Chapter 31

Swirling the ice in his glass, Adrian watches as the cubes move from side to side and melt into one another. One water droplet plops from each surface to the next until it finally disappears into the shallow amber liquid at the bottom. He’s taken to drinking Scotch on the flight to pass the time, since bouncing his knee grew old within the first fifteen minutes.

He can feel the first stages of love overwhelming his cells, taking down one organ after the next until he has no choice but to succumb to crazy and desperate lengths to get his fix. He’d cut short a meeting with one of his biggest regular investors, and headed straight for the airport to fly back just to see the woman he loves when he could no longer contain his desire to swaddle himself in her presence and never unwrap.

Never would he have imagined preferring anything over the life he’d made for himself. It had worked fine for him for a very long time. In fact, after everything that happened with Mia, he was convinced that that was as good as it got. But Beth came along, and he realized his life could in fact get better. Worlds better.

Now, he’s found someone who makes him anticipate each day, whose company he craves, someone who makes him feel like he’s actually living. He wants his days to start and end with her, and he wants the privilege to have even more of her in the middle.

Put simply, he’s in love.

It began when he first met her, the first spark igniting at the moment he first saw her at that coffee shop. Since then, it has remained constant, growing and brightening, refusing to take a shape that could be identified, but always strengthening in intensity.

Realizing this last night had solidified his resolve to finally face Mia.

He spent years running away, afraid to deal with his biggest regret and greatest loss. He ran from Mia, but he had never abandoned her entirely. He’d financed her treatment. The best mental health and rehabilitation care that money could buy. She’d been treated by the most renowned doctors in the world, and she’d been a resident at the best facility he could find. And as the years passed, she’d healed and was just a few months away from receiving a clean bill of health from her doctors.

But none of that could ease his guilt. Nor hers. She’d said so in the letters she sent. There were hundreds of them, but he could only get himself to read a handful. Still, he’d kept them all.

That’s the last thing he has to take care of.

He’s taken care of the most important step—talking to her, after years of refusing numerous invitations from her doctors. He’d sat with her and told her he was sorry. Sorry he hadn’t done more. Sorry he hadn’t see the depth of what she was going through. And sorry he’d abandoned her for all those years.

Then he told her that he’s fallen in love and was ready to heal, to move on. He told her he wished the same for her, that he wanted her to stop hating herself and to work toward finding peace and stop writing letters to him.

Walking out of her room, he felt an unfamiliar sense of peace. She was gone from his life, and there was a freedom with that knowledge that he hadn’t expected. Like a long-growing tumour had been removed and, with Beth, he could finally begin the process of healing.

It’s time for him to move on, time to stop starting and ending his day with the memories that would forever haunt him, and time to start making new ones—ones filled with happiness.

“Sir?”

He looks up to find the flight attendant holding out a tray with another Scotch.

“Thank you.” He places his empty glass on the tray and takes the new one. “How much longer?” Adrian asks as she’s about to leave.

“A little over two hours,” she answers with a polite smile even though he’s asked the same question at least five times already.

Two hours. Two more hours before he can see Beth’s beautiful smile again.

There’s only one solution to his predicament…

A nap.

Determined, he sinks into his seat, reclines the back, and forces his eyes closed. He pictures her smile and her hair. How beautiful she'd looked sleeping, her lips slightly parted as she lay on her side in his bed. She looked so fucking perfect and peaceful he’d felt like he could watch her forever.

He wakes hours after drifting off into a nap to the jolt of the wheels of the plane meeting the pavement of the runway. The flight attendant smiles and waves as his eyes meet hers, and she mouths "we’re here.”

He pulls his seat back upright and grabs his phone from the cup holder. No messages show on the screen, so he unlocks it to be sure, but no amount of hope can make the status change. Nothing.

He makes his way to the front of the plane, his heart nearly bursting in anticipation. “Thanks,” he says, giving the flight attendant a genuine smile as she steps to the side of the main cabin door to let him by.

He walks down the stairs to a waiting Ivan holding an open door and wearing a smile.

“Mr. Dane.”

“Hey, Ivan,” he greets. “Straight home, okay?” He’s brimming with excitement. He can’t wait to see her face.

“Yes, sir.”

Settled in the back seat of the car, he scrolls to her number and dials. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he knows he’s one short step away from throwing himself off the proverbial ledge.

He sends a text. Several. They all go through, but remain unread and unanswered.

He prides himself on being a smart man, and something doesn’t feel right. But he quiets his thoughts with the power of sheer will and unbuckles his seat belt as they pull to a stop in front of his house. She’s become the motivation behind his new top priority in life: No matter what, keep her happy.

That’s the new goal, and it’s a lofty one. But he’s known to work his ass off for something he truly wants. And plain and simple, she’s what he wants.

****

The first thing he notices when he walks into his house is the quiet. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock is the only sound stretching across the expanse of his four thousand-square-foot condo.

He walks into the bedroom and flicks on the light. “Beth?”

The sheets on his bed are rumpled but otherwise, there’s no sign of her. He wanders around the house in search of her but comes up empty. Then he notices the door to the library. It’s slightly cracked open and when he walks in, the standing lamp in the corner of the room illuminates the immediate surrounding space softly.

His eyebrows pull together at the sight, but he doesn’t slow his gait, striding for the beckoning light. The couch beside the lamp is clear except for a loose sheet of paper inconspicuously tucked into a crack in the couch.

“No,” he mutters when he realizes what he’s looking at. The letter he’d started writing to send to Mia. He’d never completed it, never got to the part where he’d intended to mention that he’d found someone and needed to move on.

Beth must have seen the letters Mia had sent to him too.

How did she somehow find the last thing he wanted her to see? It feels like some kind of bad karma.

More than three hundred envelopes had to have come and gone since Mia got admitted. He’d had the power to stop them at any time, yet he never did—and now he isn’t sure why. Maybe he wanted the daily reminder as part of his punishment. Maybe he’s just so fucked in the head, he’s afraid he wouldn’t think about the child he lost without the constant reminder of the letter. He doesn’t know. But whatever the reason, today is the day it comes to an end.

He jumps into action, pulling his phone from the pocket of his pants and considering all the ways he can fix it. He’s a fixer, a problem solver. He can fix this.

He fights the tightness in his throat, but it’s potent in a way he isn’t prepared for. He opens his text messages and types out several drafts. None of them are good enough. No words powerful enough to explain.

He tries his luck and calls again. It goes to her voicemail.

He runs his hands through his hair and dials Amy’s number.

“Good Morning, Mr.–”

“Amy, I need to know if Ms. Parsons is at the office.”

She hesitates before answering. “Uh… I’ll have to find out from Martha.”

“Find out.”

She isn’t used to him shouting, but she sure as hell doesn’t question it. He hears a gentle thud like she’s just dropped her phone, then the muffled sound of her speaking to someone else.

After a minute that feels like ten, she says clearly into the phone, “She’s not, sir.”

His heart clenches. “Thanks, Amy. Please call me if there’s any update.”

He hangs up and heads for the last possible option—her apartment.

The only word that keeps repeating in his head now is 'please.'

Please don’t let me lose this. Please don’t let me lose her.