Behind Her Smile

by Luck, Olivia

  The elevator pings on the twentieth floor. Blindly, I make my way down the hallway and to the apartment. Ahead of my blurry gaze, a dark thundercloud takes up residence outside one of the units. Keeping my head low, I walk hurriedly toward my temporary residence when the gray blob grabs me by the upper arm.

  “Karolina.”

  Embarrassment and relief whirl inside me at the sound of his voice. My knees give way and I fold into his waiting embrace. As it’s not the first time I’ve fallen into Alec’s waiting arms, I do not hesitate to take comfort in him. His familiar warmth and spicy scent. He steers me into the apartment easily, finding my keys in my purse, handling the lock, all the while maintaining close physical contact.

  Alec settles me into one corner of the couch then moves into the kitchen. The faucet pours water into what sounds like the teakettle. Turning over my shoulder, I see he’s already lost his suit jacket and is quickly arranging a mug of tea.

  Hugging my knees to my chest, I watch him move around the kitchen fluidly, as though he lives here himself. “How did you know? How do you always know when I need you? You’re supposed to be at work. It’s the middle of the day.”

  “Adriana called me and said you were shaken up after a visit to Willow’s House.”

  The teakettle whines a high-pitched warning that the water is boiling while I ruminate.

  “And you dropped everything to come see if I was all right?”

  His brow furrows. “By now, I would have thought you might understand how deeply I care for you, Karolina. If you are hurting, I will do anything to cheer you. Fuck my business. There’s nowhere I would rather be than with you.”

  Squeezing my knees tighter to my chest, I shake my head back and forth mournfully. “You have the wrong idea about me. I’m not who you think I am. It’s better you know the truth. I don’t want to hide anything from you.”

  Alec does nothing to hide his growing displeasure. His shoulders visibly tighten when he places the steaming mug on the coffee table. “Believe me, Karolina, I’ve looked at you from every angle. I’ve had five fucking years to figure out my feelings.”

  Shrinking into myself protectively, I keep my gaze on my hands.

  “Dammit, you know I won’t hurt you,” he growls. “Look at me.”

  When I don’t lift my chin, a light touch nudges my gaze up to meet his limitless, black eyes. The simmering anger wars with his gentle touch. His hand falls to his side once he has my full attention. “Internalize this. File it away. Remember it always. I will never hurt you. I will never raise my hands to you in anger. Never. Do you understand me?”

  “You see a woman who doesn’t exist.”

  Alec leans closer, dominating my entire field of vision. “We’ll get to that in a minute. Believe this, Karolina, not all men are abusive assholes. I will never hurt you.”

  The hard conviction lacing each word thaws a layer of hard ice imprisoning my heart. “I want to believe you, but I don’t know if I can.”

  There. I said it. An involuntary wince builds, but I manage to hold the automatic reaction back while I wait for him to respond.

  All the hardness in Alec’s expression softens. He angles backward, far enough to give me a bit of breathing room, but not far enough for me to lose the warmth emanating from his body.

  “Progress, sweet Karo. We’ll get there.”

  My stomach twists. “I’m not. Sweet, that is.”

  “I’ve known you for five years. We’ve spent enough time together for me to know you and you to know me very well. You know things about me no one else does because I trust you. Implicitly. I’m not a man to give his trust to undeserving subjects. Now you’re saying I have you all wrong. Explain it to me. Tell me what I’m not seeing.”

  “The first time I picked up a thread and needle, I was seven years old at a summer camp. Even though I was too young for the activity, according to the counselors, I begged and begged my mom until she demanded they allow me to participate. One pair of crappy pajama pants later and I was hooked. I thought all I ever wanted out of life was a career in fashion. I worked myself to exhaustion during high school and college to keep that dream alive. And then David happened. I let it all go to be with him. Every dream disappeared into thin air because he gave me something I didn’t even know I wanted—a sense of belonging.”

  “I can understand that,” Alec murmurs, causing another chink in the armor shielding my heart. “For someone who hasn’t felt part of something greater than themselves, that bond is practically irresistible. Look at me. I’ve let business dictate my priorities, and I’m a thirty-four-year-old man with no personal growth to show for it. If I hadn’t been stubborn and opened myself up to someone . . . who knows? I admire your courage, Karolina. Despite being hurt by your family, you were willing to take a chance.”

  “Courage has nothing to do with it.” The laugh that bursts from my hollow chest is bitter. “I was so desperate for someone to love me that I believed every one of David’s lies. Whatever he told me, I took at face value.”

  “Christ, if you questioned him that hard, you would be incredibly cynical.”

  “A little cynicism could have saved me from all the pain.”

  “You don’t know anything for certain,” Alec insists.

  I can’t look at him when I say this next part. I’m too ashamed. “If I had any guts, I would have left him before we got married. The first time he ever hurt me was the night before the small wedding. He pushed me onto the bed with so much force that it left marks up and down my sides. It wasn’t okay when he apologized, and it wasn’t okay the night of our wedding when he took me–” I shudder unable to say anything further.

  Suddenly, I’m against Alec’s chest. He squeezes me to him with force but not enough to cause pain. “If he weren’t in jail, I would rip that smug smirk right off his face.” I tremble against him at the mention of violence.

  Wiggling until he releases me, I curl back into the corner of the couch.

  “I would never hurt you, Karolina. But if someone caused or causes you pain, I can’t promise I won’t hurt them.”

  “There’s been enough physical force. Promise me you’ll stay away from David. Promise me you won’t hurt him. It’s done.”

  Alec pauses, his jaw ticking with unmasked tension. “If you need that from me, then, yes, I absolutely promise. And I don’t break my word, Karolina. That’s another thing you’ll learn about me.”

  Melancholy arrives and desolation sets in. Alec Christos takes my breath away. Compassion swims in his onyx eyes. I don’t want to change the ways he looks at me. But he has to know how weak I truly am, how I am no woman he could ever love.

  “David was the one who broke my wrist and my ribs on another occasion. When he wasn’t physically abusing me, he used words to cut me down. Nothing I did was right—the clothing I wore, the way I interacted with his friends and potential clients, the food I ate. No self-respecting person would allow that kind of treatment, but I let him take me down piece by piece. The worst part was I believed all of it. I thought no one else could possibly want me and I stayed. Because I was weak. Those women at Willow’s House left their abusers. They saved their children and themselves before it was too late.”

  “How can you speak for the women at Willow’s House? You have no idea what brought them there and you shouldn’t assume anything.” Okay. Alec has a point there. I nod slowly, accepting his argument. “For dealing with such a complex situation, you have an uncanny way of turning this into a black and white scenario. You said yourself that the sense of belonging was appealing to you on your most primal level. No wonder you wanted to stay with him.” Alec makes it all sound simple. He is horribly wrong.

  Suddenly, it’s the most important thing in the world to me that he hear the rest of my ugly past. “I knew David had the capacity to hurt me physically when I got pregnant. I knew the threat was real and still I stayed. My son was real to me. I felt him growing inside me, and I loved him with every breath I took, but it w
asn’t enough for me to protect him. I didn’t leave David. I stayed and my son paid the ultimate price. It’s an unforgivable sin.” Tears well up but don’t fall. I hug my arms around my chest, but the gesture spurns no comfort.

  Alec closes his palms around my shoulders and jerks me toward him again. I’m not afraid of the intensity of his glare. When he speaks, he delivers his words intently and huskily. “There is a boundary that delineates between where you end and another person begins. On one side is what you are responsible for—your own actions. On the other side of the boundary is what you cannot control. You, Karolina, had no control over that filth.”

  “I should have left him.” The words come out in a near harsh shout. “The moment I found out I was pregnant I threw myself into his arms because I thought a baby would put an end to the abuse. How stupid I was. A fool to think he wouldn’t strike again. And when he did . . .” Shaking my head, I can’t say any more.

  “If you left him, he would have found you. And it could have been much worse.” He presses a finger to my lips to keep me from interrupting. “I am not trying to diminish the incredible loss of your son, Karolina. I’m saying that David Morgan has no qualms about killing. He has a slew of unsavory characters on hand who would have done anything for a piece of his wealth. I ache for you. My heart splinters for you, sweet Karo. You must know it wasn’t your fault.”

  The pieces fall together. Loosely. From Alec’s angle, things don’t look quite as ugly. “I could have done more.” The argument is half-hearted.

  Alec frowns, seemingly lost in a memory. “David wanted you. He would have stopped short of nothing to have you.”

  The back of my neck starts to tingle. “What do you mean?”

  Alec rubs the back of his neck. “David is relentless. I don’t think I need to tell you that. He made it clear to me that you were going to be his under no uncertain terms when we saw you that day at the hotel pool.”

  “The bet.” I didn’t remember it until this moment.

  “The bet.” Alec grimaces. “The biggest mistake I’ve ever made. It’s not an excuse, but I was an arrogant prick then. I won the damn thing and I gave you up. David was enraged—said he wanted you as his girlfriend. I thought he was angry that he lost to me, but he kept ragging on about how you were it for him. I had no clue what he was talking about, but I let it go because I didn’t want anything serious and I didn’t want to mess around with him. See?” he says ruefully. “We both made massive errors in judgment. If I had forced him to back off, we might have avoided this whole mess.”

  A throbbing pain takes up space in my chest.

  Alec lifts his hand to skim it across my jaw and then to cup my cheek. “You asked me for a promise, now I’m asking you for one. Try to recognize that you could not control David or anyone else for that matter. You can’t control that I love you more with each breath I take. You can control how often we spend time together. I’m praying you won’t let me go, Karolina. I just can’t stop loving you. No matter how many excuses I find to turn off my feelings, they won’t go away.”

  “You have a way of making all my problems seem, not smaller, but manageable. When I’m drowning, you reach down and pull my head above water. I—I can breathe when you’re around.” God, the poetic waxing sounds pathetic, but it’s true. Alec does something to me.

  “Karo, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  “I believe you.”

  His arms slip around my waist, and I find myself sliding into Alec’s lap. The short hairs on his beard brush against my temple as he touches his chin to the top of my head. One hand anchors me to his waist, splaying against the small of my back. His other hand skims up my spine to cup the back of my neck.

  “As much as it burns me to say this, we need to spend some time apart. You don’t need to fall out of one relationship and into another. Independence is important to you, and I’m not going to influence your decisions. Take a month away from me.” The groan comes from deep in his chest. His pain is palpable. “I don’t want to walk away from you again. Go where you need to go, but please, I beg you, return to me, sweet Karo.”

  Inexplicably, a consuming sense of peace settles around me as the metaphysical manifestation of Alec’s embrace. Burrowing deeper into his chest, I let the slow, steady thump of his heartbeat soothe me.

  “And what about when we inevitably run into each other on the street?” I inject some lightness into my voice, and I hear his answering smile.

  “I’ll look at you and take solace in knowing that I’m one day closer to where I belong.”

  Karolina

  Life goes on. Little by little, I surface from the crippling grief and self-doubt. On my own.

  It starts with a job. Lourdes offered me a position five days a week. The job is mostly crap—steaming garments, making alterations, cleaning the showroom—but I get to attend meetings and voice my opinion to Lourdes and her design team. In that aspect, the job is invaluable. At Lulu, I contribute and socialize with people who have the same interests as I do. Most importantly, the job gives me the chance to uncover what I truly want from life.

  The door swings open and a very smiley Adriana stands on the threshold, waving me inside. “It’s here!” She sounds like a child on the morning of their birthday. Little thrills dance in her eyes. I have a garment bag carefully folded over my arm. In my free hand is a shopping bag with a pair of unworn shoes from my former life.

  Grinning with the same amount of enthusiasm as my friend, I hurry inside. “Keep in mind I still may need to make more alterations. But we are really close.”

  With steps in sync, we make our way through the ground level of the home toward the master suite. “Right, right. You keep saying that, but at the last fitting the dress was flawless.”

  “Sue me. I’m a perfectionist.”

  Adriana laughs freely; her shiny raven hair flips over her shoulder as she closes us inside her dressing room-slash-closet. I hang the dress on a wall hook then go into the bathroom to wash my hands to avoid smudging the fabric. Once my hands are totally dry, I go back into the closet and find Adriana carefully removing the dress from the garment bag. She emits a little squeal not congruous with her polished exterior. I’ve come to learn that Adriana takes pleasure in the little things in life and has no problem showing her emotions. Every little thing I learn about her, I like. From fairy godmother, Adriana has turned into my best friend.

  I help Adriana zip into the gown. While she admires her reflection, I take notes on final dress adjustments.

  “I went back to the Morgan house,” I murmur between the pin in my mouth.

  “Come again?” Adriana says, arching one of her sculpted brows.

  “The divorce will be final in the next couple of weeks.” Pausing to remove the pin from my teeth, I turn to retrieve the shopping bag from where I left it next to the hanging garment bag. “And I won’t ever go back to that place. I wanted to do one more run-through to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything I wanted during the rush to escape. Plus, I wanted to visit with Miranda and Carlo. Turns out, they’re going to retire. They bought a place down on the Keys. And I found these Manolos that I never wore once. Since we wear the same size and they’ll complement the dress wonderfully, I thought you should at least try them on.”

  Adriana opens her mouth to argue. I can see the protest forming on her face, but I cut her off first. “Just try them. If you don’t like the shoes, no sweat. You’ve done so many outrageously kind things for me, so it’s one little way of thanking you.”

  She eyes the shoebox in my hand with an interested gleam in her eyes. “Well, let me see them then.” She holds on to my shoulder when I bend to my knees to slide her feet into the strappy metallic stilettos. The agreement comes swiftly and mutually—the shoes are perfect.

  “Do you have time to stay and catch up?” Adriana asks once she changes back into a pair of jeans and blouse.

  Grinning, I shake my head at her. “We talk on the phone almost every day. W
hat do we need to catch up on?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the deadline Alec imposed on you thirty days ago? We’re coming to a close here, darling, and quickly. The man has been working rapidly to keep his mind off you, and it isn’t working. He asks me about you every chance he gets.”

  Pleasure colors my cheeks. I don’t try to hide my obvious reaction. “A month ago, Alec didn’t impose a deadline. He planted a seed of possibility.”

  Adriana loops her arm through mine, pulling me toward the kitchen. “This calls for a glass of champagne.” There’s never a reason not to sip on champagne, according to Adriana.

  “You don’t even know what I have to say,” I cry laughing at her insistence. She gives me a gentle push toward a banquette built underneath wide windows displaying the manicured backyard. I sit down with a mock sigh. The noise doesn’t register with Adriana.

  “Damn right. Friends don’t always need to speak verbally.” I grin in her direction. She’s right; we have developed a close friendship. She makes quick work of nabbing a bottle from the double-wide Sub-Zero and popping the cork. Not a moment later, two flutes appear on the table and the bubbly liquid hisses as it hits the glass. She lifts her glass to clink it against mine in a toast. “To your burgeoning fashion career.”

  The carbonated liquid tickles as it trickles down the column of my throat. “That’s kind of the point,” I tell her dryly.

  “Start talking,” she demands.

  “Working at Lulu’s has given me a real insight into what it’s like to work at a fashion house. Don’t get me wrong, being there is thrilling and inspiring. And also, exhausting.” I grimace. “That sounds ungrateful. I don’t mean it to. It’s just that—well—let me start at the beginning.”

  Adriana takes another small swallow of champagne, waiting quietly for me to continue.

  “Somewhere along the way, my dreams got complicated. When I was in school, my singular goal was to become a designer like Lourdes. I wanted to run a fashion empire, hold court at Bryant Park, and see my dresses on the covers of magazines and at the Academy Awards. Then David came into my life and I realized that I wanted a family—desperately. I couldn’t see any way to balance a family and a career in fashion.”