“There are clothes in the second closet. They should fit.” He’s already moving toward the door. “Be ready in twenty minutes.”
“Raffaele.”
I don’t know why I say it. I don’t have anything prepared. He doesn’t turn around.
“Fifteen would be better.”
Then he’s gone.
I sit very still.
The ache between my legs feels louder now. So does the one higher up.
Right.
This is what I wanted. I said so, out loud, more than once. Professional. Measured.I don’t have feelings for you—I said that. He said,good. He said,I didn’t ask for feelings. Both of us agreed in writing, basically. A clean transaction. A strange path through a strange job.
So.
This is the version of him that fits that. Cufflinks and instructions and a twenty-minute window. That man makes sense. I can work for that man.
The one who brushed his lips against my neck after—that one doesn’t make sense. That one was inconvenient.
I should be relieved.
I press the heel of my hand against my chest.
It’s fine. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The hardwood is cool under my feet. My thighs tremble slightly when I stand, and I hate that, and I hate that I notice it, and I hate that I wonder if he’d notice it.
The sheet falls away. I’m still naked in his bedroom, and there’s no one here to see it now. The performance is over. The audience has left.
I find the bathroom on my own. Marble, of course. A shower the size of my bedroom. I turn the water as hot as I can tolerate and stand under it with my forehead against the tile until my skin goes pink.
I don’t cry. I won’t give him that.
When I come out, wrapped in a towel that’s too soft to be fair, I open the second closet the way he said. It’s full. Not with his things—with mine. Or things that are going to be mine. Blouses, skirts, a row of dresses in neutral tones. Everything unworn, tags cut. Sized for me.
He planned this.
Not last night—this.Me standing in this closet in the morning, dressing for work from his shelves.
I pull on underwear, a bra, a cream blouse, a navy skirt. My fingers work the buttons efficiently enough. The fabric sits differently on me than anything I own, skimming rather than catching, like the clothes know where they belong and I’m the one playing catch-up.
In the mirror over the dresser I look almost like I fit here.
I don’t look at the bed on my way out.
He’s in the kitchen when I find him, standing at the island with a phone to his ear and a cup of coffee in his other hand. The pan from last night is gone. There’s no evidence of any of it—no wine glass on the counter, no wooden spoon in the sink. The whole place has been cleared. Someone came through, or he did it himself before I woke. Either way, the scene’s been reset.
He sees me in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t stop talking. His eyes flick down, up, and back to some point on the counter.
“—fine. Have him at the office by ten.” A pause while he listens. “I don’t care. Ten.”
He ends the call and slides the phone into his jacket.
“Coffee’s there.”
He nods toward a second cup on the island, already poured. Black. No sugar. The same way he takes his.
