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I laugh. It's not dignified. Nothing about my face right now is dignified. I'm pretty sure I have mascara on my chin.

"I'm scared."

"Of course you are." He squeezes my hand. "Love is terrifying. Your mother scared the hell out of me for thirty years."

That gets a real laugh out of me. "She had that effect on people."

"She had that effect on me. Everyone else thought she was delightful." He shakes his head. "I was the one stupid enough to propose to a woman who could outargue me in two languages."

I smile, and for a second he's so entirely himself that it hurts in the best way.

"Tell him," he says.

I go still.

"He deserves to know this stopped being an arrangement for you." He pauses. "And from what you've told me, I think it stopped being one for him a long time ago too."

I don't say anything for a moment. I just sit there holding my father's hand in a room that smells like antiseptic and clean sheets, and for the first time in... I don't know how long... the weight of everything I've been carrying feels like something I'm allowed to put down.

"When did you get so wise?" I ask.

"I've always been wise," he says. "The brain just needed a tune-up."

I laugh — a real one this time. The kind that loosens something in my chest.

He pats my hand. "Now go home and tell your husband you love him before I do it for you."

"You wouldn't."

He raises his brows. "Levi gave me his number at the wedding. Don't test me."

"Of course he did."

I lean forward and kiss his forehead. He smells like soap and warmth and every good thing I almost lost and somehow still have.

At the door, I look back once. He's already picked up his book, sunlight on his hands. More present than absent today. Not all the way healed — maybe never exactly the way he was before. But here. Sharp enough to see right through his daughter's billion-dollar marriage and gentle enough not to make her feel stupid about it.

That's my dad. That's always been my dad.

By the time I pull out of Brookhaven's parking lot, I know exactly what I'm going to do.

I'm going home. And tonight, before anything else gets the chance to blow this up, I'm going to tell Everett Kauffman I love him.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

EVERETT

I’m at the tower for the first full day since France, buried under the kind of backlog that happens when a man who hasn’t taken a vacation in five years suddenly decides to spend two weeks in the south of France pretending he’s the type of person who relaxes.

I don’t relax. I never have. Aria doesn’t need to know that the entire time I was watching her paint on that balcony, I was also answering emails under the table.

My desk looks like a crime scene. Contracts waiting for signatures. Two acquisition briefs thick enough to use as doorstops. A stack of Hawkeyes projections I should’ve reviewed an hour ago. Three emails flagged urgent by people who clearly don’t know what the word means.

I’m halfway through a quarterly review when my phone buzzes.

I glance at the screen.

Genevieve Holiday.