He carried the tea back and set it on the nightstand and pulled a chair over and sat. And he didn't say anything, just let her come to it in her own time. Three nights. She said finally. You asked how bad the last few nights have been.
That's the answer. This is the third night I haven't really slept. The cold. I told you. The hardware doesn't like the cold.
She wrapped both hands around the warm mug. It's never been this bad before. Or maybe it has. Maybe I just Maybe I always had somewhere to be the next morning, some meeting, some fight. And it gave me a reason to get up off the floor.
Tonight I didn't. I fell and I lay there and I realized there was nobody in the entire world who would notice if I never got up at all. Her voice was terribly steady. And that's when I called you. Daniel felt that one land somewhere deep.
I'd notice, he said quietly. I know. She looked at him. That's the strange part. I've known you 6 weeks and I called you before I even thought about it.
My body was on the floor and my hand was already dialing your number. Do you understand how much that terrifies me? Why would it terrify you? Because the last time I needed someone, Victoria said, the last time I let myself lean on a single human being, it was the man who was driving the car 11 years ago, my fiance. He walked away from the accident without a scratch and I spent 9 months in a hospital learning to walk again and he came to visit four times before he stopped coming at all.
She took a sip of the tea. He said he couldn't watch me be weak. He said it wasn't the woman he proposed to. And then he told two people at his firm about my spine, about the hardware, and inside a month it was all over the industry. And my own father's board started asking whether I was fit to inherit anything.
Her hands tightened on the mug. So I learned. I learned that the moment you let someone hold you up, you hand them the map to exactly where you're weakest, and they will use it every time. That's not cynicism, Mr. Carter. That's data.
That's 11 years of data. Daniel sat with that for a long moment. "Can I tell you something? " he said. "You will, regardless. " That got the ghost of a smile out of her, tired as it was. "When my wife was dying," Daniel said, "at the end, she couldn't do anything for herself.
Nothing. I fed her. I carried her. I did all of it, every single thing, for the last 2 months of her life. " He looked at his own hands. "And you know what she said to me near the very end?
She apologized. Just like you did tonight. She said she was sorry I had to see her like that. Sorry she was a burden. Sorry I was stuck taking care of a body that didn't work anymore. " His voice went rough.
"And I got so angry at her. It's the only time I ever got angry at her when she was sick. Because I said, 'Sarah, don't you dare apologize to me for letting me love you. Taking care of you isn't the price of loving you. It's the whole point.' And she cried, and I cried, and it was the closest we ever were, right there at the end, when she finally stopped being ashamed of needing me. " The penthouse was silent.
"I don't know who taught you that being weak means being betrayed," Daniel said. "But he was wrong, Victoria. He was a coward, and he was wrong. And he cost you 11 years of ever letting a single soul near you. But he was wrong.
He met her eyes. Taking care of somebody isn't the price of caring about them. It's the whole point. You just never had anybody stick around long enough to prove it. Victoria Hale looked at him and her eyes were bright and her jaw was working the way a person's does when they are fighting with everything they have not to cry in front of someone.
And then for the first time in 11 years, Victoria Hale stopped fighting it. She didn't sob. She wasn't the kind of woman who came apart in big pieces. But two tears spilled over and ran down her face and she let them, didn't wipe them away, didn't turn from him, just let this one man in the world see them. I don't remember the last time I cried.
She said her voice barely there. I told you that. On the phone, weeks ago. I remember. You made me a liar, Mr. Carter.
She wiped her face now finally and something in her expression was almost wondering. Twice in one night I've done things I haven't done in over a decade. Ask for help. And cry. She let out a breath that shook.
I don't know what you are. I don't know what to do with you. You don't have to do anything with me, Daniel said gently. That's the whole thing you can't seem to believe. You don't owe me for tonight.
You don't have to pay it back or guard against it or figure out my angle. I don't have an angle. I'm just a guy sitting in a chair making sure you're okay because somewhere along the way I started giving a damn whether you're okay. He stood, took the empty mug from her hands. Now lie down.
I'll be right out there on the couch. If you need anything in the night, you say my name and I'll hear you. And in the morning, I'll be here and we'll figure out the cold and the hardware and how to make sure this never happens like this again. But tonight, you just sleep, and you let somebody else keep watch for once. She lay back against the pillows.
She was asleep before he even reached the door. Daniel stood in the enormous, empty, echoing penthouse, and he looked at the sleeping woman who ran an empire and had no photographs on her walls, and he felt something shift inside his chest that he wasn't ready to name. He didn't sleep much on that couch. He kept getting up to check on her the way he checked on Lily standing in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of her breathing until he was sure it was steady. Somewhere around 4:00 in the morning, he stood there in the dark and admitted a thing to himself that he'd been circling for weeks.
He'd stopped doing this for the salary a long time ago. He didn't know when it had happened. Maybe the hallway outside the board meeting when her eyes had found him. Maybe tonight on the phone when she'd whispered, "Please. " But the money had stopped being the reason a while back, and now there was another reason, and it was a reason a man in his position had absolutely no business having about a woman who signed his checks and could destroy his life and lived in a world that would never not in a hundred years make room for a widowed former janitor from a walk-up in Queens. He was in trouble.