Fallen Rose by Amelia Wilde

Chapter Twenty

Haley

Leo’s house is quiet the morning after my party, but it’s a good quiet. The quiet of a space that was very recently bursting at the seams with joy. Everyone but Daphne left with drivers at the end of the night. I’ve taken a long, long shower and dressed in soft clothes. I’m sore from the party. I don’t know if it’s from the heels or the dancing or my nerves.

I go downstairs to look for Leo and find Gerard waiting in the foyer instead. “Good morning, Haley. How was your party?”

“It was amazing.” There’s a tense set to his posture. Gerard’s eyes go back to Leo’s large double doors. “Is Leo in the dining room?”

There are usually three places I can find him if he’s not in the bedroom when I wake up. His office, the den, or the dining room. Sometimes I find him reading at the table with a cup of coffee at his place. The first day I was here, I found him just that way. His plate in front of him, and his book. He’d abandoned the book in favor of making me take all my clothes off and come all over his fingers. I told myself it was awful, and cruel, and humiliating, but in reality it was over for me. I was never going to be the same after that. I was never going to want anyone else. I just didn’t know it yet.

“No. He’ll be arriving back at the house in about five minutes.”

“Back at the house? Where did he go?” Worry clenches my stomach in a fist. Leo didn’t say a word about leaving. The last time he invited me for a walk, he turned out to be very, very sick. “Is everything all right?”

“He had a meeting in the city. Everything is secure. We’ve had no problems on the grounds.”

Secureis not the same thing as all right.

I go to the dining room to wait for him.

The space has been transformed back into its usual arrangement. All that’s left from my party are the gold hangings on the ceiling. He made that perfect night for me, and then he went to the city without telling me. I don’t know whether to be pissed off or afraid or both. The house feels like a cavern without him. It feels like a popped balloon. Someone has put his book back on the table. It’s a battered paperback. I recognize it. It’s a story about building a cathedral.

Voices in the foyer. Footsteps in the hall. And Leo appears in the doorway.

I’ve come into the room many times while he’s backlit by the window. He has the most cutting profile, the most beautiful profile I’ve ever seen. The light always catches on the planes of him, casting shadows that take my breath away.

It’s a different view from his seat. That first day when I came into this room, I almost stopped breathing at the sunlight on his cheekbones. He would have seen me, lit in a soft glow. He’s standing in it now. What I didn’t know on that day was how it showed everything. It’s the kind of light that makes hiding impossible.

This is his house. He’s choosing to let me see him this way. In his pristine black clothes. They were made for him. To highlight his body, yes. To show off the lean muscle on his tall frame and his perfect thighs and strong shoulders. But they were also made to protect him from as much pain as possible.

I don’t think it’s working.

He’s wrung out, his dark eyes haunted. Leo stands up the tallest when his pain is bad. There’s another level beyond that, though. There is. He hasn’t admitted it to me out loud, but I can tell by looking at him that we’re almost there now. A pressure in my chest expands. I want answers. I don’t want to ask for them. Not because I’m afraid of the answers, but because I don’t want to hurt him. Not any more than this meeting already has.

Leo looks at me for a long, long time. Until I can feel him struggling. Until the silence seems heavier by the second. His eyes go to his book, and then back to me. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

“Are you?”

His hands come up and he covers his face. Runs them right over his eyes and down. It’s over in a split second and it’s probably nothing. Except it’s not a gesture Leo makes. It’s not something I’ve ever seen him do. And not with trembling hands. “I’m not hungry.”

“What if we just—” I cross the room and take his hand. Leo squeezes mine and brings it to his mouth. Grazes his teeth over my knuckles. “Sometimes, if I was having a really shitty day, my sister would send me upstairs to start over. So I’d get in bed and take a nap and wake up again, and then it would be better. Or at least bearable.”

He lets out a breath. “I’m fucking terrible at napping.”

“Then let’s not nap.”

Leo pushes me back against the doorframe then. He drops his head and kisses my jawline, kisses my neck, kisses my mouth. He puts both hands on my face, and the shaking disappears. Like I’m the only solid thing in the room. In his life. He feels like the only solid thing in mine. “Upstairs,” he says against my skin, and then he picks me up and takes me there himself.

*     *     *

The day passes.The night. The next morning. Leo doesn’t tell me about his meeting, and I don’t ask, but I know he’s thinking about it. I keep catching him staring off into nothing. I go to him every time. I can’t resist it. He’ll tell me when it’s time, when he can, but until then—

Until then, I can kiss his cheek. Drag my nails down the back of his neck and make him shiver. Beg him to take me to bed.

It’s nightfall, and I’ve been reading in the den. Daphne sits on the opposite chair, her legs over the arm, staring at the ceiling while she bickers with Leo about her room. “I just want you to have an opinion about it.”

“I have no opinion about your mural, Daphne.” He’s standing at the window, looking out.

“It’s going to be on a wall in your house. You could at least say if you want a forest scene or an ocean scene.”

“You only paint oceans.”

“Maybe I want to paint a forest.”

“Then paint a forest.”

Daphne gives a dramatic sigh and flings herself off the chair. She goes over and gets up on tiptoe to brush a kiss to Leo’s cheek, then flounces away. “We’re not done with this discussion,” she warns with a glare. He rolls his eyes.

“Go to bed.”

“You go to bed,” Daphne says, and then she’s gone.

I’m about to make a joke that’s not really a joke about going to bed when Leo pulls his phone out of his pocket. He takes one look at the screen, and then all the quiet of the evening is shattered. Leo’s phone hits the floor, forgotten. He strides across the room to the fireplace and throws open a panel in the wall above it to reveal a TV that’s brand-new and surrounded by fresh paint.

“I didn’t know you had—” The rest of the sentence never makes it to the air.

Because my dad is on the news. On TV.

My blanket pools on the floor, slipping off legs gone numb. The TV is partially blocked by Leo’s shoulder until I’m up next to him. So close. Too close. I reach to touch the screen before I know what I’m doing.

“He looks—” He looks so old. He looks so afraid. So tired. My dad is washed out in the bright lights from the cameras, his face pale, sweat gathering at his hairline. The podium in front of him is too tall. “Oh, Jesus.” He’s not alone. Caroline stands next to him, her arm looped through his. It’s meant to look like she’s steadying him, but I bet she’s not, I bet she’s keeping him there. Making him do this.

Leo pushes another button on the bottom of the TV, and I can hear him.

I can hear my dad.

“—her fiancé has already spoken to you, but it’s not enough. It hasn’t been enough. I’m asking you—asking as a father.” His voice is unstable. Trembling. He raises his sleeve to dab at his forehead. “Please return my daughter to her family. We are all worried sick. We need Haley in our lives. Our Haley. She’s about to graduate college next semester. Her whole life is ahead of her. All she ever wanted—”

He puts a hand to his chest, his fingers curled into a fist. I can feel it on my own chest, like a brand, burning through my heart. Goose bumps fly down my shoulders to my fingernails. I dream of Leo dying almost every time I fall asleep. This is a waking nightmare. It was one thing for Rick to work with Caroline, to agree to give a press conference, to lie. It’s another for her to scare my dad like this. I thought Cash would tell him I was okay after the party. And maybe he did. But Caroline obviously told him something else.

She’s been nodding along with everything my dad says. Caroline nods again. But she’s nodding at silence. I can’t take my eyes off my dad. He’s wincing.

“All she ever wanted—” He clears his throat.

“Dad,” I say, and I know it’s foolish, I know he can’t hear me. I know. The fist at his chest spreads out and a matching horror takes wing across my heart. “Something’s happening. Leo. Something’s happening to my dad.” I grab for his arm and hold tight.

“Haley,” my dad says. His face contorts. I think he might sob, or beg, but he doesn’t.

He collapses over the podium, his hand clutching his heart.

It’s chaos on the screen. Someone runs in from the side, and Caroline’s bending over him. I launch myself at the TV and get both hands over him before the picture cuts out, replaced by the news studio.

“Oh my god.” I let go of Leo and scramble for the couch. For my phone. “Oh my god. I think he just died on TV. I think he just died. I think he just had a heart attack and died on TV.” My face is numb. My heart is numb, or it hurts so much I can’t feel it. I don’t know who to call. The phone screen swims in front of me. “Oh, help. Help.” I go back over to Leo. “Please. I don’t know who to call.”

“It was for nothing.”

“What?” I try to push my phone into my hands. “What are you talking about?”

He turns, and all the worry, all the uncertainty of the past few days, is gone from his expression. He looks like the man I met in the street a lifetime ago. The mean, devastating man who took pleasure in my fear. The beast.

Leo glances down at me like I’m a stranger. He takes in my face. My clothes. My tears. And then he shakes his head, like I’ve overstayed my welcome at one of his business meetings. “This is over.”

My mouth falls open. I can’t close it. “Just—I just need to know who to call.”

“You can call anyone you want from the car, but you’re leaving. It’s over.”

“Leo, what—” He’s killing me. His eyes are so blank, so devoid of warmth, that they could freeze me in a blink. “What car?”

He walks away from me. Turns on his heel, and goes away. Picks up his phone from the floor. He dials a number and puts it to his ear. “Haley’s coat and a car out front,” he says into it. “Now.”

“No.”

“Time to go,” he says.

I turn and run. He’s not doing this. He’s sick, or he’s upset, or he’s in pain. He’s not actually doing this. I’ll barricade myself in the first room I find. I’ll make him understand.

Or I’ll run headfirst into Gerard, who stalls me long enough for Leo to catch me.

I fight him.

I fight him with everything I have. With fists and feet and all my weight.

I fight him, and I lose. Leo takes me to the front doors like a doll or a discarded piece of furniture. He holds out one of my arms so Gerard can put my coat on. The pink coat he bought me. I pull my arm back, fighting, fighting, fighting.

“It’s fucking freezing,” Leo snaps.

“Then don’t send me out. Leo. Stop.” He gets the coat around behind me, and no matter how hard I pull, I can’t stop him. It’s over both arms. “I want to stay with you.”

“You don’t belong here.” Gerard opens the door, his eyes unbearably sad, and stands by while Leo takes me out into the cold. To the waiting car.

The driver opens the door. Leo tries to put me in the back seat, but I fling both arms out and grip the frame with both hands. “Stop,” I scream at him. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sending you home, where you belong.” There’s no blank look in his eyes now. It’s fire and rage, heat and hurt. “I don’t want you here with me. You’re a complication. A liability.”

“You need me here. And I need you. I’m choosing you. I can just stay here with you. I only wanted to call and find out if he’s alive.”

“You’re going to do better than that, darling. You’re going to go see him. They’ll be taking him to a hospital. Gerard will find out which one, and Thomas will have that information before you reach the highway.”

I take one hand off the car and get my fist into his shirt. “I’m coming back to you. I don’t care what you say. I want you. I choose you. I love you, Leo. Please don’t do this.”

His eyes linger on my lips and hope tears through the air, through my lungs.

Leo brushes my hand away from his shirt and pushes me into the SUV. He traps my face with his hands. “You’re a Constantine.” He practically spits the name. It sounds so ugly when he says it like that. “And you’re sweet. You were fun to toy with, like the rest of them, but you’re not worth my life.”

“You don’t mean this. You don’t.” It’s half sob, half scream, like getting louder can get through to him. I grab for his wrist. His hand. My heart won’t beat. It hangs in pieces. “Please. Don’t do this. Please, let me stay.”

He pats my cheek, sarcastic and mean. “We’re finished now, Haley. Done. Don’t come back.”