12. Enzo
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Enzo
The dress arrives at four.
I sign for the garment bag without really looking at it. Black, heavy, expensive packaging. I ordered it three days ago from a designer who owed me a favor, gave him her measurements based on memory and how she felt in my hands.
If it doesn’t fit, I’m an idiot.
I carry the bag to the bedroom where Ana’s curled up scrolling through her phone. She’s wearing my shirt again, the gray one, hair still damp from the shower we took an hour ago. The shower that turned into more. The more that turned into us barely making it to the bed.
Three times in twenty-four hours and I still want her. Every time I look at her I want her again. It’s becoming a problem.
“What’s that?” she asks, looking up.
“Dress. For tonight.”
She sits up, eyes the garment bag like it might attack her. “I was going to wear the green one. From yesterday.”
“This one’s better.”
“You bought me another dress?”
“I bought you the right dress.” I drop the bag on the bed beside her. “The green one’s pretty. This one’s a statement.”
She’s quiet for a second, looking at the bag, then at me. “What kind of statement?”
“That you’re not hiding. You’re not ashamed. You’re not the sad wife who got cheated on and ran away.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “This one says you won. Whatever game they thought they were playing, you won.”
“I haven’t won anything yet.”
“Tonight’s the start.”
She reaches out and touches the bag, runs her fingers along the zipper. I watch her hand move, watch the way she’s hesitating, and I want to tell her to just open the damn thing. But I wait. Let her get there on her own.
“What if it doesn’t fit?” she asks.
“It’ll fit.”
“How do you know?”
Because I’ve memorized your body. Because I know the exact curve of your waist and the flare of your hips and the way your back dips right above your ass. Because I could draw you in the dark with my hands tied behind my back.
“Guessed,” I say instead. “Based on what you tried on yesterday.”
She gives me a look that says she doesn’t buy it, but she unzips the bag anyway.
The dress spills out. Deep red, almost black in certain lights, the color of expensive wine.
Floor-length with a slit up one side that’ll show her leg when she walks.
The back is mostly open, just thin straps crossing between shoulder blades.
The front is high-necked but the fabric clings, shows everything without revealing anything.
Ana stares at it for a long moment. I watch the worry pull at her mouth, the way her eyes keep snagging on the place where a price tag would be, and I want to tell her to stop. The price doesn’t matter. Nothing about money matters when it comes to her.
“Enzo.” Her voice is quiet. “This is too much.”
“It’s exactly enough.”
“This dress costs more than my father gave me for a year.”
“Your father’s an asshole and his opinion on anything is worthless.” I stand up. “Try it on.”
“Now?”
“Now. If it doesn’t fit, we need time to fix it before tonight.”
She hesitates, still staring at the dress like it’s from another planet. Like it belongs to someone else’s life, not hers.
She’s wrong. She just doesn’t know it yet.
“Fine,” she says finally. “Turn around.”
“Seriously?”
“Turn around.”
I turn around. Not because I haven’t seen every inch of her already, not because there’s anything left to hide, but because she asked. And I find myself wanting to give her whatever she asks for. It’s a problem. A big one. I don’t do what people ask. I don’t bend.
But for her, apparently, I bend.
I hear fabric rustling behind me. The soft sound of my shirt hitting the floor. The whisper of silk sliding over skin. I stare at the wall and try not to think about turning around early, about watching her step into that dress, about peeling it right back off her.
“Okay,” she says. “You can look.”
I turn.
And my brain just stops.
She’s standing in front of the full-length mirror, her back to me, looking at her reflection.
The dress fits. Of course it fits. It fits like I knew it would, like I hoped it would, like I spent three days praying it would.
It follows every line of her body, cinches at her waist, skims down her hips.
The open back shows the curve of her spine, the architecture of her shoulder blades, skin I had my mouth on an hour ago and want my mouth on again right now.
Then she turns around.
And it gets worse. Or better. I can’t tell anymore.
The high neck frames her face, makes her look untouchable. The fabric clings to her chest, her stomach, her hips, but it’s not obscene. It’s suggestion. It’s promise. The slit falls open when she moves, showing a flash of thigh that makes my mouth go dry.
She looks like a queen. She looks like a weapon. She looks like the reason men start wars.
“Well?” she asks. “Will this do?”
I open my mouth to answer and nothing comes out.
She frowns. “Enzo? What’s wrong? Does it look bad?”
Bad. She’s asking if she looks bad. She’s standing there looking like that and she’s asking if she looks bad.
“You…” My voice comes out rough, cracked. I clear my throat and try again. “You look…”
Still nothing. I’ve lost the ability to form sentences. All the blood in my body has gone somewhere that isn’t my brain and I’m standing here like an idiot with my mouth open.
Ana’s frown deepens. She turns back to the mirror, studies herself with that critical look women get when they’re about to talk themselves out of it. “It’s too much, isn’t it? I look like I’m trying too hard. I should wear the green one, that was safer…”
“No.”
She stops. Looks at me in the mirror.
“Don’t change.” I finally get my legs working and cross the room to stand behind her. “Don’t change anything. You’re…”
I put my hands on her hips. Through the thin fabric I can feel the warmth of her skin, and I have to fight the urge to slide my hands lower, to find the slit in the dress, to…
Focus.
“I’m what?” she asks.
“Devastating.” The word comes out low and rough.
“You’re absolutely devastating. You’re gonna walk into that function tonight and every person in the room is gonna forget how to breathe.
Every guy is gonna want you. Every woman is gonna want to be you.
And Rafael is gonna realize what a colossal fucking idiot he is. ”
She stares at my reflection in the mirror. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted. I can see her pulse jumping in her throat.
“You really think so?”
“I don’t think. I know.” I lean down and press my mouth to the curve of her neck, right where it meets her shoulder.
She shivers again, harder this time, and I feel it run through her whole body.
“I know because I can’t think straight when I look at you.
I’ve seen you in my old shirts looking half-asleep.
I’ve seen you crying with mascara running down your face.
I’ve seen you naked and spread out underneath me.
None of that hit me like this. You, right now, in this dress. ”
“Enzo…”
“I’m not done.” I wrap my arms around her waist, watching us in the mirror. Her in that dress, me behind her, hands possessive on her hips. We look good together. We look right. “I’ve been with a lot of women. I’m not gonna lie to you about that.”
“That’s… not exactly what I want to hear right now.”
“None of them,” I say, ignoring her, “made me feel like this. None of them made me want to burn everything down just to see them smile. None of them made me want to be better than I am.”
She’s very still in my arms. I can feel her breathing go shallow, feel the tension in her body.
“What are you saying?” she asks quietly.
Good question. What am I saying?
This was supposed to be simple. An arrangement. Revenge. A way to hurt my family and help a woman who got a raw deal.
It’s not simple anymore. I don’t think it was ever simple.
“I’m saying this stopped being an arrangement somewhere around the time you told your father to go to hell.” I meet her eyes in the mirror. “I’m saying I don’t know what this is, but I know I don’t want to let you go.”
“You might have to. Eventually.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t real.” Her voice goes soft. “None of this is real. It’s revenge and strategy and making the right people see the right things. Once that’s done…”
“Once that’s done, what? You leave? Go back to your life?”
“I don’t have a life to go back to. That’s the problem.”
“Then stay.” I blurt out. “Build a new one. Here.”
She turns in my arms so she’s facing me instead of the mirror. Her eyes search mine, looking for something. I don’t know what. I don’t know if she finds it.
“You don’t mean that,” she says.
“I do.”
“You barely know me.”
“I know enough.”
“We’ve known each other for three days?”
“I’ve known you for years. I’ve been watching you for years.” I cup her face in my hands, feel her jaw under my palms, the soft skin of her cheeks. “Three days is just how long I’ve been brave enough to do something about it.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. I can see her thinking, turning it over, weighing it. She’s always doing that. Always measuring risks and rewards, always trying to figure out the smart play.
I want to tell her to stop thinking. Just feel it. Take the leap.
But I don’t. Because this has to be her choice. Everything has to be her choice from now on. She’s spent her whole life having choices made for her. I won’t be another person who takes that away.
“We should finish getting ready,” she says finally.
It’s not an answer. I know it’s not an answer. But I let it go because pushing her won’t get me anywhere, and we have a function to get through, and everything I want to say to her can wait until after we’ve watched her old life go up in flames.
“Yeah,” I say. “We should.”
I step back. Let my hands fall away from her face. Put distance between us that I don’t want and she probably needs.
“I have to do my hair,” she says. “And makeup. It’ll take a while.”
“Take your time. Car comes at seven.”
She nods and starts to turn away, then stops. Turns back.
“Enzo.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. For the dress. For everything you said.” She bites her lip and I want to kiss her so badly I can taste it. “For making me feel like I matter.”
“You do matter. You matter more than anyone I’ve met in a long time. Anyone who made you feel like you didn’t is a fucking idiot.”
She smiles. Small and soft and a little bit sad.
“I’m starting to believe that,” she says. “That’s new.”
Then she disappears into the bathroom and I’m left standing there, staring at the closed door, trying to figure out when exactly I lost control of this situation.
Wondering if I ever had control in the first place.
***
I shower in the guest bathroom. Shave. Take my time because I need to keep my hands busy with anything that isn’t going back into that bedroom and interrupting whatever she’s doing in there.
The suit I had pressed yesterday is waiting in the closet. Black on black, no tie. I hate ties. They feel like leashes. And this is my family’s function, so I’ll dress however I damn well please.
The mirror shows me a man I barely recognize. Not because I look different. I look the same as always. Dark hair, dark eyes, the face that got me compared to my father more times than I can count. What’s different is something underneath. Something loose where it used to be locked down tight.
She did that. In three days she’s gotten under my skin deeper than anyone has in fourteen years.
I should be worried. I should be pulling back, reinforcing walls, reminding myself this is temporary. That’s the smart play. That’s what I’d tell anyone else to do.
I’m not doing any of it. That’s what should scare me, and doesn’t.
I finish getting ready and check my watch. Six forty-five. Fifteen minutes until the car.
I walk back to the master bedroom and stop in the doorway.
The bathroom door is still closed. I can hear the faint whir of a hair dryer. Smell perfume, faint and floral, the bottle she must have found in the bags from yesterday. Signs of life in an apartment that’s been empty for years.
I could get used to this.
That’s the terrifying part. Her being here. Waking up beside her. Coming home and finding evidence that someone else exists in my space. For so long I’ve kept this place empty on purpose. No attachments. No roots. Nothing anyone could use against me.
Now I’m standing here thinking about what it would be like to have her here permanently, and I don’t hate the idea. I don’t hate it at all.
I check my watch again. Six fifty-two.
The bathroom door opens.
Ana walks out.
She’s swept her hair up so it shows her neck, the line of her jaw. Her makeup is subtle but it works, smoky eyes, red lips that match the dress. She’s wearing the black heels from yesterday, the tall ones I told her to get, and they do exactly what I said they’d do to her legs.
She looks nothing like the woman who cried in my lobby two nights ago. That woman was broken. Lost. Didn’t know who she was or what she wanted.
This woman knows exactly who she is.
This woman is going to war.
“Well?” she asks, and I can hear nerves under the confidence. “Will I do?”
I cross the room in three strides and kiss her. Hard. Possessive. Probably ruining her lipstick and not caring even a little bit.
When I pull back, she’s breathless.
“You’ll do,” I say. “You’ll more than do.”
She laughs, reaching up to wipe lipstick off my mouth. “You’re gonna smear my makeup.”
“Worth it.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re perfect.” I take her hand, press a kiss to her knuckles. “Ready?”
She takes a breath. Lets it out slow. I can feel the tension in her hand, the slight tremor she’s trying to hide.
“No,” she says. “I’m terrified. I keep thinking about walking in there, seeing Rafael, seeing everyone who’s gonna be watching and judging and waiting for me to fall apart.”
“So don’t fall apart.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple. You walk in. Keep your head up. Let them see what you want them to see.” I squeeze her hand. “And if anyone tries to make you feel small, I’ll end them. Publicly. Loudly. In ways they won’t recover from.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“Wasn’t trying to be comforting. Just honest.”
She looks at me for a long moment. I watch her face, watch her work through the fear, watch her decide what she’s gonna do with it.
Then she comes to a decision. Her shoulders drop. Her chin comes up.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m not ready. But let’s do it anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She squeezes my hand back. “Let’s burn it all down.”
I smile. Sharp. Dangerous.
“That’s my girl.”
We walk out the door together.
I don’t let go of her hand.