Chapter 12
Chapter 12:
“I’m the one selling,” Lara said, from the fourth step.
She’d considered several ways to deliver this line — apologetic, defiant, breezy — and had settled on neutral. The tone of a woman reporting a fact. The sky is blue. The market is up. I’m liquidating my share of our home.
Stewart, sensing with professional instinct that this was a conversation better conducted without him, began a tactical retreat toward the kitchen. “I’ll just — I’ll go review some paperwork while you p>
“Stay,” Lara said, without looking at him. “This won’t take long p>
Callum and Declan stood shoulder to shoulder in the hallway, forming an unintentional blockade. Their faces wore matching expressions of bewilderment — not anger, not yet. The anger would come once the bewilderment burned off, the way sunburn arrives hours after the exposure.
“Why are you selling?” Declan’s voice was careful, feeling its way through the sentence like a man crossing a river on stepping stones. “Aren’t you fine here? Is this — are you still upset about the other day p>
He meant the flowers. The asthma. The push he’d given her that he probably didn’t remember giving.
His face did something Lara had rarely seen: it softened with genuine contrition.
Declan Thorne — who apologized for things the way most people apologized for natural disasters, acknowledging them without accepting personal responsibility — was visibly struggling.
“We didn’t mean to forget about your allergy. That was — we were wrong.
But do you really need to go this far p>
Lara shook her head.
Calm. Measured. The version of herself she’d rehearsed in the mirror.
“It has nothing to do with what happened before p>
It has everything to do with you. I don’t want a single thread left connecting my life to yours.
She thought this with a clarity that felt like cold water. She didn’t say it. Instead:
“I quit my job, and I’ll be starting over somewhere new. There’s no reason to keep living here.
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And after twenty years together — we don’t need to be joined at the hip forever, do we p>
She phrased it as a question because questions were softer than statements, and Lara was still, despite everything, incapable of cruelty.
Even now, even leaving, even after the flowers and the trophy and the doorframe and every small, accumulating abandonment of the past month, she couldn’t bring herself to say the thing that would hurt them.
Callum’s jaw tightened. He was in negotiation mode now — the CEO who didn’t lose deals, who found solutions, who restructured his way out of every dead end.
“If it’s about the commute, Declan and I will drive you. Wherever your new job is. We’ll arrange a car.
A driver. Whatever you need. You don’t have to leave p>
“Exactly.” Declan nodded, seizing the thread. “With both of us here, logistics are easy. There’s no practical reason to separate p>
Practical reason.
As though the decision to leave a home were a supply chain problem.
As though you could solve heartbreak with better transportation.
Lara pressed her fingers to her temples. They were going to fight her on this. Of course they were. These were two men who had built careers on refusing to accept unfavorable outcomes — one in boardrooms, the other on racetracks — and the idea that someone might simply choose to leave them was, apparently, an outcome they hadn’t modeled.
She needed a different approach.
“Fine,” she said.
And then, with the strategic precision of a woman who had spent twenty years learning exactly which buttons to push: “Then let’s sell this place and buy a bigger one.
Big enough for all of us p>
She paused. Let the idea settle. Then:
“We could even invite Bridget to move in p>
The name landed like a pebble in a still pond. Ripples everywhere.
Declan’s eyes lit up — immediately, transparently, with the unguarded enthusiasm of a man who hadn’t realized he was being maneuvered. “If Bridget comes too — yeah, that could work. That could actually work p>
But Callum — Callum, who read contracts for a living, who noticed the clause buried on page forty-seven, who never accepted an offer at face value — narrowed his eyes.
“You’re really willing for Bridget to live with us p>
He was studying her the way he studied balance sheets: looking for the line item that didn’t add up, the number that seemed too clean, the generosity that concealed a cost.
Something about Lara’s proposal didn’t fit. She’d spent the past month barely tolerating Bridget’s presence. She’d burned photographs. She’d resigned from her job.
And now — now she was volunteering to share a house with the woman?
Lara met his gaze and smiled. It was a good smile — warm enough to be convincing, cool enough to be Lara.
“Of course. Why not? We’re friends p>
The word “friends” did something to Callum’s expression — a flicker, fast enough to miss if you weren’t watching — but he said nothing. The deal was on the table.
Both men had agreed to sell. The specifics could be managed.
“Then that’s settled,” Lara said, and the relief that flooded through her chest was so intense it felt almost physical — a knot untying, a weight being set on a table, a door unlocking.
She would sell her third. The house would be dissolved.
And by the time Callum and Declan realized there was no bigger house, no new arrangement, no future that included her, she would be in Thornfield, in a different life, wearing a wedding dress with a high neckline.
Stewart, who had been standing in the kitchen doorway trying very hard to look like he wasn’t listening, cleared his throat.
“So — shall I draw up the paperwork p>