13. SIENNA
SIENNA
The sheets are tangled in my legs and still warm from a restless night. My body is heavy with the specific reluctance of early morning. very limb resistant, the room still dim. Grey light at the curtains, not quite day yet.
I can’t resist, I reach for my bed side table and grab my phone to read Carter’s reply to my message, letting him know that I was home. Again.
Good girl.
My face goes warm. And I can feel the warmth spread to all my body. A buzzing feeling of excitement, like an electric current. I pull the sheet up to my chin like that helps anything and read it again.
I mean, Carter is hot. Not quite silver fox hot yet, but getting there.
Tall, with muscles that his suits can’t hide.
Salt and pepper threading through his hair at the temples.
Chocolate-brown eyes with fine lines at the corners that tell you he does laugh at some point although every evidence points against it.
But it's not just the way he looks. It’s the way he carries himself.
It's the way he commands a space. The powerful stillness of him. The way it seems to steady me at the same time that rattles me.
Good girl.
There’s that electric current again, zapping through my body and settling in a more specific space. My hand drifts slowly under the sheet, between my breasts, going lower—
The phone chimes.
I jolt so hard that I knock my elbow on the headboard. My face, already warm, gets warmer. I am alone in my bedroom. There is no witness to anything. I hold the ceiling with my eyes for two full seconds before I look at the screen and read the message:
Do you prefer Italian or French food? This is Adrian by the way, you might want to save my number under handsome.
I read it twice and smile at the screen.
Adrian is not at all what I expected. I can sense that he has more underneath the version he presents to the world.
The kiss we shared was special. But I didn’t dare to let myself think too much about it. I attributed it to the emotional rollercoaster that night was and the unexpected vulnerable moment he shared.
But here he is. Reaching out with the most unexpected question.
I type: I like both. But Italian a little more. Why?
The dots appear immediately. Then stop. Then start again. Stop.
The message arrives.
Because I'm taking you out to dinner Friday night and I wanted to know where to make the reservations.
My smile at the phone screen goes wider.
I type: Are you now? Funny, I didn’t remember you asking me out.
The dots dance again. The answer comes faster this time.
If it was a question you could’ve said no. This way is safer :)
I laugh. Out loud, alone and genuine.
I'm already typing yes when I remember. I can’t on Friday. I have a situation with Green Guerrilla that can’t be canceled.
I have a thing on Friday. Can we reschedule to Saturday?
The reply comes before I've set the phone down.
It's a date!
I put the phone down on the pillow beside me. I need a moment to gather my thoughts. And my racing heart.
And then the phone rings. I pick it up, without thinking, just wanting to hear Adrian’s teasing voice—
"We need to settle this inheritance thing once and for all." Paula's voice brings the cold with it and the smile dies in my lips.
Something in my stomach pulls tight and doesn't release.
"There's nothing to settle." I force my voice to sound firm. "I already told you my conditions. Have your lawyer draw up the document and I'll sign over everything." I take a deep breath in. "Unless you're having trouble finding one who puts up with you."
I know I'm being mean. But, right now, I can’t find the strength to care.
"You little—"
She stops.
One breath. Two. When she comes back her voice has gone honey-sweet, the shift so fast and so complete that the effect is worse than the usual screeching.
"I have a buyer for the house," she says. "Ready to go, cash, no waiting period. The number he is offering for it is significant. If you are reasonable we can split it."
"The house isn't negotiable." I sit up in bed. "You can have everything else. I don't care about the money."
The sweetness drops.
"You were always such a bitch." No pause, no wind-up. "Even as a kid. Snotty little thing. You never came back after you left. You deserve nothing for the way you treated your father. Not even coming to his funeral. What kind of daughter—"
"I don't owe you an explanation." My voice raises. I’ve given up trying to control it. "I don't owe you anything."
I stop.
I breathe.
My fingers are so clenched tight holding my phone that I can feel my pulse in them.
"You knew," I accuse. "You said nothing. You did nothing." One more breath, slow and deliberate. "That's what you get from me now. Nothing."
I hang up.
My heart is going too fast and my lungs aren't working correctly, too much air or not enough, I can't tell which. I try to stay in the present. The sheets under my hands. The morning light through the curtains.
I try not to go there.
I can't stop it.
The sound of leather. That specific crack, the one I heard so many times my body learned to tighten before it landed. Copper taste in my mouth. The sour smell of whiskey breath and the heavy silence before it started. The silence was somehow always the worst part.
I learned not to cry. Crying would please him. So I didn’t. I learned to make myself go somewhere else inside my head, to keep my body still, to produce no sound at all and to wait for it to be over.
I'm very good at being silent when I want to scream.
My body curls before I tell it to. Knees to my chest, arms around myself, the phone pressed flat against my sternum, and I'm crying the way I always cry, no sound, no movement, just the wet sliding down my face into the pillow, my jaw aching with holding everything else in.
The phone vibrates against my chest.
I look at the screen through wet eyes, blinking to clear them enough to read.
It's Adrian.
You have a passport, right?
The smile comes before I can do anything about it. Fragile, stupid, completely involuntary. I'm still crying. My face is wet, my chest seems like it is going to explode from holding so much and I'm smiling at a text message.
And for the first time since the call, I breathe properly.