OFF LIMIT

Chapter 3

I made it upstairs a little after midnight, my heels dangling from one hand, the house finally quiet beneath me for the first time all evening.

I was still in the doorway of my room when my phone buzzed.

Gabriel.

So sorry, Bella. Claire's not feeling well, I need to stay with her tonight. I'll come see you first thing tomorrow, promise. Love you.

I typed back something understanding, something that didn't let on how disappointed I was, and set the phone on my nightstand.

It wasn't his fault. I knew that.

It still stung a little, the first night home and my brother nowhere in sight.

I changed out of the black dress, washed my face, climbed into a bed that still smelled faintly like fabric softener from years ago, and lay there in the dark, unable to sleep.

My mind kept circling back to the doorway, to the last thing Theo had said to me before he left.

I'd walked him out, more out of habit than intention, the way I used to when I was younger and it had felt natural instead of dangerous.

He'd paused at the door, keys in hand, and looked at me with that same steady, careful expression he'd worn all night.

"I mean it," he'd said. "Whatever you're carrying, you don't have to carry it alone. I know I'm not your father. I'd never try to be. But you can talk to me, Isabella. About anything. I'll always be here for that."

I'd nodded and said thank you and closed the door before my face could give away how much those words had undone me.

Now, hours later, staring at the ceiling, they wouldn't stop replaying.

Whatever you're carrying.

If only he knew exactly what that was.

I was still awake, still turning his voice over in my head, when my door creaked open and my mother slipped in, still in her robe, hair down for the first time all night.

"Can't sleep either?" she asked quietly.

I shook my head, and she crossed the room without another word and climbed into bed beside me the way she used to when I was small and had nightmares, like no time at all had passed.

I curled toward her, and for a while neither of us said anything.

"I keep thinking about your father tonight," she said eventually, her voice soft in the dark. "This house is always loudest with him gone. Strange how that works."

"I miss him so much, Mom."

"I know, baby."

She smoothed a hand over my hair, the way she used to.

"We never really talked about it properly, did we? After you left. I think we were both trying to survive it in our own ways, and somewhere along the way we stopped talking about him at all."

We talked for a long time after that.

About him.

About the things I hadn't let myself say out loud in years, the sound of his laugh, the way he used to hum off-key in the kitchen on Sunday mornings, how much I still reached for my phone to call him sometimes before remembering.

My mother cried.

I cried harder.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, wrapped in her arms in a bed that still felt like it belonged to a younger, less complicated version of myself, I finally fell asleep.

I woke up late, my mother already gone, sunlight slanting through the curtains I hadn't bothered closing all the way.

My head felt thick, my eyes swollen from crying, but something in my chest felt a little lighter too, like I'd set down a weight I hadn't realized I was still carrying.

I decided the day called for something simple.

A walk.

Coffee.

A trip to the little bookstore a few streets from the house that I used to disappear into for hours as a teenager.

It hadn't changed much, tucked between a bakery and a dry cleaner, the bell over the door still slightly out of tune.

I wandered the shelves slower than I needed to, letting myself get lost in it, and ended up in the section I would never have admitted to browsing in front of anyone I knew.

Contemporary romance.

The kind with a lot of tension and very little subtlety.

I'd read through most of my old collection a dozen times over the years, worn paperbacks I'd left behind when I moved abroad, and it felt like exactly the kind of mindless escape I needed.

I picked out three, tucked them low in my basket like that made any difference, and made my way to the checkout.

Which was, of course, exactly when I saw him.

Theo was two people ahead of me in line, a small stack of books balanced in one arm, dressed down in a way I rarely saw him, dark sweater, sleeves pushed up, looking entirely too good for a Tuesday morning bookstore run.

He hadn't noticed me yet.

I had exactly no time to escape before he turned, book in hand, and his eyes landed on me.

"Isabella."

Something easy and surprised crossed his face.

"Small world."

"Hi."

My voice came out higher than I meant it to.

I was suddenly, acutely aware of the covers in my basket, the kind with shirtless men and dramatic embraces, and I angled my body slightly, uselessly, trying to hide them without being obvious about it.

His gaze flicked down anyway, just briefly, and something almost amused touched the corner of his mouth before he had the decency to look away.

I felt my face go hot.

"Getting some reading in?" he asked, entirely too innocent.

"Just some light stuff."

I willed my voice to sound normal.

"You?"

He held up his own stack, business biographies and something on negotiation strategy, exactly what I would have expected.

"Considerably less exciting than yours, I'm sure."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course not."

The amusement in his eyes deepened, but he let it go, mercifully, and gestured toward the little café visible through the front window.

"I've got a bit of time before my meeting. Coffee?"

I should have said no.

I said yes instead.

The café was small, warm, the kind of place with mismatched chairs and the smell of espresso thick in the air.

Theo ordered for both of us without asking, remembering exactly how I took my coffee even after five years, and I tried not to let that mean as much to me as it did.

"So."

He nodded toward my tote bag, where the covers of my new books were doing a poor job staying hidden.

"Should I be worried about the kind of thing you're reading these days?"

"Absolutely not."

I took a sip of my coffee to hide the heat climbing my neck.

"It's harmless."

"Mm."

He didn't look convinced, and there was something almost boyish in the way his mouth curved, a version of him I rarely got to see, unguarded and teasing instead of composed and careful.

"I remember when you used to read those historical ones. Big dresses. Duels at dawn."

"You paid attention to what I read?"

"I paid attention to a lot of things."

He said it simply, without any particular weight, and moved on before I could decide whether it meant anything at all.

"How's Sienna? I haven't seen much of her this week."

We ended up talking about her for a while, easy and fond, trading old stories, the two of us laughing over some disastrous science fair project she and I had built together at fourteen that had nearly burned down half the garage.

It was the kind of conversation that used to happen constantly when I was younger, comfortable and familiar, and for a few minutes I let myself forget to guard every word.

Let myself simply enjoy sitting across from him the way I used to before wanting him became something complicated.

His phone buzzed eventually, and he checked it with a small, apologetic grimace.

"I have to go. Meeting in twenty minutes."

"Of course. Thank you for the coffee."

"Let me drop you home first."

"You don't have to do that. I can walk, it's not far."

"Isabella."

He was already standing, already reaching for his jacket, that quiet, immovable authority settling over him the way it always did when he'd decided something.

"Let me drop you home."

I gave up arguing.

It was easier that way, and if I was honest, some small, foolish part of me didn't want to.

He opened the car door for me the way he always had, waited until I was settled before closing it, and when I reached for my seatbelt, he leaned across and pulled it into place himself, quick and efficient, his hand brushing my shoulder in the process.

It was nothing.

A completely ordinary gesture from a man who had been looking after me in one way or another for most of my life.

I held my breath anyway.

And hated myself a little for it.

The drive was short, filled with easy, unimportant conversation, and when he pulled into the driveway he came around and opened my door again before I could do it myself.

"Thank you," I said, standing there a beat too long, unsure what else to say.

"Anytime."

He studied me for a moment.

"Take care of yourself, Isabella."

Then he was back in the car, and gone, and I stood in the driveway feeling like I'd just survived something without entirely understanding what.

I found Gabriel in the living room when I went inside, sprawled on the couch looking exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.

"Hey, stranger."

He sat up when he saw me, and I crossed the room and hugged him properly this time, the kind of hug that had been missing the night before.

"How's Claire?"

"Better. Resting."

Something flickered across his face, gone before I could name it.

"Sorry again about last night."

"Don't apologize. I understand."

I sat down beside him, studying him properly now that I had the chance.

There were shadows under his eyes I didn't like, a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen him in photos.

"You okay? You look tired."

"It's been a lot lately."

He rubbed a hand over his face.

"But, honestly, I've been thinking about proposing to Claire."

My whole face lit up despite the heaviness underneath his words.

"Gabriel. That's amazing."

"I want to do it right. Soon, actually. I don't want to wait forever."

He gave me a small, tired smile, the first real one I'd seen from him since I got back.

"I just haven't figured out how yet."

"You'll figure it out. You always do."

I squeezed his hand.

"I'm so happy for you. Both of you."

We talked a while longer, easy and unhurried, some of the old closeness settling back between us in a way that made my chest ache with how much I'd missed it.

Eventually he stood, checking his watch, saying Claire probably needed him, and I walked him to the door and hugged him again before he left.

Upstairs, alone again, I finally settled into bed with one of my new books, determined to lose myself in something that wasn't my own complicated life for a few hours.

It worked, for a while.

Then the story shifted into something considerably less innocent, and against every intention I had, my mind wandered somewhere it had no business going.

I did not know, exactly, when this had happened.

When wanting Theo had stopped being some vague, shapeless ache and become something specific, something I could picture in exact, humiliating detail.

Maybe it was the way he'd looked at me across that dinner table, steady and unreadable.

Maybe it was his hand brushing my shoulder in the car, brief and accidental and still somehow the loudest thing that had happened to me in months.

Maybe it was simply the sum of every small kindness he'd ever shown me, the way he made me feel important, confident, entirely seen, in a way almost no one else ever had.

Or maybe it was simpler than that.

Maybe it was just that he was devastatingly, unfairly handsome, and I had spent five years pretending I hadn't noticed.

I set the book down eventually, staring at the ceiling instead, thinking about a version of him I had no right to think about.

Theodore Kingsley.

Forty-five years old.

A man who had built an empire, who had never married, who had raised Sienna essentially alone.

I knew the story in pieces, the way you know things about people you've grown up around without ever discussing them directly.

Theo's younger brother, Sienna's biological father, had died in a car accident when she was barely a year old, his wife with him.

A single night, a single stretch of icy road, and Sienna had lost both her parents before she was old enough to remember either of their faces.

Theo had taken her in without hesitation.

There had been no other family close enough, no question of anyone else raising her, and he had never once treated it as an obligation.

He'd raised her as his own from the very beginning, had never let her carry the word orphan, had built an entire life around making sure she never had to feel the absence of parents she couldn't remember losing.

I knew because he'd told me himself, once, years ago, in a moment I doubted he even remembered clearly the next morning.

It had been after one of my father's birthday dinners, the two of them well past sober, my father having already gone up to bed while Theo lingered on the back terrace with a glass he'd stopped really drinking from an hour earlier.

I'd gone out to bring in the last of the dessert plates and found him there instead, staring out at nothing, uncharacteristically undone in a way I'd never seen him before.

I'd asked if he was alright.

He'd laughed, low and humorless, and told me things he had no business telling a seventeen-year-old, his words loosened by whiskey and whatever old grief had crept up on him that night.

About his brother.

About the accident.

About a version of Sienna's life that didn't exist anywhere except in that conversation, an entire history erased and quietly rewritten out of love.

"She can never know," he'd said, gripping the terrace railing like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

"I won't let her grow up feeling like she was someone's leftover responsibility. She's mine. She's always been mine."

I'd nodded, seventeen and completely out of my depth, and promised I'd never say a word.

I never had.

I doubted he even remembered telling me at all, and some quiet, protective part of me had never once considered bringing it up, not to him, not to Sienna, not to anyone.

It felt like the truest thing I knew about him, the clearest proof of exactly who he was underneath all that composure.

And I had carried it, silently, for eight years.

I understood, lying there in the dark, that this was part of why I loved him.

Not just the way he looked, or the way his voice did something unfair to my composure, but the steadiness underneath it, the proof of exactly what kind of man he was when everything had fallen apart around him.

He had taken in a grieving infant who wasn't his and built her an entire childhood without a single crack showing.

He had stayed.

He had built something out of the wreckage instead of running from it.

He was, in every way that mattered, exactly the kind of man impossible not to love.

Which was precisely the problem.