18. Elena
— ? —
Elena
The burgundy gown cost eight hundred dollars.
I paid for it myself, with money from the Miller commission, my money, earned with my own hands. Sophie helped me pick it out at a boutique in SoHo, spending three hours in the fitting room until we found something that made me feel powerful instead of just dressed up.
“You look incredible,” Sophie says now, adjusting the strap on my shoulder. “Seriously. Vivian is going to have a stroke.”
“Vivian wasn’t invited.”
“Even better.”
We’re in my apartment, my apartment, not the manor, getting ready like we used to before everything got complicated. Wine on the counter, music playing, Sophie making inappropriate jokes while I try not to smudge my eyeliner.
It feels normal. It feels like us.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Not even slightly.” I smooth down the front of the gown. “Let’s go.”
***
The Foundation gala is held at the Metropolitan Grand Ballroom, a venue so opulent it makes Vale Manor look understated. Marble columns. Crystal chandeliers. Enough champagne to drown a small country.
Adrian is waiting at the entrance, and when he sees me, his expression does something complicated, pride and wonder and a possessiveness that makes my stomach flip.
“You look…” He stops. Shakes his head. “There aren’t words.”
“Try.”
“Stunning. Breathtaking. Like every fantasy I’ve ever had about you came to life.”
“Better.” I take his arm. “Let’s make an entrance.”
***
The room notices.
I feel the weight of their attention as we walk in, the whole ballroom tracking our progress across the marble floor. Some looks are hostile. Some are curious. Some are the complicated expression of people who believed Vivian’s lies and are now reassessing.
I don’t flinch from any of them.
We make the rounds, Foundation board members, city officials, the inevitable social climbers hoping to catch Adrian’s attention. I smile and shake hands and don’t let anyone make me feel small.
At 8 p.m., Adrian excuses himself.
“Where are you going?”
“You’ll see.” He kisses my forehead. “Trust me.”
I watch him cross to the stage at the front of the ballroom, where a podium has been set up for the evening’s speeches. The murmur of conversation dies down as he approaches the microphone.
“Good evening,” Adrian says. His voice carries clearly through the room. “Thank you all for being here tonight. The Foundation’s work is important, and your support makes it possible.”
Polite applause. Standard opening. Nothing unusual.
“But before we continue with the evening’s program, I need to say something.”
The room goes quiet.
“Many of you have heard rumors about my wife. That she’s unstable. That she abandoned me. That she’s using our marriage for money or status or whatever other lies were convenient.” Adrian’s jaw tightens. “I’m here to tell you those rumors were false. All of them.”
I feel the attention of the room shift to me. A ballroom full of people staring at the woman in the burgundy gown.
“The rumors were spread by my own family,” Adrian continues. “By people I trusted, who should have known better. My wife was driven out of our marriage not by instability, but by my own neglect, and by a coordinated campaign to make her feel unwelcome in her own home.”
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. I see people exchanging glances, reprocessing everything they thought they knew.
“Elena Vasquez is the strongest person in this room. She rebuilt her life from nothing. She built a business with her own hands. She forgave me when I didn’t deserve it and gave me a second chance when I’d done nothing to earn one.”
His eyes find mine across the ballroom.
“She’s the love of my life. And I’m asking all of you to welcome her back to a community that should never have let her go.”
For a moment, there’s silence.
Then someone starts clapping. Slowly at first, then building, until the whole room is applauding, not the polite golf clap of social obligation, but genuine, warm appreciation.
Adrian steps away from the podium and crosses to where I’m standing. The crowd parts for him.
“I should also mention,” he says when he reaches me, loud enough for nearby tables to hear, “that I removed my mother from the Foundation board this morning. She won’t be attending any future events.”
“Adrian…”
“She had it coming.” He takes my hand. “I should have done it years ago.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll stay with me.” His voice drops, meant only for me. “Say you’ll let me spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
“I’ll stay.” My voice cracks. “I’ll stay.”
He kisses me.
In front of the entire ballroom, in the middle of the Foundation gala, my husband kisses me like we’re the only two people in the world. And I kiss him back, and somewhere in the crowd Sophie is definitely taking photos for blackmail purposes, and I don’t care.
I don’t care about any of it.
Because this man chose me. In front of everyone. And that’s the only thing that matters.
***
We leave early.
“My place,” I say as we tumble into the back of his car. “I want to be in my own space.”
“Your place it is.”
The drive feels endless, too many red lights, too much traffic, the anticipation building until I’m practically vibrating with it. Adrian’s hand rests on my thigh, warm through the silk of my gown, and every few minutes his thumb traces a small circle that makes me want to climb into his lap.
By the time we reach my apartment, I’m done waiting.
“Inside,” I say, fumbling with my keys. “Now.”
“Demanding.”
“You love it.”
“I really do.”
The door barely closes before I’m pushing him against it, reversing our positions from that first desperate night, claiming the space, claiming him.
“I’m in charge,” I say against his mouth.
“I noticed.” He’s grinning. “Any objections?”
“Not a single one.”
I step back and look at him, pressed against my door in his perfect tuxedo, hair already disheveled, eyes dark with want.
“Jacket off.”
He shrugs out of it, letting it fall to the floor.
“Tie.”
He loosens it slowly, watching my face, and I can see him enjoying this, the game of it, the playfulness we haven’t had in so long.
“Now the shirt.” I cross my arms. “Slowly.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
He unbuttons the shirt one slow button at a time, and I watch each inch of chest revealed like it’s a present being unwrapped. When he reaches the bottom, he pulls the shirt free of his pants and lets it hang open.
“Better,” I say. “Now come here.”
He pushes off the door and crosses to me, and I meet him halfway, my hands sliding under the open shirt to touch warm skin. He inhales sharply.
“Your hands are cold.”
“They’ll warm up.” I push the shirt off his shoulders. “You can handle it.”
“I can handle anything you throw at me, Mrs. Vale.”
“Vasquez.”
“Vasquez.” He grins. “My apologies.”
“You should be sorry.” I walk backward toward the bedroom, pulling him with me by his belt. “Very sorry. Deeply apologetic. Remorseful, even.”
“I am all of those things.” He catches me around the waist, lifting me slightly. “Shall I demonstrate my remorse?”
“I think you’d better.”
We fall onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and laughter, actual laughter, the kind I’d forgotten we were capable of. He lands on top of me and I squirm beneath him, not trying to escape, just feeling the weight of him, the solidity.
“Hi,” he says, looking down at me.
“Hi yourself.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“You mentioned.”
“I’m going to keep mentioning it.” He dips his head and kisses my neck. “Forever. Until you get sick of hearing it.”
“That might take a while.”
“I’ve got time.”
His mouth traces down to my collarbone, and I arch into the sensation. But when his hands move to the zipper of my gown, I catch his wrists.
“Ah-ah.” I roll us over until I’m straddling him. “I said I’m in charge.”
“So you did.” He grins up at me, completely unrepentant. “What’s my punishment?”
“You have to wait.” I slide down his body until I’m kneeling between his legs. “You have to be patient and let me do whatever I want.”
“That sounds less like punishment and more like…” He breaks off as I undo his belt. “Okay. Yes. Waiting. I’m waiting.”
I take my time with his pants, drawing out every moment, watching his face as anticipation builds. When I finally free him from his boxers, he’s already hard, straining toward me.
“Look at you,” I murmur. “So eager.”
“Elena…”
“Shh.” I wrap my hand around him and stroke slowly. “I’m savoring.”
He groans, his head falling back against the pillows. I work him with my hand, finding the rhythm that makes his breath catch, that makes his hips jerk involuntarily.
“You’re killing me,” he gasps.
“Dramatically stated.” I lean down and lick a stripe up his length. “But I’ll allow it.”
His whole body shudders when I take him in my mouth. I start slow, teasing strokes, light suction, building sensation without letting him tip over. Every time he gets close, I pull back.
“Elena. Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please either let me come or get up here and let me touch you, because I’m dying.”
I laugh against his skin, actually laugh, because this is fun, this is joy, this is everything I forgot we could have.
“Fine.” I release him and crawl back up his body. “But only because you asked nicely.”
“I’ll always ask nicely.”
“Liar.”
I reach behind myself and unzip the gown, letting it pool at my waist. His hands come up immediately, cupping my breasts through the lace of my bra.
“God.” His voice is reverent. “I’ll never get tired of this.”
“Good.” I unclasp the bra and toss it aside. “Because I plan to do this a lot.”
He sits up and pulls me into his lap, and suddenly we’re face to face, chest to chest, and the playfulness shifts into something more intense. He kisses me, deep and thorough and claiming, while his hands work the gown over my hips.
“Condom?” he asks against my mouth.
“Drawer. Or…” I hesitate. “Do we need one?”
He pulls back to look at me. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure I want to feel you. Really feel you.” I take his face in my hands. “I’m sure I want this to be real.”
“It’s always been real.”
He shifts, positions himself at my entrance, and waits. Letting me set the pace. Letting me decide.
I sink down onto him slowly.
The sensation is overwhelming, him filling me, stretching me, the heat of skin against skin with nothing between us. I pause when he’s fully seated, just breathing, adjusting.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Perfect.” I start to move. “You feel perfect.”
We find a rhythm together, me rising and falling, him meeting each movement with a thrust of his own.
It’s different from the desperate coupling against the door, different from the grief-raw tenderness of the hospital recovery.
This is celebration. This is joy. This is two people who almost lost everything finding their way back to each other.
“I love you,” he says, his hands gripping my hips. “I love you so much it scares me.”
“I love you too.” I pick up the pace. “Even when you’re annoying.”
“I’m never annoying.”
“You’re frequently annoying. But you make up for it.”
“How?” He grins up at me. “Tell me how I make up for it.”
“Like this.” I clench around him and watch his eyes roll back. “Exactly like this.”
“Elena…”
“Come for me.” I lean down, my forehead against his. “I want to feel it. I want to feel you.”
He groans, his hips stuttering, and then he’s pulsing inside me, hot and real and mine. The sensation triggers my own release, waves of pleasure rolling through me as I collapse against his chest.
We lie there for a long time, catching our breath, tangled together in the aftermath.
“I forgot,” I say finally.
“Forgot what?”
“That we used to laugh.” I prop myself up on his chest. “During. After. We used to laugh all the time, and somewhere along the way we forgot.”
“We’re going to laugh more.” He brushes hair from my face. “Every day. I promise.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
“Please do.”
***
I wake to an empty bed and a note on the pillow.
Making breakfast. DON’T get up, I’ll bring it to you. A
I smile and reach for my phone, intending to text Sophie about last night’s dramatic exit from the gala.
But Sophie has already texted me, a link, no context, just three exclamation points.
I click through.
It’s a design blog. A major one, the kind with hundreds of thousands of followers and actual industry influence. And the headline reads:
ELENA VASQUEZ DESIGNS: THE MOST EXCITING NEW VOICE IN AMERICAN FURNITURE
Below the headline, photos of my work. The Miller sideboard. The honeybee console table. The luna moth drawer pulls catching the light.
My phone buzzes with another text from Sophie:
You’re famous, babe.