Chapter 23 Elena
Elena
Istare at myself in the mirror and pull the maroon fabric a little looser around my stomach, only for it to fall back exactly the way it had been before.
Nothing helps. The bump’s not exactly big yet, not by any stretch, but it’s there, and it’s rounder than it was a few days ago.
It’s enough to catch attention in every single one of my dresses and make me want to hide.
Harry told me not to try to hide it. He told me I looked beautiful.
But he says that a lot lately, and I can never tell if he genuinely means it or if he thinks those are the words he’s supposed to say.
I press my hand to the swell below my ribs, my heart fluttering to think there’s something, someone, growing beneath my hand.
He’s not gone to one of these dinners in months, since before the wedding.
It used to be a standing tradition, he’d said.
Once a month, always at Joseph and Ann’s house — two people I’ve not met and apparently were too busy to come to the wedding.
He said it was a way for him to be around people that he didn’t necessarily feel the need to be himself with, but could shut off his brain for a few hours without having to discuss money or work or politics.
But then the wedding happened, and there was the chaos that came with it. And me. And he stopped going.
So tonight, we’re going. Together.
I swipe a bit of lipstick over my lips just as a knock sounds downstairs. Heat creeps up my cheeks already, knowing exactly how he’s going to react to me dressed up like this without hiding my stomach, and it only grows as the door creaks open and I hear his feet padding up the stairs.
He steps in through the open door, stopping just a step inside, dressed in a nice button-up and slacks cut so pristinely I would climb him if it didn’t pose the risk of me falling and hurting our kid.
His eyes drag over me slowly, not saying a word, but I can see the way his pupils dilate and swallow half of the green of his eyes.
“Too much?” I ask.
He takes a step in, his hand running through his perfectly styled grays, his lips pursing as if he can’t think of the right words to say, studying me. “Elena,” he says.
I blink at him.
“You look so fucking sexy that I have half a mind to call up and cancel,” he says, completely deadpan, his gaze not wavering for a second. “You look unreal.”
I snort, turning back to the mirror to fix my lipstick. “I look pregnant.”
He steps behind me, watching me in the reflection. He brings his head down to my neck, his lips grazing against my skin, and places his hands on my waist. Slowly, deliberately, he slides one around to cradle the gentle curve of my stomach. “Exactly.”
My lips part as he presses a kiss to my neck, approval shining in his eyes in his reflection. But it’s not just that. It’s hunger, it’s warmth, it’s possession.
“Later,” he promises, his lips rising to the shell of my ear, “I’ll show you exactly how much I like seeing you like this.”
Heat curls low in my belly, and I grip the edge of the vanity, my flush deep enough that I can see it through my makeup. “Harry.”
He grins and presses another kiss into my skin, this one just above my ear. “Just saying.”
I close my eyes for a second, letting myself feel his affection, his hands on me, his breath on my scalp. But I go against what my body is already screaming for and gently, playfully, pull away, grinning at him. “We have to go.”
He smirks, slow and dangerous, the way he knows makes me forget how to breathe for half a second — but he steps back.
Out front, Grace is already waiting in a light purple dress, her auburn hair done up.
Liam stands beside her, lanky and perpetually half-distracted by his phone.
He offers me a nod that barely passes as a greeting before disappearing into the car, his half-tucked shirt unruly at the back.
Harry exchanges a look with Grace, something passing between them in the same way I can look at Sarah and say everything without a single word, before he opens the door for her and me both.
————
Joseph and Ann’s house is a mansion in the classical sense — columns, hedges cut within an inch of their lives, white stone glowing under floodlights.
It’s the kind of place that my parents would have dragged me to growing up for social events, the kind I would have been told to straighten up before walking into, the kind where my mother would eye me like a hawk to make sure I wasn’t eating too much when I was hardly eating much at all.
It’s the kind I know too well.
The butler opens the door before we can knock, as if he’s been waiting there for an hour to do that exact thing. He takes my coat and Harry’s, hanging them in a closet by the door before moving on to Grace and Liam.
“Harry! Finally!”
A man with salt-and-pepper hair turns the corner, clad in a pressed navy blazer with gold cufflinks and matching slacks.
He’s grinning, mustache twitching, as he steps up to Harry, pulling him into a hug that feels oddly earned.
He looks like a man who inherited wealth but never learned the art of appearing modest about it.
“Joe,” Harry grins, clapping him on the shoulder as he’s released.
A woman with bleached blonde hair, maybe in her mid-fifties, trails behind him.
“Glad you’ve finally reappeared,” she says, stepping into his space and wrapping her arms around his neck like it’s nothing.
Her knee-length black dress rises just a hair as she embraces him, a plastic smile glued to her face, one I recognize far too well — it looks just like my mother's. “This must be Elena.”
“If you’d have let me get more than a single word in before jumping me, Ann, I’d have introduced her,” Harry chuckles, stepping back from her and resting his hand on the small of my back. “Elena, this is Ann and Joseph Clearwater. Ann and Joseph, Elena.”
Joseph reacts first, reaching out a hand to shake mine, his eyes locked solely on my face before flicking down to my stomach briefly. It’s the kind of look that people think I won’t notice, the one I’m used to for entirely different reasons. “Elena,” he grins.
I smile and nod and offer a sweet hello like my mother taught me to.
Ann, on the other hand, doesn’t try to hide the way her eyes linger. She lets her gaze hold as she takes a step forward, slowly dragging it back up to my face as she shakes my hand. “Lovely to meet you,” she drawls.
Harry’s hand stiffens on my back. Joe moves on to Grace and Liam.
“Our daughter Sienna is around here somewhere,” Ann continues, her voice too easy, too breezy. “She’s just finishing at Dartmouth, home for the weekend. You two might have some things in common. Generationally.”
Great.
The entry hall stretches out as we walk, all polished wood and white paint and chandeliers twinkling above. Harry leads me through into the sitting room, chatting away to Ann about something I pretend to listen to but can’t hear over the whooshing sound of my own pulse in my ears.
Grace sits down on a tufted chair, falling into conversation easily with a man I don’t recognize, but who seems to be dressed similarly to the butler.
Liam’s slouched on the sofa nearby, sinking into the cushions, his long legs sprawled out in front of him and his earbuds in like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Harry squeezes my hand once before letting go to speak to his friends in another room, and I take a glass of sparkling water from a tray by the doorway, trying to stand like someone who belongs here while obviously being the odd one out.
“You look lovely,” someone says behind me.
I turn. A tall, perfectly blonde woman with flawless skin stands behind me, looking every bit the same as Ann if Ann weren’t thirty years older and afraid of aging.
She stands in a light pink dress that hugs every slight curve of her thin body, her hair falling in perfectly styled curls around her face and over her shoulders.
She glances down at my stomach, lingering just like her mother, before lifting her eyes and grinning at me.
“Elena, right? I heard about you from George,” she chirps.
Her arms wrap around me suddenly enough to make me stiffen, but I force myself to relax, to pretend like this is all entirely normal.
She pulls back just as quickly as she came, her grin still forced, her head tilting just a little as she studies me again. “I’m Sienna.”
I can’t quite tell if she’s just air-headed or if she’s some kind of perfect high school mean girl in the flesh. “Nice to meet you,” I offer, huffing a light little chuckle as if that’ll help the awkwardness.
“I like your dress.”
“Thanks,” I reply, my hand coming up to cover my stomach on instinct — and not because of the pregnancy. “I like yours too.”
She smiles, and this time, I can see right through it. It’s not air-headedness.
Someone calls her name and she flits away like hand-waved smoke, leaving me with just my glass of sparkling water and the dread of the next two hours.
————
A bell chimes halfway through my conversation with Grace as if we’re being summoned.
“That’s dinner,” she says, nodding toward the doorway. “It’s weird, I know. You’ll get used to it.”
“To be honest, it’s not that much different to what it was like at my parents’ house,” I chuckle, pushing up from the couch.
She follows me a moment later, nudging her son to take out his headphones and nodding toward the kitchen. Liam grumbles under his breath but gets up anyway.
Crystal lights hang over a fairly long, rectangular table covered in a deep green tablecloth. Bits of nature cover the runner, from moss to leaves to pinecones to full plants, and at first glance, it’s gorgeous.
But the longer I stare, the more fake it looks.
These are not outdoorsy people. The pinecones look real, but like they’re covered in a layer of thin wax to keep them shiny and pristine.
The plants are potted, but the moss is fake, with faux little drops of dew scattered through them.
It feels more like something my parents would do than something I would ever choose.
Harry pulls my chair out for me, waiting until I’ve sat to move to his own beside me, and the second his ass hits the seat, I squeeze his thigh beneath the table.
He glances at me, one brow raised, before it settles as I can only hope he sees the stress building inside of me.
I don’t know what it is about this place, these people, other than the eerie similarities to my own family. It’s suffocating.
Joseph raises his glass when I lay my napkin across my lap. “Well, now that we’re all here,” he says, pausing just long enough for his gaze to flick to me before scanning the table. “Let’s hope the food isn’t the only thing that turns out to be a good match tonight.”