I grabbed the heels – black, sleek, high enough to matter but not high enough to compromise my dignity – and slipped them on. The extra inches changed my posture, straightened my spine, lifted my chin. I felt taller in more ways than one.
“One request,” Sable said as I headed for the door.
I paused. “What?”
“When you get back – every detail. I want the full report. What he said, what you said, what he wore, what you ate, whether he pulled out your chair, whether you laughed, whether there was a Moment with a capital M. Everything.”
“You realize this is my actual life, not a television show.”
“Your actual life is better than television and you know it. Now go.”
I smiled. Took a breath. And walked out of the room.
In his own room, Caelum stood in front of his mirror and experienced the unfamiliar sensation of being dissatisfied with every item of clothing he owned.
He’d been dressed for twenty minutes. Undressed for ten. Redressed for another twenty. The suit – black, tailored, Italian, the kind of garment that usually went on without a second thought – was currently on its third iteration. First attempt: too formal, like he was attending a board meeting rather than a date. Second attempt: too casual, like he didn’t care. Third attempt: exactly the same as the first, which meant he’d wasted thirty minutes arriving at the place he’d started.
He studied his reflection. Black suit. White shirt. Red tie – a detail that had seemed inspired ten minutes ago and now seemed like he was trying too hard. He adjusted the tie. Loosened it. Tightened it. Loosened it again. Remembered that Marlowe’s lipstick was red, and the idea that they might accidentally match was either charming or catastrophic, and he couldn’t decide which.
“Get a grip,” he told his reflection. His reflection looked unconvinced.
He checked his phone: 4:05. Just under two hours. His hair was cooperating for once – dark, swept back, holding its shape without the stiffness of too much product. His shoes were polished to a sheen that bordered on aggressive. He looked, he had to admit, good. The kind of good that came from expensive tailoring and rigorous grooming, yes, but also from something less quantifiable – a brightness behind his eyes, an energy in his posture. He looked like a man with somewhere to be and someone to be there with.
The last time he’d felt this way, Lydia was alive.
The thought arrived uninvited and stayed, as Lydia’s memory always did, not like a guest but like a resident. He looked at his reflection and saw, just for a moment, the ghost of a different evening – Lydia in the doorway in a blue dress, laughing at how long he’d taken to get ready, stealing his tie and wearing it like a scarf, telling him he was ridiculous and perfect and hers.
He blinked. The ghost dissolved. The mirror showed only him – older, tireder, standing in a different apartment, getting ready for a different woman, carrying the same heart with a few more cracks in it.
“Okay,” he said to the empty room. “Let’s not ruin this.”
He pocketed his phone, checked his reflection one final time – a reflex, not a vanity – and walked out.
The hallway stretched between his room and Marlowe’s, and he moved through it with the measured stride of a man trying very hard to look calm while his pulse was doing things that defied medical explanation. He turned the corner-
And stopped.
Marlowe was coming from the other direction. Sable was beside her, but Sable ceased to exist the moment he saw Marlowe. Not because Sable wasn’t there, but because something in his brain – the part responsible for processing visual information and maintaining cardiovascular stability – experienced a total system failure.
Black dress. Red lips. Gold hair falling in waves. Silver at her neck and ears. And her eyes – those eyes that could cut and warm and challenge and invite, all in the same glance – looking directly at him with an expression that was part confidence, part vulnerability, part challenge, and entirely, devastatingly, her.
He forgot how to walk. Not metaphorically. His feet actually stopped receiving instructions from his brain, and he stood there in the hallway like a man who’d been turned to stone by something beautiful.
“I think someone’s in love,” Sable whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.
I smiled. And walked toward him.
Each step felt deliberate, cinematic – the heels marking time on the marble, the dress moving with me, and at the end of the hallway, a man in a black suit whose face was doing something extraordinary: every layer of composure, every boardroom shield, every carefully maintained wall was coming down in real time, and what was left underneath was simply a man looking at a woman and forgetting how to pretend he wasn’t awestruck.
“Shall we?” I said, and was amazed at how steady my voice sounded, how completely it concealed the riot happening behind my ribs.
He blinked. Swallowed. Rebooted.
“Yes,” he said. “We shall.”
He offered his arm, and I took it. Our fingers brushed, and the contact – skin against skin, ordinary and electric – sent something warm climbing from my hand to my chest. We walked side by side toward the staircase, and I was intensely aware of every point where our bodies were close: his arm against mine, his shoulder near my cheek, the warmth he radiated like a furnace someone had dressed in Italian tailoring.
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.