Chapter 13 Elena
Elena
Ishouldn’t have worn the dress.
It’s too tight, too low in the back, too black.
And yet, I’m standing at the base of the helipad wearing it, shivering just slightly in the wind the helicopter’s whipping up, acting like I didn’t pick it out deliberately.
Like I didn’t pull it down over my hips with shaking hands and check my reflection from four, five, six different angles before deciding to pin my hair up to show off even more.
I hate how aware of my body I am.
But I also hate that somehow, in this, in his gaze, I like how I look. Hate that he’s the reason for that.
Every time his eyes linger on me, every time his voice goes low like it did earlier when he’d said let me take you out, it’s like a part of my brain short-circuits and wants to be seen for once.
Because when he looks, really looks, it feels like he sees me in the way I want. The way I didn’t even realize I craved.
He steps up beside me in his dark green suit, the wind from the rotors pushing his perfectly styled silver hair out of place.
He’s shaved since this morning, his facial hair trimmed right down, and when he looks down at me, I can’t help but stare back at the way his green eyes stand out far more in that color than they have before. He looks like sin in human form.
I hate that too.
“You wore that on purpose,” he says, just loud enough for me to hear over the helicopter. His eyes drag down the length of me like the dress has personally offended him.
“You said dinner and wear something nice,” I shoot back, adding air quotes. “Are you expecting an apology?”
He mutters something in response, but it's lost in the roar of the blades spinning.
Harry helps me up into the helicopter, his hand locked in mine for half a second as my heels threaten to send me falling to the ground, and passes me a set of headphones with a little mic on the side.
Just as I manage to get them on, he’s finishing saying something I can’t hear at all to the pilot, his phone glowing in his free hand.
The name on the screen reads Matthew, a single incoming text, and before I can tear my gaze from it, he notices.
I hear his voice through the headphones, tinny and weird. “Should’ve told you this morning, but got distracted,” he says carefully. “Matt found George. Kind of. We know where he is, what hotel he’s at. Tracking him down is another story.”
My lips morph into a flat line as the words hit. It feels like a shard of ice in my chest. “Oh.”
“Thailand,” he says, as if that explains everything.
I nod once, not bothering to answer. He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask him to — I don’t need him to. George is still running, still actively choosing anything other than me.
I press my hands to my thighs and turn away from Harry as the land begins to fall away from us, the helicopter lifting in a way that makes my stomach clench.
I’m not going to marry him. George. Even if he comes back tomorrow, apologizes, and insists that Harry and I divorce so that we can fulfill the original contract.
I can’t do it to myself. Not after what I went through, not after leaving me hanging for four weeks now, not after… Harry.
We fly low over the Hudson River, the vast green sprawl beneath us slowly shifting into the jagged grey of the outer boroughs. Manhattan rises at the tip like something carved out of steel, lights flickering, the lowering sun reflecting off the skyscrapers as we bank over the city.
I’ve never flown in like this — always the train, or a car, or a plane if flying in from further away. But this, with the aerial view of the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center further to the south, is like something out of a life that always felt a step above my own.
And tonight, oddly, it feels like it belongs to me.
The helicopter touches down on a private pad atop a mid-level roof in Midtown, and before I can even try to find my footing, Harry’s hand is at the small of my back, steadying me like he didn’t even think about not doing that.
I glance up at him, pausing just as both of my feet make it to the ground. His eyes flick down the length of me again, lingering but unreadable. “You definitely wore that on purpose,” he repeats, the sound nearly lost if I wasn’t paying such close attention to his lips to read them.
I don’t lie this time. “I know.”
He takes me to a place I’ve never heard of, tucked into the top floor of a glass high-rise, all sharp angles and dark tabletops and low lighting.
It’s intimate, quiet, full, and buzzing with quiet but obscene opulence — it's the kind of place that doesn’t post its menu online, and you certainly won’t know the cost until the bill comes.
We’re led to a corner table by a hostess who barely masks her surprise when Harry asks for a table for him and his wife.
Whispers spread like wildfire. I hear them as we pass, feel them building in me like static.
The view from the window beside our table is breathtaking — the last bits of light reflecting and multiplying off the glass of the windows around us, the streetlights flickering on beneath, an endless stream of people walking through the sidewalks and nonstop yellow cabs in the road.
Ordinary people living ordinary lives, lives I used to wish for, lives I used to long for in the dead of night when only Sarah could hear me. It’s odd, considering where I am now.
Harry orders for both of us, and I don’t pick a fight about it.
He knows this place, said as much on the drive from the helipad to here, and food might be the only thing I trust him with.
The wine he picks out is older than me and far more upscale than my parents’ wine, the amuse-bouche has ingredients that I’ve never even heard of, and the waitress calls him Mr. Highcourt like she knows exactly who he is and what he does, like he’s been here a million times before.
And through it all, Harry’s hand rests on the table less than an inch from mine. Not touching, not avoiding, but sitting too close for comfort. We don’t talk, at least not much, something heavy sitting between us that neither of us wants to put words to.
Fucking Thailand.
I know what happens there. I know why men like him go, know what he’s doing, know exactly what kind of women—
“—age gap’s insane, right? She’s what, twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?”
I stiffen the moment the whispered words hit my ears. It’s coming from behind us — a pair of servers close enough to the kitchen doors to think they won’t be heard in the dining space. My gaze snaps to Harry, but if he’s noticed, it’s not obvious.
“He’s got to be fifty, at least,” the other says, her voice a little higher, a little louder. My fork slips from my grip, clattering against the plate of filet mignon. Harry’s eyes meet mine. “Could be her dad, maybe.”
“No, he definitely said wife. I heard him. Probably a gold-digger.”
Harry’s jaw shifts, just a little, a muscle twitching beneath his ear. He definitely heard that.
I reach for my wine, my hand shaking only slightly, and take a sip. Swallow.
Set it down.
“Elena,” Harry says, a hint of something darker in his voice, gravel barely covered by satin.
I stand anyway.
“Elena,” he repeats. God, the way he says it.
I ignore him.
I weave through the tables without really thinking, my heels clicking against the floor. For once, I’m not thinking about how I look or how uncomfortable the tightness of my dress should make me feel. I have a one-track mind.
“Excuse me.” I stop just short of where the two servers are standing, glasses and towels in hand, polishing away. They freeze as they look at me, the younger girl with auburn hair and freckles going red in the face, the older, blonde one forcing a half-smile.
She’s the one who tries to speak.
“Hello! Did you need something—”
“No,” I interrupt. I rub my lips together, my lipstick and the sheen of wine left behind making them glide easily. I probably shouldn’t have drunk, now that I think about it. My inhibitions always lower a little too much. “I just wanted to clarify something for you, since you’re clearly confused.”
The younger girl takes a step back. The older one’s face morphs, wariness creeping in.
“I am his wife. You heard that correctly,” I say, and the sound of a chair scraping against the marble floor behind me makes me pause for all of two seconds.
“I’m thirty. Old enough to make decisions for myself, like marrying a man with at least some measure of integrity instead of someone my age who gossips like a child on their shift. ”
The younger one’s throat bobs. “I-I’m sorry—”
“Take this as a word of advice,” I continue, leaning in a little closer and lowering my voice.
I can feel heat at my back, and the softness of a much larger hand wrapping gently around my wrist doesn’t make me reconsider my words.
“Women don’t always marry older for money.
He’s old enough to know exactly what to do without needing correction.
Consider that next time a man your age asks, ‘Did you come?’”
I’m wrenched back into something warm and sturdy, the breath nearly leaving my lungs, and I don’t need to turn to know exactly whose chest I’m pressed against. “That’s enough, Elena.”
The girls skitter off before I can get another word in.
I can feel the way his chest expands on an inhale, slow and measured and stiff, but he doesn’t say another word. He just steers me back to the table and sits me down like a scolded child before settling in to finish his meal.
But his eyes don’t leave mine again.
————
Harry is silent the entire car ride.
It’s not long. Apparently, we’re not going back to the estate tonight, but he doesn’t tell me that — instead, the car drops us in front of the flagship Highcourt Hotel in Midtown East.
He opens my door, helps me out, but doesn’t meet my gaze. Just ushers me inside without a word, his hand on the small of my back.