Something flipped in my brain.
An enormous, stuck gear slowly turned inside of me, and an unmovable building block of my very makeup shifted. Daniel rose to the top, and everything else repositioned with a heavy metallic clank that echoed through my entire existence. For the first time in my life, my parents and Royaume Northwestern took second seat to something else, and the moment they did, a flood of new thinking poured out. Ideas I never would have considered began bubbling up, sloshing around, spilling into my mind. A mental clog disintegrated, and alternate pathways started to form.
And then I knew what to do. I knew it so clearly, I started to laugh.
I got up and darted across the room for my phone.
Bri twisted to watch me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling an emergency meeting of the hospital board,” I said, pulling up my email.
She shook her head. “But—it’s a Friday. They’re not going to come talk to you tonight—”
“They will if they still want a Montgomery on staff this time tomorrow.”
I hurriedly typed out the email and hit Send.
It was what Daniel had said last night. When you don’t care, everything’s on your terms. They can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter to you, so ask for whatever the hell you want.
It’s not that I didn’t care about Royaume. It’s that I didn’t care more about it than Daniel.
So let the negotiations begin…
Chapter 37
Alexis
I’d been calling Daniel since last night. His phone was going right to voicemail, and my texts were unread.
I was exhausted. I’d barely slept. My meeting with the hospital board went until almost midnight, and then I’d spent two hours on a satellite phone call with my brother and his wife. I had to rewrite my speech, get Daniel a ticket to the gala, and put a tux on hold for him at a shop in Minneapolis. Then I left him a message, begging him to come. When he didn’t call me back or return my texts, I called the VFW looking for him. Hannah said he hadn’t been there in weeks, so I called Doug.
Doug told me Daniel said he was moving out of Wakan. That he couldn’t be there anymore. That he was probably already gone.
Because of me.
I’d broken his heart.
I’d thought letting him go was the most humane thing. The most humane thing would have been to let him stay.
Daniel had been ready to give up his whole world for me once. He’d always known what came first. He was willing to trade Wakan, the Grant House, his legacy—all to join me in this shallow, hostile place, because being without me was unacceptable to him.
And I hadn’t felt the same when it mattered.
I had allowed him to think I was embarrassed by him, that he wasn’t worth any sacrifice, no matter how big. That he wasn’t everything to me that I was to him. I’d had one foot out the door since the very beginning, I’d never given him everything, I’d denied him, hid him. And then I abandoned him.
I betrayed him.
So if he never wanted to speak to me again, could I even blame him?
I had to push it down. It wasn’t going to help get me through what I had to do. And I was doing it whether he showed up or not.
It was six o’clock and I was at the quasquicentennial. I couldn’t shake hands and hold a phone. My gown didn’t have pockets, so my cell was back at the table in a clutch where I couldn’t check it. I’d given Daniel’s number to Bri and asked her to keep trying to get in touch with him. I didn’t know how that was going, because she’d disappeared forty-five minutes ago, and I hadn’t seen her since.
The event was well under way. More than five hundred were in attendance, a carefully cultivated invite-only list. A red carpet welcomed guests into a Midsummer Night’s Dream–themed venue.
The ceiling had been transformed into a night sky complete with twinkling stars. Flowers dripped from the walls, and candles flickered on the linen-covered tables under towering floral centerpieces with bejeweled dragonflies in them. They’d even brought in trees. Servers in white gloves carried trays of appetizers and champagne around. Ice sculptures sat at every bar. There was a live band. Style magazines were here with other media. They were calling it the party of the century. I’d already posed for dozens of photos and done half a dozen interviews while Mom looked on, pleased.
My parents looked like the king and queen in a room full of their subjects. Everyone was shiny and glittery. Jessica and Gabby were standing in their gowns with their distinguished husbands over by the bar with Neil and Dad.