Page 28 of Thirty-Two Calls

Lance closed his eyes, a ragged breath escaping his lips. "I want to give her everything. I want to marry her. I want to wipe away the last decade of making her feel like a secret. But when I look at her... Richard, she doesn't want it. She isn't looking for marriage. She doesn't want the Rothwood name. She told Van that becoming my wife would just feel like another way of depending on my reputation to shield her from the whispers."

Richard frowned, leaning against the stone balustrade. He was a master of reading people, but even he hadn't anticipated this specific, impenetrable wall. "I didn't expect that. Evie always struck me as a traditional romantic. She would have moved mountains to be your wife."

"She would have," Lance agreed, his voice cracking with a profound, self-inflicted grief. "If I had asked her when she was twenty-two. Or twenty-five. But I made her wait."

Richard sighed, clapping a firm, sympathetic hand on Lance's shoulder. "Ten years is a long time, Lance. It's an entire lifetime for a woman in her twenties. She waited for you. She bled for that relationship while you managed your empire and your ex-wife's optics. Eventually, you can only bang your head against a locked door for so long before you just... stop wanting to go inside."

The words were brutal, but they were the exact, unvarnished truth Lance needed to hear.

"She got tired of waiting," Richard said softly. "And in the process of surviving that disappointment, she built a version of herself that doesn't need a marriage certificate to feel whole. You can't fault her for outgrowing the fairy tale you refused to give her."

"I don't fault her," Lance whispered, a single tear slipping down his cheek, swallowed by the darkness. "I revere her for it. It just breaks my heart that my cowardice cost me the privilege of being her husband."

Lance looked back toward the glass doors of the villa, toward the hallway that led to the woman who held his entire soul in her hands. He was a king who had finally won the war, standing in the ruins of his own making, quietly devastated by the ultimate cost of his victory.

He had Evangeline. It was a miracle, and it was more than he deserved. He would spend the rest of his life standing in her sunlight, even if he could never give her his name.

Chapter Twenty-One: The Taming of the Tide

Six months into his sun-drenched exile on the Riviera, the edges of Lance Rothwood’s reality had profoundly softened. The frantic, clawing need to rebuild the Rothwood empire around Evangeline had quieted into a profound, grounding stillness. He had learned the terrifying, beautiful art of simply being present.

He learned her. He learned that she preferred her tea steeped for exactly four minutes. He learned that the soft, rhythmic tapping of her keyboard meant she was lost in the Kingsley-Hayes narrative, while a frustrated sigh signaled a plot hole that required a walk along the cliffs to untangle. He learned the exact, sleepy weight of her head on his shoulder in the mornings.

Evie and Lance were happy. It was a sunlit, unhurried happiness, entirely untethered from the chaotic gravity of New York. But beneath the balmy surface of Lance's serenity, a deep, silent ache persisted.

It manifested in small, subtle ways. When they walked past the ancient, stone chapel in the village square, Lance would feel an instinctive tightening in his chest. He would casually, indirectly steer the conversation toward the permanence of their life together, testing the waters.

Evie would always catch the implication. She was endlessly, achingly gentle.

"We don't need a cathedral, Lance," she’d murmur, looping her arm through his, her hazel eyes reflecting the cloudless Mediterranean sky. "We have everything we need right here. It doesn't matter anymore."

Each time she said it, a fresh wave of grief washed over him. He would smile, kiss her temple, and agree, but the sorrow was a heavy stone in his gut. It had not even been a year since they had reunited, and in that short span, he felt the excruciating, physical pain of being denied the one thing he wanted most: to make her his wife.

If I feel this shattered after ten months, he thought, watching her walk ahead of him along the cliffside path, what did she feel for nine years? He felt the crushing weight of his regret pressing down on him, a debt he knew he could never, truly repay. She had forgiven him, yes. But forgiveness did not erase the brutal fact that he had extinguished her dream.

The Call of the Maelstrom

The bubble, however, could not remain entirely impervious.

Every few months, a crisis in New York would escalate beyond the capabilities of his executive team, demanding the physical presence of the CEO. A massive corporate merger, teetering on the edge of collapse, finally pulled Lance away.

"Come with me," Lance pleaded, standing in the foyer of the villa, his tie undone and his luggage waiting by the door. "Please, Evie. Just for four days. We'll stay at the Plaza. You won't even have to look at the financial district."

Evie, dressed in a comfortable linen sweater, reached up and smoothed his collar. She was deeply amused by his anxiety, but she remained entirely firm.

"I am right in the middle of a crucial chapter, Lance," she smiled, a gentle but immovable boundary. "And my French tutor is coming on Tuesday. I’m staying."

"The French tutor can wait," Lance urged, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her close. "New York can wait. I’ll cancel the merger."

"You will absolutely not cancel the merger," Evie laughed softly, pressing a kiss to his jaw. "Go. Slay the dragons. I will be here when you get back."

Lance relented only because he knew he could not force her, but he walked out of the villa feeling a familiar, cold dread. He hated returning to the city without her. He hated the whispers, the ghosts, and the terrifying possibility that he might lose her in his absence.

The Confession

The New York merger was a bloodbath, but Lance concluded it with a vicious, brutal efficiency that left Wall Street reeling. In the aftermath, a desperate request came through for a joint interview with a major financial syndicate, covering both his independent ventures and the newly insulated Rothwood foundation.

He reluctantly agreed, purely to solidify the public stance that the Rothwood empire was permanently out of reach.