Chapter 4: Seven Years

Adrian

"Close the door, darling."

I closed it. When I turned around, Celeste had already pulled the oxygen tube off her face and dropped it on the nightstand.

"Celeste..."

"Oh, relax." She laughed. "I can manage ten minutes without it. I'm not as fragile as I look, Adrian."

It was nearly midnight. The nurses were asleep at the other end of the east wing. I'd only come in to say goodnight.

She got up off the bed. No wheelchair. No hand on the wall. She walked straight across the room to me, put her arms around my neck and pressed herself against me.

"Seven years," she whispered against my jaw. "I've waited seven years for you."

Then she kissed me.

For a second I let her. Then I took her wrists, gently, and moved her back.

She blinked up at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. You flew in from Geneva this morning. Dr. Albrecht said rest." I steered her back toward the bed. "You need to sleep."

"I don't want to sleep. I want you."

"Celeste. You're sick."

Something flickered in her eyes. Then it was gone, and she sat down on the edge of the bed with a little sigh, like a child sent to bed early. "You always were a gentleman."

I picked up the oxygen tube and handed it to her. She put it back on. I waited until she lay down, then pulled the cashmere throw up over her shoulders.

Her breathing was slow and even. No rattle, no catch. Nothing like my grandfather at the end, when every breath sounded like it had to be dragged up from somewhere deep. Her cheeks were pink. And when she'd held me a minute ago, her grip had been strong. I could still feel where her fingers had pressed into the back of my neck.

She'd flown nine hours today. She'd been up all afternoon. And she'd just crossed this room without the wheelchair, without the tube, without even touching the wall.

She didn't look like a woman whose doctors had given her six months. She looked like a woman just back from a holiday.

I caught myself counting her breaths and stopped.

What the hell was wrong with me? Doctors in Geneva had seen her scans. Dr. Albrecht had her file. Sick people have good days, that's all. And this was the woman who'd dragged me out of a burning car with her bare hands and burned her own arm doing it. Who was I to stand in the dark and wonder if she was sick enough?

I owed her my life. I didn't get to question her. She has been gone for seven years. Of course she misses me and wanted this so bad. She probably had an adrenaline rush.

"Goodnight," I said, and turned off the lamp.

I lay in the dark with the smell of lilies on my shirt from where she'd held me. Heavy and sweet. My head started pounding behind my left eye.

Without thinking, I reached across the bed. Three years of habit.

Ivy never smelled like lilies. She never smelled like any perfume I could name. She smelled like fresh-cut flower stems and rain on a window, something clean and green and quiet. I used to bury my face in her pillow on the nights she was up before me. I never once asked her what it was.

But this wasn't our bed. Ivy was down the hall in it, and I wasn't.

I pulled my hand back fast.

Then her voice came back to me from that afternoon, sweet and polite in front of the whole staff.

‘Lilies are on page four. They give him migraines.’

And in the library a few hours later.. ‘I don't want a single penny of your money, Adrian. Not one.’

Forty million dollars. A penthouse. A villa. She'd looked at it like a menu in a language she couldn't read and pushed it back across the table.

Who does that?

Someone making a point. Someone who wanted me to feel like a bastard.

It was working. And that pissed me off even more.

I gave up on sleep, pulled on a robe and went down the hall to my study.

I didn't turn the lamp on. I poured a whisky, stood at the window looking at the black water, and for once I let myself remember.

Seven years ago. The coast road, after midnight. Headlights in my lane, and then I was off the road and upside down. Heat on my face, petrol, glass in my mouth. I couldn't find my own hands. Then darkness.

I woke up in St. Aurelia's with my father standing over the bed. A nurse told me a young woman had dragged me out of the car seconds before it went up in flames.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Next door."

It was Celeste. My girlfriend of two years. She'd been driving behind me that night on her way to meet me. Her right arm was wrapped in white bandages from wrist to elbow. When they wheeled me in to see her, she smiled and told me she'd pulled me out through the broken window with her bare hands. Then she touched my face and said, "You owe me, Wolcott."

I laughed. She saved my life. She saved me!! I meant to spend the rest of my life paying her back.

Then she died. And I spent seven years believing I owed her my life. Because i did!

Now she was back, with six months left and one wish. I could give her that. I could give her everything she wanted. Because she deserved it!

My coat was hanging over the back of the desk chair. Something hard knocked against the leather when I moved it. I reached into the inside pocket.

The box.

I'd completely forgotten it. Ivy had handed it to me last night, and I hadn't thought about it once since.

Cream paper, and a ribbon tied in some complicated knot. Very Ivy. Cufflinks, probably. Or another leather notebook I'd never use.

I pulled one end of the ribbon.

"Adrian?"

Celeste was standing in the doorway in a silk robe. No tube. No nurse. She'd walked the whole length of the house in the dark on her own.

"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I kept thinking I'd dreamed of you."

"You shouldn't be out of bed."

"Then take me back."

I looked down at the box. Then I put it in the desk drawer, turned the key and slipped the key into my robe pocket.

"Come on," I said.

She took my arm. All the way down the hall, she walked half a step ahead of me.

We were outside the east wing when my phone buzzed.

Security alert. Front entrance. 2:07 a.m.

I almost didn't look. Then I did.

The front hall on the camera, gray and grainy. A woman in a camel coat crossing the marble with one suitcase.

Ivy.

She stopped at the hall table. Took off her ring and put it down. Then her keys. Then the black card I gave her the week we got married, the one she only ever used for groceries and other people's birthday presents.

She didn't look at the camera. She didn't look back at the house. She opened the door, the wind blew her hair across her face, and she walked out.

The door shut.

"Adrian?" Celeste tugged my hand. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Go to bed. I'll be there in a minute."

She went. I stood alone in the hall and played it again.

And again.

I watched it four times. Ivy had left my house!