Page 129 of Salvaged Hearts

Us.

Her.

In the end, the only thing that I would take to my grave was my memory of Alessandra Hart.

My wife.

When she shattered around me, the heat beneath my skin became an inferno, and I followed her over the edge with a roar.

The roomat the end of the hall had long collected dust, painfully vacant, like a reminder of my life. Not anymore. Never again, if I had anything to say about it.

The walls were now covered in mounted charcoal sketches and splashes of color over canvas. Alice spent her evenings unwinding in a collection of acrylics and pastels, and sketches she swore were trash, but that had me mesmerized. One piece at a time, she’d made the room hers—her easel and stool by the windows overlooking the ocean. The oversized fuzzy chair in the corner with an equally fluffy blanket and her books now filling the wall of shelves.

Our week was full of end-of-summer wrap-ups and the beginning of fourth-quarter clients, in addition to the clean-up afterThunderstrikedelivered retribution on my behalf. As satisfying as it likely would have been to pay a visit to the Gilbert’s in their new cinderblock home, I didn’t need to validate why their threats had been effective.

They knew. Just as they knew who’d put them in there, and if they had a fraction as many brain cells as dollars seized by the U.S. government, they also knew I’d put them down if it came to that, without hesitation.

We’d filled our evenings with entertaining the Rhodes—boating, touring the city, and a match of football on the Emerald Bay field.

So, it was more than a little heartwarming to follow a comedic trail of her possessions through the foyer and down the hallway when I got back Friday evening. Like a nod to our normal routine, her shoes were halfheartedly discarded feet apart, followed by her blazer draped over an armchair beside the one painting she’d purchased for the hallway. By the time I crept through the cracked open door, I’d collected her discarded jewelry from a sofa table my assistant acquired at an auction a few years back.

With her music blaring—Hozier, if my memory served me well—and her eyes trained on the canvas on its stand, she focused with a statue’s stillness. With a firefly’s grace, she flitted forward to swirl a brush across the blue before stepping back and canting her head. She almost moved to the melody, like a well-rehearsed dance, as she nonchalantly added more color to the painting. I studied it then, smiling as I recognized the undeniable beginning of our island. The beach where our lives were irreparably altered.

“It’s perfect,” I said softly, smirking as she jumped and faced me.

“Christ, Grey.Make a noise.”

“I did. Several, actually. You just didn’t hear me.”

“In the zone, I guess.”

“Our beach?” When she nodded her confirmation, color flushed her cheeks. I would never tire of seeing her blush for me. “You ready for tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she sighed, the sound a bit jittery. “I don’t know why I’m nervous; it’s notmeplaying on that field.”

“Because you want your brother to be successful. That’s admirable if you ask me.”

“Pax has fought so hard for this.”

“I know.”

“TheWolvesgot him two Super Bowl rings.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t lead the Bombers to their first in decades.”

She smiled at that, rubbing the back of her hand over her face and leaving a smear of teal across her cheek. Laughing, I closed the distance to wipe her face clean.

“That’s for you,” she said, nodding to the painting.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I thought it could go in our room.”

“Finally get rid of that heartless, modern catastrophe you hate so much?”

This smile she didn’t bother to hide. “Maybe,” she replied, her arched brow and spark of challenge in her eyes making me laugh.

“Thank you. The other bores me to tears, anyway.”

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