Chapter Twelve #2
I get back in the car because the cold is starting to seep into my skin. The key turns, the engine catches, the dash wakes. I pull out slowly, gravel giving way to asphalt as I turn toward home.
I let myself say the thing I haven’t said because not saying it doesn’t make it less true.
I want her.
I also want her to wake up tomorrow and not flinch when she sees me. I want her not to pay for my actions with her job, her pride, her comfort in a place she’s earning with a speed that makes me proud.
So I take my want, and I put it somewhere else and cover it with a lid. I don’t throw it away. I’m not that noble and I’m not that stupid.
Some men are made simpler by want. They burn and then burn out. I am not one of them.
It makes me careful, to a fault. It makes me cautious. And apparently, it makes me cold.
It breaks down the lie that I’ve told myself for years: that I can keep the two halves of my life in separate rooms and never open the door between them.
The door is open now. I can pretend it isn’t. I can try to shut it, lock it, throw away the key. But it won’t stay that way. Because it’s been opened, and I’ll always remember what it was like.
And I’m not sure I want to close it again.
I take the far entrance because it buys me a few extra minutes.
The morning wind off the water has bite, and I let it wake me up as I cross the service lot.
Delivery vans idle with white breath curling out of their grilles.
Someone from Facilities wheels a cart of filters toward the dock, head down, jacket zipped to the chin.
I tell myself to walk straight to my office. I tell myself I’m going to keep my head down and do the work I can control and avoid the one person I cannot think about without going soft. Or hard.
It’s a plan. It sounds reasonable. It’s also cowardice, and I know it.
“Coward,” I say under my breath as the sensor slides the glass doors open for me. The word has no heat; it’s a plain assessment, like saying the floor is marble or the brass still needs another polish.
The lobby is buzzing with activity, even at this early hour. A woman working on the new computer that just came in this week. Likely, familiarizing herself for the opening. A crew is delivering furniture.
I recognize the plans laid out on the table as Caterina’s diagram. The floor is freshly polished and will likely be again before the grand opening. Music floats up from somewhere low, not the casino floor, something soft that someone put on to work to.
I should talk to her. I should look her in the eye and check that she’s okay. Not because I doubt it—she is made of steadier stuff than most—but because I owe her that much after the way I shut down last night. It wouldn’t fix anything, but it would be something. Decent.
Or maybe leaving her alone is the decent thing. Maybe what she needs from me is distance. No looking at her like I can still taste her skin. No reminder in broad daylight of everything we did in the dark.
I take the long corridor that wraps behind the front desk and skirts the events offices. The carpet hushes my steps. Light pours in long from the eastern glass, thin and white in the early hours before the sun has fully risen.
Avoiding her is about control, I tell myself. About not making an already complicated situation worse. About respect.
The word leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t use to lie to myself this much.
What happened to me?
It’s not about respect. It’s about self-preservation. Again.
It’s about keeping her from seeing the truth. Keeping myself from admitting that I don’t know what will happen when I see her again. Will I have control of myself? Will I give myself away?
My phone buzzes. A text from the courier confirming delivery to Trenton at 10:00 on the dot. I thumb back a brief reply and slide the phone away. Work is a familiar relief. It’s a game I know the rules to. A game I’m damn good at.
Maybe I just need to concentrate on that.
I turn the corner by the back stair that drops to the kitchens, and the lounge opens on my left. The bar that hasn’t been set quite yet takes up one entire wall, and a big window that frames the water takes up the other side. Painters’ tape is off the floor. The paper is gone from the glass.
I mean to keep walking.
I stop because I see a flash of blue where the barstools meet the curve of the rail. A scarf. A light one, fine knit, soft, is looped around a throat I know too well.
I run my tongue over my teeth, feeling the soft give of her flesh.
She’s there early, of course she is, propped on a stool with a legal pad turned longways and a pen parked across the top. Her hair is down, flowing in dark waves over her shoulders and down her back. The scarf drapes down the V of a dark blouse.
If I didn’t know what it covers, I would still want to touch the place where it lies. Now that I do know, my mouth goes dry, and a hot ribbon of shame slides under my skin.
I bit her. I put my mark there. The part of me that wanted to cover it with my hand and the part that wanted to erase it both flare and then drop away. What’s left is simple: the knowledge of what I did, and the way she has to hide it to avoid inviting comment.
I should keep walking.
I don’t.
There’s a man beside her at the bar, mid-thirties, sport coat tight across the shoulders, catalog-handsome with a bright grin.
He’s got a box on the bar with a logo I recognize from the vendor list. He leans a hip into the rail casually.
His hair is a tidy wave. His laugh is a little too ready.
He is speaking with his hands in a way that is meant to look charming and does not.
She is polite. There’s no other word for it. She is listening with her whole body in a way that makes vendors and guests feel like she’s giving them her full attention.
She smiles when she needs to. She nods. She asks a question, and the man brightens like he’s delighted with her.
If I didn’t know her, I might mistake that for interest. I do know her, at least parts of her, and I can see the slight angle to her body that keeps him at the distance she chooses. She is generous, not available.
I tell myself it’s nothing. This is normal.
This is her job. Vendors talk like this.
Salesmen flirt. If they get a no without bruising their ego, they back off and hand you a catalog.
If they hear a maybe, they take a mile. She is good at setting the line, and she doesn’t need me to interfere or come to her rescue.
Heat moves through me anyway. Not the way it did last night.
This heat is different. It sits lower in my stomach, hot and heavy.
It annoys me because it’s childish and stupid and has a name I don’t like to use.
Jealousy. Possession. It is not a useful feeling.
I dislike it in other men. I dislike it in myself even more.
I step into the lounge, and the barware guy clocks me out of the corner of his eye.
I see the way his shoulders stiffen slightly, but he keeps his smile in place.
Olivia does not turn. She finishes her sentence, patient, as if the presence of an owner in her airspace is not a reason to break her rhythm. It isn’t. She knows that. She’s right.
“…and the etch should be simple,” she says to him, voice steady. “The logo on one side only. We’re not making a billboard out of a rocks glass.”
The vendor laughs, eager. “Of course, of course. Classy. Minimal. I like it.” He taps the box like that confirms it.
“And if we, ah, find ourselves needing… special orders, we can always—” He lets the sentence hang with a little wag of his eyebrow, like an innuendo but about glass.
It’s silly. Somehow that makes it worse.
“Special orders go through me,” she says, not cold, not warm. Clear. “But you’ll have ample notice.”
“You got it.” He grins. “You just call me whenever.”
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. He doesn’t notice.
I close the last of the distance. My footfalls are not loud, but the man’s attention snaps to me the second I start to approach. He straightens. As a salesman, he is good at reading a room.
And he knows when he’s come across someone who holds the checks.
“Morning,” I say in a neutral tone.
“Good morning,” Olivia answers, turning at last. Her face is calm. Her eyes give away nothing. The scarf is a band of color I cannot stop looking at. Her voice does not dip or rise or waver. “This is Marco with Coastline. We’re reviewing the last samples.”
I tip my head into a nod. “Marco.”
He thrusts out his hand like a man eager to prove himself. I shake it because there’s no sense in cutting a vendor off at the wrist unless you need to. It’s not his fault that he’s been enamored by Olivia.
His palm is soft, warmer than mine, no calluses. “Pleasure,” he says.
“Show me,” I say, looking at the box, not the man.
He flips the lid and pulls out a rocks glass like it’s a jewel. It is handsome: weight in the base, clean lines, a whisper of an etch near the rim. The logo is understated. It catches the light without being obnoxious or loud.
Olivia lays a fingertip near the etch. “We want the etch here. Right-hand pour. When the glass lifts, the mark appears and disappears. No shadow on the drink. No double branding.”
I nod because she’s right. “Good.”
Marco angles toward her, pleased. “She’s got an eye,” he says, conspiratorial, like I might have missed it.
“She does,” I say, and my voice is flatter than I intend.
He clears his throat and pulls a second glass. “Highball,” he says. “Same family. We can do a frosted ring if you want variation—”
“No ring,” Olivia says. “We’re not in 2006.”
He laughs, too big, as if that line was meant to be a joke for him. “Right, right. You’re tough.”
“I just know what I want,” she says. She looks at me without looking at me, a quick flick that a stranger would miss. It’s an acknowledgment: I am here; she sees me; we are at work.