by Dani Collins
Who remembered something like that? He’d probably had a hundred orgasms since, but he remembered vividly how hard he had come that evening—maybe because he replayed that evening nearly every time he was in the shower, he thought ironically.
He always stopped with that moment of culmination, though, not wanting to recollect the way she had wiggled his foot a millennium later, waking him from his sex-induced doze.
“I thought you would join me.” She had worn only a towel. Her hair was in a clip, damp around her hairline, her face clean and fresh. “Are you going to shower before we go?”
“Where?” Maybe if he hadn’t been drunk on endorphins and dopamine, he would have been thinking more clearly and handled things better, but his head had been full of cotton, his limbs made of lead.
“Dinner.” She went into the closet and came out to throw a dress on the foot of the bed. “With my dad.”
“Oh. No. I’m not going.”
She had laughed, then realized he was serious and frowned with confusion. “I told you two weeks ago that he would be here to take me for a belated birthday celebration. That’s why we waited until tonight, so you would be home and could come. You made the reservation.”
“Yeah, they have my credit card. Go wild.” He had curled his arm under his pillow, always happy to watch her move around wearing only a towel. “The car is yours, too.”
“But—” She disappeared into the closet and came back wearing her bra and underwear. They were a lacy, spring green that made her skin glow like dark honey. “I don’t understand. Did something come up?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you coming?” She leaned around the bathroom door to hang her towel. “Don’t you want to meet him? He wants to meet you.”
“I’m sure he does,” he’d said drily. “But I know what meeting the family means and that’s not where this relationship is going, so what’s the point?” He had thought that went without saying.
Nina had come back into the bedroom to stare at him with a wide-eyed, ingenuous look. She was a master at this projection of artlessness. She’d worn the same look when she’d told him she had been fired, as though the news had arrived from left field.
He’d known from the outset that her boss was after him. He’d had no interest in the other woman and plenty in Nina. Since he was partially responsible for Nina’s job loss and they were already sleeping together, he had said she could use his spare bedroom as a studio. He had no friends or family who came to visit so it was wasted space.
He had used those words when he offered it, so he couldn’t understand how she might have read more into why he was letting her stay with him, but she’d stood there looking as though she’d been sucker punched.
“Where is this relationship going?” she had persisted. “Or not going, I should say.”
He’d got his back up. Guilt had crept in—unwarranted. He didn’t lead women on, but he had sensed her affront. In response, his own defense mechanisms had locked into place.
“Why does it have to go anywhere? We’re both comfortable.”
“Are we?” Her face had darkened and her hands had knotted into fists.
“Oh, I think you’re very comfortable, Nina.” He’d sat up to find his underwear and pulled them on. “Why are you acting like this? I told you on day one that I wouldn’t let anyone manipulate me ever again.”
“How am I manipulating you?” The doe eyes again, as though he was roaring down a country lane straight at her and she didn’t understand what was happening.
“You’re not. Because I’m not stupid enough to let you. I gave you what you wanted.” He flicked a hand toward her studio down the hall. “That’s more than I’ve given any other woman, but that’s as far as this goes. Outrage over the lack of wedding bells is completely misplaced.”
“First of all, it’s dinner.” Her voice had begun to shake with anger. “I didn’t expect any skywritten proposals. But, wow, I thought you respected my work. I thought—” She had hurried to dress, stepping into the jeans she’d been wearing earlier and yanked on a pullover. Her hair had come loose from its clip and she’d flung the butterfly hinge across the room.
“Of course, I respect your work.” Had he rolled his eyes a tiny bit? Yes. Because she was always so sensitive about it. She had talent by the truckload as far as he could tell, but she had zero confidence in herself. Fake it till you make it was his motto while she seemed to be nurturing a hard case of impostor syndrome.
She had sent him the most scorchingly bitter look he’d ever received from anyone. It had stung deep inside where he had believed he was well-guarded and impervious.
“For God’s sake, Nina. I’ve bought you everything you need. What does that say about my belief in your potential?”
“So much,” she choked out as she grabbed her phone from the top of the dresser and threw it into her day bag. She had flung the bag over her shoulder and hurried down the hall.
“We’ll talk about it later, then?” he’d called facetiously.
She had spun around in the hall to face him. Her eyes had been glistening with angry tears. “No one has ever made me feel as stupid as you have tonight. Goodbye, Reve.”
She hadn’t come back. He’d check her social channels and seen she was with her father so he presumed she was staying at the hotel with him, and next thing he knew, she was in Albuquerque and had blocked him.
The penthouse had felt hollow and quiet after she was gone. He resented that she had conditioned him to expect someone to be waiting for him and, out of sheer aggravation, had had her things boxed up. He’d had his assistant track down her father’s address, but at the last minute Reve had balked at shipping it to her.
She would come back for it. Designing clothes in New York was her dream. She’d put hours and hours of work into each piece.
Sell it. Give it away. Throw it away. I don’t care, but it’s not mine.
She didn’t really mean that. She couldn’t. If she did, it meant that she really hadn’t intended to see him today.
His heart teetered at that thought, and he quickly steadied it. Her turning up here was one more act in a play. He wasn’t being a misogynist thinking this was nothing but mind games and manipulations. Men did it too. Everyone did.
But he kept hearing her say, You’re actually the only person I can tell. Maybe the best person, because you have no emotional investment.
No emotional investment. That was certainly the goal, but hearing it stated like a blunt fact, without any taunting inflection, made him sound like a sociopath.
He felt things. He just didn’t allow those feelings to control him or allow him to be controlled by someone else.
She really believed he felt nothing, though. She had only come into his neighborhood to flip him off because she was still angry at how stupid he had made her feel.
It made him sick to think she’d felt belittled by him.
How had he not clued in to her trouble with reading? She almost always dictated her texts. When she did type one out, she used a lot of emojis. She had invariably asked him to order for her when they went for dinner, or listened to the specials rather than read the menu. She spent very little time on social media or browsing headlines, but she loved audio books and podcasts.
He’d thought she liked to listen because her hands were always busy. He hadn’t realized she had had to work twice as hard as everyone else to master the basics. He’d grown up in poverty of all sorts, but he’d had a mind that grasped concepts quickly and he often took that for granted.
He had also taken for granted that Nina was as jaded and pragmatic as he was. He wanted her to be like him. That’s how simple, harmless affairs remained simple and harmless.
He looked at her, so innocent and defenseless in her slumber. No one could get through life with their heart pinned on their sleeve the way she seemed to.
Don’t fall for it, he warned himself.
Her phone burbled.
Nina snapped awake with a gasp and a disoriented look around.
When her gaze snagged on him, a glimmer of wonder touched her expression. A smile began to dawn.
A sensation he couldn’t describe bloomed in his chest, but before it could take hold, memory seemed to steal all the light from her eyes. Her expression darkened the way a cloud blocked the sun. Whatever flame of possibility had sparked to life in her was doused and buried.
She swung her feet to the floor and picked up her phone. “It’s my dad.”
For one beat, there was only another burble from her phone while she stared expectantly at him.
“What?”
Nina abruptly rose and walked down the hall, swiping the phone to speaker as she went. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, button, what’s up?” Then, with sharp concern, “Where are you?”
“Reve’s.” Her voice was fading, but he heard the heavy sheepishness in his name.
“Nina.” The older man’s voice rang with fatalism. “Why?”
Reve didn’t hear her reply. She shut herself into the spare bedroom while he sat there thinking, Ouch. Dad certainly didn’t want to meet him now, did he?
That’s when it struck him why Nina had looked at him so strangely a minute ago. He had always left the room when her family called. Always. She had expected him to walk away today. When he hadn’t, she had.
He didn’t know why that felt like such a knee to the groin, but it sure did.
* * *
Nina turned her face up to the spray of the shower, washing away tears as they leaked from her closed lashes.
“Nina?” Reve walked into the bathroom without knocking.
“Reve! I’m in the shower.” Obviously. The walls of the cubicle were fogged and they used to shower together pretty much every day, but that wasn’t who they were anymore. She crossed her arms over herself, feeling naked in more than just a physical way.
“Are you crying?” He closed the door and stood there as a blurry bulk, arms crossed.
“Yes.” She regretted ever telling him she preferred to cry in the tub or shower. It was starting to freak her out how much he’d taken in and remembered about her when their last conversation had convinced her she was nothing to him. “Can you leave me to it?”
“Look, I’m sorry he’s turning his back on you. I wish I had some good advice on how to handle that, but most people are garbage and this is why I don’t let people close to me. I’m not broken. I just hate expecting better from people only to be disappointed when they let me down.”
Dear Lord, that sounded like a tragic way to live. And this was how she’d tricked herself into thinking he needed her. A man with such a big cloud hanging over him needed sunshine peeking through.
“He’s not turning his back on me. He was perfectly sweet. He already knew.”
“And never told you?” He sounded outraged. “What an ass. No wonder you’re upset.”
“I’m relieved.” Did he understand anything about how human beings worked? “I’ll tell you what he said in a minute. Can you go? Please?”
He made a grumbling noise and left.
She finished up, combed out her wet hair and walked into the bedroom wearing only a towel.
Reve was in the chair, legs straight, ankles crossed. He was turning a small abstract sculpture in his hands.
She came up short, asking with exasperation, “What are you doing in here?”
“Do you have pink in your hair?” His hands stilled as he studied her. “It’s cute.”
“I’ll tell my sister you like it. Could you wait in the living room?”
“This isn’t new to me.” He waved at her.
“That was basically my dad’s reaction,” she said ironically as she secured her towel. “Is my suitcase still by the door?”
“I brought those.” He pointed at the foot of the bed.
She looked at the familiar ice-blue silk boxers and matching T-shirt. Her brightly colored kimono was there, too. She had made the set for herself and had worn them every morning when she had risen naked from his bed.
She touched the cool, sleek fabric. “Why do you still have these?”
“They were in the drawer. I never got around to sending them to storage with the rest.” He shrugged off any significance.
“Has anyone else worn them?”
“No. Why would you ask that?” His mouth warped in insult.
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” She gave a defensive shrug. “Thank you.” She had slept in her pajamas on her friend’s decrepit sofa the last few nights and would rather burn them than wear them again.
She took the shorts and top into the bathroom and left the door cracked as she changed behind it, talking as she did.
“I was almost a year old when Dad found out. He was running out of time to claim a life insurance benefit on—” She peered around the door. “I hate to say she wasn’t my mother even though I never met her and she didn’t give birth to me.”
“’Kay.” He was tossing the sculpture between his hands.
His gaze flickered to her bare legs as she came back into the bedroom, touching her ankles just long enough to pull warmth into all of her exposed skin, and then he met her gaze without remorse. In fact, there was a flickering flame of appreciation in his gaze.
She did her best to ignore it, but she was hideously conscious of the fact she was braless in silk and her nipples were hardening to press against the light-as-cobwebs fabric.
She shrugged on the kimono and tied it closed, her lower back tingling with the sense he was watching her every move.
“The insurance company called Dad to clarify because the copy of the death certificate he’d submitted didn’t match the one they had requested from the government in Luxembourg. The government one had a box ticked that indicated his wife was pregnant at her time of death. They said that usually means she hadn’t delivered. Dad had only seen her for a few seconds, just long enough to identify her because he had three kids right outside the door, one of them a newborn, the other two completely traumatized. The clinic took care of cremation, and the doctor called him with the autopsy results a few months later. Dad never saw the actual report, though. He told the insurance company he definitely had a baby, but by then I was starting to look not so much like them.” She turned and waved at the door. “Can we—?”
She couldn’t stay in such an intimate place while she told him all these intimate things.
He shrugged and rose, all of his masculine energy swirling around her, making her aware of their thin, loose clothing, and his height and strength and lazy regard.
She swallowed and picked up her phone before she led him to the living room, where her glass of wine sat on the coffee table.
She picked it up and wandered out to the terrace. The concrete still held the day’s heat, and the setting sun turned the surrounding buildings to rose gold.
Reve joined her a moment later, having detoured for the bottle and his own glass.
“He was starting to have suspicions?” he prompted as he topped her up.
“Thanks,” she murmured absently. “Yes. He didn’t want to believe he’d brought home a stranger’s baby, but had a paternity test done and discovered he had.”
“Did he tell the clinic?” His focus on her was intense.
She’d always found Reve’s full attention to be thrilling and disconcerting. It made her feel as though she was the only thing that mattered in the world.
Don’t read into it, she warned herself, looking away. It had taken weeks to fully grasp that he’d only been using her for sex. He wasn’t the charming, concerned protector that she had cast him to be.
“He left a few messages, but no one got back to him.” She moved to the half wa
ll that formed the rail of the terrace. Below her, shadows were collecting in Central Park. “Dad didn’t want to rock too many boats, though. He told Abuela. He thought she deserved to know since she was raising her daughter’s children while he was still flying for the air force. They were both afraid I’d be taken away if they revealed what had happened. Children get deported, too.”
He grimaced an acknowledgment as he joined her.
“The little that Dad remembered about the clinic was that they handled discreet services for celebrities. He presumed I had been given up voluntarily by someone who couldn’t keep me. He didn’t want me to end up in some orphanage in Europe, forcing them to grieve another loss. He said Abuela said her daughter had made sure they had a baby to help them cope with losing her. She said I’d already brought her so much comfort and love that she couldn’t bear to give me up.”
Nina had to bite her lips to steady them. Abuela had been the only mother Nina had ever known. She had loved her with everything in her and missed her every single day.
Reve didn’t say anything.
She glanced to find him watching her with intense concentration, but as she met his gaze, he turned his to the horizon and gave a light snort.
“You’re such a product of the material world,” she said with affront. “There are things that can never be seen or measured or proven, you know. If you believe they’re real, they are. I thought it was a lovely thought that I was brought to them through her daughter’s spirit.”
“It is,” he allowed. “And it’s true I don’t believe in ghosts or cosmic fate, but it was wrong of him to keep it from you. You shouldn’t have found out like this.”
“It’s a really painful topic for him.” Her father had cried openly as they had revisited the grim loss, breaking her heart. “He said the time never seemed right to bring it up, and he never wanted me to feel anything but his. He was pretty freaked-out that I might have a twin.” She chuckled softly into her glass.