you were right." I look at William. "It's better to level it down. Clean slate. Start new."
My voice isn't steady and I've stopped trying to make it that way. "And I hope we can do that too. Clean slate. Start fresh. No lies. No secrets."
I take the final leap. My pulse is loud. Deep breath in.
"I love you."
The words are barely out of my mouth and Adrian is kissing me. Passionate. Heated. The kiss is urgent and unsteady, I can feel how much he's been holding back, how long, and he pulls away just enough to say "I love you so much" against my lips.
His voice is wrecked, raw all the way down, and I feel every word of it.
Then Carter's hands on my arms, drawing me toward him. He doesn't rush. He tips my chin up and looks at me first, takes a real moment, eyes on mine and staying there. When he says my name it's barely a sound at all. "Sienna." Just that. And then he kisses me and it's slow and solid, and something in my chest that has been braced for a long time releases by one degree, then another, then another.
Then William.
