Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty Five
Antonio
I tug my shirt over my head and reach for the clean one folded on the dresser, still half-damp from the shower steam and the fact that my head is full of her.
Behind me, Elsa sits at her vanity with a towel wrapped around her, hair twisted up, skin flushed from the heat, shoulders bare. She’s doing creams and serums like it’s a completely normal day.
As if we didn’t just lose our minds in the shower and say things we’ve never said to other people before.
Elsa loves me.
A smile moves over my face. It’s the most precious gift I’ve ever been given, her love.
I dress slowly because I can’t seem to make my hands move faster when she’s in my line of sight.
She dots something under her eyes, taps it in with the pad of her finger. Then she reaches for a big tub of moisturizer, scoops up a generous amount, and lets the towel pool in her lap.
My mind empties of all thought.
God.
I love how comfortable she is like this. How she just exists in her own skin without flinching. Without the reflex to cover up, to shrink down, to apologize for taking up space.
I clear my throat like that will fix what’s happening in my body.
“You know,” I say, voice rough, “most women are… modest after sex.”
She glances at me in the mirror, brows lifting slightly as she starts working the moisturizer over her shoulder.
“Mm?”
“Shy,” I clarify. “Eager to cover up. As if I haven’t already seen everything.” I take a step closer, stopping behind her chair, not touching. Just watching. “I like that you don’t do that.”
Her mouth curves, faintly amused, and she keeps rubbing the cream into her skin with slow, thorough strokes that make my mouth water. I track her hand with my eyes, imagining my lips following the same path down her arm, and then over to her other arm.
She doesn’t stop her routine. She just answers like it’s obvious.
“Privacy and modesty don’t really exist in the modeling world.”
My gaze flicks to her face in the mirror.
“You went to a lot of your mom’s gigs, huh?” I ask.
Her expression softens in a way I didn’t expect—fond, almost nostalgic.
“Yeah,” she says. “My parents didn’t want to be separated, and they were never the type to leave me home with a nanny while they jetted around the world.
So I always went along. On the set of photo shoots.
Backstage of fashion shows.” She smooths the moisturizer over her chest, drawing my eyes down.
“It helped when I took up modeling for a while, too. Not much room for modesty when you walk backstage, and three people start undressing you in the middle of a room with a hundred other people because you have about ninety seconds before you have to be in the next outfit, ready to walk again.”
My brows lift before I can stop them.
“You modeled too?”
She lifts her own brow at me in the mirror.
I let out a breath and shake my head once. “I mean—” I gesture at her, at the whole, completely unfair picture of her there. “Not that you couldn’t. Look at you.”
Her cheeks flush with the compliment, and she smiles, kind of shy.
“I’m just surprised,” I add, because it’s true. “It doesn’t seem like your thing. Why’d you stop?”
She shrugs, casually, and dips her fingers back into the tub.
“I guess I realized it wasn’t really my thing.
I just thought it was because it was my mom’s thing, and I wanted to be just like her.
” She rubs the cream into her hands, then props one foot onto the vanity to rub the moisturizer into her thigh.
The towel slides down even more, and my mouth waters.
She continues, unhurried and lost in memory, completely unaware of where my thoughts are.
“It all looked so amazing and glamorous from the sidelines, but when you’re in it, it’s not quite so shiny. ”
I stay quiet, letting her talk.
“The constant jet-setting,” she continues, “but when you’re modeling, it’s not just to sit on set and watch the glamour.
It’s for work, and the schedule gets exhausting.
All the fancy clothes are wonderful… and also pretty uncomfortable.
The red carpets, all glammed up, camera flashes in your face while people shout personal questions at you. ”
Her tone shifts, almost imperceptibly. Still calm. But tighter around the edges. I notice immediately.
She keeps rubbing the moisturizer in automatically.
“It’s a job,” she says, like she’s reminding herself as much as me. “And when you’re in it, you’re not this… untouchable thing people imagine. You’re a body someone is styling, posing, lighting. People adjust you without asking. They talk about you like you’re not standing there.”
I feel my shoulders go rigid.
She glances at herself in the mirror again, but her eyes aren’t really seeing her face. They’re somewhere else—backstage, maybe. Under those lights.
“And you get used to it,” she adds, softer. “You tell yourself it’s normal because everyone around you acts like it’s normal.”
I don’t interrupt. I just stand there listening, because if I move, I’ll interrupt the way she’s finally letting the truth out.
Elsa exhales slowly.
“Yeah, the jet-setting sounds glamorous,” she says, and a faint, humorless curve touches her mouth.
“But it’s airports at five a.m. and sleeping on planes and barely eating, because when you’re wearing clothes someone else designed, it’s better not to eat than to eat something because it’s convenient.
The clothes look amazing in photos, but half of them hurt.
Pins. Tape. Shoes that make your toes go numb and you’re expected to smile like it’s effortless. ”
She starts on her other leg, rubbing moisturizer in slow circles while she remembers.
“And then there’s the part nobody tells you about when you’re watching from the sidelines,” she continues. “The way people feel entitled to you. Not because they know you. Not because you’ve given them anything. Just because you exist and you’re… visible.”
My stomach drops.
“But it’s part of the job. It’s selling the clothes, and the body beneath it is what makes the clothes look good. And I dealt with it. I didn’t let it bother me.” She pauses and looks down at the tub for a second. “Until…”
“What is it?” I murmur.
She shrugs, and my stomach drops.
“Until,” she whispers, “the countdown to eighteen.”
It takes me a second, but when it does, it hits me like a punch.
“Elsa,” I say again, a little harder.
“Do you know what it’s like,” she asks, quietly interrupting me, “to be seventeen and realize that grown men are counting down the seconds—literally seconds—until you’re legal?”
She scoops a little more cream, then wipes the excess on the back of her hand, trying for casual.
“A countdown to eighteen. Like the day you turn eighteen is some sort of starting gun. Like the only thing standing between them and what they want is not whether I want it or not, but the possibility of consequences.”
She sets the tub down and wraps the towel around her again.
“I know I’m not the only one it’s happened to. I know other women in the spotlight have had to put up with it before, but it was right around the time I found out that I wasn’t getting all my fan mail.”
“What do you mean?” I murmur, almost afraid to know.
She lets out a slow breath through her nose, like she’s bracing.
“My team,” she says. “PR. Management. Whoever was sorting it. They were… filtering.”
I feel something cold slide down my spine. “Filtering what?”
Her mouth tightens. She keeps her eyes on the mirror like she doesn’t want to see my face when she says it.
“The normal letters came through,” she says. “The sweet ones. The harmless ones. But the other ones—”
She swallows, and her fingers pause in their fidgeting on the towel for half a second before they start moving again.
“They held them back,” she continues, voice flat. “It’s common in the industry not to show models and celebrities all the letters. They hold certain ones back and keep them, just in case.”
My jaw clenches. “In case what?”
But I know. I know exactly what she’s going to say. The world I spend my time in is no stranger to men like this.
“In case something happens to me. In case some crazy, obsessed fan kidnaps me or threatens me or stalks me, they have the letters to give the cops.”
She clears her throat. “We’re not really supposed to see those letters. Well, they don’t want us to see those letters.”
“But you did,” I say quietly.
Her laugh is small and ugly. “I was about to turn eighteen, and my parents could no longer legally take care of things like that without my permission. So, they had to let me know, in case they needed to get the cops involved.
“Once I found out, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I had to see them. I snooped in my manager’s office and found the boxes. Plural. Packed full of them.” She shakes her head once. “Each one meticulously labeled.
My stomach turns. “Jesus.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was na?ve. But the things some of those people said…
They wrote like I wasn’t even a person,” she says, and her voice finally cracks—just a hairline fracture, but I hear it.
“Not Elsa. Not a girl who had homework and friends and parents who loved her. Just… a body they’d decided was theirs. ”
My stomach knots so hard it feels like nausea.
“And the countdown,” she continues, “wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t ‘can’t wait for your birthday’ from some harmless fan.” Absently, she scoops a small dot of cream and rubs it into her hands, even though she’s already done it.
“It was grown men counting down until I was legal. Not that being underage was a problem for them. It’s just when they could finally say out loud what they wanted to do to me instead of sending anonymous letters.”
I feel my hands curl at my sides. I force them open. I want to stop her. I want to hold her and comfort her, but I made her start this, and she needs to finish it. I can’t stop her purge just because it might break something in me if I hear any more.
“Some of them were… graphic,” she continues, eyes still locked on the mirror.
“Not flirting. Not admiration. Fantasies. Instructions for me, as if I were a willing party. Step-by-step plans for the minute after midnight. They weren’t all sexual, either.
Some of them were so much worse. Those were the ones that were investigated, I found out.
Apparently, the cops already had a pretty big file as well. ”
I can’t get air all the way into my lungs.
She swallows hard and pulls the towel out of her hair, letting her damp locks fall over her shoulders. “And the countdown sites—people commenting under them, cheering, joking, trading screenshots of me—pictures that they edited so I was… doing things.”
She shivers hard, and I step forward to cut her off. That’s enough. I shouldn’t have pushed her. It was a mistake.
I lean down behind her and pull her back against me, wrapping my arms around her tightly.
“Hey,” I say, and my voice comes out rough, like my throat’s been scraped raw. “Hey, look at me.”
She meets my eyes in the mirror and tilts her head, letting her temple rest against my cheek.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went through that, and I’m sorry that I made you relive it,” I whisper.
“You didn’t make me,” she says quietly. “And it doesn’t affect me the way it used to.
It’s still sick, obviously. It’s all very disgusting, but I’ve learned to put it in the past. I left because I felt like, by being a part of it all, I was enabling it.
I know now how stupid that is. It wasn’t my fault.
It was their fault—completely. But at the time, I felt so ashamed, reading the things they were saying about me. ”
My arms tighten around her. “Those men should be put in the ground,” I say, quiet and vicious.
“I agree with that. Unfortunately, it’s not usually what happens.
” She leans back against me. “It created tension between my mom and me. Because she’d dealt with it her whole life and she had her own armor, her own way of pretending it didn’t touch her.
And I was—” She huffs a breath. “I was young. I thought she should be angry all the time. I thought she should want to burn the world down.”
Her mouth presses into a line.
“We got over it,” she says. “Eventually. She accepted that modeling isn’t what I wanted to do, and I accepted that she had her own way of dealing with things. But it changed how I saw things. It changed what I wanted my life to be.”
I press my mouth to her damp hair, a careful kiss that’s more comfort than anything else.
“I don’t blame you,” I say, and it comes out like a vow. “Not for leaving. Not for being angry. Not for wanting her to feel it the way you felt it.”
Her fingers curl over my forearm like she’s anchoring herself.
“I know you know this,” I say, softer, “but shame belongs to the people who did it. Not to the girl who was just trying to live her life.”
“Took me a long time to realize that,” she says quietly, eyes shining.
I’m still pissed off. More than pissed off. I want to hunt people down.
I want to find the people who sent the letters, the cops who did nothing, the agents and managers who left those boxes in such an easy-to-find place. I want heads to roll.
I calm myself down by holding Elsa longer.
Her shoulders rise on a breath, then fall.
“I guess we should get up,” she murmurs.
“We don’t have to,” I say.
“If we don’t, I’m going to starve,” she says.
My laugh rumbles out, and I pull back.
“Can’t have that,” I say, taking her hand to pull her up.
She drops her towel and walks to the dresser, still naked and comfortable about it, even after everything she just told me.
I feel a surge of pride at her bravery, at how she picked herself up and didn’t let it change who she is.
“Any chance we’re leaving the apartment today?” she asks lightly, turning toward me.
I shake my head.
Not a chance in hell. I want to spend all day with this woman in my arms. Plain and simple.
“Good,” she says and pulls out shorts and an oversized sweater.