Charles died on the second day. It was peaceful and quiet, and she held his hand as he passed. Even though she’d been expecting it, the grief was still sharp. Not so much for his loss—she’d lost him two years ago and the pain of that wasn’t so raw—but for the future that had died with him and for the loneliness that she knew would engulf her the moment he was gone.
Except . . . it didn’t. Grief, yes. Loneliness, no.
She didn’t want to think about the reasons for that though, so hours after he’d died, she moved around his hospital room like a zombie, collecting belongings and tidying stuff away to make it ready for the next patient. She’d already called her parents to let them know the news, her father stoic and silent, her mother weeping and being histrionic, begging her to come home to “be with your family.”
Which sounded nice, but it wasn’t love and support she would have come home to. They only wanted her back because they both needed something from her. Her mother needed an emotional crutch and her father needed her to support her mother. Neither of them actually wanted to see her.
She’d made up some lie about how she couldn’t possibly come home now, that there was too much for her to organize and that she’d be in touch later, then she’d disconnected the call before her mother could start with the emotional blackmail.
Phoebe took the sunflowers out of the vase and dumped them in the bin. They didn’t even look like they were wilting, and it seemed like a waste, but she wasn’t going to take them home.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her jeans, and she pulled it out, glancing down at the screen. Nero, again.
Her throat ached, her chest sore.
He’d sent her lots of texts and had called as many times, too, but she’d ignored all of them. It hadn’t felt right to talk to him or even respond, not with what was going on with Charles, so she’d left all of them unanswered.
It hurt, though. She wanted very much to go back to his house, to walk through the door and into his arms. To feel him around her, comforting her, protecting her. But she couldn’t let herself. Her fiancé had died, and to go straight to another man was wrong on just about every level there was. No matter how badly she wanted to.
Besides, there was also the matter of Nero’s terrible past. He was just as trapped and as broken as Charles had been in his coma, except with Nero it wasn’t physical, it was mental. Which made it even more difficult for him to heal, especially when he refused to acknowledge the issue.
No, she definitely didn’t want to take on caring for another broken person. She’d been doing it all her life, first with her parents, and then with Charles. Even before the accident, she’d been the one who’d run their household and organized things because he couldn’t. Or maybe because he wouldn’t. And after the accident, she’d been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces, who had to pay for the hospital and make the medical decisions. Who visited every week.
She couldn’t face a third person. She didn’t have the emotional energy. It felt as if it had all been sucked out of her and she had nothing left.
She needed some time, some space. She needed to figure out who she was when she didn’t have anyone else to focus on.
“I can leave whenever I fucking want to . . .” Nero’s voice, harsh and insistent, refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of him . . .
God, how could she fight that? What could she offer him that would help anyway? All the emotional support she’d given her mother had only made her mother more needy and her father even more critical. Organizing her and Charles’s life hadn’t made him any more capable of doing it himself. And then after the accident, sitting beside his bed and playing songs . . . Well, that had done nothing at all.
No, Nero needed more help than anything she could give him.
Quickly, she keyed in a text: Charles has died. I need some space.
There was a brief pause and then he responded: I’m sorry.
So simple, only two words, making her eyes prickle. No one had said that to her, certainly her parents hadn’t. A simple acknowledgment of her loss that made her heart ache, that made her suddenly want Nero with an intensity that left her breathless. She wanted his arms around her and his big, hard body surrounding her, his strength taking some of the load for a while.
But no. She would be strong. She didn’t need him. She had to do this on her own.
The next week passed in a blur.
Charles had no family, so she had to do all the organization for his funeral by herself, plus there was the sorting out of his stuff back at their apartment and getting his affairs in order. Even in the two years since he’d been in hospital, she’d left all his belongings in the apartment as they were the day he’d walked out of it. She hadn’t wanted to get rid of them just in case. But now there would be no “just in case,” and there was no reason to keep them, so she spent at least two days putting everything in boxes and donating them to Goodwill.
That was difficult, as was the funeral. While he’d been in hospital, Charles’s circle of friends had dropped away, so there weren’t very many of them who turned up. And even though her mother called her every day asking when she was going to come back to London, her mother never suggested flying over to attend Charles’s funeral.
After that was over, Phoebe came back to the empty apartment to find a bouquet of flowers had been left for her, roses with jasmine winding through them. They smelled so sweet, reminding her of the scent that used to drift up from the garden at Nero’s house and in through her windows in the evening.
There was no note but she knew who they were from all the same.
The smell of them made her throat close and her chest tight, and she thought about texting him to say thank you. But she couldn’t face it so she didn’t. Instead she put them in a vase on her nightstand and went to sleep with the scent of them around her.
Another week passed.
She kept herself busy with making final arrangements for a headstone and dealing with the lawyers and the details of Charles’s will. Then she took a few days to decide what she was going to do. All her life had been spent revolving around other people and what they wanted, so it was strange not to have that. Strange to have to think about what she wanted.
She really didn’t know what that was.
Eventually she decided that she was going to have to leave New York, get out of the city and go somewhere different. Definitely not back to London, but somewhere she’d never been. Somewhere with big open spaces, where she could breathe and could figure out what her life was going to look like from now on.
For some reason, she kept thinking about that picture of Everest Nero had given her, the one that had hung on the wall in her bedroom in his house. The one that made her think of freedom and the world at her feet. Maybe she’d go to Nepal. Maybe she’d go trekking.
Maybe you should go back to him.
Ah, but she couldn’t do that. She’d left it too long. And besides, she couldn’t tie herself to yet another needy person. She had nothing left to give, not that she’d ever made a difference to him anyway.
Yet another week passed and she began the process of packing away her New York existence. Putting her stuff into storage and giving up the lease on her apartment. It was all so depressingly easy, as if the life she’d had here was merely a picture drawn in chalk on the sidewalk and a shower of rain had washed it away, leaving the sidewalk clean. As if she had never been.
Nero stopped sending her texts, and he didn’t call. Part of her was relieved that he’d stopped, and part of her wasn’t. Part of her wanted that contact from him, was desperate for it, and because that part of herself reminded her too much of her mother, she ignored it.
But after another couple of days had passed, she realized that going to see Nero was something she was going to have to do. She couldn’t leave the city without at least seeing him and telling him her plans. It didn’t feel right. Besides, she still had a lot of her belongings at his place she needed to collect, plus she hadn’t formally handed in her resignation as his assistant. True, she could do all of that over the phone or via email, but that felt too much like a coward’s way out, and she wasn’t a coward.
Or maybe you just want to see him one last time?
No, of course that wasn’t it. Of course, it wasn’t.
She texted him, a formal little note telling him she needed to see him to hand in her notice and asking when it would be convenient. Uncharacteristically he didn’t reply for at least a few hours, and when he did, his text in return was terse and to the point, giving her a date and a time only.
He was angry with her, probably, and fair enough. Even though there had been extenuating circumstances, she had walked out on him and never came back, and that must have been difficult, especially considering she’d left only after he’d finally revealed the extent of his own damage.
The memory of that afternoon still made her heart hurt, and she didn’t need that right now, not on top of everything else, so she tried not to think about it.
She tried not to think about it when the day she was due to visit him came around either. Instead, she dressed carefully in her usual professional outfit—pale gray pencil skirt and a crisp white blouse—and made sure her hair was carefully pinned. She took more time with her makeup, hiding the tell-tale dark circles of her sleepless nights with lots of concealer, and going for a brighter-than-normal lipstick.
She pushed aside the churning nervousness as the taxi picked her up from her apartment, distracting herself by looking up Nepal on a few travel websites.
As the cab pulled up outside Nero’s house, Phoebe had to take a moment to get her breathing under control before she paid the driver and got out. She also tried not to take any notice of the other feeling that was quivering there under the nervousness. Longing. She hadn’t thought she’d miss him, but she did.
Phoebe shook away the thought, clutching her handbag as she pushed open the iron gate and walked slowly up the front stairs. All she was coming here to do was to let Nero know that she was leaving the city and that she was resigning as his assistant. That was all. She wasn’t going to stay. She couldn’t. She had nothing to give him, and, besides, she needed to go and find out who she was.
Taking a breath, Phoebe knocked on the front door.
It swung open, revealing James’s familiar face. “Come in, Miss Taylor,” the butler said. “Mr. de Santis is waiting for you.”
Her throat constricted, and she couldn’t speak, could only nod and tighten her grip on her handbag even more as she stepped inside.
James closed the door behind her and gestured for her to follow him. As he led her down the hallway toward Nero’s office, she couldn’t help noticing something. All the walls were bare. There had been a huge painting of a mountain on the wall near the front door, and now it was gone. They all were.
Foreboding began to wind through her nervousness, because there was something heavy hanging in the atmosphere of the house. A kind of emptiness that hadn’t been there before. It reminded her of the apartment after she’d cleared it out of all Charles’s stuff, as if no one lived there anymore.
James stopped outside Nero’s office and held the door open for her, his expression blank.
Phoebe took a breath and stepped inside. And everything inside her drew tight.
Nero was standing beside the windows.
Had it been two weeks? Or was it three? She couldn’t remember, but whatever. It felt like months. Like years. Eons even.
His arms were folded over his massive chest and once again she was struck by his height, by the broad width of his shoulders, the sheer power of his physical presence. He was in his normal business clothes—a perfectly tailored suit—and yet . . . something was different about him. There was a stillness to him that hadn’t been there before, his raw energy muted somehow.
The harsh lines of his face were absolutely unreadable, but his eyes . . . They were so dark, the glittering brightness that had once lit the depths, vanished. Black holes with no bottom, no end.
Her heart contracted, and it was difficult to breathe. What had happened to him over the past couple of weeks? What had he done once she’d gone?
“Hello, Phoebe,” he said, his voice harsh and deep in the silence of the room and absolutely devoid of expression. “You wanted to see me?”
* * *
She looked tired. That was the first thing he noticed. She had dark circles under her eyes that she’d obviously tried to hide with makeup, but he could see them all the same. She hadn’t been sleeping, clearly. Her skin was pale, too, the white blouse making her look like a ghost. Her beautiful hair, though, that was the same, all coiled up and neat on the top her head. It made his hands ache to reach out for it, to touch it, pull out all the pins and feel the silky warmth of it on his skin. He ached to hold her, to feel her, period.
But he wasn’t going to do that.
Over the past two weeks since she’d gone, since he’d destroyed his paintings and all the screens in his control room, he’d retreated from the rooms he’d shared with her, returning to the safety of his office and his gym. He’d initially spent most of his time running endlessly on the treadmill or lifting weights, doing anything he could to ease the fury and the pain that ate away at him.
But it hadn’t worked. So he’d paced in his office, going around and around like a tiger in a cage, while his mind did the same thing within the confines of his skull. Unable to accept the reality of his situation, wanting to return to the same old familiar lies that he could go out at any time.
He kept thinking about pursuing that last lead he had—his mother. But something in him kept shying away from the idea. The same protective instinct that had kept him from stepping outside his front door protected him again.
It made him angry. What was it about his mother that he needed protecting from?
That evening when he had destroyed his art and his security monitors, he found a laptop he hadn’t destroyed and sat in the library, calling up the file he had on his mother, but there wasn’t anything about it that set off alarm bells. Except her address, which was a hospital.
He knew that, of course, he knew that. She was in hospital because . . .
“Your mother’s not well,” one of the social workers told him gently, a week or so after he’d been found and was asking for her. “She’s in hospital.”
“Why?” he asked, starting to feel desperate. “Was it my stepfather?”
The social worker’s face had been full of pity. “No. Your mother was very unwell. She had delusions. She kept you in the room because she thought she was keeping you safe from harm.” The woman had reached out to touch him. “There is no stepfather, Nero. There never was. Your mother wasn’t with anyone.”
No. No, that couldn’t be right. There was a reason he’d been kept in that room all that time, and it wasn’t because his mother was delusional. He had to have been in danger, right? Because what parent would do that to their child? What parent would lock their son in a room for ten years, depriving him of everything, simply because they were sick?
He wanted to hurl away the laptop, break that, too. Instead he got up and reached for his phone, calling the hospital no matter that his instinct was telling him to ignore it, demanding that he speak to his mother.
She cried when the staff put her on the line, and when he demanded the truth from her, she gave it to him. No, there hadn’t been a stepfather and she hadn’t been in debt. She hadn’t needed to keep his existence secret from anyone. But didn’t he understand that he was better off inside that room than out in the world? It was dangerous out there, didn’t he know that? She’d only wanted him to be safe, to be protected.
Instinctively he didn’t want to believe her, but he could hear the madness in her voice and that drove the truth home in a way that nothing else could.
He hadn’t been kept hidden from an abusive man.
He’d been kept a prisoner by a very sick woman, for absolutely no reason at all.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted to think about it. No wonder he’d tried to deny it. His childhood had been held hostage in that room, and now ten years of his life as an adult were also being held hostage. To his past.
Anger rose up inside him, a towering inferno of frustration and anguish. He wanted to break everything in his entire house and only just managed to stop himself at the last minute. Calling James instead, he ordered his butler to pack away his entire art collection, then he pulled every book in his library off the shelf and hurled them at the walls.
That didn’t help.
Hours later, fury so thick in his mouth he could almost taste it, he’d found himself standing in Phoebe’s bedroom, with her scent in the air and her clothes still lying on the bed where she’d left them.
He’d breathed her in, and suddenly it was as if his anger didn’t matter. As if his mother and what she’d done to him didn’t matter. What mattered was that it looked like Phoebe had only just stepped out and would be coming back at any moment. But of course, she wouldn’t.
He almost dropped to his knees where he stood, because it had felt as if someone had taken an ax to his chest to hack out his heart.
He missed her. He wanted her. He needed her like he needed air to breathe. But she was gone, and he didn’t know how to get her back.
It wasn’t until he’d sat on the end of the bed, breathing in her scent, that the truth had come to him. That he did know what it was like to lose someone he cared about after all. Because he had lost her.
She must have felt this same pain when her fiancé was in a coma, this same agony when he died. This terrible sense of absence, of loss.
Which meant, of course, that he must love her. Why else would it hurt so fucking much?
It was a terrible thing to admit, and he could feel the hunger for her rise within himself. The urge to find her, grab her, bring her here and lock her away with him so she could never leave him again.
But he couldn’t do that. That was what his mother had done to him, so how could he do that to Phoebe? He may be broken, but he wasn’t that broken. Phoebe had shown him what true love was all about anyway. It wasn’t keeping someone locked away, it was sitting beside a hospital bed and waiting for them to wake up.
He couldn’t get her back. He would have to wait for her to come to him. Because if he truly cared about her, he had to let her make her own choices, even when those choices weren’t ones he liked.
If he truly cared about her, he would set her free. Because anything less would make him just like his mother.
So he’d stopped calling her, stopped texting her. He’d sent her flowers on the day of Charles’s funeral to show her he was thinking of her, but that was it. He hadn’t even run his usual searches on her to see where she was.
It had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life.
Now she was here, right in front of him, tired and pale, and so fragile he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her.
But he would keep to the decision he’d made. He wouldn’t ask anything more of her, and if she wanted to leave then he would let her go.
“Hi, Nero,” she said huskily, her fingers white where they gripped the strap of her purse. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“Of course.” He kept his arms crossed because otherwise they’d reach for her, and that wasn’t allowed. But he let his gaze roam over her face, searching for any hint as to what she was thinking and why she hadn’t come back to him. “How are you?”
She gave him a tight smile. “I’m fine.”
A lie. She wasn’t fine. “I’m sorry about Charles.” And he was.
She glanced away, her red-gold lashes veiling her gaze. “Thank you. It wasn’t unexpected, but still . . .” She stopped, cleared her throat. “Look, I won’t stay long. I just wanted to hand in my resignation and to let you know I’m leaving.”
His heart lurched and he had to sink his fingers into his biceps and hold on tight. He wanted to demand she tell him why she’d stayed away, why she hadn’t even sent him a text after her fiancé’s death, but that would reveal too much, so he contented himself with, “Leaving? Where are you going?”
Her lashes lifted, her golden-brown gaze coming to his. There was something lightless in it that made him want to take her face between his hands and kiss the gold back into her eyes. “Actually, I’m not quite sure yet. Maybe Nepal. But I’m definitely leaving New York.”
Tension crawled through his muscles, and he had to fight to not move. “Why?” Sharp. Too sharp.
Phoebe swallowed, but she didn’t look away from him. “I think I need some space. Some time to myself. I’ve been looking after Charles for a long time and now . . . Well, I think I need some time to figure out what I want. I got too caught up on wanting to be there for my parents, and then I had to be there for Charles.” She made a strange, awkward gesture with her hand. “I think it’s time I was there for myself, if you know what I mean.”
He did know. And that’s exactly what she should do.
Which means she’s not coming back to you.
He hadn’t known that he’d hoped she was coming back until that moment. That a part of him had been holding onto the faint possibility that she was here to tell him she was staying. But, of course, she wasn’t. He’d told her she needed to think of herself more often and that’s exactly what she was doing.
He wasn’t his mother. He wouldn’t keep her.
Hating it, he forced himself to smile. “Then you should do it.”
Emotion flickered over her face, and he thought it was shock and maybe pain. Which was strange. The shock he understood because she wouldn’t be expecting him to agree, but the pain? No, he couldn’t figure that out. “That is what you want, isn’t it?” he asked, just to make sure.
She glanced away again. “Yes. I’m sure.” This time there was no flicker in her expression at all. “I’m sorry, Nero.”
His jaw felt tight. Far too tight. “For what?”
“For everything.” Her gaze came back to his. “For leaving you the way I did.”
He wanted to demand why. Why she’d left him all alone. But he didn’t. He didn’t want her apologies. He didn’t want her being kind. His intentions were good, but she could shatter them so easily if she wasn’t careful.
“I’m okay,” he forced out, keeping his voice harsh. “Is that all?”
Her eyes widened at his tone. “I . . . yes.”
“Anything else?”
“What about you?” She was looking at him now, the way he hated. The way he loved. With that soft look in her eyes, as if she cared. “Are you really okay?” Her gaze flickered around the room. “I see you’re back in your office. Have you . . . been out of it recently?”
He wanted to reply angrily, with something cutting that would hurt her the way she was hurting him. Tell her that no, he hadn’t been out of his office for a week now and that was all her fault. She’d left him and now he was back to being the way he’d been before.
But that was something he wasn’t going to do anymore either. He wasn’t going to lash out like an angry child, be that selfish or that petty. Yet he couldn’t tell her the truth either, that he wasn’t okay. Because that would hurt her, too, would trap her as surely as if he’d locked the front door and put bars on the windows. As if he’d boarded up the doors like his mother had done to him.
“Yes,” he said, trying to soften the word. “At least I will be.”
“Will you see someone? About the past? About being in here?”
See someone . . . A psychiatrist, no doubt. Well, he could do that, but he knew he wasn’t going to. Because what would be the point? Once she was gone, he had no reason to leave his house. No reason to leave this room. None at all. He would stay here until he died.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he lied. “I’ll get James to make me an appointment.”
Another fleeting emotion crossed her face. Relief maybe? Or was that pity again? “Oh good.” She sounded breathless. “I’m glad about that.”
Definitely relief. Jesus. Did that mean she cared? She’d told him she did that day in his control room, but he wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered.
All that mattered was that she made her own choices and that those choices made her happy. Because her happiness suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world.
He made a show of looking at his watch, because he could feel all his good intentions sliding out of his grip the longer she was in the same room as he was, so it was better if she left and quickly. “Is that all?” He tried to make the question sound casual. “I have a meeting soon.”
“Oh . . . yes. Of course.” She gripped her purse strap, a hesitant smile curving her mouth that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Your final pay should be in your account in the next few days and naturally you can expect a glowing reference. I’ll also make sure James sends the rest of your belongings back to your apartment.” He didn’t even attempt to smile since he knew it wouldn’t be pretty. “I’ll show you out.”
She gave a jerky nod, turning toward the door. He followed her, his hands in fists, keeping his gaze above her head and not where it wanted to be, following the lines of her beautiful curves as she moved.
He managed to get himself out of the office and into the hallway, moving behind her to the entranceway, because for some reason he didn’t want his last sight of her to be in his office.
She paused by the front door, her hand on the handle, and turned back, giving him another of those hesitant smiles. There was something in her eyes, that even now, he couldn’t read and didn’t understand.
“Goodbye, Nero,” she said.
Stay. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here alone.
He clenched his teeth together hard. No, he wouldn’t say it. He was going to let her go. “Good-bye,” he forced out.
Whatever it was in her eyes flickered and disappeared. Her lashes fell and she turned away, opening the door and stepping through it, not looking back.
The door closed after her, the sound heavy and solid, like a mausoleum door shutting on a tomb.
He felt it then, the deep sense of doom flooding in on him, crushing him, all the air leaving his lungs, all the air leaving the entire room.
She had gone, and she had taken all the light, all the air, all the life with her. Leaving him alone to rot in the dark, leaving him trapped in his house.
Go after her.
Nero heaved in a breath, staring at the door, feeling parts of himself begin to crack, to shatter. This house had been his haven, his safety for so long, but now . . .
It is your tomb.
He couldn’t go after her. He’d promised himself he’d do the one unselfish thing he’d ever done in his life and let her go. Because that had been her choice and he had to respect it. He had to honor it. And if that meant he had to die here in this house without her then he would.
She wouldn’t want that.
No, but what other choice did he have? It was either he keep her here forever with him or he let her go.
There’s another option: You could go with her.
His breath caught painfully, a shudder going through his entire body. The front door loomed large in his vision, the end of a long, dark tunnel.
He’d never loved anyone in his life, but he knew he loved her. He knew it with everything in him. Just like he knew that if she left without him, he would die here alone. And his death would hurt her, a hurt she didn’t need.
What she did need, though, was love. It’s what she’d always needed.
So give it to her.
Nero moved toward the front door, forcing his feet to walk one step, then another, then another. He reached for the door handle and instantly the sense of doom tripled, the vice closing around his chest, squeezing his lungs, his mother’s voice in his head, warning him to stay safe.
But he wasn’t going to let that rule him, not anymore. Phoebe needed him, and he would walk through fire and bullets for her.
He made his numb fingers grip hard to that handle. And he pulled it.
The door opened, the air from the outside world blowing in, overwhelming him. Exhaust fumes and oil, hot pavement and trash, and jasmine . . . Phoebe’s scent.
Phoebe. He had to think of Phoebe. Her soft skin and her beautiful hair. The way she felt under his hands and around his cock. The way she looked at him as if he was a puzzle she was trying to work out. The way she touched his back to soothe him, her fingers in his hair, stroking . . .
He looked at the steps, concentrated on them and not the massive open bowl of the sky or the buildings that loomed over him, threatening to fall on him, forcing his feet to move. One step. And another.
The vice around his chest was crushing him, making him gasp, and his muscles threatened to seize.
Think of her. Think only of her.
Her silky hair in his hands, sifting through his fingers. The cool sound of her voice, agreeing to his ridiculous needs. The hard crack of her palm across his cheek as she’d given him the slap he so richly deserved.
The steps were hard to manage and he didn’t know how he got down them without falling, but he did. Then there was sun on his head, the pressure of air on the back of his neck, and he didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see where he was, but he needed to see if she was still there, if he was too late.
So he forced his head up.
The sun was too bright, and his vision was doing strange things. Everything felt too big, and he was too small, an ant crushed against the earth. He fell to his knees, unable to bear the pressure of all that emptiness above him. Unable to breathe with all the buildings, all the things pressing in on him and no walls to keep them out.
Then he saw a figure at the end of the path, right by the gate, and the sun was shining on her hair.
“Phoebe,” he roared, except it came out as a whisper because his voice had broken. “Take me with you.”