Chapter 31
BOGDAN
The chandelier goes dark while I'm standing beneath it.
For half a second, the ravens above me disappear. Then the emergency lights along the walls take over, leaving every exit and the path to it visible. The paper moon hangs dull and white above an empty dance floor.
Klim waits beside the test panel. I walk to the staff corridor before telling him to restore the normal lighting. From here, the front doors are easy to find. No rack, crate or abandoned decoration stands between me and them.
I make the walk a second time from the lounge.
The fitting room is on my right as I head toward the main room, with the reserve-prop store opposite.
Behind me, the corridor continues past the lounge to the turn into the loading wing.
I can see that turn from the fitting-room doorway.
Tomorrow, the staff go forward, away from it, if we need them out.
Klim joins me beneath an emergency lamp.
“The lights stay on if we lose the stage circuit,” he says. “The rear door is watched. Nobody opens it for a costume or a delivery.”
“Or a familiar face.”
He nods. We both know which familiar face has made the instruction necessary.
The normal lighting returns. A sequined sleeve glitters in the wardrobe recess between the lounge and the service turn.
Tessa's spare rack is parked inside it with the wheels locked and the passage clear.
Most of the garments have gone out already.
By tomorrow, nothing remains to be collected by a customer.
Klim hands me the revised staff list. I know the names on it. That isn't the same as looking at every one and understanding that we're asking people to sit down together after their other workplace burned.
We reduced the supper again this morning.
A handful of workers chose to stay home, and I don't want anybody calling them to change their minds.
The rest will eat early and leave in small escorted groups.
The kitchen staff already working here will provide the food.
No outside vendors come through the service door.
“Alison has the final plan?” I ask.
“And the cancellation notice. She has the number for whoever's covering each entrance. If something happens, we call police immediately.”
I look toward the loading wing. Kirill is there with the men assigned to him, checking their positions under Klim's direction. Nobody has to decide tomorrow whose pride matters more than getting the workers out.
An empty building would be simpler to defend.
It would also send these people home with the last thing they did together still being a count beside a burning club.
The supper was theirs before it became another decision on my desk.
I won't pretend there's no risk, but I can keep it small, keep the public out and be here when they arrive.
Klim takes the list back.
“You'll stay downstairs?”
“The whole time.”
He folds the paper and puts it away. I don't need to tell him which two names I looked for first. Their cars and escorts are already arranged, with Matvei staying beside them until they're inside the hotel.
I leave the club before the staff start clearing the last worktables. The cancellation sign covers the public entrance, large enough to read from the curb. It has my approval and my money behind it. I still hate seeing the doors shut on a room that used to answer to me.
By the time I reach Beacon Hill, I'm more afraid of a hotel door opening than I was of the darkness under the chandelier.
Tessa asked me to come after the final delivery. Her message didn't say whether she wanted supper, help carrying the last bags, or a conversation that would leave me downstairs alone again. I've read it so often that the words no longer tell me anything.
Matvei is in the upstairs passage when I arrive. He lets Tessa know I'm here and moves back toward the adjoining room, where Peggy is staying. I hear her laugh at something behind the door. The sound stops me for a moment. I'd forgotten how freely it used to carry through a building.
Tessa opens her door before I knock.
She's wearing a soft gray dress and the diamond necklace I gave her. There are no pins on her wrist. Her hair is loose, and she holds a pair of scissors by their closed blades.
“You look frightened,” she says.
I look at the scissors.
She follows my glance and laughs. “I was cutting a tag out. Come in.”
The suite looks lived in now. Five pillows are stacked on a chair beside the bed, leaving the sixth where she sleeps.
A paper bag from the workshop lies open beneath the window, and her red-bottom heels stand together by the wardrobe.
She puts the scissors on the desk, away from a plate of shortbread.
I take my coat off and hang it on the hook she points to. I know how to enter rooms where people wait for permission to sit. Here I have to stop myself asking where she wants me to stand.
Tessa picks up a black waistcoat from the bed. “It's finished.”
I recognize the cloth before she turns it. She fitted it on me the afternoon I kept Ethan's name to myself. For days I've remembered her hands at my side and the pastry she brought upstairs, as though enough attention to the details could change what I did between them.
She holds the waistcoat open. “Try it.”
I leave my jacket at the foot of the bed and slide my arms through. Her fingers settle the shoulders, then fasten the buttons down the front. The cloth fits without pulling. When she smooths it against my chest, I can smell the faint rose scent of the cream on her hands.
“There,” she says. “Now you look like you own the haunted castle.”
“I was hoping to take the dressmaker home.”
Her hands stop against me.
I wish I'd waited, although it's the truth.
I want her shoes beneath my bench again.
I want the half-empty glass she always leaves on my side of the bed and the noise she makes when I put her sewing scissors in the wrong drawer.
The house has staff and guards and enough space to make her absence expensive. None of it helps me sleep.
“I kept working on this,” she says. “Even when I was furious with you.”
I look down at the little black buttons. She matched their thread to the cloth so closely that I have to tilt toward the lamp to see it.
“I know.”
“No, you don't. Some nights I wanted to throw it away. Then I'd think you'd be downstairs wearing something boring, and I'd pick it up again.”
She gives a small laugh that doesn't last. I take her hands off the waistcoat and hold them between us. One thumb has a small rough patch. I remember her rubbing at it in the office on Wednesday while I told her the party was cancelled.
The things she's finished for me hurt more than anything she could've thrown.
“I was afraid you'd go,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine.
“When Klim brought me the photograph. When you came upstairs that afternoon. I thought if I told you what was happening, you'd see what being with me cost.”
I feel the pressure of her fingers without knowing whether she's holding on or preparing to pull away. The bed is a few steps behind her. On it lies the envelope from the clinic, open beside her phone.
I could point to the babies, to every car outside and every bill I've paid. Once, I would've thought those things answered the question she hasn't asked yet. Now I can hear how little they would explain about the message I chose not to send.
“So you let me stay stupid,” she says.
“I let you stay unwarned. You weren't stupid.”
Her mouth trembles. I want to kiss it until she stops hurting, and the wanting is so selfish that I keep my head still.
“I called it protection,” I tell her. “I had men watching the doors, and I used that to excuse keeping quiet. But I wanted another night with you in my house before you knew enough to leave.”
The admission leaves me feeling sick. There's no new photograph to lay on the desk, no fresh fact that makes yesterday worse. It's the same two days I've already admitted to, finally without the reason I preferred hearing myself give.
Tessa looks down at our hands. For a moment I think she might ask me to go. I'd have to take the waistcoat off while she watched, leaving behind something she'd finished even when she couldn't stand to see me.
“I loved being there,” she says. “That's why it hurt.”
I close my eyes briefly. The room smells of her hand cream and the butter in the shortbread. Somewhere in the passage, Peggy's door opens and shuts. Ordinary things continue while I stand in front of the woman I made cry.
“I miss you,” I say.
Tessa pulls one hand free and touches my cheek. Her thumb moves over the edge of my mouth, and I turn into her palm before I can stop myself.
“I'm here.”
The words nearly undo me. I bend until our foreheads meet. She keeps her hand against my face and takes a breath that shivers between us. I wait for her to move away.
Instead, she kisses me.
I hold her at the waist, feeling her come closer of her own accord. The relief is fierce enough to make my knees unsteady. For once I don't care whether she'd laugh if she knew. I would let her laugh for an hour if it meant she stayed this close.
When she draws back, her fingers are tucked beneath the edge of the waistcoat.
“Stay tonight,” she says.
“Tessa.”
“I know I'm still hurt. I also know I want you here.”
I kiss her again, with one hand cupping the back of her head. She puts the clinic envelope safely on the desk, then comes back to me and begins undoing the waistcoat buttons she'd fastened minutes ago.
She undoes the last button and slides the waistcoat from my shoulders.
I hang it over the wardrobe handle myself before either of us can crease it.
When I turn back, she’s already working the soft gray dress up over her hips.
I help her lift it free. The diamonds stay at her throat, catching the lamp as she stands before me in nothing else.
“Come here,” she says.
I do. I kiss her slowly this time, without urgency, without trying to prove anything.
Her hands find my shirt, then my belt. I undress the rest of the way and lift her onto the bed, settling her back against the pillow.
For a moment I only look at her loose hair, my necklace, the slight change in her body that still undoes me every time I remember what’s growing between us.
“I’m not going to break,” she whispers.
“I know.” My voice is rough. “I still want to be careful.”
She draws me down. I kiss her mouth, her throat, the warm skin above the diamonds.
I squeeze her tits gently, then take more when she arches into my hands, pinching her nipples until she gasps against my cheek.
My palm slides lower, over the soft curve of her stomach, and finds her pussy already wet.
I stroke her slowly. Two fingers ease into her. She rocks onto them, eyes half closed, and I work her until she’s trembling and holding my wrist.
“Bogdan, please.”
I move down the bed and put my mouth on her. I eat her pussy with unhurried hunger, tongue flat and thorough, tasting her while she fists the sheets and tries not to wake Peggy through the wall. When she comes, it’s quiet and shaking, thighs closing around my head, my name a broken breath.
I climb back over her. She guides my cock to her entrance herself. I push in carefully, inch by inch, watching her face. She’s tight and hot and perfect around me. When I’m buried deep, I stay still until she nods.
Then I fuck her slow.
Deep, steady strokes. One hand in her hair, gentle. The other braced beside her head so I don’t put my weight on her. She wraps her legs around me and meets every thrust, kissing my mouth whenever she can reach it. Desire and relief tangle so tightly I can barely tell them apart.
“I missed you,” I tell her against her lips.
“I’m here.” She says it again, firmer. “Stay.”
I stay. I fuck her until she comes around my cock, soft and complete, and I follow her over, burying myself deep as I empty into her, hot and thick, holding her close through every pulse of it.
We remain locked together afterward, foreheads touching, breathing the same air.
I ease out carefully and gather her against my chest beneath the blanket.
She tucks her face into my throat. I keep my hand over hers on the sheet, feeling the small rough patch on her thumb, and let myself believe, for tonight, that she meant it.
Later, Tessa sits beside me against the headboard with a blanket over her lap. She breaks a piece of shortbread in two and gives me the larger half.
The sugar dissolves against my tongue. I hadn't noticed being hungry until she put food in my hand.
“You ate nothing at the club, did you?” she asks.
“Not enough.”
She reaches for another biscuit without scolding me. Crumbs fall onto the blanket, and she brushes them into her palm, missing one. I leave it until she notices me looking and picks it up with a damp fingertip.
I want years of seeing her do things like that.
She settles against my shoulder while I put the plate aside. The room's only light comes from the lamp near her phone. I could reach that phone or my own without moving her. Neither is making a sound.
For a while I let myself have the silence.
The scan envelope lies where she put it on the desk. I can see a corner of one print beneath the flap. Tomorrow will be a week since the doctor turned the screen toward us, and I still sometimes count them in my head to be certain I haven't invented the number.
Tessa catches me looking. “Peggy says we should start buying everything in bulk.”
“She should send me the list.”
“That's exactly what she hoped you'd say.”
Her laugh warms the side of my neck. I rest my cheek against her hair and picture Peggy adding something extravagant for herself between the baby blankets. I'd buy that too. I'd buy anything that put more of this sound in the room.
Tessa moves closer, drawing the blanket around both of us. She hasn't said she forgives me. I haven't asked her to make tonight stand for everything I still owe her.
I can feel the difference when she grows quiet again. There are moments she leans into without thinking, followed by the little hesitation I put there. Desire hasn't removed it. Neither has the money or the news from the police.
I kiss the top of her head.
On the chair, the five unused pillows have started to slide. Tessa sees them, sighs and reaches as though she means to get up. I put my arm around her and draw her back against me.
“Leave them.”
She lets them fall. The last one lands softly on the carpet, and her shoulders shake with a laugh she tries to keep quiet for Peggy's sake.
I hold her until the laughter eases. Outside the window, the courtyard lanterns are lit for Halloween, their orange faces reflected in the dark glass.
Tomorrow I'll sit beside her at supper in the waistcoat she made.
Tonight she turns toward me, trusting me with the small, ordinary weight of her head on my chest.
I stay awake long enough to feel it grow heavy.