Page 61 of Suite 7

Because he’s made me off-limits to myself.

I shower, not cold water, because I’m not giving him that satisfaction, hands strictly functional. Soap, rinse, done. I do not linger. I do not give in to what my body keeps asking for.

But I want to.

God, I want to.

But I don’t. Because he told me not to. And somehow obeying him feels more important than the relief would be, which is a sentence I don’t examine too closely before bed.

Me: How long?

Kane: Until you stop asking that question. Sleep well, Vera.

The message feels final in a way that makes it worse, that he can close a conversation, leave me here, burning, while he presumably sleeps peacefully. I lie in the dark and the sheets are too soft and too warm and everything is too much and the cotton against my bare legs and my tank top with each breath and the insistent pulse between my thighs that won’t⁠⁠—

This is Day One.

I’m not going to survive this.

Wednesday arrives and the box doesn’t work anymore.

The moment my alarm goes off, the sound scrapes across my nerves like a wire without insulation. I silence it and lie still for a moment, taking stock the way I always do: identifying, labelling, filing, and find that the filing part has stopped functioning. The thoughts won’t go where I put them. They sit on top of everything, heavy and insistent, and underneath them my body is already awake in a way that has nothing to do with the alarm.

This is stupid, I think clearly, in the shower, water beating too-hot against my shoulders. I’m a grown adult woman and I’m following the instructions of a man who told me not to touch myself and I’m complying like — like what? Like it means something. Like he’d even know if I choose to disobey.

I turn off the water. Get dressed.

The seam of my underwear is noticeable in a way it has never been before. I change. The next pair is worse. I stand in my bedroom at seven-fifteen in the morning conducting a sensory audit of my own lingerie drawer because Kane Sinclair has apparently rewired my entire nervous system.

I file this under not thinking about it and go to work.

Work on Wednesday is not manageable.

My assistant Kim asks if I’m feeling okay twice before ten o’clock. The contract on my screen might as well be written in a language I used to know.

A colleague stops by my desk to touch my arm while asking about the Nakamura account and I go so still he asks if I’m alright, and I say fine, tired, and the moment he’s gone I press my palms flat against my desk and breathe until my heartbeat settles.

The box is not working. Every sensation goes straight through without filing — the rasp of my jacket collar, the quality of the air conditioning, nothing between me and what my body wants and the fact that I’m not allowed to have it

This is idiotic. The thought arrives with some force by mid-morning. He set a rule that makes no practical difference to his day and significant difference to mine and I’ve been following it for two days because — why, exactly? Because I agreed to? People agree to things and change their minds. That’s what renegotiation is. He said so himself.

I get up. Walk to the small unused conference room on the third floor, the one nobody remembers exists, and my hands are shaking slightly as I pull up Kane’s number.

I have his number because Sloane made sure of it, years ago. In case of emergency, she said. Both of us in each other’s phones, no excuses.

I wonder what she’d make of this emergency.

I never call him. Ever.

He answers on the second ring. “Vera?”

The sound of my name in that voice. My chest tightens, one involuntary beat.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” The words burst out. “I can’t think. I can’t focus. I’m a mess. My own body is betraying me and it’s too much.”

“Take a breath.”

“I don’t want to take a breath. I want⁠⁠—“