“We’ll see.”
“Now get out.”
He left. I bolted the door behind him, turned the lock with a satisfying click, and stood there for a moment with my forehead pressed against the wood. On the other side, I heard his footsteps – measured, unhurried, the footsteps of a man who had all the time in the world – fade down the hallway.
I sat on the bed. The impossibly soft, impossibly expensive bed in my impossibly beautiful prison.
My thoughts drifted to Sterling. The things he’d said replayed in a loop – the cruelty, the casualness, the way he’d discarded me like a receipt from a meal he’d already forgotten. But underneath the hurt, a stubborn part of me still wanted to believe it was anger talking. People say terrible things when they’re angry. I knew that. I’d said plenty of terrible things today.
I picked up my phone and dialed his number.
It rang. And rang. And rang. And went to voicemail – his voice, bright and casual, asking me to leave a message I knew he’d never listen to.
I hung up without speaking.
“He’s still angry,” I told the empty room. “I’ll try tomorrow.”
The bathroom was all marble and soft lighting, the kind of bathroom that makes you feel like you’re in a hotel that charges by the breath. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into my pajamas – the old flannel ones, worn thin at the elbows, ridiculous in this gleaming apartment, and exactly what I needed.
I crawled into bed. The sheets were cool and absurdly smooth, like sleeping inside a whisper. I stared at the ceiling – this unfamiliar ceiling in this unfamiliar room in this unfamiliar life – and thought: I should call Rowan.
But the thought dissolved almost as soon as it formed. Exhaustion was a tide pulling me under, and I was too tired to resist it. Tomorrow. I’d call him tomorrow. I’d figure out everything tomorrow.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me, and somewhere between waking and sleep, I thought I heard the sound of a door closing softly at the end of a very long hallway.
Morning arrived with the subtlety of a searchlight.
Whoever had designed this apartment had given zero thought to the concept of sleeping past sunrise. The floor-to-ceiling windows – which had seemed like a luxury feature last night – were now functioning as the world’s most expensive alarm clock, flooding the bedroom with golden light so relentless it practically had a work ethic.
I groaned, pulled a pillow over my face, and negotiated with consciousness for another five minutes. Consciousness won. It always does.
I sat up. Blinked. Took stock. The room was still obscenely beautiful. The city still sprawled beneath the windows like a postcard I hadn’t asked to receive. And I – I actually felt rested. Genuinely, honestly rested, in a way I hadn’t felt in weeks. It was the bed, probably. Whatever ungodly thread count those sheets were, they had done something to my spine that bordered on medical intervention.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room and almost didn’t recognize the girl looking back. She looked calmer than expected. Less like someone whose life had been disassembled and reassembled without her permission, and more like someone who’d had a really good nap. Funny how sleep can lie to your face.
I padded to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth with the toothbrush someone had thoughtfully left on the counter (still in its packaging, the expensive kind, because apparently even dental hygiene in this house had a budget), and emerged feeling approximately sixty percent human.
Then came the knock.
I froze mid-step, one foot in the bedroom and one still on the bathroom tile. Caelum. It had to be Caelum. Come to check on his purchase. Come to remind me that this apartment and everything in it, including apparently me, belonged to him. I felt my jaw tighten. Fine. If he wanted a morning argument, I had plenty of ammunition.
I marched to the door and pulled it open with the energy of a woman ready for war.
“What is it, Caelum? I’ve got-“
The rest of the sentence died in my throat.
The person standing in the hallway was not Caelum. Was not, in fact, a man at all. She was a girl – my age, maybe a year younger – with skin like polished bronze and the kind of face that made you understand why Renaissance painters went through so much trouble. Wide brown eyes. Full lips pressed into a polite smile. Hair pulled back in a neat bun that somehow managed to be both professional and effortlessly stylish.
“Hi,” she said, and her voice had a warmth to it that felt almost startling in this cold, glass-and-marble world. “My name is Sable. Mr. Caelum sent me to assist you with anything you might need.”
I stared at her for a beat. Then two. Then a smile cracked across my face – the first real, unforced smile since I’d walked out of Rowan’s front door – and I stepped aside.
“Come in. Please. God, come in.”
She entered with a careful grace, her eyes sweeping the room the way a person does when they’ve been in places like this before but still appreciate the view. I realized, with a pang of something between relief and desperation, that I was looking at the first friendly face I’d encountered in this gilded new life, and I wanted to keep it.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.