6. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
I can’t sleep.
The guest room is beautiful, cream walls, soft linens, a bathroom with a rainfall shower and more towels than any one person could possibly need, but the storm is rattling the windows hard enough to make the glass hum, and every crack of thunder sends my heart slamming against my ribs as though it’s trying to escape.
I tell myself that’s why I’m awake. The storm. The unfamiliar bed. The strangeness of being somewhere that isn’t the penthouse or the hotel room I’ve been hiding in since my life fell apart.
I don’t tell myself the truth, which is that Reid Vanderbilt is sleeping somewhere down the hall, and the weight of that knowledge presses against my skin.
The clock on the nightstand reads one forty-seven when I finally give up pretending.
Swinging my legs out of bed, I tug Reid’s old sweatshirt back down where it rode up in my sleep, the one that smells of cedar and salt air, of him, and pad barefoot into the dark hallway.
The house is quiet except for the storm.
Reid’s place bears no resemblance to the penthouse, none of the aggressive minimalism Vincent insisted on.
This is old money made comfortable, warm wood floors, soft rugs, furniture that people actually sit in.
The kind of home someone builds because they want to live there, not because they want to photograph it for a magazine spread.
I find myself in the kitchen without really meaning to, drawn by some instinct toward the low glow of the appliances and the promise of work for my hands. The refrigerator hums. The storm howls. I stand at the counter and try to remember the last time I felt this unmoored.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
I spin around, my heart lurching, and Reid is standing in the doorway in nothing but gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt that clings to his shoulders in ways I’m trying very hard not to notice.
“The storm,” I manage. “It’s loud.”
“It is.” He moves into the kitchen, easy and unhurried, and opens the refrigerator without turning on the lights. “I was going to make tea. Want some?”
“Sure.”
He fills a kettle and sets it on the stove, and we stand in the blue-dark kitchen while the water heats and the rain lashes against the windows.
The silence between us isn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it carries weight, freighted with all the things we haven’t said, all the history we’ve been carefully stepping around since the alley.
“I used to hate storms when I was a kid,” I hear myself say. “My mother would come into my room and tell me stories until they passed. After she died, I just... learned to wait them out alone.”
“Bridgett.” His voice is soft. “I remember her. She was kind.”
“She was.” I wrap my arms around myself, the worn cotton of his sweatshirt soft against my skin. “She would have hated what my father did. Selling me off the way he did. She would have fought him on it, if she’d been alive.”
“Would she have won?”
The question lands somewhere tender. I think about my mother, about her gentle stubbornness, about the way she could make my father back down with nothing but a look and a quiet word.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe. Maybe not. My father is good at making people believe they don’t have choices when they actually do.”
The kettle starts to whistle, and Reid turns away to deal with it. I watch his hands as he pours the water, steady and sure, and I think about all the times Vincent’s hands trembled with impatience or anger or barely concealed contempt.
“Do you remember that summer?” Reid asks, handing me a mug. “The one before you got engaged. We must have spent every day at the dock.”
I close my eyes, and the memory rises up unbidden, two teenagers sprawled on sun-warmed wood, talking about nothing and everything, the whole future stretched out ahead of us, a thing we might actually get to choose.
“You were going to sail around the world,” I say. “You had it all planned out. Every port, every route. You said you’d send me postcards from everywhere you went.”
“And you were going to design buildings. You showed me your sketches.” His voice is closer now, and when I open my eyes he’s moved to lean against the counter beside me, near enough that the warmth radiates off his skin.
“You were so talented, Scarlett. Even then. I remember thinking that whoever got to watch you grow into that gift would be the luckiest person alive.”
My throat tightens. “That person was Vincent. And he spent years pretending the gift was his.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, though. You can’t.”
The words come out harder than I intend, edged with a decade of swallowed rage.
“You don’t know what it’s like to build a beautiful thing and watch someone else sign their name to it.
To have people congratulate your husband on your ideas, your designs, your work, while you stand there smiling as though that’s exactly what you wanted.
To make yourself so small that you start to forget you were ever anything else. ”
Reid is quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks his voice is rough.
“You’re right. I don’t know what that’s like.”
He turns to face me, and in the blue-dark his eyes are almost black.
“But I know how it feels to watch it happen. To stand on the outside and see someone you...” He stops, swallows. “Someone you care about disappear into a life that’s making her smaller every day. And not be able to do a damn thing about it.”
Neither of us moves, and the space between us holds its breath.
“Reid...”
“You should’ve chosen me, Scarlett.”
The words land hard enough to rock me. I take a step back, my hip connecting with the edge of the counter, and he follows, not crowding but not retreating either, holding his ground the way he’s held it since the moment he caught me in that alley.
“I never got to choose anything.”
It comes out cracked. Broken. The truth of it splits the whole night open, all the years of swallowed grief and buried rage and the endless, exhausting performance of being someone I was never allowed to actually become.
“I know.” His hand comes up to my jaw, careful, in case I bolt. His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone, and the touch goes everywhere, a current down my spine. “I know you didn’t. And I have spent years being angry at the wrong people.”
“Your father?”
“Myself.” His jaw tightens. “I should have fought harder. I should have...”
“You were seventeen. We both were. What were you supposed to do, kidnap me?”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
I laugh, surprised, and the sound unlocks a thing in him. His other hand comes up to cup my face, both thumbs stroking my cheeks now, and he looks at me as though I’m precious and painful all at once.
“I would have never treated you the way he did,” he says quietly. “Not for one single day. I would have spent every moment making sure you knew exactly how brilliant and beautiful and goddamn remarkable you are. I would have fought anyone who tried to make you small. I would have...”
I kiss him.
I don’t decide to do it. My body just moves, closing the distance between us, my hands fisting in the soft cotton of his t-shirt as I pull him down to me. And the moment our lips touch, years detonate at once.
He makes a sound against my mouth, surprise, relief, a low groan, and then his arms are around me and he’s lifting me onto the counter as though I weigh nothing at all.
My legs wrap around his waist instinctively, pulling him closer, and he kisses me as though he’s been starving for this, as though he’s been holding himself back for a decade and finally, finally doesn’t have to anymore.
“Scarlett.” My name in his mouth, rough and reverent. “We don’t have to, if you’re not ready...”
“I’m ready.” I pull back just far enough to look at him, to make sure he sees the certainty in my eyes. “I have been ready. I just didn’t know it until right now.”
His forehead drops to mine, and for a moment we just breathe together, the storm raging outside and a fiercer storm raging inside.
“I need you to understand this,” he says quietly. “Whatever happens tonight, whatever you want or don’t want, it doesn’t change anything about our deal. You don’t owe me this. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” His hands tighten on my hips. “Because every other man in your life has made you pay for everything you’ve ever received, and I refuse to be one of them. So if you want to stop, at any point, for any reason...”
“Reid.” I take his face in my hands, force him to look at me. “I’m not doing this because I owe you. I’m doing this because I want to. Because now, I actually know what I want, and I’m allowed to take it.”
His expression shifts. The restraint he’s been holding onto so carefully starts to crack, and underneath it I can see the hunger he’s been hiding since the alley, since the gala, since I first felt his hand on my back and learned what it was to be touched by someone who wanted to steady me rather than steer me.
“Then take it,” he says, and the words are a surrender and a challenge all at once.
I take it.
I take his mouth and his hands and the solid warmth of his body pressing me back against the counter.
I take the way he kisses down my neck and groans against my skin as though touching me is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
I take the way he asks, constantly, endlessly, is this okay, do you want this, tell me what you want, because apparently there are men in the world who care about the answer.
His hands slide under my clothes, palms hot against my skin, and I gasp as he finds my breasts.
He kneads them with a desperate kind of hunger, his thumbs brushing over my nipples until they are hard and aching.
I arch my back, pressing my chest into his palms, needing more.
I reach for his belt, my fingers trembling but determined, and I fumble with the buckle until I can slide his trousers and boxers down.