Chapter 9: Rule Broken
1343 Words
“I know that. You know that. But she convinced herself he was, and she walked away because it was easier than staying.” His voice went quiet. “Noah stopped speaking entirely two weeks after she left. Hasn’t said more than a handful of words since then. Until this morning with you.”
The weight of that settled between us.
“The doctors say it’s selective mutism,” Adrian continued. “Psychological trauma manifests as an inability to speak in most situations. They say he might grow out of it or he might not. They say he needs therapy and patience and time.”
“And you’ve been giving him all of that.”
“I’ve been trying. But every therapist, every specialist, every well meaning person who tries to help, they all leave eventually. And every time someone new comes into his life and then disappears, it reinforces what Vivian taught him: that he’s not enough to make people stay.”
I looked at the portrait again, at this woman who’d walked away from her child because he didn’t meet her standards, and felt something cold settle in my stomach. “Is that why you don’t celebrate Christmas? Because that’s when she left?”
“Partly.” He moved to the desk, picked up a pen just to have something to do with his hands. “Also because Christmas in my world is, it’s performative. Parties and galas and people pretending to care about things they don’t actually care about. Vivian loved it. The spectacle. The attention. The chance to show off.”
“And now you associate the whole holiday with her.”
“Smart.” He set the pen down, aligned it perfectly with the edge of the desk. “You’re very smart, Miss Hart. Annoyingly so.”
“Elise.”
“What?”
“You keep calling me Miss Hart like I’m here for a business meeting. My name is Elise.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, and something shifted in his expression. “Elise is too, it’s too personal.”
“As opposed to the very impersonal conversation we’re having about your ex wife and your son’s trauma?”
A ghost of something that might have been a smile touched his lips. “Point taken.”
“So use my name. Please.” I moved closer, drawn by something I couldn’t explain. “I’m going to be here for at least few more days. We can either spend that time being strangers who happen to be trapped together, or we can at least try to be civil.”
“I thought we agreed on a polite distance.”
“That was your rule, not mine.”
“All the rules are mine. You’re in my house.”
“Right. Your house, your rules, your life.” I gestured at the portrait, at the office, at the perfectly controlled space he’d built around himself. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Better than it would work with chaos.”
“Is that what you think I am? Chaos?”
He studied me for a long moment, those blue eyes seeing too much. “I think you’re the kind of person who walks into a stranger’s house in a snowstorm and immediately starts rearranging the furniture. Metaphorically speaking.”
“Maybe the furniture needs rearranging.”
“Maybe it’s arranged exactly the way it needs to be to keep from falling apart.”
We stared at each other across the office, and I realized this wasn’t about rules or boundaries or inappropriate questions anymore. This was about a man who’d built walls so high he couldn’t see over them, and a woman who’d just spent three years inside someone else’s walls and recognized the architecture.
“Maren’s here.”
I jumped. A woman stood in the doorway, older, maybe sixty, with silver hair pulled back in a neat bun and sharp eyes that missed nothing. She wore dark slacks and a cream sweater, and she looked at me with the kind of assessing gaze that seemed to catalog everything in seconds.
“Maren.” Adrian’s voice shifted to something more formal. Professional. “This is Elise Hart. She’s, she got stranded in the storm.”
“I gathered.” Maren stepped into the room, and I noticed she moved with the easy confidence of someone who’d been here long enough to claim space. “I’m Maren Woods. I manage Kane Summit Resort, which is at the bottom of this mountain and currently buried under four feet of snow.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Is it?” She smiled, but it wasn’t unkind. Just knowing. “You’re in the west wing, dear. That’s Adrian’s private space.”
“She was just leaving,” Adrian said quickly.
“Was I?” I looked at him, challenging myself. “I thought we were having a civil conversation.”
“We were. Now we’re done.”
Maren’s smile widened slightly. “Well. This is interesting.”
“Maren.” Adrian’s voice held a warning.
“What? I’m just observing. It’s not often someone stands in your office arguing with you instead of running away.” She turned to me. “He’s usually more effective at scaring people off.”
“I’m not that easy to scare.”
“Clearly.” Maren looked between us, something calculating in her expression. “Well, I came to check on you both and make sure you have everything you need. The staff stocked the kitchen this morning before the roads became completely impassable. You should be set for at least a week.”
“Thank you,” Adrian said stiffly.
“And Noah? How is he?”
Something flickered across Adrian’s face. “He’s, he spoke this morning. To Elise.”
Maren’s eyes went wide. “He spoke?”
“Several full sentences.”
“Adrian, that’s, that’s wonderful.” She looked at me with new interest. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just, I was just there.”
“She was more than just there,” Adrian said quietly. “She saw something I’ve been missing.”
The admission seemed to cost him something. Maren noticed it too, her expression softening. “Maybe that’s what you both needed. Someone to see.”
“Maybe.” Adrian moved toward the door, clearly done with this conversation. “Thank you for coming, Maren. As always.”
“Of course.” But she didn’t move immediately. Instead, she looked at me one more time. “He’s a good man, Elise. Stubborn as a mule and scared of his own shadow sometimes, but good. Don’t let the ice fool you.”
“Maren,” Adrian warned.
“I’m going, I’m going.” She patted his arm as she passed. “Try not to scare this one away before the storm clears. Noah already likes her. That’s rare.”
Then she was gone, leaving Adrian and me alone in the office with Vivian’s portrait watching over us like a beautiful, judging ghost.
“I should go,” I said finally.
“Yes. You should.”
But neither of us moved.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “Noah isn’t broken. And neither are you. You’re just, you’re both hurting. And hurt people build walls. I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” I thought about my own walls, the ones I’d built around myself during three years of being told I was too much, too emotional, too everything. “I really do.”
I left him standing there in his office, surrounded by leather and wood and the portrait of a woman who’d walked away.
And as I found my way back to the guest wing, I realized something that should have scared me but didn’t.
Adrian Kane wasn’t just a cold, hostile stranger anymore.
He was a man drowning in pain, and I was dangerously close to jumping in after him.
- Writer
