Page 40 of Lady and the Butcher
“We’re going out,” he said.
I turned too fast, the room tilting around me. “Now?”
He was already taking his phone from his pocket. His tone shifted, crisp and cold, a man slotting himself into a language built for efficiency. A yes. A time. A name I didn’t recognize. Someone on the other end scrambled. He ended the call, slid the phone away, and looked at me like nothing about me could surprise him.
“Ten minutes.”
It took a beat for my pride to catch up. “You just?—”
“Ten,” he repeated.
I could have said no. I could have told him he didn’t get to wind me tight and then walk me out the door like I was an errand. I could have, and some version of me might have, if his palm hadn’t still been a ghost at my throat. If the glass hadn’t held the shape of my hands like a prayer. If the silk didn’t cling to the places he’d warmed.
I pushed away from the window. My knees remembered themselves. I glanced in the mirror, and I told the woman there to hold her line.
In the car, Charleston slid past in blades of light. The harbor flashed and hid and flashed again between buildings until the road opened and the water took over the frame.
Our destination rose up like a ship morphed into a cathedral. Glass walls curving toward the river. Black steel and pale stone. The roofline pitched into the sky like a sail about to catch wind. Bronze letters arched over the entrance in a clean, spare font that knew it was expensive.
The Mariner’s Table.
I’d driven by before, always from a distance that let me pretend I didn’t care about what happened inside. Power lunches. Anniversary dinners. Deals disguised as toasts. The kind of view you had to reserve with a favor. The kind of menu that replaced vowels for effect.
Atticus didn’t slow. He stepped out as if the building had been waiting for him. The host looked up. Something went through his face, quick and bright, like a switch being thrown. Words were exchanged that I didn’t catch. The host nodded once, twice, already backing up, already waving a server over. Like choreography. Like a tide that understood gravity.
A small room to the right of the main dining floor emptied like someone had lifted and poured it out. Couples rose with apologies already on their lips. Wine glasses were carried. Napkins were folded without glances exchanged. No one sat there when we stepped in. The door sighed shut. The harbor filled every pane.
There was a table in the center, round and white. There were a few smaller tables near the glass. Candles set low, flames mirrored a hundred ways. The Ravenel Bridge wore a thin chain of light now. The water had deepened to bruise and ink.
“Sit,” he said, and somehow it sounded like care.
The chair was heavy under my hands and then obedient under my weight. A server appeared. He poured champagne without being asked and disappeared again like he’d been made of smoke.
“You didn’t ask for the room,” I said, because my mouth needed work to do if my body was going to survive the evening.
“I never do,” he said.
“You like people to move.”
“I like quiet when I need it.”
“And when you don’t?”
His mouth did that almost-smile. “You’ve seen me in both.”
It was true. I’d seen him on the lawn at Stephen’s party, still and watchful, fully inside a party he wasn’t part of. I’d seen him in the suite, leaning in a doorway like restraint was a sport. I was seeing him now, king in a glass kingdom, letting the city swivel under him.
The server returned with a salad that looked like it had been painted and dark bread that smelled like some better version of home. He set everything down and vanished.
I held the cool shape of the coupe in my fingers. The bubbles snapped on my tongue and dropped all the way down my chest. Atticus watched my mouth like it was the only thing in the room.
“You’re flushed,” he said, mild, almost amused.
“You put your hand up my dress and then told me to get in the car,” I said, very evenly, because I wanted to sound like a woman with a backbone. “So, yes. I’m flushed.”
“You like being left wanting,” he said, as if the topic were weather.
“I like not being toyed with.”
