CHAPTER 1: SIGH
888 Words
Her name was Valentina.
Or Viviana. He couldn’t remember. Damn!
She was beautiful in the uncomplicated way of women who had learned early that beauty was a currency and had invested accordingly. Dark hair. Darker eyes. And plump lips that knew exactly what they were doing at all times.
She was saying something.
Gus was not listening.
He was standing at the edge of his penthouse with a glass of Clase Azul in his hand, looking out at the city like a king eyeing his lands, his territory. He was largely aware of a voice behind him, the way you're aware of a distant boring motivational speaker. Present. Textural. Requiring nothing from you.
She came up behind him.
Her hands on his shoulders. Practiced. Knowing. The hands of a woman who quietly understood what was expected of her and delivered it with particular professionalism.
He felt nothing.
Not nothing like numbness. Not nothing like distraction.
Nothing like ‘absence’.
He’d had this feeling for months.
Longer, maybe. He’d stopped counting.
"Gus." Her voice. Whispering right at his ear.
"Mm."
"You're not here."
He stared at his own reflection in the glass. The city burning gold behind it. The silhouette of a man with everything and the expression of a man counting the exits in a room he once didn’t dream of leaving.
"No," he said. "I'm not."
She laughed, a faint practiced sound, the kind of laugh supposed to remind him she was fun, easy, and didn't make demands.
"Then where are you?"
He didn't answer.
She moved around him slyly, positioning herself between him and the window, her back to the city. She was in something black, expensive and essentially absent. Her fingers found his chest. Her thumbs tracing his collarbone through his shirt. Her smile that of a woman who’d never been refused.
"I can help you be here," she said.
She kissed his neck. His jaw. The corner of his mouth. He stood perfectly still.
She gently pulled back, eyes searching, confused. That had never happened before. Men did not stand still when she touched them. Men ‘moved’. Men reacted.
"Gus?"
"Not today," he said.
Her smile faltered. Recovered. "You're never in the mood lately. Let me try harder."
He rolled his eyes.
She dropped to her knees.
A move she'd perfected. Her hands moving to his belt.
And something in Gus broke.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. A crack in the wall he'd spent years building. He looked down at the beautiful woman on her knees, offering him exactly what he'd paid for, exactly what he'd wanted a hundred times before, and he felt nothing but a rising, suffocating rage.
Not at her.
At himself.
At the hollow thing inside him that even this , even ‘this’ could not fill the need in him.
"Get up," he said.
She didn't. She was already unbuckling his belt. "Let me take care of you. Please. I can…”
"I said get up!!"
His voice was quiet.
She stopped. Looked up at him. Saw something in his eyes that made her hands fall away.
"Gus, whatever I did "
"You didn't do anything."
He stepped back, away from her hands, away from her knees, away from the whole hullabaloo. He picked up his glass and finished the rest of his drink.
"Get dressed. Toro will have someone drive you home."
Her composure finally cracked.
She’d been chosen for this, for him. But in that moment, watching him prepare to leave without touching her, without even looking at her, something broke in her.
"Please," she said.
She rose from her knee, stumbling, her pride bleeding out onto the thick carpeted floor.
"Please, not like this. Not like I'm nothing. I've been here every time you called. Every single time. I never said no. I never asked for more than you gave. And you're just going to…"
"Yes," he said. "I am."
Her eyes filled. Her heart shattered. She thought maybe…just maybe if she always came, he would finally see her. Feel her. For real. Rage suddenly filled her. He could see the hate, sharp behind the tears. She’d built her entire identity on being wanted, and here she was, begging a man who could care less.
"Stay," she whispered. "Just stay. We don't have to do anything. Just, let me be here. Let me pretend."
That word ‘pretend’ landed like a slap. A sting.
Gus turned. Eyes wide.
He walked to her. Close enough that she had to throw her head back to see his face. Close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and sugar from his bonbon. She thought, for one electric, humiliating second that he was going to kiss her.
He didn't.
He looked at her with a blank expression.
"There's nothing to pretend," he said. "You're my property. You come and go as I please."
Her mouth opened. Closed. She blinked back tears.
"Get your things and be out of mines in ten."
He turned his back and walked to the door.
Behind him, her breath hitched ; a small, wounded sound that she immediately choked back. He heard her fumbling for her clothes, heard the shake in her hands as she dressed herself in the silence of his rejection.
He didn't look back.
He didn't care.
- Writer
