Page 53 of When Ice Queens Collide
“What is it?”
“Friday, when you came to my house?”
Simone's chest pulled tight. She knew what the question was before Alexandra asked it.
“Was that part of the strategy too?”
The question landed, and Simone stopped walking.
Alexandra stopped, too, and turned, then waited. Her face was very still, almost statuesque. Simone looked at her, and what she saw was a woman who had asked the hardest question knowing she might hear an answer that would squash this before it ever really had a chance to develop, and who had asked it anyway because Alexandra Vaughn did not flinch.
“No,” she said. “It wasn't strategic. I didn’t have an ulterior motive and wasn’t trying to get anything from you.”
Her voice was thinner than she wanted it to be. She made herself keep going.
“Wednesday night I sat down with the file, after Vivian. I had to write the kill shot. I'd written kill shots before, and I knew exactly what to say and how to say it. But I sat there for three hours without writing a single word. Whatever it is that lets me do that to a company, it was just gone. My capacity had been disappearing for weeks and I'd been pretending it wasn't, and on Wednesday night, it was gone. So I came to you.”
Alexandra closed her eyes. It was a small thing—half a second, no more—and Simone had not seen her need to regain her composure like this before. When she opened them, they were wet. She didn't look away, nor did she try to hide it.
“Thank you,” Alexandra said.
Simone felt the impulse rise to make it light and say, “for what?”in the warm voice she used when a moment got too heavy and she wanted to put it down somewhere lower. She heard the impulse come up. She let it pass.
“You're welcome,” she said.
They started walking again. The trail came around a thinner stand of alders, and the sea opened back in front of them, lower this time, the gray-blue water catching what light was left. Wind hit them broadside. Simone saw Alexandra's hair lift and settle, and Alexandra didn't push it back.
The bend ahead was the distinctive Sitka spruce. Simone knew the gravel went a particular way in the twenty feet before it. They were nearly there, but she didn't say anything about it. Some part of her wanted to. She wanted to point at the tree and tell Alexandra what it was, the first thing she'd let herself learn in this city, the thing she'd stopped at on the night the lie ran out. But she let the desire pass. The tree could be just hers a little longer. Someday she'd tell her. Not today.
“There's a thing I have to say,” Simone said. “And I don't have a graceful way to say it.”
“Try.”
“What I do for a living, I take companies. I find what's valuable inside what someone else built and I take it. I've done it sixteen times.”
“I know.”
“I don't want yours.”
The trail crunched under their boots, and Alexandra's breathing had picked up slightly. The cold didn't account for it.
“I came here to take it,” Simone said. “But I'm trying to tell you now I don't want it. Not the deal, not any version of it. I'm not going to take what's rightfully yours.”
“Simone…”
“I want you.”
The wordyoucame out smaller than she meant it to. She kept her eyes on the path. Her hand was trembling in Alexandra's, and Alexandra had to feel it. She didn't say anything about it, though.
“That's the answer to your question,” Simone said. “I came for the company, and I'm not leaving with it. And I'm not leaving.”
She had to stop for a breath.
“I don't have a graceful version of this. I'm sorry.”
“Don't be.”
“I'm a mess.”
