16. Simon
SIXTEEN
SIMON
She was sound asleep when I woke up.
I lay quietly in the bed a long moment, just looking at her.
Her dark hair was splayed across the white pillowcase, and her face was slack, the careful composure she carried all day gone.
She looked younger like this, her lips parted slightly in sleep, her hands resting loosely at the edge of the pillow.
I leaned over and pressed my lips to her warm forehead.
She stirred. Her dark eyes fluttered open, blinking against the morning light, and then she found my face. Her mouth curved into a sleepy, satisfied smile.
"Good morning," I murmured.
"Good morning." She stretched, pulling the heavy sheet up to cover herself. "What time is it?"
"It's early. I should probably go back to my own room."
She blinked, confused. "What?"
"If Olivia wakes up early and finds my room empty, she'll know I wasn't in it."
Violet stared at me a long moment. Then she laughed, a short, quiet, disbelieving sound, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. "Are we actually trying to keep this a secret?"
"No," I clarified. "Olivia just doesn't need the full inventory right now."
She considered the logic. "That's fair." She nodded. "Go."
I got up reluctantly. I grabbed the shirt I'd left on the floor the night before, threw it on, and found my way to the bedroom door in the dim early light. I stepped out into the quiet hall.
I stopped where I stood.
I looked at the heavy door I'd just come through, then slowly turned my head to look at the identical door directly across from it.
I went back in.
Violet was already sitting up, swinging her bare legs off the side of the mattress. She looked at me, bewildered. She looked past me at the open door. She looked back at me, her mouth already starting to form a question.
"Simon," she started.
"This is my room."
She pressed her lips together, fighting it. It didn't help at all.
We both started laughing at the same time, desperately trying to keep the noise down because there was an impressionable fourteen-year-old sleeping down the hall, which only made it worse.
"You're supposed to be the one leaving," I pointed out, once I'd recovered enough breath to speak. "This is my bedroom."
"You literally carried me in here last night!" she whisper-shouted. "You clearly didn't look where you were going."
"That's—" I stopped, conceding the point. She was right. I'd carried her up the main stairs and pushed open the first door I reached, and it had been my own, and I'd been too distracted to notice. "That's still somehow your fault."
"I had no idea." She was still laughing. She reached blind for the tangled sheet, pulled it around herself, and stood up with the white cotton wrapped like a toga. She crossed the hardwood floor toward me. "This is very funny."
"It is," I agreed.
She stopped right in front of me and looked up, the trailing sheet pooling around her bare feet. I pulled her in and kissed her deep.
"Go get ready," I said against her lips. "We're heading back to the city."
"Yes, sir," she teased, and slipped out the door.
She gathered her makeshift sheet and darted across the hall to the guest room. I closed my bedroom door and stood alone in the quiet, thinking about the night before.
She had a second tattoo inked at her waist, low, in elegant little script.
I'd caught it when I was positioned behind her, the one Sloane had teased about at the restaurant, finally in front of me.
It read harder, which wasn't what I'd expected it to say, and which had made the rest of the night a lot more interesting.
The one on her inner thigh I'd already found. Baby girl.
I'd known this woman professionally for two years. I'd understood her competence, her sharp corporate capabilities, and I'd had no idea about any of this. I was glad to know it now. I intended to keep knowing it.
I showered, dressed in fresh clothes, packed my overnight bag, and headed downstairs.
Violet was already in the kitchen, her packed bag beside her. Her hair was pulled back, and she stood gazing out the large window at the glittering lake, nursing a fresh cup of coffee. She heard my footsteps on the stairs and turned around.
We looked at each other a long, loaded moment.
"Where's Olivia?" I finally asked.
As if on cue, the heavy front door slammed open and shut, and frantic footsteps hit the hallway floorboards.
"Coming, coming," Olivia called. She appeared in the doorway, already out of breath, balancing her overnight bag over one shoulder while juggling her phone, a thick book, and a bundled jacket in a messy pile under her other arm.
We loaded the car. Olivia claimed the front passenger seat. Violet and I slid into the back.
I didn't plan to take her hand. I just did it.
My fingers found hers resting on the leather seat between us.
She didn't pull away, and I didn't let go.
The whole drive back to the city passed pleasantly, Olivia's loud playlist dominating the front seat while my thumb traced slow, absentminded patterns across the back of Violet's hand.
When we pulled up to the townhouse, Olivia scrambled out first. She marched around to our side of the car and looked pointedly back and forth between us, her arms folded across her chest.
"Did something happen last night?" she demanded.
"Mind your own business," I said.
"I can't mind my business. I want to know what happened."
"Mind your business and take your heavy bag up to your room."
She grumbled something sassy under her breath that I couldn't catch.
Then she looked at Violet, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a wicked smirk, and winked.
Violet burst out laughing, a full, rich sound, unprepared for the teenage audacity, and Olivia's shoulders straightened in triumph as she marched up the front steps.
I watched her disappear inside, then looked back at Violet, who was still laughing, her hand clamped over her mouth.
"I'm sorry," I sighed. "She's being ridiculous today."
"I really don't mind." She took a breath, letting the laugh settle. "We've gotten really close, Olivia and me."
"I know that."
"I don't think you know how close." She looked at me, her chin dropping in confession. "She's been rooting for us. Hard. For a while now."
I looked at her, mildly stunned. "Has she, now."
"She's a very big shipper."
"And here I was, thinking she was a private, reserved person."
"Only about herself." Violet tilted her head, curious. "If she wanted us together that badly, why didn't you just make the move yourself?"
"Why didn't you?" I countered.
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it.
"I made a move," I defended. "I leaned in. In the kitchen. You were the one who—"
"Please." She held up one hand, her chin tipping up. "Are you ever going to stop bringing that kitchen moment up?"
"No. I'll never let you live it down."
She rolled her eyes and turned toward the stone steps. I grabbed her bag from the pavement beside mine and followed behind her.
The days that followed were good.
We commuted to the office together every morning and kept the rigid professional distance the executive floor demanded, a facade neither of us found hard to hold, though both of us found it occasionally, deeply inconvenient.
In the private elevator, she'd stand a little closer to me than before, that electric weight of being too aware of a shoulder brushing yours. In the hallway outside the forty-seventh floor, she'd hand me the afternoon briefing folder, her fingers brushing mine, and she'd just keep walking.
By midweek, she'd started leaving my afternoon coffee on the corner of my desk with a sticky note stating the time of my first afternoon call. She'd always done this, except the sticky notes were longer now, and they occasionally held a handwritten sentence that had nothing to do with the schedule.
I hadn't been this happy in a relationship since I was a reckless teenager, not in this specific, ungoverned, consuming way. I'd been fond of Lara. I'd been comfortable. I'd been content, a word I was only now understanding the real definition of, now that I had something to compare it against.
The weekend came, and I let myself sleep later than usual.
I came downstairs to find total chaos. Specifically, flour.
There was white flour over the dark counter, flour coating the marble island, a fine, powdery layer of it across the hardwood floor between the two. Marta sat calmly on a high stool near the large window with her arms crossed, just watching. She looked up when I walked in.
"They wanted to try something new," she explained, before I'd even asked.
I rounded the corner to assess the damage.
Violet and Olivia stood side by side at the kitchen island with their sleeves rolled up, staring down at a huge, uneven spread of raw dough between them.
There was red tomato sauce splattered near the sink.
There was a block of mozzarella that had been partially and violently demolished.
There were at least four separate toppings haphazardly organized in bowls I didn't immediately identify.
Violet had a streak of flour across her jaw and dusted on her left sleeve, and she grinned at me with her messy hands hidden behind her back.
"We're making homemade pizza," Olivia announced, as if the disaster were obvious.
"I can see that."
"Violet said we could make it from scratch and it would be much better."
I looked at Violet. She looked right back at me, still grinning, unbothered by the destruction of my kitchen.
"Pizza isn't healthy, whether it comes from outside or inside," I said.
Olivia turned to Violet at once. "Don't listen to him."
"I wasn't going to," Violet assured her.
I walked over and sat down beside Marta, resigned. "Why did you let this happen?"
"I couldn't stop them," Marta confessed, though she didn't look particularly troubled by the kitchen anarchy.