Sweet Love 2x: Miss Ruthless CEO for our Superstar Uncle

Chapter 427: An Old Habit

The suite emptied out.

Aunt Estella retired with a cup of tea, her bedroom door closing with a soft click. Arianne did a final check on the twins: door cracked, nightlight on, the whale propped against Leo’s shoulder where he’d left it. When she came back down the hall, the main room was empty except for Franz, who was standing at the window with his hands in his pockets.

She knew that posture. She had seen it before, when something was sitting with him and he hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. She didn’t push.

She went to the bassinet, checked on Lexx, adjusted the blanket half a centimeter. Then she sat on the edge of the bed.

Franz stayed at the window for another minute. She watched his reflection in the glass: the set of his jaw, the way his shoulders weren’t quite loose. Then he came and sat beside her.

The mattress dipped. Neither of them spoke. Below, the city moved on without them.

She had known, at dinner, the moment Harvey said the words. She had watched Franz absorb it the way he absorbed things that landed wrong: face even, body contained, attention somewhere far away. She had spent the rest of the evening waiting for this.

"Are you angry with me?" Arianne asked. Her voice was low.

"No."

"Disappointed?"

He said nothing for a beat. Then: "Am I allowed to be upset?"

"Yes." She didn’t flinch from it. "You are. I should have told you much sooner. I kept waiting for the right moment and the right moment never came and then so much time had passed that telling you felt worse than not telling you. Like it had become the kind of thing that changes how someone looks at you."

"It doesn’t change how I look at you."

"I know. But I didn’t know that, before." She looked down at her hands. "I’m sorry. For keeping it from you. For letting you feel like there were parts of me you hadn’t been given access to."

"There are. That’s what I’m sitting with." He said it without accusation, but plainly. "Not Mythos. Not what you built. The fact that after two years I found out from someone else."

She didn’t argue with that. "You’re right."

"I’m not asking you to tell me everything at once. I’m not asking you to be someone you’re not." He looked at her. "I’m asking you to trust that I’m not going to use it against you. Whatever you give me."

Arianne said nothing. Outside the window, a siren moved through the streets below and faded.

"I know that," she said. "I do know that. It’s not about you. It’s an old habit and it runs deep and I’m working on it."

"I know you are."

He reached over and took her hand. Not a gesture of forgiveness: more like staking a claim. She let him hold it.

"Is there anything else?" he asked.

"No. Harvey told you the last of it. The rest is quarterly reports and board minutes. Very boring."

"I’ll take your word for it."

She looked up at him. "I was going to bring you tomorrow. The office. The people. I wanted you to see it before I said the words. Harvey took that from me."

"He does that."

"He’s very annoying."

"He’s a good friend."

"Yes." A pause. "He stayed. Through all of it. He never asked me for anything in return."

"Like someone else you know."

She looked at him. "You stayed too. Even when I gave you no reason to."

"I’ve been staying since I was eight years old. I’m not going to stop now."

She looked at him: the way she sometimes did when she was deciding whether to say the next thing. Then she reached up and pressed her hand flat against his chest, over his heartbeat. Not a dramatic gesture. Just a fact she was confirming.

He covered her hand with his.

She didn’t pull away. She leaned into him instead, her shoulder against his arm.

They sat like that for a while. The bassinet creaked once as Lexx moved in his sleep, resettling without waking.

"Does Lily still steal Leo’s drawings?" Franz asked. He wasn’t sure why that came to mind. Something about sitting in the dark, the suite around them settled.

"She doesn’t steal them. She ’borrows’ them for reference. There’s a distinction, apparently."

"Leo doesn’t agree."

"Leo has never agreed. He keeps a separate folder now so she can’t find them."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked."

He looked at her. That was fair, and they both knew it. There were things she would tell him if he asked that she would never volunteer: not from malice, but because it hadn’t occurred to her that he would want to know. That was its own kind of gap between them, and it was one they were both responsible for.

"Tell me things," he said. "Going forward. The small ones too. Not just the ones that feel significant enough."

She considered this. "All right."

"I want to show you," she said. "Tomorrow. All of it. The office. The people. Everything I built here. I want you to see it."

"Are you sure?"

"I brought you to Rohan. I introduced you to Harvey. I told you about the years I spent here." She tilted her head up to look at him. "Yes. I’m sure."

"Then I’m looking forward to it."

She paused. Outside, a car passed on the street below, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling. Then: "I know I don’t do this well. Letting people in. I know it frustrates you sometimes."

"It doesn’t frustrate me."

"Franz."

"It frustrates me sometimes," he said. "But I’m not going anywhere. That’s not a threat. It’s just a fact."

She looked at him a beat longer than she needed to. Something in her face that she didn’t usually let show. Then she settled her head back against his shoulder.

Lexx breathed in his bassinet. Outside, Rohan went on glittering in the dark.

Franz put his arm around her and held on.