Chapter Seven — Sienna
The silk doesn't forgive mistakes.
That's what my mother used to say. Cotton is patient. Wool is forgiving. Silk remembers everything you do wrong and holds it against you.
I've been at this workbench for fourteen hours and I've made exactly zero mistakes.
The gown is almost alive. Ten yards of Rosso red pulled apart and rebuilt from the inside out. Every seam an argument I'm winning, every pleat a thing I'm refusing to apologize for.
I step back from the dress form and look at it.
I'm still wearing his jacket. Adrian's Tom Ford. It's charcoal wool, too wide in the shoulders, and hits me mid-thigh. I took it off the hook inside the Sanctuary door hours ago because the lab runs cold and it was there.
It's not a good excuse. The lab hasn't been cold in an hour.
The clock on the wall reads 11:47 PM. The rest of the Sanctuary is silent.
I'm threading a new needle when I hear the elevator. I don't turn around.
I know his footsteps. Certain, unhurried, the pace of a man who never moves without purpose. I've been memorizing them against my will for two weeks, my body paying attention whether I wanted it to or not.
He stops in the doorway.
I can feel it. The way the room shifts. The air going still and then not still, like it's adjusting to something it didn't expect. I pull the thread through the eye of the needle and focus on the silk.
"You're still working," he says.
"Observant."
A pause. Not offended, something else. I hear him move into the room, slow, and I keep my eyes on the needle.
"You're wearing my jacket," he says.
"I was cold. Your jacket was on the hook. I'll have it dry-cleaned."
Another pause. Longer.
"It looks—"
"Don't."
He stops.
I set the needle down and finally turn.
First mistake of the evening.
He's standing three feet away, sleeves rolled to the forearm, tie gone, collar open.
Underdressed in exactly the way a man gets when someone else has walked off with his jacket.
The low studio light catches his jaw, his cheekbones, all the angles I've been keeping out of my eyeline for two weeks.
Behind him, the dress form holds the red silk in the dark like it's waiting for something.
"The left panel seam is wider than the right," he says. Not a dig. Just an observation. He's moved to stand beside the dress form, looking at the construction the way he looks at everything that matters to him. Like he's got all the time in the world and he's going to use it.
"It's intentional. The asymmetry creates movement in the skirt." I say it, to the dress form because he's drifted closer and I'm not looking at him.
I turn back to the workbench and pick up the needle.
"You should get some sleep," I say.
"I was going to say the same thing to you."
"I'll sleep when the bodice is finished."
"That's three more hours of work."
"I'm aware of how long it takes to finish a bodice."
He exhales. Not frustrated, something quieter. He moves to the secondary bench and leans against it, arms crossed, and I know without looking that he's not leaving.
Fine. He can stay. It doesn't mean anything.
I work in silence for five minutes. The needle moves through the silk in the steady rhythm of a woman who is absolutely not aware of being watched.
"You used the old password," he says.
My needle stills.
"For the design archive." His voice is careful. Even. "Yesterday, at 2 AM."
I don't move.
"The one from three years ago," he says. "From before everything. I never changed it."
"I assumed it had been changed."
"It hadn't been changed."
I set the needle down. My hands are steady. I'm very proud of that.
"Why?" I ask.
The word sits in the room between us.
"I don't have a professional answer for that," he says.
"Give me an unprofessional one."
I turn around because I need to see his face when he says it. Adrian Kensington's face tells a different story than his words and I've learned to read both.
He's looking at the dress form. At the red silk.
"I kept it," he says. "The password. The scarf.
Told myself it didn't mean anything." He looks at me.
Nothing managed about it. "When I saw your name in the file, when I finally put it together, I went back through eighteen months of what my company did to yours.
And I couldn't make it mean anything except what it was. "
My throat is tight.
"Adrian—"
"I never would have left." His voice drops. "If I had actually looked at you that morning instead of deciding what it was before it finished happening, I never would have left."
The studio is very quiet.
The silk doesn't move. The city beyond the skylights is its usual distant roar. And three years of something I packed up and labeled mistake starts coming apart.
"You spent three years trying to get over it," I say.
"Yes."
"How'd that go?"
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Older than that.
"Badly, apparently." A beat. "I never changed the password. Three years, and some part of me couldn't make myself close that door."
"That's not the whole answer. That password is a fact you're hiding behind."
"You're right." He doesn't flinch from it. "I don't have a good excuse for the password. I have an excuse for the scarf, and it's worse."
"Worse how?"
"The scarf was never about not knowing where I put it." His jaw works once. "I've taken it out of that drawer more times than I'd admit to anyone but you, right now, in this room."
"To do what with it?"
"Nothing." The word costs him something. "I take it out. I look at it. I put it back. Three years of a ritual that accomplishes exactly nothing except reminding me precisely how much I gave up."
I should say something cutting. I have several remarks available.
"That's pathetic, Adrian."
"I'm aware."
"I mean it. That's genuinely pathetic."
"So I've gathered." The corner of his mouth moves again. Not quite a smile, something more dangerous than a smile. "Say it again."
"What?"
"My name. Like that. Like you're furious at me for still wanting you."
"I am furious at you."
"I know." He doesn't move toward me. He doesn't have to. "It's the best thing that's happened to me in three years."
I don't decide to cross the room.
My body does it. My brain arrives two seconds later to find it already done. Three steps, the workbench behind me, the dress form to my left. Adrian in front of me, close enough that I can smell the sandalwood and the cold. Something my body memorized three years ago and never let go of.
He doesn't move.
He's watching me the way he watched the dress form, fully, nothing held back. The openness of it hits harder than any aggression could.
"I hate you," I say.
"I know." Not smug. Just certain, the way he's certain about most things.
"I built an exit strategy the night I signed your contract."
"I'd have been surprised if you hadn't."
"I was going to use your resources to rebuild everything you helped destroy and then walk out with the deed and never look at you again."
He's quiet for a moment. "That sounds like you." He reaches up slowly. One finger traces the line of my jaw. Barely there, a question not a claim. "Is that still the plan?"
My answer comes out embarrassingly soft. "Ask me again in an hour."
He kisses me.
Not gently. There's nothing gentle in three years of this. His hand fists in my hair and pulls my head back. His mouth is on mine like he's been starving for it and he's done pretending he isn't. A sound breaks out of me against his mouth, involuntary, gone before I can catch it.
His other hand finds my waist, flat against the small of my back, pulling me in, and the full contact of it, chest to chest, his heart going hard against mine, blows open something I've had locked away for three years.
I kiss him back.
My fingers find his open collar and grip the fabric. His hand tightens in my hair and I gasp against his mouth. I feel him smile, brief, satisfied, devastating.
"There she is," he murmurs.
"Shut up."
He does better than that.
The zip of my dress slides down in one clean, quiet motion. Steady fingers. No fumble. The silk falls from my shoulders and pools at my feet.
He doesn't move. Just looks.
I'm standing in the center of the studio in my slip as his eyes move over me slowly, top to bottom, like he's got all night, and he knows it. It makes my whole body feel lit from the inside.
Something shifts in his face. He reaches past me to the dress form and lifts the red silk from the pins, careful, like he knows exactly what it cost me.
He looks at it for a moment.
Then he looks at me.
"I kept the scarf," he says, "because I couldn't keep you."
My chest does something I don't have words for.
"Don't say things like that," I tell him.
"Too late."
He loops the silk around my wrists.
Not tight. A question. I look down at the red against my skin. The silk I've been rebuilding my life from, now loose and warm around my wrists.
"Okay," I say.
He lifts me onto the workbench.
I've thought about this. I won't pretend I haven't.
Not consciously, not in any way I'd say out loud, but since the elevator on my first day. Since the pen. Since six minutes in the boardroom with his palm on my back. I just never let myself go there.
I'm there now.
He pushes the straps of my slip off my shoulders. I pull my arms free and the fabric slides down, catching at my waist, pinned between me and the workbench. His eyes drop and I watch him look at me. The low sound he makes in the back of his throat does more for me than most men manage in an hour.
"Three years," he says, almost to himself.
"Stop counting and do something about it."
He does.
His mouth finds my throat and I tip my head back. He kisses down my neck, my collarbone, lower. His hands cupping my breasts, thumbs dragging slow across my nipples until I pull in a sharp breath and grip the edge of the workbench.
"Adrian."
He takes his time. Mouth and hands and the occasional scrape of teeth that makes me forget what I was angry about. I'm warm everywhere, restless, my hips shifting against the steel surface.
"You're taking your time on purpose," I say.
"Yes."