Chapter 4: Everything He kept

Alexander left before seven. Regina did not go back to sleep.

She walked downstairs and stopped outside his study. The door was open. In three years of marriage, she had never once seen it open like this.

She stepped inside.

The wooden box still sat on the lowest shelf. She knelt down and lifted the lid. Old photographs filled the top. In one, a younger Alexander laughed at something outside the frame, his arm around a dark-haired woman with a smile that didn't perform for the camera.

Rosalie.

Under the photographs, a folded letter. Under the letter, a small receipt.

A flower shop. Dated six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago, he told her he was in Geneva.

Near the bottom of the box, a single earring sat wrapped in tissue paper, the kind of small, expensive thing a man keeps only because he can't make himself throw it away. Regina set it down quickly, like it had burned her fingers.

"What are you doing?"

She turned fast. Alexander stood in the doorway, his coat still on.

"The door was open," Regina said.

"I left it open." His eyes dropped to the paper in her hand. "What is that?"

"You tell me." She held it up. "A florist. The same week you said you were in Geneva."

Silence.

"Alexander."

"Her grave," he said. "I stop there every year. Before my flight."

"You never told me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because telling you meant answering the question you're about to ask me."

"Then answer it."

He crossed the room. Stopped close enough that she had to lift her chin to keep looking at him. Close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him, even through her own anger.

"Did you ever love me," she said quietly, "or was I just somewhere to put what was left after her?"

"I've asked myself that for three years." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "Every time I felt something for you, I told myself it wasn't real. Guilt. Habit. Loneliness wearing your face." He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering against her jaw. "It took losing you tonight to admit I was lying."

Her breath caught. "Say it plainly."

"I love you." The words came out low, like they had been locked somewhere too long and only just broke free. "Not as a replacement for her. Not as something steady to hide behind. I love you, and I have for longer than I let myself admit."

Regina didn't step back. She told herself that meant nothing.

She didn't believe it.

His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, slow, deliberate, like he was giving her every chance to stop him and silently praying she wouldn't.

She didn't.

"Alexander—"

"Don't," he murmured, his mouth a breath from hers. "Don't tell me to stop unless you mean it."

She didn't mean it.

His mouth came down on hers, slow at first, careful, like he was testing whether this was real. Then deeper, when she answered him without hesitation, her fingers curling into the front of his shirt, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away. Three years of silence broke apart in the space of that kiss. Three years of cold dinners and empty sides of the bed and a name she had never been allowed to ask about — all of it burned away under the way he held her now, like she was the only steady thing left in his entire life.

He pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, both of them breathing hard.

"I should have done that three years ago," he said.

"You should have done a lot of things three years ago."

"I'm trying to do them now."

"Alexander?" His name. Not steady, not in Regina's voice.

It came from downstairs. Heels on marble, fast, getting closer.

Regina knew, even before she saw her, that no one would have stopped her at the door. Evelyn Laurent had been walking through Kingston Manor since she was a child, long before it belonged to Alexander, back when the two of them used to run down this exact hallway while their fathers talked business in the next room. Old habits like that never asked permission to continue. The staff still let her through out of pure instinct, invitation or not.

Alexander went still in a way Regina had never felt against her body before — every line of him locking tight at once.

"I told you I wasn't coming tonight," he called out, already stepping back from her. "Evelyn, you shouldn't be here—"

"I needed to see you." Evelyn's voice was closer now. Right outside the study door. "I waited at the hospital for two hours, Alexander, and you never—"

She stopped in the doorway.

Her eyes moved from Alexander's hand, still resting at Regina's waist, to Regina's mouth, to the open box on the floor between them, full of photographs of a woman none of them had ever stopped grieving.

For a long moment, nobody said anything at all.

Then Evelyn smiled — slow, careful, and far too calm for a woman who had just walked in on exactly what she walked in on.

"Well," she said softly. "This is interesting."

Regina felt Alexander's hand tighten slightly against her waist.

"Evelyn," he said. "This isn't—"

"Don't." Evelyn held up a hand, still smiling that same quiet smile. "I'm not here to make a scene." Her gaze slid to Regina, and something colder moved behind her eyes. "I'm here because there's something you both need to know, and I think you're going to want to sit down before I say it."

Regina felt the warmth from a moment ago drain out of the room completely.

"Know what?" she asked.

Evelyn looked at Alexander for a long beat, like she was deciding how much damage she actually wanted to do tonight.

"It's about Rosalie," she said. "And I don't think either of you is ready for it."