“Oh no.” I’d gone through several of my boxes the night after I’d found out Adeline was back in town and they were right out in the open now.
She looked over immediately. “What?”
“My embarrassing youth.”
“It wasn’t that embarrassing,” she said, smiling. “I was there, remember?” Her grin widened as she crouched beside one of the boxes. “You were the best at most things and the captain of everything else. Maybe you peaked early, Mr. Westwood.”
I grinned at her. “Just for that, I’m leaving you in the attic.”
“You brought me here willingly, andyoupointed these out to me.” She laughed as she dug through the boxes, finding our old yearbooks, trophies, and college textbooks. “I can’t believe you kept all this.”
“To be honest, I forgot it even existed for a long time.”
She finally sat back on her heels and brushed dust off her hands. “Why didn’t you ever get your own place after the apartment?”
The question caught me off guard. The truth was bitter on my tongue as it came out. “I moved back in here not long after we broke up. Theo had just graduated college and he was kind of going through a rough patch.”
“He was?”
I shrugged. “He was floundering pretty badly. I figured it made sense to stay close to him.”
All of which was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The other part, the real reason I’d moved out of that apartment and had come back home was sitting in the dust ten feet away from me, her hair backlit by a shaft of dusty sunlight.
Back then, after she’d married Louis, I’d suddenly felt completely untethered. I’d built so much of my future around her that when she was ripped away from me, I genuinely hadn’t known what would come next.
I didn’t say it out loud, but the thought lingered as I watched her move. Her gaze swept across not only the art but also the remnants of the life my family had once had. Having her see that was easier than admitting that living at home had been a lot less tricky than moving forward.
Nothing had really stuck after she’d moved away. None of the relationships I’d tried had lasted long enough to have even earned the title. None of my thoughts of buying a place somewhere in the city had materialized. The full, ugly, hard truth of it was that some part of me had stayed exactly where she’d left it.
Before I could stop myself from asking, the question I’d wondered about a lot more often than I’d ever admit finally came out. “Do you ever wonder what things would’ve been like if you hadn’t married Louis?”
She chuckled softly. “Literally every day.”
My heart attempted to punch through my ribcage like an idiot when she smiled at me like she used to. It was a smile that had always felt private, like it was only for me. I almost said it then. I came so close to just telling her how I felt.
In fact, I almost told her everything—that I’d thought about her every day for eight years and that no woman had ever come close. That the reason I never moved out of the Manor wasn’t because Theo needed me but because every future I pictured without her in it felt wrong.
But even after the sex and all this time we’d spent together again, I wasn’t sure how she would react, so I kept my mouth shut like a coward. Things were so fucking unsteady between us right now that I knew if I rocked the boat too hard—like by baring my soul to her, for example—it would tip right over.
Again.
“We should probably get out of here before the ceiling collapses and crushes us beneath several million dollars’ worth of neglected art.”
She looked over at me again, clearly amused. “That would be a very Westwood way to die.”
“Well, yeah. It would be tragic but tax deductible.”
She laughed and followed me back downstairs. By the time we reached the second floor, she’d slipped into work mode, talking me through auction houses and museums with an ease I hadn’t seen from her in years. There was a definite energy in her now, the kind of confidence I’d thought she’d lost.
“I can start cataloging on Monday,” she said as we descended the grand staircase. “If you want to sell, I have a few auction contacts who’d lose their minds over some of these pieces, but honestly? Local museums would probably be interested in showcasing part of the collection too.”
I stopped her halfway down the stairs and she paused a few steps below me, looking back over her shoulder after I’d tapped it. I wasn’t sure what I’d intended to say, though. There had been something, but when her gaze met mine, it flew right out of my head.
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly.
I frowned. “For what?”
“For freaking out when Lu went missing.” She held my gaze intently. “She scared me so badly, Zach. I just…” She trailed off for a beat, giving her head a sharp shake before speaking again. “I feel like I keep ruining the girls’ lives. Every decision I make somehow hurts them and I shouldn’t have taken everything out on you that night.”
