Chapter 2
On the way down in the elevator, I made a call.
My assistant had been with me three years. He answered to nobody but me, and he ran the woodshop and everything on the investment side.
He picked up, and I gave him two sentences.
"Break up the accounts. Start moving everything tonight."
He went quiet for a beat. "All of it?"
"All of it," I said.
I looked at myself in the elevator mirror and let two seconds pass.
"One more thing. Put a list together for me."
"What kind of list?" he asked.
The Stella Winters in the mirror wore the off-white dress Richard liked, the lipstick shade he had chosen, the perfume he had given me, and heels at the exact height he preferred.
She was soft, she was quiet, and she kept her eyes down.
She looked like something he had built with his own hands.
I let the smile go flat on my mouth.
"The list of groomsmen," I said.
"Mr. Stanton says I get to pick.
"So I should take the picking seriously."
The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.
I glanced down and saw the blood on my palm had already dried.
It brought back the day a wire rig dropped me on set.
Richard got to the hospital with a storm on his face, sat down beside the bed, and looked at me. "Cry if you want to cry."
But I didn't cry. Not even a tear.
Looking at him took the pain out of it.
It didn't hurt this time either.
From that moment on, I understood that the hurting had to end too.
Richard came home late that night.
I had showered and dried my hair halfway, and I sat on the edge of the bed in the off-white silk slip he liked best, waiting.
It had always worked on him.
He never said so, but his eyes had never been able to lie about it.
When the door opened, I looked up.
Richard shrugged off his coat and dropped it over the back of the sofa with his tie still knotted exactly right. When he saw me, his step slowed.
"Still up?" he asked.
I smiled at him.
"I was waiting for you," I said.
I used to say that all the time.
Richard walked over and placed his hand on my forehead.
"Why didn't you dry your hair?" he asked.
"I was feeling lazy," I replied.
He frowned, took the towel from my hand, and stood behind me to dry my hair.
He did it like it was second nature.
His fingertips brushed softly behind my ear.
He'd done this for me so many times before.
Our first winter in that apartment, a fever knocked me flat. He lifted me out from under the covers at two in the morning, carried me to the sink to wash my face, sat me down, and dried my hair.
Leaning against him with my head swimming, I asked him, "How do you even know how to do this?"
He said, "You hit 104 last time. I found someone to teach me."
Once in a while, when his mood was very good, he dropped my full name and called me Stell instead, low and quiet.
It happened almost never.
I remembered every one of those times exactly.
So with him standing behind me working the towel through my hair, something in me still slipped for a second.
It lasted only that second.
I hadn't sat down on that bed to be talked around.
What I wanted was to hear him finish those sentences with his own mouth.
Seven years of loving him, and I wanted to know exactly how far he would go in arranging my life.
Richard dried my hair until it was halfway there, then looked down at me.
"Don't sleep on wet hair. You'll wake up with a headache."
I made a small sound of agreement, turned, and put my arms around his waist.
The cold from outside still clung to him and his trousers were pressed sharp, and through the thin silk I could feel how tight he had gone.
"So clingy tonight?" he said with a teasing smile.
"When am I not?" I said.
Richard lowered his head and smiled.
The laugh barely reached his face, and it still made him impossible to look away from.
Then he leaned down and kissed me.
He started at my forehead, moved to the tip of my nose, and worked his way down to my mouth.
Richard had never been in a hurry when he kissed.
He held himself under tight control most of the time, and the things he actually wanted were the things he took slowest.
I used to believe that particular patience belonged to me alone.
He caught how calm I was almost at once.
He pressed me down into the bed with a hand locked at my waist, and his voice came out rough.
"Stella," he said.
"Yeah?" I replied.
"Something's off with you tonight."
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
He was so close.
The line of his brow, the ridge of his nose, the want he kept banked behind his eyes, I knew all of it better than my own face.
Any other night I would have gone soft long before this.
That night I didn't.
I just looked at him and asked softly, "What's wrong?"