The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 103

Chapter 93: Tom’s Birthday

Bella POV

25 Points

I should have known that asking Caleb Black to help with Tom’s birthday was like asking a wildfire to help with kindling.

The penthouse rooftop had been transformed overnight. There were balloons in every shade of blue and green-Tom’s favorite colors, which I was certain I’d mentioned exactly once. There was a magician in a top hat doing card tricks by the drinks table. There was a pony. An actual pony, standing in a little fenced enclosure near the far edge, wearing a tiny birthday hat.

“There’s a horse on your roof,” Maya said, appearing at my elbow with a mimosa.

“I see the horse, Maya.”

“Just making sure you were also seeing the horse.”

Tom saw the horse approximately three seconds after stepping onto the rooftop. The shriek he produced could have shattered the windows in the building across the street. He ran at full speed, arms windmilling, and Caleb-who had apparently anticipated exactly this-was already there to intercept him before he crashed through the fence.

“Easy, easy.” Caleb swung him up, grinning in a way I hadn’t seen before. Open, unguarded. It changed his whole face. “You have to be calm around horses, or you spook them.”

“I’m calm,” Tom announced, vibrating like a tuning fork.

“I can see that.” Caleb carried him to the pony, helped him stroke its nose. Tom went reverently still, his small face doing something I’d only ever seen it do with his favorite books-pure, concentrated awe.

I stood back and watched my son experience his first horse, and I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“You’re doing the face,” Maya murmured.

“What face?”

“The one where you’re falling and you’re furious about it.”

୮

“I’m not falling.” But I turned away from the sight of them before the feeling in my chest could solidify into something I’d have to name.

The party was small-Maya, a few of Tom’s friends, their parents, my second assistant with her daughter who Tom adored. Caleb had hired people to manage everything: the food, the games, the magician who was now producing an endless handkerchief from a child’s ear to wild laughter.

But Caleb himself wasn’t managing from a distance. He was in the middle of it. He’d hunkered down to help three four-year-olds with a craft project, blue paint now smeared across his expensive shirt, looking completely unbothered. He’d carried two kids on his back simultaneously when they’d demanded horse rides of their own. He’d sat cross-legged on the ground and watched the magician with the same open delight as the children around him.

Tom orbited him all afternoon. Every time Caleb moved, Tom found a reason to be nearby-showing him a

13

Chapter 93 F’s Bthday

+25 Points

drawing, pulling his sleeve to point at something, narrating the plot of a movie in exhausting detail. And Caleb listened to all of it. Every word.

“He’s going to make me cry at a child’s birthday party,” my assistant said beside me, watching them. “I’m going to be so embarrassed.

“Get in line,” I muttered.

When the cake came out-four layers, dinosaurs, Tom’s name in green frosting-Caleb held Tom up so he could reach the candles. They leaned in together I saw Caleb murmur something in Tom’s ear. Tom giggled, scrunched up his face with exaggerated seriousness, and blew every candle out in one breath.

Everyone cheered as Tom threw both arms in the air like he’d won a championship.

Later, when the other kids had drifted toward the magician for one last trick and Maya was chatting with Priya, I found Caleb at the edge of the rooftop, looking out at the city with Tom dozing against his shoulder-a warm, exhausted, frosting-covered heap.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said, coming to stand beside him.

“I wanted to.” His voice was quiet, careful not to wake Tom. “Four birthdays I missed.”

“Three.”

“Three.” He adjusted Tom’s weight gently. “I’m going to be doing grand gestures for years to catch up.”

“You don’t have to catch up. You just have to show up.” I watched Tom’s eyelashes flutter in sleep. “He’s going to remember this forever. The pony alone will be a story he tells until he’s forty.”

Caleb smiled, still looking at our son. “Good.”

The afternoon light was turning gold, long shadows stretching across the rooftop.

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