It had taken everything in Lennox to draw a line.
He reached for my hand, reading what I didn’t say. “It’s not like before,” he murmured. “He’s… different now. Softer.”
I wanted to believe him. And maybe I did. But I also knew how power lingered in the bones of men like Alan Gold, even after they’d sworn they’d changed.
I smiled anyway, brushing my thumb over the embossed rose on the invitation. “Then maybe this is his olive branch.”
“Maybe,” Lennox said, voice low. “Or his way of pulling me back toward his world for a minute. Either way, I’ll go. See what it’s about.”
He said it lightly, but I felt the echo of that other life pressing at the edges. The one with suits, mergers, and closed doors.
I helped him pack later that morning, folding his shirts with careful hands, pretending not to notice the ache settling under my ribs. I told myself it was fine—just a visit, just a weekend—but the thought of the city calling him home again left something hollow in my chest.
What if he left and the quiet here stopped feeling like home to him? What if his father’s world, polished and familiar, whispered louder than mine ever could?
I said none of it.
Instead, I tucked a note into his bag, small and simple:Remember to listen for the hum.
When he kissed me goodbye, I pressed my palm against his heart, feeling the steady rhythm beneath it. “Drive safe,” I said softly.
He smiled. “You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.”
But I would.
Because even when the mountains were full of song, it was his laughter that made the silence feel like home.
23
LENNOX
My mother used to say men like us carried two hearts — one for the world, one for the women who softened it.
When she died, my father taught us how to hide both.
Alan Gold built his legacy on control. Structure. Precision. He ruled boardrooms and broker tables like a man who’d never bled. But I knew better. I’d watched him break once — in the quiet of our old house, when he thought we were asleep, his hand pressed over the empty side of the bed like he could still feel her warmth.
He’d never talk about it, not in words. Instead, he shaped his love into expectations. Micah met them with strategy. Cairo met them with charm. I escaped them with distance.
And somehow, we all carried her — the grace she left behind — in different ways.
The city always hit me different after time away.
The air was thicker here, full of steel and static — horns and heels, church bells and chaos — the sound of life pressing forward whether you were ready or not.
I’d driven down from the retreat early that morning, windows cracked, the scent of pine still clinging to me like a prayer I didn’t want to wash off. Naima had kissed me slow before I left, her fingers resting against my jaw like she could anchor me even from miles away. That kiss followed me the whole drive — a reminder that peace had a pulse, and mine carried her name.
By the time I parked in front of my father’s brownstone in Shadyside, the city hum had already found its way into my chest. The house rose just as I remembered it — brick and bone, trimmed with memory.
Inside, it smelled of cedar polish and faint cigar smoke. The kind of scent that carried authority and old habits.
“Boy, you still knock?” My father’s voice rolled through the foyer before I could call out.
I smiled. “Respect doesn’t expire, old man.”
My dad looked up from the living room, his amber eyes a mix of serious and warm, glasses slipping down his nose, a grin breaking through years that used to make him unreadable. “Respect,” he echoed, chuckling. “That what they’re teaching you up there in them trees?”
Before I could answer, two deeper voices chimed in, both familiar, both amused.
