32. Nora
CHAPTER 32
NORA
If I didn’t know better, I’d say West was jealous.
Standing in the corner and watching me with Henri and Pawel.
I’m used to lingerie shoots. They’re not my favorite, but I know what’s expected of me, and I’m used to the impersonal way I’m touched by the makeup and wardrobe department. Stand here. Lie like that. I have to moisturize that calf.
I carry those expectations like a cloak and turn performance into my armor.
It’s not me being photographed. Not really. It’s a projection of myself that can become what the viewer wants.
But I’ve never done it while West watched, and it was his gaze on my near-naked body. Not a photographer or a DP’s. And then he’d covered me in a jacket that still carried his warmth and his scent, like he was marking his territory.
Maybe it’s wrong, but I liked that. Someone coming to pick me up afterward, reminding me of who I am.
Not who they want me to be.
Now he’s beside me, my arm threaded through his. He was the one to take my hand and put it in the crook of his arm. We’re standing at the base of the steps to the Fashion Institute fundraiser. This is what I’ve been looking forward to all day. Not the shoot. This. The pieces on display here tonight are legendary.
We walk the red carpet together, looking in the direction of every photographer. The cameras flash bright and dizzying, and he’s there every step of the way.
“Mask on?” he asks by my ear.
“Yeah. Yours looks good.”
“I’m not as smiley as you.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all.”
When a photographer yells at me to look his way, West says in a half-amused drawl that Nora will look wherever she wants , to the laughter of the photographers.
I look up at him in surprise as another bright flash explodes.
Inside, the Fashion Institute is huge and storied. A legendary building. When I was a child and we spent summers at my grandparents’ in Maine, we’d occasionally spend a few days in the city. My mom and I always came here.
Beautiful, well-dressed people watch us enter the fundraiser. There are plenty of people I recognize. Designers I know, photographers I’ve worked with. West stays by my side as we mingle about.
More than a few people cast him speculative glances.
One designer winks at me openly and tells me that I’ve done well to catch myself the Calloway. Not a Calloway. The Calloway. He has plenty of family—distant cousins, a sister, aunts and uncles—but West has become this generation’s main Calloway, the way his father was and the previous heirs before him.
When I spot the exhibit, I slide my hand down to grip his. “Come!”
He lets me drag him over to the items for sale. “Is this what we’re here for?”
“Yes. Look at this. Isn’t it incredible? These are archival pieces. This dress right here? It doesn’t look like much, but it revolutionized the industry. Grace Kelly wore it in 1972.”
He gives a low hmm beside me. “Are you planning on bidding on one?”
“No, no, they’re way too expensive.”
“But if you could?”
“Maybe this one… this emerald dress. I remember when it was worn at the Cannes Film Festival when I was a kid, and I was floored. I used to sketch it in my notebook, over and over again, trying to get the drapes in the fabric just right.”
West’s eyes are on me, not the dresses. “And what about this one?”
We move down the row, my voice getting more excited with each passing design. I’m halfway through telling him about how the slit in a dark navy gown was the first of its kind ever when I put a hand over my mouth. “Sorry. I’m boring you.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because people who don’t like fashion don’t usually find this interesting.”
“I find you interesting.” West’s hand runs up my back, and his fingers tangle with the ends of my hair. The light tug at my scalp feels good. “Keep going.”
“You’re good at this,” I tell him. Maybe he won’t see how flustered this makes me, his full attention, the hand playing with my hair, if I disarm him first. “Pretending.”
“Maybe I have a good scene partner,” he says.
“Thanks for coming here tonight. I wouldn’t have been able to go without you.”
Somewhere behind us, the music picks up, shifts from a classical piece to a modern cover. “Tonight serves us both,” he says. “This will be in the papers tomorrow.”
“The Calloway heir and the Montclair heiress,” I murmur. I saw some of the chatter online after the last pictures of us surfaced. “They seem to like it. The public, I mean.”
His hand slides forward, fits against the side of my face. It’s warm against my skin. “We’re a good match.”
“Mhm. Your mother still happy?”
“She is, yes.”
“No harem of women thrown your way?”
His lip curves. “No, not since you moved in with me.”
“I must be the most hated woman in New York,” I say. There’s flirtation in my voice, and it feels good. It feels good to reach up and fix the stiff collar of his shirt. “You’re the most eligible bachelor in the country, and here I am, taking you off the market.”
“No one could hate you.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say with a smile.
“And if anyone should be on the receiving end, it’s me.” His Adam’s apple is so close to my fingers. I brush the back of my knuckle against it. His skin is warm. “You’re beautiful. People want to buy what you model, look like you, date you. I’m the one taking you off the market.”
“I’m not that famous.” My fingers trail up, along the edge of his jaw. It’s still a wonder to me that I get to touch him like this.
“Mmm?” His free hand fits against my waist, warm and big. “I want one person to hate me very much.”
My breath catches. “The stalker.”
“Yes. I want him to look at the photos tomorrow, of us out on that red carpet, and I want him to burn up inside with hatred for me. To wish he was where I am right now, holding you.” West’s eyes drop to my lips. “I want him to imagine the things you do for me that you’ll never do for him.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“I have,” he admits darkly. “Because I want him to get reckless, and stupid, so I can catch him.”
The fierceness in his eyes makes me feel like when he draped his suit jacket around me. Enveloped, warm, taken care of. For years, I hated it when my brother tried to do that sort of thing. When my mother complained I was moving too far away.
But with West, it makes me stronger.
A few people are looking at us with interest. It’s not every day people engage in this kind of public display of affection.
And it’s never been me.
But here I am, the other half of a couple. Even if it’s just a fake one.
I dig my teeth into my lower lip. “Can I kiss you?”
“You don’t have to ask anymore.”
“It still feels right. I don’t want to?—”
“If you’re going to say take advantage,” West says, “after I just saw you in nothing but lingerie in front of a crew of twenty people, knowing you were uncomfortable, I might break apart.”
“That bothered you?”
His jaw works. “Yes.”
“I’m used to it. And I’m going to turn down more shoots.” Once I gather the courage to tell my mother, brother and agent that my modeling is fully over and done with.
“Good,” he says. “You do what you want, trouble.”
“What did you think? It was their collection. The lingerie.” I brush my hand into his thick hair, and it helps ground me against the flood of excited nerves.
West’s teeth grind together. “Nora…”
“I never know when your compliments are real and when they’re part of the game we’re playing,” I say. “But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I want to hear it anyway. Maybe I want to pretend I’m an adored girlfriend tonight.”
His hands come to fit around my waist, and the tenseness in him could be shattered with a single blow. “You looked fucking incredible. Is that what you want to hear? You know you’re beautiful. But it broke my brain, sweetheart, to see you in nothing but that lace. To know how easy it would be to slip it to the side…”
“Oh.”
“Too much?”
I shake my head, and his lips curve into a dark smile.
“You’re brave tonight. And if you want to be adored, well… I’d adore you. Tell you how pretty you looked, how perfect, in lingerie that no other man but me should see. You had a little pearl hanging between your tits. Did you notice that? Because I did.”
“Yes. It’s part of… of their signature look.” I feel hot beneath the dress again. “What would you do? If we didn’t have an audience.”
Something glitters in his eyes. A question and delight, and he knows exactly where I’m going with this. “I’d keep you on that couch. Ban the others from the room. I told you, I don’t like others watching when I make a woman come.”
“And you’d make me come.”
“I’d ask you to show me how you touch yourself first. Tell you how pretty you look, how good you’re doing, how well you’re pleasing me.” He bends closer, brushes his lips along mine. “You liked the suction on that vibrator, didn’t you?”
“You know I did.”
“I could do that.”
There’s a throbbing between my legs. “Do you mean…”
“I do mean, yes.”
It’s hard to breathe. Hard to focus. His lips brush over my temple. “That’s what I’d do with you on that couch. Worship you the way you deserve to be.”
“I… I…”
“Too much this time?”
I shake my head in a tiny no .
He groans against my temple. “You get me hard at the most inconvenient times, sweetheart.”
“Really?” I glance down between us.
“Really. Fuck, don’t draw attention to it. And don’t sound so damned happy.”
I laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be? That’s cool.”
“I can’t believe you just used that word,” he mutters.
“What other word do you want me to use?” I rise up, brushing my lips against his ear, and whisper in French the things I wouldn’t tell him. That I think I like being his adored girlfriend.
He groans again, and his hands tighten around my waist. “I have to brush up on my French.”
Something vibrates against my hip. Insistent, incessant. It’s not a call. They must be texts. Once, twice. Then a third time. Like someone is texting me nonstop. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Someone’s trying to reach me, I think.”
I open my bag and pull out my phone. My mother sometimes has her episodes, when she demands my attention with all the fervor of a mosquito. Is this the right couch for my decoration projection? Blue or white? Tell me!
But it’s not Mom.
The texts are from an unknown number. Seven hello s in a row, no punctuation, no capital letter.
Another text follows quickly. Good. I have your attention now.
My stomach drops, and I turn my phone to West. The three little dots appear, signaling that the person is typing.
I can’t look away.
You look beautiful in that black dress. But you shouldn’t let him touch you like that.
“Shit,” West growls beside me. His arm is around me in the next instant, and he waves our guards forward with a quick hand.
My hands are shaking, holding the phone. I keep staring at it, but the three dots don’t appear again. There’s no other text.
“Nora,” his deep voice urges by my ear. “Come. We’re leaving. Hand me the phone.”
My eyes flick from face to face in the room as we walk. From person to person. The stalker is here. Inside. There’s no other explanation.
How many people are there in here? A hundred? Two hundred?
Amos and Sam are there too, walking behind me. West gives orders in a low voice. He taps something on my phone and then hands it to someone and tells them to trace it.
And then I’m in the back of the car with Arthur in the front seat and West beside me, and it feels like I can finally take a breath again.
“Home,” West tells the driver, and it’s the most beautiful word I’ve ever heard.