18. Cassandra
— ? —
Cassandra
The atelier is quiet at midnight.
I shouldn’t be here this late - the doctor’s advice about rest echoes in my head constantly - but I couldn’t sleep, and the sitting room at my parents’ house felt too small, and my thoughts were too loud, and I needed to do something with my hands.
So here I am, pinning fabric to a dress form at twelve-thirty in the morning, twelve weeks pregnant and nowhere close to having my life figured out.
The design is for the mother-of-the-bride gown - the one the woman from town commissioned, the one that’s due in eight weeks.
I’ve been working on the bodice construction all week, trying to get the boning placement exactly right, and tonight I finally cracked the problem that’s been plaguing me since Tuesday.
Small victories. I’ll take them where I can get them.
The front bell jingles.
I freeze, pins in hand. I didn’t lock the door. But it’s midnight, and I’m alone, and-
“It’s me.” Antonio’s voice, from the doorway. “I saw the light from the street.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “You’re up late.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He steps inside, closing the door behind him. He’s in jeans and a t-shirt, more casual than I’ve seen him in weeks, and his hair is messy like he’s been running his hands through it. “What’s your excuse?”
“Same. Plus the dress is being difficult.”
He crosses to the worktable where I’m standing, looking at the dress form with genuine curiosity. “What’s wrong with it?”
“The bodice structure. I finally figured out where the boning needs to go, but the placement is tricky and I keep second-guessing myself.”
“Can I help?”
“Do you know anything about corset construction?”
“No. But I can hold things.”
I almost smile. “That’s been your job description for five weeks now.”
“I’m very good at holding things.”
He moves to the other side of the worktable, putting the dress form between us. The overhead light casts shadows across his face, and I’m struck suddenly by how tired he looks. Not just physically tired - the kind of tired that settles into your bones when you’ve been holding something up too long.
“I heard you,” he says quietly. “The other day. At your parents’ house.”
My hands still on the fabric. “Heard me what?”
“Talking to Odette. About feeling invisible.” He meets my eyes across the worktable. “About wearing gray because you were trying to disappear.”
Something cold runs through me. “You were listening?”
“Not on purpose. I was in the room above - the sound carried.” He’s not making excuses, just stating facts. “I should have walked away. I didn’t.”
“That was a private conversation.”
“I know. And I’m sorry I heard it. But I’m not sorry I know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means…” He stops, takes a breath. “It means I needed to understand the size of what I broke. And I didn’t, not really. Not until I heard you say it in your own words.”
Neither of us speaks. The dress form stands like a witness, pins glinting in the light.
“I wore red on our first date,” I say finally. “Do you remember?”
“A dress with little flowers on it. You said you found it at a vintage shop in Silver Lake.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything about that night. The way you laughed when I mispronounced the wine. The way you argued with me about film theory even though you admitted later you’d never seen half the movies I mentioned. The way you looked at me like I was just some guy, not…”
“Not a movie star.”
“Not someone who mattered because of my job.” He moves around the worktable, closer to me but still at arm’s length. “You were the first person in years who saw me instead of the career. And somewhere along the way, I forgot to return the favor.”
“Antonio…”
“I saw your career. I saw the wife who supported mine. I saw the woman who was trying to have my baby, who took tests and scheduled appointments and did everything right. But I didn’t see you.
The woman who stopped wearing red. The woman who was disappearing.
I should have seen it, and I didn’t, and I’m sorry. ”
I don’t know what to say. The apology lands somewhere deep, in a place I’ve been protecting for so long I’d almost forgotten it existed.
“Apologies don’t fix things,” I say.
“I know.”
“They don’t erase a year of feeling invisible.”
“I know that too.”
“So what do you want me to do with this? Say it’s okay? Tell you you’re forgiven?”
“No.” He’s closer now, close enough that I can smell his familiar cologne, the one I bought him years ago.
“I want you to know that I see you now. That’s all.
I see you, Cass. I see the colors you’re starting to wear again.
I see the way you light up when you’re working on a design.
I see the woman who told Bianca Fioravanti to get out of her shop and meant every word. ”
“You weren’t supposed to be watching during that.”
“I was trying not to interfere.”
“I noticed.”
“Did I do it wrong?”
“No.” The word surprises me. “No, you did it right.”
Something shifts in the air between us. The late hour, the empty shop, the intimacy of a conversation that’s gone deeper than either of us planned.
“I should go,” Antonio says. “Let you finish your work.”
He turns toward the door, and I should let him go. I should say goodnight and lock up behind him and go home and sleep and keep the careful boundaries we’ve established firmly in place.
Instead, I reach for him and catch his hand.
He stops. Looks down at my fingers wrapped around his.
“Cass.”
“I know.” I don’t let go. “I know this is complicated. I know we have boundaries. I know that wanting you was never the problem…”
“Then what is the problem?”
“The problem is that I can’t trust my own feelings around you. The problem is that every time I start to soften, I remember all the times softening led to disappointment. The problem is…”
He closes the distance between us.
His mouth finds mine, and for a moment I forget every careful border I’ve spent months building brick by brick.
The kiss is hungry and desperate, the kind that happens when two people have been starving in the same room and pretending the famine is strategy.
His hands cup my face. My fingers twist in the soft cotton of his t-shirt.
The worktable edge digs into the small of my back as we collide, pins scattering across the cutting mat with a bright metallic rattle that sounds obscenely loud in the midnight quiet.
“Cass…” he starts, and I swallow the rest of it with another kiss, harder, teeth catching his lower lip until he groans.
He tastes like the espresso he must have made himself at the rental, bitter and familiar.
One of his thighs slots between mine, and the pressure against the seam of my jeans makes my hips roll without permission.
Twelve weeks pregnant and still this reckless.
The dress form watches from three feet away, half-boned and pinned for the mother-of-the-bride bodice, a silent witness to how quickly wanting undoes me.
His palm slides under my sweater, warm against the bare skin of my waist, then higher, cupping my breast through the thin bralette. My nipples are already sensitive from the hormones; the brush of his thumb makes me gasp into his mouth.
“Sensitive,” he whispers, sounding wrecked. “Tell me if the pressure crosses a line.”
“It isn’t crossing. It’s nowhere near enough.”
That ruins whatever restraint he had left.
He hikes me onto the worktable, pattern paper crumpling under my ass, and grinds the hard line of his cock against me through denim. The friction is filthy and incomplete and exactly what I shouldn’t allow.
I hook my ankles behind his thighs and pull him closer, chasing the grind until I’m panting against his throat, nose buried in the cologne I bought him years ago.
“Fuck, you feel…” He cuts himself off, forehead dropping to my shoulder. “I can feel how hot you are through these jeans. You’re burning me.”
“Then put your hand inside them before I lose my nerve.”
He freezes for half a second - permission landing like a struck match - then pops the button, works the zipper down, and slides his fingers past the waistband of my underwear.
He finds me soaked, swollen, aching. Two fingertips skim my clit and I jolt so hard a metal measuring tape clatters off the table onto the floorboards.
“Jesus Christ, Cass.” His voice has gone gravel-deep. “You’re dripping onto my knuckles.”
“Don’t sound shocked. You caused the flood.”
“Good.” He circles my clit with a pressure that is almost cruel, almost perfect, dipping lower to gather slick and bring it back up. “I want to be the reason you’re ruined for sleep. Always.”
I shove his shirt up so I can scrape my nails down the ridges of his stomach, then lower, palming him through his jeans.
He’s thick and straining, a damp spot already darkening the fabric where the head presses.
I squeeze once and he swears in Italian, hips jerking into my hand like he can’t help it.
“Undo these,” I whisper against the shell of his ear. “I want to feel the weight of you in my fist.”
“If I free myself I may not stop at touching.”
“Then don’t strip completely. Just enough. Edge us both until it hurts.”
He does: jeans shoved halfway down his hips, cock freed into my waiting fist, hot and heavy and devastatingly familiar.
I stroke him from root to tip while he works my clit in the same rhythm, both of us shaking, both of us too far gone for dignity.
The atelier smells like steam-pressed wool and sex.
Somewhere beyond the shopfront glass a streetlight paints a strip of amber across the floorboards and over the scatter of fallen pins.
“Harder,” he rasps. “Twist your wrist at the top - yes - fuck, just like that.”
“Listen to you, giving instructions in my shop.”
“Your shop. Your rules. I’m just the idiot who walked in and put his hand down your pants.”
I laugh against his mouth, broken and fond, and thumb the slit of his cock until his knees nearly buckle.
He retaliates by sliding two fingers into me while his thumb keeps circling, curling against that swollen spot that makes my vision spark.
My head tips back. A moan escapes before I can swallow it, loud enough that I clap my free hand over my own mouth.
“Don’t hide the sounds,” he begs. “I’ve missed them. I’ve jerked off to the memory of them for months.”
“That’s filthy.”
“You love filthy.”
He’s not wrong. I grind down onto his fingers, shameless, while I keep stroking him, spreading precum down his shaft until my fist glides wet and easy. We are a mess of denim and heat and unfinished vows. The dress form’s empty eyes seem to watch every dirty second.
He drops to his knees so suddenly I grab the table edge for balance.
He yanks my jeans and underwear down to mid-thigh - not off, just enough for access - and puts his mouth on me right there against the worktable.
His tongue is relentless, flattening, then pointing, then sucking.
My thighs tremble on either side of his head.
“Antonio - fuck - your tongue is criminal…”
“Keep talking,” he murmurs against my cunt, the vibration making me shudder. “Describe what I’m doing to you.”
“You’re eating me out on my own cutting table like you’ve been starving since Rome.”
“I have been. Give me more. Sit on my face properly.”
I tip my hips forward and he groans approval, sliding those two fingers back inside while he sucks my clit.
The stretch makes my vision blur. I’m so close already - too close, the kind of edge that freefalls if you breathe wrong.
My hands fist in his hair. My hips rock against his mouth shamelessly.
Pins glitter on the floor like fallen stars.
He stands again before I tip over, wiping his mouth with the heel of his hand, eyes black with want.
He notches the blunt head of his cock against my entrance - not pushing in, just resting there, slick and devastating.
The almost of it is worse than full penetration would be.
I can feel how easy it would be to tip my hips and take him.
One inch. One irreversible choice that would complicate every boundary I’ve drawn around this pregnancy and this repair.
“I want inside you,” he says, raw as scraped wood. “I want to bury myself in this heat until the pins fall out of that half-finished dress. Tell me I’m allowed.”
My body screams yes. My heart - bruised, twelve weeks pregnant, still learning how to trust the man who left cold sheets - screams something colder and wiser.
“Stop.”
He stops.
Immediately. Completely. He steps back with his hands raised like I’ve drawn a weapon, cock still glistening from where it kissed my entrance, chest heaving. The abrupt absence of him is almost a physical pain. My empty cunt flutters around nothing.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
“No.” I’m breathing hard, jeans tangled at my thighs, sweater rucked under my breasts, dignity somewhere under the fallen measuring tape. “I started it. But we can’t - this doesn’t change anything, Antonio. Wanting you was never the problem. It was everything else.”
He swallows hard. Nods. Tucks himself away with shaking hands while I tug my clothes back into place, both of us suddenly clumsy with leftover electricity and the humiliation of almost.
“I know.”
“Do you? Because that felt like you were trying to fuck the divorce clean…”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything except kiss you.” He runs both hands through his hair, looking as shaken as I feel. “I wasn’t thinking. I should have been thinking about what you need, not what my cock wants.”
Tension coils between us, charged and unfinished, the almost hanging in the air like steam that never quite dissipates. My clit still throbs in time with my pulse. My mouth still tastes like him. The worktable is a wreck of crumpled patterns and our heat.
“You should go,” I say, quieter now.
“Yeah.” He moves toward the door, pauses with his hand on the frame, silhouette cut by the streetlight. “Cass?”
“What?”
“For what it’s worth - I’m glad wanting me isn’t the problem. Even if everything else still is. I’ll wait for everything else. As long as it takes.”
He leaves. The bell over the door jingles once, then settles.
I stand alone in the atelier, pressing my fingers to my lips, feeling the ghost of his mouth on mine.
Lower, between my legs, the unfinished ache pulses like a second heartbeat I refuse to soothe.
I don’t finish myself against the table.
I refuse to. Wanting him was never the problem - and proving that to myself means walking away from the edge with my hands still shaking and my jeans still damp.
The dress form watches from across the room, pins glinting, patient and silent as a judge.
I turn back to the bodice construction, pick up a pin, and pretend my fingers aren’t trembling.