The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 132

Chapter 119: Separation

Caleb POV

She didn’t move rooms. She didn’t have to – we’d never shared one to begin with, and that particular distance had always been there, a boundary we’d silently agreed to while everything else between us slowly, carefully changed.

What changed on Sunday was something subtlex and, in its own way, more devastating.

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Before, she’d been everywhere in the penthouse in the small ways that mattered – her coffee cup on the kitchen counter beside mine in the mornings, her reading glasses left on the arm of the living room sofa, the faint sound of her on a call drifting from her home office when I worked late. The penthouse had felt inhabited. Alive in a way it never had before she came back into it.

By Monday morning, all of it had pulled back behind her closed door.

I noticed. years of therapy had at least given me that much- and I sat with the gutted particular feeling of watching something load-bearing develop a crack and understanding that I was the one who’d caused it.

She needed space. She’d said I need to think and I’d said okay and I’d meant it. Space was reasonable. Space was not the same as over. I repeated that to myself several times in the dark.

By Tuesday, Tom had noticed. He had his mother’s radar – that sharp, wordless attentiveness that missed nothing – and he’d been watching both of us at breakfast with focused concentration. We were civil at the table. Coffee passed, juice poured, his toast cut into triangles the way he liked. Perfectly, carefully civil – and perhaps that was exactly the problem.

Tuesday evening he climbed into my lap while I was working and sat there without asking for anything, which was unlike him enough that I closed the laptop entirely and just held him.

“Daddy,” he said, into my chest.

“Yeah, bud.”

“Are you and Mummy fighting?”

“We’re working through something,” I said.

“Maya says when grownups work through something it takes a long time.”

“Maya’s usually right.”

He was quiet. Then – “Are you going to be sad for a long time?”

I pressed my chin against the top of his head. “No,” I said, with more certainty than I had any right to. “I’m going to fix it.”

He seemed to accept that as he went back to his dinosaurs a few minutes later but the thing that kept coming back to me was Diana.

Not because I wanted to – she was my sister and I had waited years to have her back, and the dinners. had been good, and watching her and Tom negotiate with each other with cautious mutual curiosity had

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Chapter 119 Separation

been one of the quietly better things.

Clam

But Bella’s withdrawal had started after that first dinner, but for what exact reason that I had to find out.

It was an accident on Wednesday.

Tom was at Maya’s for the afternoon – one of their standing arrangements, dinosaur documentaries and whatever snacks Bella had decided Maya’s apartment was better stocked with- and I’d assumed the penthouse was empty when I stepped out of the bathroom.

The towel was low on my hips. My hair was still damp, water tracking down my chest, and I was thinking about the Aldermere call I needed to return when I walked straight into her.

She’d come from the direction of the kitchen, a folder tucked under one arm, a glass of water in her hand. She stopped the moment she saw me.

The water didn’t spill because she had too much control for that but her eyes moved.

I watched them because I was a man who had spent months learning to read Bella Hart and I wasn’t above cataloguing every detail when she forgot to guard herself.

Her eyes moved down my face, my chest, the towel and she let them, just for a moment too long. Her tongue dragged across her bottom lip. Then she caught herself, gave her head a small shake, and looked back up.

“I didn’t realise you were,” she started.

“Bella.”

She stopped. I hadn’t moved toward her yet. I was still in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, and I watched her process that – the fact that I wasn’t stepping back, wasn’t reaching for a shirt, wasn’t giving her the easy exit of pretending this was nothing.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” I said.

“I’ve been busy.” Her voice was steady.

“You’ve been in the same building for days and you’ve said approximately thirty words to me.”

“I’ve been thinking. Like I said I needed to.”

I pushed off the doorframe then. Slowly closing the distance between us by half. I reached out and touched her jaw, tilting her face up slightly.

“Caleb”

“I know,” I said quietly. “I’m not pushing.”

“This is pushing.”

“This is reminding you.” I held her gaze, close enough now that I could see the amber in her eyes. “That whatever is going on in your head, this is still here. We’re still here.”

For a moment she didn’t move. Her free hand came up – and I thought she was going to pull me closer, and then her fingers closed around my wrist instead as she lifted my hand away from her face.

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< Chapter 112 Separation

“Go get dressed,” she said.

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She turned and walked back toward her office without looking at me again. I stood in the hallway, damp and stupid.

Then I went to get dressed, and I thought about Diana as I called Hendricks.

“The first dinner,” I said, without preamble. “Were there any private conversations between Bella and Diana when I stepped out?”

Hendricks was quiet for a moment. “I wasn’t present, Mr. Black. I’d need to.”

“I’m not asking you to surveil my sister. I’m asking if any of your team observed anything.”

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