Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
GIA
Okay so this is the master bedroom. His master bedroom. The room where he sleeps. Where we are apparently both supposed to sleep. Tonight. Together.
The room is enormous.
Of course it is, because nothing about this day has been remotely proportionate to what a normal human being can reasonably process, so naturally the bedroom is the size of my entire Paris apartment, all dark wood and high ceilings and a bed that could comfortably sleep four people.
The maid, a sweet-faced girl who cannot be older than twenty, is already moving toward me with the specific purpose of someone who has been briefed on what tonight is supposed to be and has come prepared to facilitate it.
Ugh, I need some time alone. I need to gather my thoughts and I don’t know—I just need to be alone.
She reaches for the buttons at the back of my dress. “I’ll help you take it off.”
"No. I've got it," I step away from her.
She hesitates. "Mrs. Caruso, I'm here to help—"
"I appreciate that." I step forward and give her a smile because she doesn’t deserve to be at the receiving end of my terrible and snappish mood tonight. "I'd just like some privacy. Thank you."
She looks uncertain. She looks at the dress, at me, at the dress again, doing the mental calculation of whether the buttons at the back of my gown count as a one-person job.
They do not. I know this. I'm choosing to ignore it.
"Good night," I tell her with another smile, this one less genuine because I’m fucking tired of smiling.
She nods and goes.
The door clicks shut and I stand in the middle of Rafael Caruso's master bedroom in my wedding dress.
I take one long breath, then I get to work.
The buttons are tiny. There are approximately forty of them. Whoever designed this dress was either a sadist or deeply committed to the idea that a woman should never be able to undress quickly.
I cannot reach the buttons. I literally cannot reach the buttons. I should have let the maid stay. Do not think about the maid. You made your choice, now figure it out.
I contort. I reach. I get maybe six buttons from the top and then nothing, my arms do not bend that direction and the fabric is pulling, the bodice is tight, too tight, it's been tight since I put it on this morning in my father's house when I thought I was dressing for someone else's wedding, and now it's pressing in from every side and I cannot get air properly and—
The memory comes without warning.
Another dress. Another room. Hands on my buttons, moving faster than I wanted, and me standing there telling myself it was fine, it was fine, this was what was supposed to happen, this was what being a wife meant, this was—
Stop.
I press the heel of my hand against my sternum and I breathe. In. Out. I am in Rafael Caruso's house. I am twenty-four years old. That was five years ago and a different room and a different man and I am not the same person anymore either.
In. Out.
I reach back and move up the dress and I work the buttons with hands that are steady because I am making them steady, one by one, until enough of them are open that I can drag the whole thing down and step out of it.
It falls to the floor in a pile of pale-grey fabric that I step away from immediately because I don't want to look at it.
I stand there for a moment.
Just breathing.
Then I look at the bed.
Someone has laid out clothes. There is a full wardrobe, actually, I see hanging in the open closet, neatly arranged. Outfits in my size, which means this was planned in advance, which means everyone in this house knew exactly what today was going to be before I left my father's house this morning.
The whole world was briefed except fucking me.
I woke up this morning a single woman. A free woman.
A woman with a Paris apartment and a bakery downstairs and absolutely zero intention of ever getting married again.
And now I am standing in a stranger's bedroom surrounded by clothes someone else chose for me for a life someone else planned for me and I am so angry I would put my fist through that very expensive looking wall if it wouldn’t break my bones to pieces.
I yank on everything I can find. Leggings. A long sleeve top. A cardigan over that. Socks. I look like I'm preparing for a polar expedition and I do not care even slightly.
I know what's supposed to happen tonight.
My father's voice in my ear, clinical and unbothered: Rafael will expect to consummate the marriage. Don't give him any reason to think something is wrong. Be convincing
Be convincing. Be a fucking slut.
Over my dead body.
Use the only currency a woman has in this world to buy her sister's life.
My skin crawls at the thought. I’m not a wife; I’m a bribe. And Rafael Caruso doesn't look like the kind of man who accepts a counterfeit payment.
I climb onto the bed on the far side, on top of the covers because getting under them feels like a level of settling in that I'm not prepared to commit to, and I arrange myself in what I hope is a convincing impression of a woman peacefully asleep.
Flat on my back. Eyes closed. Hands folded. Completely natural.
This is so stupid. He's going to walk in here and see a woman lying on top of the covers in a cardigan and socks and immediately know something is wrong.
But the alternative is to actually be awake when he comes in and I cannot do that, I cannot have that conversation, I cannot lie here and look at him with his jaw and his hands and his green eyes and his—
No.
Asleep. I am asleep. I have been asleep for hours. I am the most deeply asleep person in this building.
I hear the door.
Well shit.
My whole body goes rigid, which is not what deeply sleeping people do, but I cannot help it. His footsteps are quiet, which is unfair because a man that large should not be able to move that quietly, it goes against the basic principles of physics.
They stop.
Silence.
He's looking at me. He's standing there looking at me and if I open my eyes I will have to explain the cardigan and the socks and the aggressive corpse position and I would genuinely rather stay like this forever.
"I know you're awake."
His voice, low and completely unbothered, lands in the quiet of the room like he has all the time in the world and finds this mildly entertaining.
I don't move.
"Gia."
I am asleep. I am practically in a coma. I am—
The footsteps resume. Closer. And then I hear it, the sound of him beginning to undress. The quiet slide of his jacket. The soft sound of fabric.
My eyes fly open.
"Stop." I sit up so fast the room tilts. "Stop that right now."
He's standing at the foot of the bed with his jacket half off his shoulders, and he looks at me with an expression of complete composure that is somehow the most infuriating thing I have ever seen on a human face.
"There she is," he says.
"I said stop undressing."
"It's my bedroom."
"It is also currently my bedroom, and I am in it, and I am telling you to stop."
He tilts his head. The jacket comes off anyway, unhurried, like I said nothing at all, and he drapes it over the chair by the window and I watch his shoulders move under his shirt and I am furious about it.
Do not look at his shoulders. Do not look at anything. Look at the wall. Look at the ceiling. Look at literally any other surface in this room.
"Keep your distance," I say. "I'm serious. I want at least three feet of space between us at all times."
"We're married."
"Congratulations, you've identified the problem."
He looks at me. The corner of his mouth moves.
"Three feet," I say. "I mean it."
He starts on his shirt buttons.
I grab the nearest object, which turns out to be a slipper, because whoever unpacked for me apparently has a sense of humor, and I throw it at him.
He catches it.
Without looking.
One hand, out of his peripheral vision, smooth as breathing, and then he's just standing there holding my slipper with his shirt half unbuttoned and looking at me with an expression that has moved from mildly entertained to genuinely delighted.
"Did you just throw a shoe at me," he says.
"I throw what I have available."
"I'll keep that in mind." He sets it down on the chair. "Are you finished?"
"That depends on whether you're planning to respect the three feet."
He moves.
Not toward the chair. Not toward the window.
Toward me, slow and completely unhurried, and I scramble back against the headboard and I open my mouth to say something devastating and before I can find it he has my wrists.
Both of them, caught in one hand, not painful, not threatening, just absolutely inescapable, and he presses them lightly to the mattress beside me and leans in close enough that I can smell his cologne again and see the exact shade of green his eyes are in the low light of the room.
"You're my wife, Little Gia," he says. Quiet. Even. Like he's reminding me of something I've temporarily forgotten. "In my bed. In my house."
He is extremely close. He is so close I can feel the warmth of him and my heart is doing something completely unacceptable and the cardigan was supposed to make me feel shielded and it is doing absolutely nothing, it is a completely useless garment. I want a refund.
I become aware, with a specific and unwelcome clarity, of exactly how close the rest of him is. The weight of him, not quite on me, but near enough. The press of him against the layers of fabric I put on specifically to prevent this exact awareness.
Oh.
Oh no.
I am in so much trouble.
My face is doing something. I can feel it doing something. I make it stop.
"T-Three feet," I say, and my voice comes out even, which is the single greatest achievement of my entire life.
He looks at me.
He looks at my mouth.
He looks back at my eyes.
Oh no.