The subtle dig toward my husband sends Hadrian into his own version of swooning, which looks a lot like a rooster cocking around the pen. His pecs look even more pronounced as his chest swells.
“Speaking of Elvis…” He puts his dishes and the pan in the sink before turning back to me. “I want you to leave him, if it matters at all what I think.”
“It does.” Unable to eat more, I push my plate toward him and pick up my coffee mug. “But they’re two separate things—me leaving him, and me and you.”
“Sure, sure.” He takes my fork and finishes off the rest of my eggs. He’s so comfortable in the domestic act, it’s hard to believe this is all as new for him as he says. “It has nothing to do with me.”
I pretend to roll my eyes.
“It’s a little bit because of me, though, right?”
Damn, that smile.
“It’s all because of you, you narcissist, but I’m trying to be an adult here.”
He adds my plate to the sink then returns to lean against the counter. “You’re being very adult right now, and I respect it. I do. I’m going to go so far as to encourage you to be adult about it, and not tell him you’re leaving until you have a plan.”
In just a few words, he’s forced me to acknowledge how big leaving a marriage can be. There will be drama. Elvis will push back. We still have to work together. Then we have to figure out the details of who gets what, who lives where. Add a relationship with Hadrian into the mix, and the whole thing feels a bit overwhelming.
He’s right. I need to go into it with a plan. “Will you help me make one?”
“I would love to help you make one.” His eyes are sparkling, but his expression is serious, and I appreciate how thoughtful he’s being about this when he could be a macho jerk. “Want to have an after-breakfast fuck and then start working on it?”
I feel my cheeks get red, more because he gets me deliciously heated than out of any sort of embarrassment.
But I really am trying to be a grown-up. It’s already almost ten a.m., and tomorrow I’m back at work. Supposedly back to Elvis’s city apartment tonight. There’s a lot to work out, and not a lot of time. “Though your suggestion is awfully tempting, I need to be practical with the day. I’ve been spending the weekends at the New Jersey place, and I need to stop by and get some clothes for the week.”
“I didn’t realize you were still going back and forth.”
“We aren’t used to spending so much time together. Usually, he’d spend at least part of the weekend in Manhattan, so now we’ve just reversed it. It’s been fine. It’s only the weekend that I have to commute. I haven’t had a reason to…” I realize I’m explaining too much. Defending the arrangement that I’ve hated from the beginning.
I don’t want to do it anymore.
“Point is that I need to get some clothes. And then I have to figure out where I’m sleeping tonight, and—”
“Uh, here,” he says, cutting me off. “What part of I’m keeping you do you not understand?”
My insides feel like warm mush. “Well, I don’t have to see Elvis or explain my whereabouts until I don’t show up at our apartment tonight. We should have at least a few things figured out by then. Is there anything you need to do today?”
He can’t help himself. “Besides you?” Then he’s serious. “I have a few things for work. Maybe take me an hour, two at most. I should talk to my father at some point. Make excuses for ditching. I should work out.”
I can barely move without my muscles reminding me of every position we were in last night, and he wants to work out. I want to say not fair, but I also don’t mind feeling Hadrian in my body, hours after he’s not there. “Okay, then. You can do all that while I run to Jersey—”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll drive.”
“You can, but.” I appreciate the offer, but part of me needs a little time to process. “If we split up, we can be done with everything we need to be done with by one o’clock. Then we’ll have the rest of the day to—”
“Fuck like bunnies. Okay. Sold.”
“Hadrian!” Again, I’m giggling.
“And we’ll make a plan. There’s a lot we should figure out between me and you too. A lot still to, um, say.”
It’s almost like he just said the word that I’m pretty sure we’re both feeling. “Yeah, there is.”
The air feels heavy around us. Heavy in the best way.
Keeping his eyes on mine, he comes around the island to my side, and turns me so I’m facing him. “We’ll talk more later, but I need you to know something right now. I wanted you since day one. Day one, Brystin.”
“I think it was pretty obvious since you practically assaulted me in the elevator.”
He shakes his head dismissively. “Day one was before that.”
“You watched videos of me.” I remember Adly had told me he’d pointed me out to her when I was up for the award. This also isn’t really new.
“Would you stop guessing what I’m trying to say and let me say it?”
“Sorry.” Properly chided, I zip my mouth shut.
“I came by the studio too. To watch you before we chose the award winner.” He puts his hand up to stop me in case I’m about to comment again, and frankly, I was. I hadn’t realized he’d ever come by. “You didn’t know. Elvis didn’t even know. But I watched you, and Brystin, I think I knew even then that you were going to be different. I’ve never been so immediately…I don’t have a word for it. Charmed? Obsessed? You were—you are—the most captivating person I’ve ever encountered. I knew right then and there I had to have you, in whatever way you’d let me. I’m the one who stopped the elevator.”
I can’t help it. “You stopped the elevator?”
“Thought I would have a chance to figure out what it was about you if we had a few minutes alone. A moment like that is usually all I need to get a phone number. Make a plan to meet later. But as soon as I was sharing space with you, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. Everything that happened later, me and you and the things I pushed you into—”
I wave my hand, not caring at the moment about the manipulation tactics, though it would be something we’d have to talk about eventually.
“I was always going to give you the show. And I was always going to want more. But I would have taken whatever you would have given me, Brystin. That’s how into you I was. How into you I am. I would have taken the scraps. From day one. Okay? From day fucking one.”
I never realized how much I’ve needed to be wanted until now.
It takes all my strength not to let his declaration turn me into a puddle on the floor. Forget my clothes, forget the shit we have to do—I’m ready to let Hadrian take me right here on the kitchen counter.
But Hadrian’s being an adult today too. “Okay, now you can go.” He steps away from me, deliberately. “And don’t shower—I like knowing my scent will be on you when you’re in his apartment.”
It’s as much my apartment as it is Elvis’s, but I’m not about to argue.
Brystin POV
I’m buzzing so hard from Hadrian that I forget about optics. This time when I leave his apartment, I’m wearing his T-shirt and a pair of his drawstring gym shorts, which is better than leaving in last night’s dress, but my visit is hard to explain away as professional in this getup.
I don’t think about it until someone’s calling my name. When I turn, a phone camera is pointed in my direction. Luckily, it’s just a fan who wants an autograph. I’m not even sure they know this is where Hadrian lives, but it jostles me from my everything-is-perfect mood, and I instantly regret having conceded to using Hadrian’s driver.
Instead of reminiscing about every exquisite moment from the night before, I spend the hour to Edison charging my phone and worrying about a new possible scandal. Scott has been coaching us to act like no one knows anything, but if I end up openly dating Hadrian, there will forever be speculation that he’s the cause of my divorce.
Which is obviously true, but it’s a truth that lacks nuance. It’s a truth that will forever point at me as a greedy ladder-climbing money-grabber, and as always, Hadrian will remain relatively unscathed. There’s probably nothing to be done about it, but it’s a fact that I’ll have to come to terms with, and another issue to add to the list of things that Hadrian and I need to discuss.
Hadrian’s driver lucks out and finds a parking spot right in front of my building. He offers to come up and help me bring things down, but I don’t need a stranger looking over my shoulder while I pack my underwear, so I tell him I’ll try to be back down in thirty minutes.
I don’t feel the lack of sleep hit me until I’m walking in my apartment, and I have to force myself to get busy instead of collapsing on the sofa. The suitcase I’ve been using to travel back and forth is still sitting in the hallway. I grab it on the way, and then head to my bedroom.
I freeze as soon as I walk in my door. “Elvis. What are you doing here?”
Specifically, what is he doing in my bedroom, perched on my unmade bed as though he’s waiting for me.
“Trying to figure out if I should worry about your whereabouts. An unmade bed means nothing where you’re concerned.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.
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