She stands in front of the mirror with her back to me, her dress half-zipped and my diamonds burning at her throat. Her hands fumble at the clasp, breath stuttering in a way she’s trying to swallow. The sound hits me harder than any insult could.
I approach, and she stiffens but doesn’t acknowledge me. “Turn around,” I say, softer than I mean to.
“It’s fine. I’ve got it,” she answers, voice too thin, too brittle.
“You don’t,” I counter, moving in, and when my fingers find the tiny hook my hands are steady even if the pulse in my wristisn’t. I ease the clasp free. The rivière slackens; the stones sigh against her skin.
“Thank you,” she says to the edge of the mirror, not to me.
“It was a poorly constructed joke,” I offer, and we both hear how insufficient that is.
“It was a tell,” she says, fingers closing around the necklace like she could crush diamonds. “And you told on yourself.”
“I told you what I want.” I take the necklace from her hands before she can hurt herself with it and set it—carefully, because I’m not the monster she keeps trying to make—on the dresser. “That’s not a crime.”
She laughs once, sharp as a tear drips down her flushed cheek. “Just a possession order disguised as romance.”
I brush it away with my thumb, then step back because if I don’t I’ll drag her against me, and kissing her while she’s crying is a cruelty I’ve committed once in my life and refuse to repeat. “You don’t cry over jewelry, Naomi.”
Her gaze cracks to mine in the mirror, eyes glassy, feral. “No. I cry because for one beautiful, stupid hour you saw me and wanted me and then you reminded me I’m a trophy in your display case.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
Silence holds for three breaths. In the glass, I watch her gather herself with the discipline of a woman who’s had to. She blinks the wet back, lifts her chin, zips the dress the rest of the way with a vicious little jerk.
“You don’t get to rewrite me,” she says, facing me now. “Not after the last ten years. Not after erasing me from your life as if I didn’t exist while you plotted your revenge.”
There it is. The landmines between us again.
“You want honesty?” My voice goes low, even, the way it does right before I close a deal. “There is no going back, not for youor for me. The same way there’s no denying the past formed us. We walked away from the boy and girl in that greenhouse and became people who do not make vows with their eyes closed. We don’t get to pretend this is simple. That the driveway didn’t happen.”
Her jaw works. “You say that like I’m the one who left.”
My laugh barks out of me. “Are you serious? Of course you are.” The words land before I filter them. Good. Filters have ruined enough nights. “You looked me in the eye and promised forever, and two days later you put on a dress and a smile and promised yourself to someone else.”
She flinches and it’s a small and entirely unwelcome bite in my chest. “You don’t get to weaponize something you don’t understand. I was always going to find a way, Vasso. Always. You didn’t give me a chance.”
“Because I understood enough.”
“Do you?” She steps in, heat snapping back into the air like we’re striking flint. “Do you understand what it’s like to watch your grandfather clutch his chest every time the phone rings with another scandal? Do you understand the very real probability that telling Harrison no would put Theodore in the ground? I chose a terrible thing to stop something worse.”
“You chose him,” I snarl, my voice too quiet for the roar in my chest. “Leo Goldstein—pedigreed on paper and shrink-wrapped in fucking gold for the society pages. Over me. Because I was the lowly housekeeper’s son who wasn’t fit to even soil your clothes, never mind be on your arm, right?” All these years later, the searing ache of humiliation still burns harder than I want it to.
Exposes wounds I thought had calcified.Dammit.
“I choseTheodore’s life.” Her eyes shine again, and this time the tears are not fragile; they’re molten. “And the punchline is that it didn’t even work. The Goldsteins walked after the next scandal. I was sacrificed for nothing. Dropped like a toxic handgrenade and treated like a venereal disease. So if we’re talking humiliation, you’re not the only one with a monopoly on it.”
The words punch through me, clean and vicious.
I knew the Goldsteins walked. Hell, I’d raised a glass of cheap bourbon to celebrate the news, even while my fury with Naomi still burned, but I didn’t know she carried the humiliation like a diseased organ.
There you go, softening like a high school schmuck for her again. All because she let you inside that sublime pussy.
I grit my teeth as my body responds far too eagerly to the reminder.
“And where the hell were you?” she goes on, the hurt catching fire into fury. “You left without a word. No note. No goodbye. Just gone. You don’t get to stand here and talk about vows, Vasso? You abandoned me first.”
