Chapter Thirteen — Sienna #2
I built a whole life in this penthouse in a month. And I didn't even notice I was doing it until right now, sitting on his study floor on a Saturday morning. Holding a printout that lists my own bankruptcy as a reason to let me go.
Here's the thing nobody tells you. It doesn't matter what you bring to the table. It doesn't matter how good you are, how hard you work, how much someone says they —
It doesn't matter.
When the load gets too heavy, somebody puts it down. That's not cruelty. It's not even really a decision, not in the moment. It's just what happens when a thing gets too hard to carry and there's an easier way to live without it.
My dad didn't hate us. I know that now. He just got tired, and tired people put things down. The thing they put down doesn't get a vote.
"He'll come back," I told my mom that first week, every night. Like a prayer I could wear smooth from repeating.
"No, baby," she said. "He won't."
She was right. She was always right about the men who leave. I used to hate her for it.
I'm the thing on this list.
I think about that look on his face again. Relief. Not joy, relief. The exact look of someone setting down a weight their arms have been shaking under for years.
I think about every closed laptop this week. Every call he stood up for without asking. The hand on my shoulders, gentle and immovable, steering me toward a door.
And I think, I know this. I've watched this exact thing happen before. On a man who loved fixing radios more than he ever figured out how to love a kid who couldn't be put back together when she broke.
I put the page back where I found it. Careful. I line the edges up exactly the way they were, because if there's one thing I'm good at, it's making sure nothing looks disturbed.
Then I go back downstairs to the Sanctuary, because there's nothing else to do on a Saturday morning except wait for the next thing.
He comes home a little after ten, exactly when the note said he would, and for a second, one second, I let myself believe the note. Board call. Back by ten. Coffee's on.
"Hey." He finds me in the Sanctuary, drops his jacket over a chair, crosses the room like nothing in the world is wrong. "How's the underskirt coming?"
"Slow."
"Need help?"
"No."
He studies me for a beat too long. I make myself look busy with a seam that doesn't need attention.
"You okay?"
"Tired," I say. "Long week."
He doesn't push. That's new too. Two weeks ago he would have pushed, gently, until I gave him something real. Now he just nods, like tired is an acceptable answer. Like he's relieved not to have to dig for the truth either.
We both let it sit there. Unexamined. Convenient.
That night, in bed, he reaches for me the way he always does. His hand finding my hip, sliding up, settling against my stomach. For a second it feels like every other night. Like there's no folder upstairs with my name on a list of people he might not need anymore.
I turn toward him. He kisses me. Scotch first, then something underneath that. I want so badly for it to be him, just him, that I kiss him back. I put my hand against his chest. His heart is beating steady and even under my palm, and I think, maybe I'm wrong about all of it. Maybe—
His hand moves lower. It knows exactly where to go. That's never been the problem.
What's different tonight is the silence.
The first time, he'd been quiet in a way that still sounded like him, unhurried, deliberate.
Tonight the quiet has no shape to it at all.
He doesn't say my name once. I realize, somewhere past the point of turning back, that I'm listening for it and it isn't coming.
I try to ignore it. I kiss him harder, like I can drag him back into the room if I just —
He pulls back an inch. He looks at me. For the first time tonight, his eyes actually find mine. Except they don't look at me the way they used to. They look at me like he's checking.
That's when I stop.
"Stop," I say. Just that. Quiet enough that for a second I think he might not have heard it.
He hears it.
His hand goes still. Then it's gone completely, and he's pulling back, putting space between us so fast it's almost funny, if any of this were funny.
"Sorry. Sorry, I —" He sits up a little. "Are you okay?"
And there it is.
Half a second. Less than half a second, gone before I'm even sure I saw it.
Relief.
The same look. The exact same look, on a different face, in a different kitchen, twenty-three years ago. A weight, set down. A man who didn't have to carry it tonight after all.
"I'm just tired," I say.
"Okay."
He doesn't push. Doesn't ask again. Doesn't do any of the things he would have done two weeks ago when I said fine and he looked at me like fine was a language he'd learned to translate.
He just says okay, rolls onto his back, and pulls me with him. An arm hooking around my waist, settling me against his side like the last twenty seconds didn't happen. Like the reaching for me is automatic even when the rest of him already left the room.
I lie there in the dark, my cheek against his chest, and listen to him sleep. I think about how easy that was for him. How fast the relief came. How completely he let it go, even with his arm still around me like he hadn't.
I think about the list on his desk.
S. Rossi. Recommend monitoring.
I get up around three.
I don't decide to, not really. One minute I'm lying there listening to him breathe, and the next I'm standing in the hallway with a blanket from the end of the bed wrapped around my shoulders, walking toward the guest room like my feet knew where they were going before I did.
The guest room is beautiful. It's gray and white with a bed nobody's ever slept in, art on the walls that came with the apartment and matches nothing about the people who live in it.
It doesn't smell like anything.
I notice it standing in the doorway. Every other room in this place smells like something now. Coffee, cedar, jasmine oil I've been leaving in my wake without meaning to. Little traces of myself, in rooms that used to be just his.
This room smells like no one's ever stayed long enough to leave a mark.
I get into the bed. The sheets are cold. The marble floor is colder, when I swing my feet out for a second and set them flat against it, like the building itself is reminding me exactly where I stand.
I think about the gown downstairs. Ivory silk, cut on the bias, half-finished on the form. A dress I started because he asked me to build something for us.
I think about three years ago. A studio in Tribeca. A morning. A man who left before I woke up, and took a scarf off my drafting table on his way out. One he never gave back.
One night, three years ago. An entire life, this time. Both times, I was the one who didn't see it coming until I was already standing in the wreckage.
Not this time.
Tomorrow, I'm going to find out exactly where I stand with Adrian Kensington.
Not by asking. By watching.