“I hope it works,” she said finally.
“I think it is,” Angel said, then stopped, gaze focused over Belle’s shoulder.
“You hope what works?” Lyons’s voice came from behind her and sent her heart pounding. From surprise, she rationalized, as he’d only caught her saying things he already knew.
But having your quasi-boyfriend stumble over you talking about him when he’d just quarreled with his brother? Reason to be nervous.
She tried to act normal, rising to greet him. “Hey, is everything okay?”
His arms were crossed, and his eyes had steeled, grown as cold as they had been when he’d stared down the hockey player.
“I asked you a question. You hope what works?” His voice was almost one tone, low and precisely spoken. He yelled when he was angry, but when he got really quiet, it was time to worry.
She replayed their conversation in her head, and, based on when Angel had gone quiet, it hadn’t been long he’d been there. He’d only caught the end. But taken out of context You wanted to change him and I hope it works sounded mercenary, or at the very least manipulative.
She rounded the table to get closer, wind this back before it got out of control. If she could touch him, he’d feel it; he always felt it. Maybe touch could get through whatever this anger was about, the remnants of his fight with Wolfe?
Phrase it better.
“I hoped the gifts and connection to someone would help you feel happier.” At a foot or so away, she reached for him, but he stepped back from her.
“That’s not what you meant.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “‘I hope it works’ means you had a plan. And you’re comfortable enough that I’m falling for it to openly discuss it where I might hear you.”
This wasn’t just anger with Wolfe spilling over. What else was it?
She froze where she stood, not wanting to exacerbate the situation. He’d been in a good mood from when they’d woken up, throughout the long drive, and even when he and Wolfe had gone to ride. Now, his teeth gritted, he was struggling to contain himself. That was more than simple anger.
“What happened in the barn?” she asked, the conversation landscape shifting sands.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Lyons, you came in at the tail end of a conversation,” Angel said, trying to help. “We were talking about how she wanted to help you feel happier with the gifts.”
“Stay out of this, Conley,” he shouted, suddenly, which seemed like a step down in his anger. Anger meant shouting; rage was quiet. “Unless you two are partners in some marriage and money scheme.”
His voice must have carried, because before either Belle or Angel could respond, Wolfe’s door slammed, and his running feet stayed the conversation.
In only a moment, he was there. “What’s going on?”
“Your girlfriend and Sabetta have a scheme going on. I told you. I told you. No one is that selfless. You’re just love-blind and can’t see what’s right in front of you. I should’ve just let Mother have at you, maybe it would’ve opened your damned eyes.”
Wolfe looked at Angel, his expression showing his conflict, placed in the middle.
Angel gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, and the tiniest shrug. The very next second, Wolfe was at her side. And Belle couldn’t miss the difference between their relationships.
Wolfe and Angel stuck together, but Lyons didn’t even want her touching him. A tiny shake of Angel’s head was enough for Wolfe to rally to her side.
Lyons didn’t trust her at all, and it couldn’t be all about that snippet of conversation. What else had she done?
“Maybe we should talk about this later, when you’ve had a minute...” It was the last tactic she had to defuse the situation.
“Plotting, scheming, faking feelings, did you make up Noelle too?”
His words dropped like an anvil through her insides, plowing warmth and tender feelings right out of her.
“Make up Noelle?” she repeated, but saying the words didn’t make sense of them.
The flick of his eyebrows challenged her, dared her to deny it, as if he had just scored some win against her.
The incredulity she’d felt faded, and the hollow place left in her chest filled with fire, and her palm began to burn as if she’d just slapped him. She wanted to slap him.
“What did you just say to me?” she shouted, launching forward to slam her palms into his shoulders, shoving roughly. Everything that might have happened today didn’t matter, she’d just run out of a willingness to bend or give him the benefit of the doubt, when he could say that to her.
For some reason, he didn’t shout back. He also didn’t move away, outside the half step back her shove demanded. He just watched her with that cold indifference that drove her over the edge. He had everything, and he didn’t care. Wolfe. Angel. Her. He didn’t love any of them. He used her sister as a weapon to hurt her, and it did.
But the fury she’d prayed for Noelle to send her yesterday finally came. And tears. And screaming.
He wanted to use Noelle’s death to hurt her? She’d let him see it.
“She was everything to me and I lost her. I’d do anything to have her back, including whatever you think this is. All I’ve been doing is trying to show you love, but you’re dead inside. You don’t have many people who love you, and you should know better than anyone how fleeting life is. You could lose him tomorrow.” She jabbed her finger in Wolfe’s direction. “But you still don’t even try to be a brother to him.”
Wolfe and Angel were quiet, ghosts haunting the kitchen. Not that they could say anything that would matter to Lyons or stop her.
This man who she thought she loved, who she’d been fighting for, thought so little of her that in a moment of paranoia he didn’t even hesitate to use the biggest weapon she’d given him.
She shoved at his chest again, as hard as she could, his silence screaming back at her.
“Say something! Why don’t you ask Wolfe what it’s like to hear your brother might die?”
She shoved again, plowing him backward, step by step, into the great room.
“Ask him what it’s like to live for the low, regular beeps of the heart monitor. To be afraid to blink because if you look away, it might stop.”
Another shove, but it didn’t help. It wasn’t helping, it wasn’t enough.
“Give up sleeping, and eating, and bathing for over a week while your sister is dying because no one, especially not her, should die alone.”
“Belle...” He finally spoke, his voice soft, not just quiet, and through her water-filled eyes he looked shocked.
She shoved again, he staggered back, several steps this time, and out of her way.
“You know what I want from you? Nothing. I want nothing from you.” She let it out, too far gone to care. “I was wrong and stupid to hope—it’s too late for you.”
He didn’t say anything else, and she was out of words too.
Back toward the kitchen, Wolfe and Angel hovered. “What room did he pick? Where’s my bag?”
Her voice rasped, her throat raw, and all strength just gone.
“Upstairs. First on the right,” Wolfe answered, giving her a destination for the out she desperately needed.
Belle took the stairs as quickly as she could, making a point not to look at Lyons.
She heard Angel say something behind her but couldn’t make out words above the blood rushing in her ears. When she reached the upper floor, Angel was beside her and took Belle’s hand, offering silent support and leading her to the right room.
“I can’t stay,” Belle croaked as they stepped inside. “I’m sorry. We’re ruining your Christmas. I can’t stay.”
Angel grabbed Belle in a quick, hard hug. “Don’t apologize. And don’t worry about us. This was always a worry with Lyons.�
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Because he had so much rage in him even toward her, and she didn’t know why.
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Angel said. “Or kick Lyons out.”
“I’ll go.” Belle grabbed her bag and swung the strap onto her shoulder, leaving the gifts. She was already crying—much more sympathy would make her fragile internal supports buckle. “Train station? Bus? Airport? I don’t care. Whatever is closest. I just can’t be here anymore.”
* * *
Lyons watched Belle hurtle past him and up the stairs, tears pouring over her cheeks.
The places where her palms had slammed into his chest burned like fresh brands.
She was leaving. Not fighting to stay. None of that had been arguing to stay.
“Come on,” Wolfe said, stepping into his line of sight, and urging him to move. “Let’s have a drink. Don’t just stand and watch her go.”
He listened hard, but whatever she was doing upstairs was quiet. He couldn’t hear moving or talking. But she wouldn’t have to do much to get ready to go. They hadn’t been there long enough to unpack.
“Is she going?” he asked Wolfe because it didn’t seem true, or make much sense. If she was scheming to marry money, wouldn’t she be trying to make up?
His chest burned.
“Angel’s taking her wherever she wants to go,” Wolfe said, then actually nudged him, still speaking gently. “Come on, man, don’t make her walk past you.”
Because she was leaving.
And him standing there, forcing her to go past him to get out, would be another jerk move... That was what Wolfe’s tone said.
He gave in to the nudging and walked back to where all this started. Half-filled cups of tea and a plate of biscuits sat on the table. Lyons sat too, but everything was in slow motion. Even his thoughts didn’t come to him without effort. Without pauses.
Because she was leaving. Because of what he’d said.
Why had he said that?
Wolfe joined him, placing two tumblers on the table and opening a fresh bottle of whiskey.
From the other room, he heard the front door open and close, and stood up.
Wolfe stood too, laying a hand on his shoulder to still him.
“Don’t.” He spoke too gently, with too much sympathy. “She needs time, at least.”
“You think she’ll return?” Lyons sat again but kept watching his little brother’s sad face. “No. You don’t.”
“I don’t,” Wolfe confirmed. “But if there’s any chance, it isn’t now. She won’t be able to hear anything but what you said.”
“I don’t know why I said that,” Lyons mumbled, and the drink suddenly looked very good. Very necessary. He drained his glass in one and looked back to Wolfe, who wasn’t looking back at him in return. Just frowning into his drink. Sad. He was sad.
For him. For what Lyons had just lost.
She’d said he was too far gone. There was no love in him. That wasn’t true. If that was true, he wouldn’t feel acid searing his insides.
Why had he said that?
Because he thought she was lying. Had tricked him. Didn’t truly feel for him, and he wanted her to feel something real.
Because he couldn’t hear the wrongness of it before giving it voice.
God, was he really that big an ass?
Yes.
Ask Wolfe what it’s like to hear your brother might die.
He was the kind of ass who never thought to ask Wolfe what it was like for him when he was shot. What it was like as a surgeon, to wait for his brother’s trauma surgery, knowing too well all the things that could go wrong.
How would he feel if Wolfe were in his ER, life hanging on the skills of another doctor?
Hell.
If he was that selfish, he owed it to her—and to Wolfe—to ask. To talk to him.
Then she might be able to forgive him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ON CHRISTMAS EVE Angel had driven Belle to the nearest railway station to get her back to her apartment.
On Christmas Day, Belle had boarded a plane at La Guardia to take her broken, battered heart home, to Scottsdale.
Although Angel had made sure she understood she still had friends and the support of both her and Wolfe, this was something she needed her sister to help pick up the pieces.
Losing Lyons before she’d dealt with losing her sister had been the event that had forced her to face reality. Reality was she hadn’t grieved, she’d run. It was time to stop running, even if that meant her job wouldn’t wait for her return.
Christmas Day travel was rougher than she’d have expected—airports still clogged with people, inclement weather delaying flights and forcing alternative routes. She saw Atlanta before getting stuck in Chicago for a day until a storm passed. She didn’t make it to Phoenix until late afternoon, the day after Christmas, to pick up her rental car.
Despite the late hour on a winter’s day, she made it to the cemetery and located Noelle’s grave a short distance from Nanna and Dad’s, catching her first sight from a distance of the gravestone she’d bought but fled the state before seeing placed.
Seeing her sister’s name, their shared birthday and the date of Noelle’s death engraved in the polished stone made roots sprout from her feet.
The stone faced the east, and the sun crept lower on the horizon behind it, casting long shadows from the headstones, but, at three graves away, Belle couldn’t make herself approach.
Like Lyons on the first trip to Ramapo, she’d come ninety-five percent of the way, but didn’t have the strength or the will to carry her the last few yards to her destination.
She shoved the thought aside. The last thing she wanted was to have something else in common with him. But that was what had taken her away from Noelle the past eighteen months, putting painful subjects out of her mind because she wasn’t ready to deal.
She really wasn’t ready to deal with Lyons. There was an argument to be made about dealing with one emotionally devastating thing at a time, and not tainting all the emotions tied to the loss of her sister with the loss of him, but Noelle was who she would’ve gone to over her breakup with Lyons.
So, this was it. She had to deal.
Tomorrow.
She’d start talking tomorrow, when the sun had risen and she could feel new light, and maybe some hope for the future with it. Now, the last sliver of the sun could be seen above the flat horizon, and the long shadow from Noelle’s stone reached out, stretching over the distance to touch the toe of her left shoe. Reaching out.
That was what she had now, a shadow for a sister, and a shredded heart she needed help mending.
“I’ll come back tomorrow.” She whispered the promise to her feet and fled back to her car to find her hotel and sleep.
* * *
The twenty-seventh of December, she woke to texts from Angel, and it helped ground her to what was current in her reality. That she had a life back in New York to return to once she’d sorted herself out.
She arrived early, with the dew still on the grass, and set about tending the grave. The mowers kept the grass trimmed, but no one came with an edging tool to clean up around the stone. She’d brought scissors for that.
She’d also brought lilies and water, which she placed in the little vase on the base of the stone. Making it prettier. Doing things, anything, that would let her have an external focus. Not talking. She couldn’t even think of what to say, her heart too raw for words.
When she’d done all she could, she sat in the grass, leaned against the stone and pulled out her phone, her point of connection to her sister for the last eighteen months. Bypassing the email, she opened Photos.
Only when the day was half gone did she open the email client and begin to read aloud, starting the first day, when she’d still been emailing with the notio
n that her sister was gone and would never read it. It wasn’t even a week later that the emails became more an exercise in self-deceit, speaking to Noelle as if she were reading them. Comforting herself with lies.
When the sun went down, she returned to the hotel, numb and exhausted, vowing to bring more tissues tomorrow, and more water.
* * *
Her second full day in Scottsdale—second day actually grieving for her sister. When she got there the sun had already been in the sky long enough to dry the grass. She wound the little red gas-saving rental down an access road that would put her nearer to Noelle’s grave, and parked. Today she had daisies; the prospect of sitting with dead flowers just made it all seem that much worse.
She parked for the shortest walk, and that meant she approached it from behind, but when she rounded the stone she found a fresh bunch of white roses, wrapped in tissue paper, lying on the ground.
Despite her having not visited the grave for over a year, when she’d come yesterday, there had been no signs anyone else had ever visited or left flowers. It was possible anything left might have been cleared away, but she couldn’t think of anyone who would bring Noelle a bunch of roses.
She took a moment to remove yesterday’s lilies from the little vase beside the stone, poured in some extra water and settled today’s daisies within. Only then did she pick up the flowers to look for a card, or anything that might let her know where they’d come from. Was it possible a florist delivered to the wrong grave? They’d wither today, lying in the heat.
When she found nothing to tell her who sent them, she unwrapped the blossoms and wove the long-stemmed white buds into the vase with her daisies, finally speaking to Noelle without the aid of the script, pre-written months ago.
“Maybe Angel and Wolfe sent these. I didn’t tell them which Scottsdale cemetery, but maybe they used those private investigators he told me about to find out where you were and sent flowers, so we’d know they were thinking of us.”
So unnatural, speaking to the air. Much more unnatural than sending emails had felt. With the emails, it was just like when she’d emailed Noelle in life. Out loud, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t speaking to a stone.
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