5. Sienna #2
I reached the corridor leading toward the powder rooms and kept going until I found a small glass alcove half-hidden behind a wall of white orchids.
I stopped there, pressed one hand to my chest, and tried to breathe.
My lungs didn’t want to work.
Both my hands were shaking.
I looked down at them and suddenly remembered being eighteen, standing beside Jamison at some awful engagement dinner, holding out my hand and saying, Hand, please, because his silence had terrified me and I wanted proof I could still reach him.
How many times had I asked?
Hundreds.
Hand, please.
Hand, please, Jamjam.
Such a sweet, stupid little phrase. He had made it ugly in one sentence.
I pressed my fingers over my mouth. I would not cry.
It wasn’t just what he said that was breaking me.
It was my own stupid naive thought that he would never physically hurt me, while history showed proof that the man just hated me.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor.
I jolted back so hard my shoulder hit the glass.
Emmie appeared around the orchids. Marcel stood behind her, further back, but close enough that the corridor seemed safer simply because he was in it.
“Oh, Sienna,” Emmie breathed.
“I’m fine,” I said immediately.
The lie came out bright and cracked.
Emmie’s eyes softened. “No, sweetheart. You’re not.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered, because if I said anything else, the whole night would collapse. “He didn’t mean it. I don’t think he meant it.”
Emmie touched my arm gently. “Do you want me to take you home?”
Yes.
The answer screamed through me.
Yes, please.
But the second I imagined the gossip. The visible split. Jamison’s rage. My mother’s face, with my father’s disappointment. Tomorrow morning the gossip threads would pick it up. Harlan turned female fear into female embarrassment.
My throat tightened.
“I should go back.”
“Sienna—“
“I should.” I nodded too many times. “It’s fine. I overreacted.”
“You did not overreact,” Marcel said, he glanced back down the corridor. “He’s outside the ballroom.”
I stopped breathing.
“He is not coming closer,” Marcel added. “Not unless you ask.”
“I can go back,” I said.
Emmie studied me for a long second. “You don’t have to sit beside him.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
I loved her for saying that.
“I do,” I repeated softly.
Emmie nodded once, because she understood the shape of the cage.
“Then I’ll walk with you.”
Marcel offered me his arm.
I hesitated.
Taking it felt safer than walking alone. It also felt like something Jamison would notice. Maybe that was why I took Emmie’s hand instead.
She squeezed my fingers, then guided me back through the corridor.
Jamison stood near the ballroom entrance.
Alone.
No guards, whiskey… and his phone wasn’t in sight.
His right hand had been cleaned. The blood was gone, though the skin around his thumb looked faintly red where someone had wiped too hard. He watched me approach with an expression I could not read. His eyes moved over me, pausing on my face.
I stopped a few feet away.
He looked at Emmie. She did not release my hand immediately.
“Sienna,” he said.
I nodded.
“The table,” he said, quieter than usual.
I nodded again.
Emmie’s fingers tightened once before she let me go. I walked beside Jamison into the ballroom. I did not ask for his hand. Never, a frightened part of me thought.
Never again.
At the Crow table, my seat was beside Jamison’s.
Of course.
I sat carefully, smoothing my dress over my knees. My hands went into my lap. I clasped them together so tightly my knuckles hurt.
Jamison sat beside me. Too close. I could feel the heat of him. The expensive scent of his cologne, surrounded me.
Dinner began.
The first course was placed in front of us. Some kind of pale soup. I picked up my spoon.
My hand shook.
I put it down before the soup spilled.
Jamison noticed. He shifted beside me. The movement made my body flinch before I could stop it.
His whole body went still.
I stared at my bowl.
“Sienna.”
I did not look at him.
The table conversation continued around us, strained but functioning because Crows were good at continuing through anything. Marcel spoke to someone across the table. Harrison asked Emmie about an auction lot.
I kept staring at the soup.
Jamison leaned slightly closer.
I flinched again.
“Stop flinching from me.” His breath left him in a sharp, angry exhale.
The words were low, meant only for me. They still struck hard. I turned toward him automatically.
“I’m—”
Sorry.
The word reached my tongue and died there. He hated when I apologized. He had mocked me for it. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I swallowed the word until it hurt.
Then I nodded.
Jamison stared at me. His face tightened, and for one strange second, he looked almost sick. His hand twitched on the table. I looked at it before I could stop myself.
Clean now, huge, tattooed, and very capable of making me unconscious with one swing.
My body went cold again.
He saw me looking.
Slowly, he moved his hand off the table and into his own lap.
As if hiding it from me.
The waiter poured wine. I lifted my glass and pretended to drink, though hardly any touched my lips.
Conversation rose and fell. Emmie tried to include me gently. She asked about the winter choreography. I answered but my voice sounded small and far away.