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Chapter 822:

Cole leaned against the doorframe. His knees gave way. He slid down to the carpet, his back scraping against the wood, and sat with his legs splayed in front of him like a broken doll.

His eyes moved across the empty shelves, cataloging absence. The cashmere sweaters she had favored in winter. The silk blouses she had worn to the laboratory. The running shoes she had used on the beach path every morning at six — before he woke, before he could pretend to ignore her.

Gone. All gone.

His gaze caught on something in the far corner: a pale gray shape, almost invisible against the carpet’s similar tone. He crawled forward on hands and knees and reached into the shadows.

𝖴𝗉𝖽𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗌 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒 𝗐𝖾𝖾𝗄 𝗈𝗇

A sweater. Cashmere. The color of morning fog.

Cole lifted it to his face and inhaled deeply, greedily, his lungs straining to capture every molecule. Beneath the cedar blocks and the faint mustiness of disuse, there it was — her scent. Clean and cold, like citrus peel and alpine air.

The smell detonated something in his chest. Memories cascaded through him, unbidden and unbearable.

June in this sweater, standing at the kitchen island at two in the morning, warming milk for him when he came home late from the office. She had never asked where he had been. She had known. She had always known.

June in this sweater, sitting on the window seat in the library, watching the winter waves crash against the rocks. He had passed her a dozen times that day going to and from his study, and never once asked what she was thinking.

June in this sweater, the night he had told her about Alycia’s pregnancy. She had not cried. She had simply nodded, her face pale and still, and gone upstairs to pack a bag. He had thought she was being dramatic. He had thought she would come back.

Cole pressed the sweater against his face. His shoulders shook. The sobs that tore out of him were raw, animal, stripped of all dignity and pretense.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped into the cashmere. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry p>

The words meant nothing. They were too small, too late, too human for the scale of his failure.

He curled forward, his forehead pressed against the carpet and the sweater clutched to his chest like a child’s blanket. “Please,” he whispered to the empty room, to the ghosts, to the woman who would never hear him. “Please look at me. Please see me. I’m not just his face. I’m not p>

But he was. He had always been. And now, finally, he understood what that meant.

Mrs. Lynch stood in the doorway, a tray of soup forgotten in her hands. She had worked for the Compton family for thirty-two years. She had seen Cole as a child, as a young man, as a grieving brother, as a ruthless CEO.

She had never seen him like this.

She backed away quietly, pulled the door closed, and left him alone with his ghosts.

Candlelight glowed in the private dining room of Eleven Madison Park, casting a warm shimmer across the sparkling crystal.