When the Cold CEO Falls First

Perfume on His Shirt

Kade cooked when she was nervous.

She had discovered this about herself in university, during finals week, when she had made three lasagnas in two days and then given two of them away to neighbours because the thought of eating that much pasta made her sick. Cooking was like cutting a pattern. You took different materials, combined them in different ways, and if you did it right, something new came out the other side.

Tonight she was making steak. Ribeye, from the butcher on the high street who knew her by name and always saved her the good cuts. She had a bottle of red breathing on the counter, rosemary potatoes in the oven, and a green salad because even she had limits. The flat smelled like garlic and butter and the specific, perfect warmth of something done exactly right.

She had set the table with candles. Not because it was a special occasion, but because Owen had been working late all week and she wanted him to walk in and feel like he was somewhere good.

Well. That, and she was hoping to distract him from the interview prep.

She turned the steak in the pan and thought about her skirt from earlier. The navy one. The one Owen had looked at with that slow grin, the one that had made her blush on her way out of the building. She wondered if he remembered. She wondered if he was already on his way home.

She glanced at the clock. 6:47.

He was probably just running late.

She checked her phone. No messages.

She flipped the steak. The kitchen window had fogged up, and through it she could see the lights of the opposite building, the blur of someone else's life. She liked this flat. It was small and the heating was unreliable and the bathroom door never fully closed, but it was hers.

Well—hers and Owen's, technically.

He had moved in eighteen months ago, when his lease ran out and she had offered, half-joking, and he had said yes so fast it made her laugh. His things were everywhere now: his books on her shelves, his jacket on the hook by the door, his toothbrush beside hers in the cup.

It was good. It was fine. It was a life.

She started on the potatoes. She had always liked cooking, but she had learned to be careful about it. In her early twenties, she had dated a boy who had commented on her portions. Nothing dramatic. Just a raised eyebrow, a “You sure you want seconds?” She had stopped eating seconds after that. And then she had stopped eating altogether, for a while, or at least she had stopped eating anything that didn't come with a side of guilt.

She had been thinner then. Owen had liked it. Not in a creepy way, he just noticed. He had said “You look great, babe,” and his eyes had been warm, and she had felt seen in a way that was dangerously close to being loved.

She had also been miserable.

She remembered the moment she decided to stop. She was standing in the bathroom, her hands shaking, her throat raw, and she looked at herself in the mirror and thought, this is not who I am. This is who they want me to be.

So she had stopped. She had started eating again. Properly. She had started walking instead of running, because running was punishment and walking was just moving. She had gone to the doctor for a checkup, and the doctor had said her weight was healthy, her blood work was fine, her heart was strong. She had walked out of that office feeling like she had won something.

Owen had said, “That's great, babe,” and then, three weeks later, “Have you thought about cutting back on carbs?”

Her mother had said, “You looked so lovely at Christmas. Maybe for the wedding you could try that diet I sent you.”

The wedding. As if there were a wedding. As if Kade had been informed.

She had stopped listening to both of them after that. Though she still heard it, she would probably always hear it, she had stopped letting it matter.

She added a knob of butter to the pan and watched it melt.

She thought about high school more often than she liked. It came back in flashes, usually when she was happy, when she was doing something ordinary like stirring potatoes or walking to the station. Serena's voice would intrude all of a sudden without any warning.

“Look at her. Look at the fat one!”, followed by Serena's friends laughing.

That was the thing nobody knew about Kade. Before Serena, before the stairs, she had been loud. She had been the girl who argued with the teacher about the art curriculum. She would tell people what she thought of their outfits, and would stand up in class and said, “Serena doesn't do her own homework. She cheats off everyone.”

She had been proud of that. She had thought she was brave.

The next week, Serena and her friends had cornered her behind the gym and called her a fat pig. Kade looked at their matching shoes, their identical hair, and the way they stood in a little semicircle. They looked like a single person with too many limbs. And she finally said, “At least I have a brain. You're all just rich and boring.”

It had been a good line. A great line, actually. She had been proud of it for almost a full hour.

Then the stairs happened.

After that, Kade had learned to make herself small. She had learned to keep her head down, to wear clothes that didn't draw attention, to eat her lunch in the library where no one would knock it out of her hands. She had learned that being invisible was safer than being seen.

She had spent the rest of her schooling staying invisible. She had been so good at it that by the time she got to university, it was the only mode she had. She kept her head down and she worked. She was quiet and careful and nobody bothered her.

Then Owen had seen her coat and said she was brilliant, and she had thought, maybe she can be visible for this one person.

She had tried so hard to be what he wanted. She had lost weight for him. She had changed her clothes, her habits, the way she laughed at his jokes even when they weren't funny. She had done things she was not proud of.

But she had grown since then. She had stopped apologizing for her body. She had stopped believing that being smaller was the same as being better. And she had started to think that maybe, just maybe, she could make something that would help girls like her. Girls who had been told their whole lives that they were the problem.

She had a mission now. She could feel it, sitting in her chest like a warm coal. She was going to make clothes for women who had been told they couldn't have pretty things. She was going to put them on runways, in shop windows, on billboards. She was going to make them visible.

She hadn't saved herself when she was fourteen. She couldn't go back and push Serena down the stairs instead. But she could do this. She could make sure the next girl had somewhere to go.

She checked her phone again. Still no message, so she messaged Owen. Hey, I made dinner. Are you coming home soon?

She waited for a few minutes. No response. She called him. It rang, and then it went to voicemail.

She told herself he was probably in a meeting. He was probably stuck on a call. He was probably just walking home and his phone was in his bag and he hadn't seen it.

She ate a potato with her fingers while she waited. Then she ate another one. Then she sat on the couch with the candles burning down and her phone in her hand, and the hour stretched out like taffy.

At 9:15, she gave up and took a shower. When she finished drying her hair, still no message from Owen. So she ate the steak. It was cold, and she had to reheat it in the pan, and it wasn't the same. She felt sorry for herself, which she hated, so she put on her ugliest pyjamas to balance out the self-pity.

After the meal, she was on her laptop, working through the last of her prep, muttering her answers to herself in the mirror. Why did you choose Sartori? Because of its legacy, its craftsmanship, and its commitment to innovation. Why do you want to work in design? Because I believe clothes can make people feel seen. She did this for a while, and it helped, mostly because it distracted her from checking her phone.

When she closed her laptop, he still wasn't home. She was tired, and she was annoyed, and she was worried, which made her more annoyed.

She brushed her teeth, put on a face mask, and got into bed.

At 11:12, the front door finally opened.

Kade sat up. The face mask was still on. Her heart did a weird flip.

Owen stumbled into the bedroom. He was clearly drunk. His tie was loose, his hair was a mess, and he was holding his shoes.

"Babe," he said warmly. "You're still awake."

"What happened?" Kade said. "You didn't text. I called you. I made dinner."

Owen's face went through a series of emotions, none of which lasted more than half a second. "Company dinner. I completely forgot to tell you." He looked at the bedside table where her cold steak sat like an accusation. "Oh no. I'm so sorry."

He started to say something else, then his face went pale, and he bolted for the bathroom.

Kade got up. The face mask cracked down the middle. She followed him, got him a glass of water, held his hair back while he threw up. This was not how she had imagined the evening.

Afterward, she helped him into a clean shirt and guided him to the couch. He kept saying sorry. She said it was fine.

She meant it, mostly.

"I love you," he said. "You're so good to me. You're the best."

"You're drunk," she said. "Drink some water."

"Don't wanna."

"Drink some water and I'll stay with you."

He drank some water. Kade sat down beside him and let him lean against her. She felt his breath slow, his weight settle. She was tired, and she was still a little annoyed, but he was home, and he was safe, and that was what mattered.

Then he grabbed her hand and wouldn't let go.

"You look so pretty," he said, his voice slurring. "I'm a lucky guy."

"You're a very drunk guy."

"You're pretty."

"I'm wearing a sleeping mask and I have a face mask on."

"You'd look better without them."

Kade laughed. "That's the alcohol talking."

"No, it's not." He reached for the hem of her top. "I'm serious. You're so good. You're always so good to me. Let me make you feel good."

Kade pushed his hand away, gently but firmly. "Owen. You're drunk. You just threw up."

"So?"

"So I'm not going to have s*x with you while you're like this."

He looked at her. For a second, she thought he might argue. But then he shrugged and flopped back against the couch. "You're right. You're always right." He yawned. "I'm so tired."

"Then sleep."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

He was asleep in under a minute. His breathing evened out, and the low, familiar sound of his snoring filled the flat.

Kade sat there for a moment, watching him. Then she got up, gathered his shirt from the floor, and carried it toward the washing machine. She would put it in. She would set the timer. She would go to bed. Tomorrow she would be annoyed with him, and he would apologize, and it would be fine.

She stopped in the kitchen and lifted the shirt, as it smelled like something. It wasn't just the alcohol. Underneath it, faint but unmistakable, was a perfume, something floral.

She stood there, holding the shirt as she looked back toward the living room. Owen was still asleep, snoring softly. She looked at his phone on the counter. It was face-down. It had been in his pocket all night. She didn't know his passcode. She had never asked.

She could wake him up. She could ask him what the perfume was, who he had been sitting next to at dinner, and he would say it was nothing. He would say it was just a colleague. He would laugh and tell her she was cute when she was jealous.

And she would feel like she was crazy.

She put the shirt in the washing machine and went to bed.

That night Kade dreamed of her high school.

She was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Serena was above her, smiling. The stairs stretched up and up and up, into a sky that was grey and had no clouds.

Serena said something that Kade couldn't hear. Then she reached out and pushed her.

Kade fell.

She fell the way she had fallen when she was fourteen—slowly and then all at once, her body hitting every step on the way down, her legs tangling, her arms reaching for something that wasn't there. She hit the ground at the bottom and felt the same pain she had felt then, the same awful click in her knee, and she lay there and looked up.

Owen was standing at the top of the stairs.

"Owen," she said. Her voice was small. It was fourteen years old. "Help."

He didn't look at her.

He turned to Serena. He put his arm around her shoulder, the way he had in the corridor, and kissed her cheek.

"I love you," he said to Serena.

Serena laughed. "Did you see her?" she said. "She rolled down the stairs like a ball."

Owen laughed too.

They stood at the top of the stairs, together, laughing, and Kade lay at the bottom, and she couldn't get up.

She woke up with her heart pounding and the sheets twisted around her legs.

Her boyfriend was still sound asleep on the couch.