Chapter 12

ELEANOR'S POV

He came back at dawn.

I was in the kitchen, packing the last of the mismatched mugs into a newspaper, when I heard the elevator. The doors opened with a soft chime, and I knew those footsteps, heavy and a little uneven on the left. I had spent five years teaching them to be even.

I set down the mug and did not move.

The key turned in the lock. He had a key because I had given him one, in the first month, when he still needed a cane to reach my door.

Dominic stepped inside, and the smell hit me before the sight of him did. Hospital antiseptic. Whiskey. And underneath, curling like smoke, Vivian's jasmine perfume, soaked into his shirt.

"Ellie."

His voice was rough. His collar was open, his jaw shadowed, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a man who had been awake for twenty-four hours and had spent every one of them being needed.

"You're up early," I said.

"I haven't been to bed." He dropped his jacket over the arm of the sofa and rubbed his face with both hands. "Listen. About tonight."

"Last night."

"Yes. Whatever." He exhaled. "I told you I'd settle it when I got back. So I'm here. Vivi is fine, before you ask. She wouldn't let anyone look at the wound. You know how she is about the press, she didn't want a record of it. She put on a bandage and went to sleep in Callum's back office. Henry is with her."

I said nothing.

"She isn't pressing charges," he continued. With the faintly pained patience of a man doing me an enormous favor. "She says she doesn't want trouble for me. She just wants to move past it. All I need is for you to say two words to her. 'I'm Sorry.' That's all. And this will be over."

I looked at him for a long moment.

I had once thought his handsome, tired face was the whole world. Now I saw it the way a doctor sees a cAshmoor. The vein pulsing near his temple. The faint tremor in his left hand he thought no one noticed. The stubborn set of his mouth that meant he had already decided he was right.

"Is that what you came here for?"

"Of course it's what I came here for." He frowned. "What else would I..."

His eyes dropped to the hallway.

Three cardboard boxes stood against the wall, taped shut, labeled in my neat marker. One said Kitchen. One said Books. One said Misc. A garment bag hung from the closet door, and a suitcase I had not yet unpacked from last year's trip sat open beside it.

His frown deepened. "What is all this?"

My heart did not speed up. I noticed that. It sat in my chest, calm and heavy, like a stone at the bottom of a clear lake.

"Spring cleaning."

"It's October."

"Then autumn cleaning." I picked up the newspaper again and folded a mug into it. "The wedding's in a month. I thought I'd get my things in order before I move out of here."

His whole face changed.

I watched it happen. The tension drained from his shoulders. The furrow between his eyes smoothed out. A slow, boyish, startled pleasure spread across his mouth, as if I had handed him a present he hadn't dared to ask for.

"You're moving in with me."

I let the silence stretch just long enough.

"Eventually," I said.

"Ellie." He crossed the room in three strides and caught my hands, newspaper and all. His palms were warm. They were always warm. "I thought you were furious with me. I thought I'd ruined everything. And you've been sitting here quietly packing to move in with me?"

"I'm not good at big speeches."

"No. You aren't." He laughed under his breath and pressed his forehead against mine. "You just do things. You do the thing and you never tell me, and I'm always the last to find out how much you did for me."

Yes, I thought. You are.

"I'm sorry about tonight," he murmured. "I know it was ugly. I know Vivi can be dramatic, she always has been. But she's had a hard life, and she doesn't have anyone. Once this is over, I swear, I'll make it up to you. I'll take you to Positano. We'll go on the honeymoon early."

I lowered my eyes so he wouldn't see them.

"All right."

"All right?"

"I said all right."

He kissed my forehead, right beside the bandage, careful of it this time. Then he pulled back and looked at me with something soft and grateful. Because of that, for one terrible second I almost felt sorry for him.

He really believed it. He believed every word. In his mind he had come home. He had found his patient. The loyal Ellie packed her life into boxes for him, and everything was exactly as it should be.

I had never been so thoroughly unseen.

"I need two hours of sleep," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I have a board call at nine. Wake me at eight?"

"Of course."

He dropped onto the sofa without taking off his shoes. By the time I fetched a blanket from the closet, he was asleep, one arm flung over his eyes, his breathing slow and deep.

I stood over him with the blanket in my hands.

"Ellie," he mumbled into the cushion.

My breath caught.

"Ellie. Don't..." The rest dissolved into nothing.

I waited. He didn't say anything else.

I covered him with the blanket, tucked it under his chin the way I had done a thousand nights before. Then I walked back into the kitchen without looking at him again.

The newspaper lay on the counter where I had dropped it. I smoothed the last page, wrapped the last mug, and sealed the last box.

He had never asked what was in them.

He hadn't asked a single question about where I thought I was going.