Page 42 of Lady and the Butcher
The thing about being handled is that you start to forgive the man doing it for everything else. I didn’t want to forgive him. I wanted to keep the part of me that barked and paced and kept score.
And then I’d look at him. That blunt jaw that said trouble. Close cropped blond hair that made his blue eyes look colder and cleaner than water. The narrow scar near his mouth that turned every almost-smile into a dare. Broad shoulders under simple shirts, forearms knotted with quiet strength. He was handsome in a way that didn’t ask for permission. Less pretty boy, more weapon. It wasn’t just his face. It was the way he held a room like gravity answered to him, the way focus lived in his eyes when they pinned me. The way he moved.My God, the way he moved.My body kept voting yes while my better judgment filed protest paperwork no one would ever read.
It was his voice that slid in under the door I kept barred. It made promises without speaking them.
“Tell me something true,” I said, because I needed the room to be more than choreography. “Not about the letter. Not about Stephen. About you.”
He’d asked me for truth once before. Now it was my turn, and I wasn’t letting him off the hook.
He lifted a brow. “What kind of true?”
“Any kind,” I said. “Surprise me.”
He cut a glance at the window, then back. “I don’t like boats.”
I snorted, too loud in a room that loved hush. “You bring me to a restaurant that hovers over the river and say that to my face?”
“My grandfather drowned,” he said simply. “River not ocean. It doesn’t matter. Water can keep a grudge.”
The words landed low. He’d said them like they weren’t a confession. My chest still tightened around them. I looked at the water, at the black-ribbed pilings, at the way the current ran hard even when the surface pretended calm.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it, not as a reflex but as a small, full thing I could hand him across a table.
He nodded once, as if acknowledging a toast. “Now you.”
I rolled the stem of my glass between my fingers. “People always ask if watching births makes me want to be the one doing it. If I ever get jealous.” I huffed a laugh. “Mostly I want the baby to breathe and the mother to feel seen. Want doesn’t look the way they think it should.”
His mouth curved. “And do you?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes I’m grateful it isn’t my body on the line. Both things can be true.”
We looked at each other in the thin quiet after that, and the honest, specific truths made something easier. The room softened. The air did not.
He poured more champagne. He fed me a sliver of fig and let his thumb drag, brief, over the inside of my wrist. My body jerked like he had crushed a nerve. He saw it. He catalogued it. He didn’t press.
“You’re thinking about the window,” he said.
“It’s a little hard not to when the restaurant is made of one,” I said, voice thin, trying to wrap humor around the need.
“You’re thinking about the other window,” he said.
I was. I hated him for knowing. The suite. The glass. My hands leaving prints. The city pretending not to stare. His hard body right behind me, barely touching, making me feral with not-enough.
“Eat,” he said again, gentle and unyielding. “Drink.”
I obeyed because my bones knew which orders were good for them.
The sun slid lower, then took its light with it. The bridge became a line of diamonds. The water turned the color of a bruise that would never quite fade. The candles on our table threw small circles that the glass threw back at us, multiplying flame until it felt like we were surrounded.
He didn’t talk much. He never did. He watched. He chose. He let silence do work. It should have made me feel small. It made me feel seen in a way that was worse and better than attention.
Our server came and went like a tide pool crab. Plates replaced other plates without clatter. After dinner, a dark chocolate torte landed in front of me with a small pile of sea-salt glitter and a smear of caramel that made my mouth water just to look at it.
“Eat all of that,” he said.
“I’ll regret eating all of that,” I said.
“You’ll regret not having it,” he said.
