The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 110

Chapter 99: Caleb’s Control

Caleb POV

She stayed for two hours.

+25 Points

We ate breakfast at the kitchen island eggs that didn’t burn, toast that I watched with professional vigilance- and talked about nothing important, which turned out to be everything important. Tom’s new obsession with a cartoon about engineering dinosaurs. The Singapore expansion timeline. Whether the garden needed lavender along the south border or something taller.

She had opinions about the lavender. Strong ones. I would have agreed to anything she said just to keep her sitting there talking to me with her shoes off and her coffee going cold because she kept forgetting to drink it.

When she finally stood to leave, I walked her to the door and didn’t reach for her, because she hadn’t asked me to and she needed to drive away from this on her own terms.

“I’ll come by tonight,” I said. “For Tom.”.

“For Tom.” She picked up her keys, then paused with her hand on the door. “Caleb.”

“Yeah.”

She turned and looked at me for a moment “For dinner. Both of us.”

Something shifted in my chest, slow and enormous. “I’ll bring food.”

“Don’t bring sushi again, Tom hid it in his dinosaur bin last time.”

“He seemed so enthusiastic when I offered it.”

“He’s four, he is enthusiastic about everything until he isn’t.” She opened the door, then glanced back once more with an expression I felt somewhere behind my ribs. “Tonight.”

“Tonight,” I said.

I closed the door and stood there for a moment with my hand flat against it, just breathing. She’d forgiven

Not completely – she’d said she was working on it, which was more honest than a clean declaration would have been and hit harder because of it. But she’d crossed the city this morning and said it to my face, and kissed me like she meant it, and stayed for hours talking about lavender and cartoon dinosaurs.

I pushed off the door and went to find my phone.

I had a full day scheduled – three meetings, a conference call with Singapore, a board review that my CFO had been rearranging for weeks. I picked up my phone, looked at the calendar, and called James.

“Clear my afternoon,” I said when he picked up.

A pause. “Sir, the board review”

“Reschedule it.”

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<Chapter 99 Ceb’s Control

That’s the third time this month.”

“James.”

+25 Points

“Rescheduling,” he said, with the tone of a man who had long since made peace with his life choices. “Anything else?”

“Find out where Tom’s engineering dinosaur show is filmed. He’ll want to know.”

A longer pause. “The cartoon, sir?”

“The cartoon.”

“I’ll-yes. I’ll find out.”

I hung up and stood at the kitchen window looking out at the city, the same view I’d stared at for years from this apartment while it meant nothing, while I’d been so committed to feeling nothing that I’d thrown away the only thing that had ever made it mean something. Not again, I thought. Not ever again.

I picked up my laptop and moved to the couch and got through the morning meetings in record time, and at four-thirty I stopped at the market on the way to Bella’s and spent twenty minutes standing in front of the pasta section reading labels like it was a document requiring due diligence, because she’d mentioned once that Tom liked the shells and I was not about to get the wrong ones.

I got the shells, I also got the lavender, already potted, on the way out.

When she opened the door and saw it, she looked at the plant, then at me, then back at the plant.

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