Chapter Eleven
Olivia
I stand in front of the mirror and try to look at myself like I’m a stranger.
Bathroom light is too honest. No flattering angles, no mercy. Just me, damp hair pushed back from the shower, water tracking down my spine, steam curling off the glass where my breath hits it. I wipe a circle clear with the heel of my hand, and there I am.
The mark sits where my neck meets my shoulder, high enough that I have to think about my neckline until it goes away. Purple deepening to plum, a crescent with heat blooming under it. I touch it gently and feel a bright, electric echo.
Not pain. Memory.
There are other spots. A thumbprint bloom near my hipbone. Another on my breast. A smudge along my thigh where carpet pressed and friction did the rest. Knees a little scuffed. I tilt, turn. A faint red track where stubble scratched me when he—
I stop the sentence in my head before it turns into a reel I can’t stop watching.
He’s wearing some of me, too. I know it. The thin lines my nails carved down his back, the ones I felt break skin in that second where nothing on earth could have made me gentler.
The bite mark draws my eyes again. God.
I brace both hands on the counter and breathe.
I can catalog the night like it’s a project plan.
Step one: panic. The dark swallowing the car.
The way my breath turned small and dumb in my chest. Step two: his voice.
Calm, counting, steady. Sit with me. Breathe with me.
The jacket folded twice, slid to the corner.
The way his hands sat heavy and warm on my shoulders until the worst passed, and then left me cold.
Step three: the small things that were not small. His palm turned up. The question in it. The way my hand fit his, how that single choice unspooled fifty others. The first touch against my cheek. The first yes.
Everything after is heat and wanting and the kind of focus I didn’t know I was capable of.
The sound I made when he kissed the inside of my wrist. The way his mouth took its time and still felt like a free fall.
The grip of his fingers at my waist. The rough carpet under my shoulder blades when the jacket on the floor couldn’t contain us anymore.
The shock of him biting me right where the mirror shows it now, the sound I made that definitely wasn’t polite, the way he soothed it with his mouth right afterward, as if he couldn’t help himself.
I press my thumb to the mark again and feel the pull low in my belly like my body hasn’t gotten the memo that we’re done. That we have to be done.
After. That’s where it all changes in my head.
I see it too clearly: the sweet, floating blur after. I could’ve happily fallen into that bliss for a month, a year, my life. My pulse settling under his hand. His mouth soft against mine, a kiss that said something I didn’t have words for yet.
And then—like someone poured a bucket of cold water over both of us—him pulling away.
Not a flinch. Not even sudden. Just a precise step back from a ledge only he could see.
The look that crossed his face was there and gone, but it gutted me before he hid it: devastated.
Like he’d done something holy and unforgivable at the same time.
And then the mask slid into place. That cool, tidy voice. We should get dressed.
I hated him a little in that second. Not because he was wrong, but because the whiplash made me feel stupid for thinking the world had changed with me. Like I’d been speaking the same language he was for one minute, and then suddenly couldn’t understand a word.
I remember watching his hands, the way he buttoned his shirt with the same care he’d used to touch me. The knot of his tie sliding back into place like it had never been crooked.
Meanwhile, I was putting myself back together in pieces, tugging fabric that wouldn’t obey, fingers clumsy on buttons, feeling both new and wrecked.
In the mirror, I tilt my head side to side, practicing expressions.
Neutral. Professional. Casual. None of them hides the mark completely.
Concealer will do most of it. A scarf will do the rest. I picture opening my office door tomorrow with a light wrap around my throat and the world not knowing what it’s covering.
The idea is both delicious and humiliating.
He asked if I was okay after the lights came on. He did. I heard the question buried inside the distance. And then the hall, bright and bright and bright, like it had been waiting to scold us.
Me, smoothing my skirt as if that would erase the last hour from my skin. Roberto standing there like a verdict in a suit.
“Are you going to fire me?” I hear my own voice again and want to pick myself up by the shoulders and shake. I hate that I asked that. I hate that a part of me believed it was on the table.
He shut that down fast. No. You’re not going anywhere. You’re the best damn coordinator I’ve ever worked with.
I put my fingers on my collarbone and make myself feel the words the way he said them. He meant it. That’s the problem and the comfort. He meant both things: that I have a place here, and that this—whatever we just did—doesn’t.
We can’t. Full stop.
I run water and soak a washcloth. Cool against the bite.
The color stands out more as the heat pulls the blood to the surface.
I dab it gently, not trying to erase, just testing the tenderness.
I have done makeup for worse. I have covered acne, sunburn, a regrettable curling iron encounter.
A bite mark from a man I shouldn’t have touched is just a new category of things to hide.
I hear him in my head anyway. “You’re not going anywhere.” He said that after, like it was supposed to appease me, make this all better.
I overanalyze because it’s what I do. He didn’t disappear. He didn’t lie. He didn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. He didn’t threaten me or make me feel small. He pulled away because he’s disciplined to the bone and because this breaks every rule he lives by.
He pulled away because he’s afraid. He thinks distance keeps people safe. He thinks rules keep him safe. He might be right.
And still, the mark on my shoulder is real.
The way he said my name is real. The way the ground vanished under me is real.
The part of me that wants to be embarrassed is getting outvoted by the part that remembers the sound he made when I dragged my nails down his back.
The way he dipped his head between my legs, the way his tongue explored every inch of my pussy, and learned more about it than even I know.
I pat myself dry and stand there a while longer because I don’t want to cover it all up just yet. I want to see all of it—what we did, what it did to me. I turn sideways and then straight on and then step closer until the glass fogs again.
The bruise is blooming under the harsh light even as I’m watching it.
I should hate it. I don’t.
I should feel ashamed. I do.
Tomorrow I will cover it. Tomorrow I will smile at the front desk and finalize the door plan. Tomorrow I will say good morning to Caterina even as I think about her uncle fucking me like a wild animal in the elevator.
Tomorrow I will be a woman who is put together, who can function.
Tonight I’m a woman who was pressed into the elevator floor and shown a whole new world. Who was marked and claimed.
Who was then rejected harshly.
I lean on the counter and press my forehead to the cool edge as my breath starts hitching. Breath in, breath out.
I tell myself to step back, be reasonable. Make a list, get to bed.
But it doesn’t work.
I grip the edge of the counter harder until my knuckles go white, but the breath still won’t smooth out. The room feels too small. I turn the faucet on cold, cup water in both hands, and press the cool against my cheeks, my eyes, the mark. The sting snaps me back into my body.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
I shut the water, pat dry, and wrap up in the towel. The terry cloth drags over the bruise, and I flinch. And I ache.
I open the cabinet, grab a tub of cream, and put a big glob on the bite mark. Then cover the smaller bruises as well.
I tug on an oversized sleep shirt and pad out to the kitchen. My new apartment is quiet in the way I love. No upstairs neighbor stomping, no sirens, just the faraway hush of the ocean if I crack the window. It’s what attracted me when Caterina’s agent showed it to me in the first place.
Now, it feels like a curse. Quiet that leaves me alone with my thoughts. I make tea with hands that only shake a little.
When I sit on the couch, my phone lights. Blank home screen. No messages. Good. Bad. I don’t know.
I tuck my feet under me and hold the mug close.
Steam wafts over me. I close my eyes and immediately see him buttoning his shirt.
I open them fast. I try to replace the picture with something neutral.
The restaurant’s dining room, the curve of the banquette, the way the ocean stretches, beautiful view outside the window.
But beautiful can still be dangerous.
Roberto is dangerous.
I shake it out and keep thinking of neutral things. Bianca’s smile when she showed me Stephano’s pictures. Better. Keep it there.
But my brain is a traitor. The reel clicks back to the same scene: the tenderness right before the cold, the look that cracked him open and then sealed him shut. The careful voice. We should get dressed. As if it were that easy.
It isn’t just rejection. I know what rejection feels like; it has a sting and a shrug. This was something else—fear and discipline and a wall slamming down to keep something he thinks is dangerous on the other side. Maybe that’s me. Maybe it’s him. Both.
I set the mug down and press my palms to my knees until I can feel bone. “You’re fine,” I tell myself out loud because sometimes the body believes if you will it hard enough. “You’re fine. You’re going to sleep. You have work tomorrow.”
The words help because they’re true. I am fine. My life still exists. A bruise will fade. I have my dream job with my best friend. And yet.
I breathe. I get up and walk to my bedroom. I set out the scarf on the dresser, the soft blouse I can button higher, the jacket that fits just right and makes me feel like I’m in control.
I slide my laptop, which I haven’t even turned on, back into my bag, tuck fresh highlighters into the side pocket, and plug in my phone. All the little rituals that give me peace.
Back in the bathroom, I twist my hair into a loose tie so it’ll fall right in the morning. The bruise looks darker under the softer light of the bedroom lamp. I touch it one more time, gentler now. I don’t have to like what it means to admit that it does mean something.
In bed, the sheets are cool against my legs. I stare at the ceiling and let the night sounds come in through the cracked window: the hush of a car passing, the distant shush of water. I lay a palm over my sternum and count the beat until it slows.
I wonder if Roberto is lying in bed with his window open, too.
My eyes sting. I blink hard, and the tears don’t fall. Not now. Not for this. I know how to carry complicated things without dropping them. I have practice
I can hold the ache and the pride at the same time.
The ache that he stepped back from me, the pride that I didn’t beg him not to.
I had stood up, smoothed my skirt with hands that were still shaking, and asked if I still had my job because I needed an answer. He gave it to me. I can build from that.
Tomorrow I will choose my angle in the mirror and walk into my office with my head help high. I will not look for him. I will not avoid him. I will do my job and do it well because that’s mine. Because I am the best marketing executive he’s ever worked with.
Maybe if it weren’t for Caterina, I wouldn’t have the job, but damn if I’m not going to prove to him every minute or every day that I belong there.
And if he looks at me with that quiet, wrecked look in his eyes again, I’ll survive it. I’ve survived worse than a beautiful man with rules.
I click off the lamp and turn on my side. The sheet brushes the bruise, and a flicker runs through me, not pain, not quite pleasure—just proof. I pull the blanket higher and breathe through it.
Sleep comes slowly, then all at once. The last clear thought I have is a plain one, not a list, not a wish. Just: You’re still you.
Morning will come. Coffee will help. Concealer will help. The scarf will help. Work will help.
And under the scarf, under the blouse, under everything I put on to look like the woman who cannot be rattled, a crescent of color will wait and fade in its own time.
I will let it. I will learn what it has to teach me without letting it change who I am.
I turn the pillow cool and let the ocean sound do the rest.