4. Bree
— ? —
Bree
Two Years Earlier, Four Months into the Marriage
I was in the kitchen, pouring a glass of wine I didn’t really want, when the lights flickered twice and died.
The refrigerator groaned into silence. The ambient hum of the penthouse, the sound I’d stopped noticing weeks ago, disappeared.
Outside the windows, Manhattan blinked out in sections, block by block, until the only light came from car headlights far below and the distant glow of buildings still running on generators.
“Shit,” I said, to no one.
The storm had been threatening all day. Thunder rolling in from Jersey, lightning flickering on the horizon, weather that made the doormen nervous and the cab drivers reckless. I’d assumed the building was storm-proof. I’d assumed wrong.
My phone was in the bedroom, charging. Or it had been charging. Now it was dead weight on a dead outlet, and I was standing in the dark in a penthouse I still didn’t know how to navigate by touch.
“Rafael?”
No answer. He was in his study, probably. Or he’d been, before the world went black.
I felt my way along the counter, found the edge of the island, oriented myself toward the hallway. The marble was cold under my bare feet. I’d kicked off my shoes an hour ago, some small rebellion against the woman I was supposed to be.
“Rafael, the power’s out.”
Still nothing.
I made it to the hallway. The study door was open. I could see the faint outline of his desk chair against the window.
Empty.
“Great,” I muttered. “Wonderful. Fantastic.”
A sound behind me. Footsteps. I spun around, heart hammering, and collided with a solid, warm chest.
Hands caught my shoulders. Steadied me.
“Bree. It’s me.”
Rafael’s voice. Close. His breath ghosting across my forehead.
“Jesus.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I was getting candles from the supply closet.”
He released my shoulders. I heard rustling, then the scratch of a match, and warm light bloomed between us.
Rafael’s face emerged from the dark, candlelit and strange. He looked different in this light. Softer. The hard edges of his jaw blurred almost gentle.
“Here.” He handed me a candle. “The building has emergency protocols. Power should be back within the hour.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Then we wait.” He started walking toward the living room. “The structure is sound. We’re not in any danger.”
“I wasn’t worried about danger.”
“Good.”
He settled onto the couch, setting his candle on the coffee table. After a moment, I joined him. Not close. There was a cushion of space between us, a no-man’s-land I’d learned to maintain.
“The building’s structural load can handle category three hurricanes,” Rafael said, staring at the flame. “The foundation goes down sixty feet. Reinforced concrete core with steel moment frames. Even if the storm gets worse, which it won’t, we’re safer here than anywhere in the city.”
“That’s… reassuring?”
“You looked nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said, too quickly.
“Your hands are shaking.”
I looked down. He was right. The candle flame was trembling, shadows jumping on my wrist.
“I don’t love storms,” I admitted. “When I was six, a tornado hit our neighbor’s barn. Killed four horses. I watched it happen from my bedroom window.”
Rafael was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The words came out sharper than I’d intended. I winced. Four months in, and I still hadn’t learned how to talk to this man without cutting.
“You’re right.” His voice was measured. “I should’ve asked.”
The storm picked up outside. Rain lashed the windows in sheets. Thunder rolled, closer now, and I flinched.
“The moment frames,” Rafael said.
“What?”
“In the building. They’re designed to flex during high winds. To absorb the energy instead of fighting it. If you listen closely, you can feel the building sway. Just slightly. It’s supposed to do that.”
“That doesn’t sound safe,” I said, eyeing the windows.
“It’s the opposite. The buildings that don’t flex are the ones that break. Rigidity is a structural weakness. Flexibility is strength.”
He was looking at me. The candlelight caught his eyes, turned them gold instead of blue.
“Is that a metaphor?” I asked.
“It’s engineering. But you can make it a metaphor if you want.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sound escaped before I could catch it, and Rafael’s face changed. He was staring at me now, really staring, with an expression I’d never seen before.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just… I like your laugh.”
My heart tripped over itself.
“You’ve heard me laugh before.”
“Not much. Not enough.” He looked away, toward the windows. “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“Marriage. Talking. Making you laugh.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I know you’re unhappy here. I know I’m not… what you expected.”
“I didn’t expect anything,” I said. “This was a business arrangement.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
The words hung between us. I didn’t know what to do with them.
“Rafael-”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He was still looking at the windows. “I’m just telling you. If you wanted it to be more. I’d want that too.”
The thunder cracked, close and loud, and I jumped. My candle tilted. Wax spilled onto my hand, hot and sudden, and I hissed.
“Careful.” Rafael was there, close, taking the candle from my grip. His fingers brushed mine. “Are you burned?”
“It’s fine.”
“Let me see.”
He took my hand. His thumb pressed against the wax, testing. I should’ve pulled away. I should’ve retreated to my side of the couch, maintained the cushion of space, remembered that this was a business arrangement and business arrangements didn’t involve candlelit touching.
I didn’t pull away.
“It didn’t blister,” he said. “Good.”
“Thanks, Dr. Grant.”
He smiled. A real smile, not the polished one he gave to cameras. It transformed his whole face.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Depends on the question.”
“What do you think about? When you’re in the kitchen alone, or walking through the apartment, or staring out the windows the way you do sometimes. What’s in your head?”
No one had ever asked me that before. Not my parents, not my friends, certainly not the man I’d married.
“Home,” I said. “I think about home. The farms. The way the air smells in the morning, when the dew’s still on the grass. The chickens arguing with each other. My mom’s coffee.”
“You miss it.”
“Every day.”
He was still holding my hand. His thumb traced a small circle on my palm.
“I could take you there,” he said. “We could visit. If you wanted.”
“You’re too busy.”
“I could be less busy.”
I looked at him. He looked back, and the cushion of space I’d guarded for four months stopped protecting me from anything at all.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
The question was hoarse. Almost whispered. He was asking permission, this giant of a man who ran a billion-dollar company and negotiated with world leaders, asking me if he could press his mouth to mine.
“Yes,” I said.
He kissed me.
It was nothing. It was everything. His lips were warm and careful and slightly chapped, and he kissed me the way he talked about structural engineering: methodical, thorough, precise. One hand came up to cradle my jaw. The other still held mine, fingers intertwined.
When he pulled back, his eyes were dark.
“Okay?” he asked.
I nodded, because my voice would’ve given me away.
“Can I do it again?”
I pulled him down instead of answering.
The second kiss was different. Deeper. His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, and he groaned into my mouth, low and wrecked.
Heat dropped through me and pooled between my thighs, and my whole body leaned into him before my brain could vote on it.
So this was what nobody had warned me about.
The contract hadn’t said a single word about wanting him this much.
“Bree.” My name was a groan. “I think about you. All the time. At work, at meetings, when I’m supposed to be focused. I think about you, and I can’t stop, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Maybe stop talking,” I said. “Maybe just do.”
He laughed against my mouth. Then his hands found the hem of my shirt.
“Can I?”
“Yes.”
He pulled it over my head. The cool air hit my skin, and I shivered, and he pressed his forehead to mine.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that. The first day we met. In that conference room. You walked in, and I forgot how to breathe.”
“You hid it well.”
“I hide everything well. It’s a problem.” His fingers traced my collarbone. “I don’t want to hide this. I want you to know.”
He kissed down my throat. My head fell back. His mouth found the pulse point below my ear, and he lingered there, tasting.
“The couch is uncomfortable,” I managed.
“Is that a hint?”
“It’s an observation.”
He stood, pulling me with him. His candle guttered on the table. Mine was somewhere on the floor. We made it to the kitchen before he pressed me against the island, hands spanning my waist, mouth finding mine again.
I reached for his shirt. The buttons were small and frustrating in the dark. I yanked, and a button popped, and he laughed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.” He shrugged out of the ruined shirt. “I have more.”
His chest was bare under my palms, warm, and I finally let myself look.
The candlelight caught the cut of his shoulders and the dark trail of hair that disappeared below his waistband.
Four months I’d spent not looking at this man, not letting myself catalog the way his throat worked when he swallowed or how the veins stood out along his forearms when he gripped the counter.
Now I looked my fill. My mouth went dry.
I pressed my thighs together against the ache building there, and when I dragged my nails down his sternum, the raw sound he made went straight between my legs.
“Bree.”
“Rafael.”
“I want-” He stopped. Swallowed. “Can I-”
“Ask me.”
“Can I touch you?”
“Yes.”
His hands slid down my ribs. Found the waistband of my sleep shorts. Paused.
“These too?”
I nodded, past speaking.