The Contract Between Us

Chapter 3

Aurelia

By the fourth night, my apartment felt too small to breathe in. Nadia had gone to bed early, worn out from three days of holding me together, and I lay in the dark while my thoughts went over the same things again and again: the restaurant, the slap, the phones, the comments, the clients quietly backing away. Eventually I couldn't stand the sound of my own mind anymore. I got up, pulled on the first dress I found, and left before I could talk myself out of it.

I had no destination. I walked until I found a bar with a door dark enough that no one would recognize me stepping through it, a narrow, dimly lit place a few blocks from home that I had never been inside. I sat at the end of the counter and ordered something strong enough to quiet my thoughts, and then I ordered another.

The stool beside me creaked, and a man sat down without looking my way. He ordered whiskey, neat, and for a long while he didn't so much as glance in my direction. It was almost a mercy, sitting beside someone who had no idea what my face meant to two million people right now.

By my second drink, my composure finally gave out. The tears started before I could stop them, hot and humiliating, dripping onto the bar while I stared at my hands.

"Rough night?"

His voice was low and unhurried. When I looked up at him properly for the first time, I saw dark hair, slightly tousled, a strong jaw, and pale eyes that held mine without wavering. He was dressed simply, but there was something unmistakably expensive about him, from the cut of his shirt to the quiet confidence in the way he carried himself. He wasn't smiling. He was only watching me with what looked, unbelievably, like patience;

"Rough week," I said, and laughed at how small that sounded next to what it was covering.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No." I wiped my face with the back of my hand, suddenly aware of how I must look. "I really, really don't."

"Okay." He didn't push. He turned back to his drink as if my crying were neither his business nor a burden, and being allowed to fall apart without explaining myself loosened something in my chest that had been tight for four days. I put my head down on my folded arms and cried properly for the first time since that first morning, and he let me, sitting quietly beside me, not touching me and not asking anything of me at all.

He ordered me a glass of water and slid it toward me without a word. I drank it because it was easier than arguing, and then another, and slowly the alcohol dulled enough that my head cleared and the room stopped tilting.

We talked for a while after that, about nothing that mattered and nothing about who either of us was. He asked what I did, and I told him I designed clothes, and he nodded as if it were an ordinary answer instead of the thing that was currently ending my career. He didn't recognize me. That was obvious from how easy he was with me, without any pity or curiosity in his face, and I was grateful for it.

"I should go home," I said eventually, though I didn't move to stand.

"Do you really think you can go home like this?" His voice was quiet, not unkind, just certain, as though he already knew the answer before I did.

I looked at him, at the steadiness in his face, and at the fact that he hadn't once reached for me or assumed anything about why I was there or what I owed him for the water and the patience. His restraint made me feel safer than I expected to feel with a stranger. And for the first time in four days, I wanted something instead of simply enduring what had happened to me.

"There's a room upstairs," he said quietly, watching my face rather than pushing. "I can get you one for the night, if you want to stay. Somewhere quiet, away from all of it, just for you."

I could have said no. I was clear-headed enough to know exactly what I would be saying yes to, and exactly why I wanted to say it anyway. Being careful had gotten me a fiancé who cheated on me and slapped me in front of a room full of strangers. Being careful hasn't protected me from anything. So I nodded, and when he stood and held out a hand, I took it and let him walk me toward the stairs at the back of the bar.

He kept a careful distance the whole way up, one hand light at my elbow, nothing more. At the front desk, he booked the room in his name and paid for it without a word to me, then slid the key card into my hand rather than his own pocket. He led me down the hall, pushed the door open, and stepped back to let me through first.

He was already half-turned to go, one hand still on the open door, when I turned to look at him properly with the hall light behind him. His expression shifted the moment our eyes met. It wasn't pity anymore, or the careful patience from the bar, but something sharper, and the air between us changed. One moment there was space between us, and the next there wasn't. His hand came up to my jaw, tilting my face toward his as though he needed to be sure, and I let him be sure.

The kiss wasn't gentle. It was the opposite of every careful, controlled thing that had happened to me in the last four days, and I met it with something reckless and certain that I didn't recognize in myself, my hands fisting in his shirt to pull him closer. He kicked the door shut behind us, and the rest of the world went quiet: the video, the comments, Rex's voice telling me I was nothing. There was only his mouth on mine and his hands sliding into my hair, as if he had wanted to do it since the moment I sat down beside him.

I didn't think about who he was. I didn't ask his name, and he didn't ask mine, and there was a strange relief in that anonymity, in being wanted by someone who had no idea what I had survived that week and wasn't kissing me out of pity or curiosity about a video everyone else had already seen. He kissed me like I was simply a woman he wanted, nothing more complicated than that, and for the first time in fou

r days, I felt something other than shame.