He leaned against the counter. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He watched her for a moment. “You really want to blow everything up over this.”
Carissa finally lifted her eyes. “You’ve been lying to people for ten years about who your wife is.”
“It was stupid. Fine. But it’s not worth ruining everything.”
“You already ruined everything.”
“No, I made a mistake.”
“A mistake,” she repeated. “Like buying the wrong wine. Like texting the wrong person. Not like putting your mistress in my place and asking for my blessing.”
Damen’s face tightened at the word mistress.
“Don’t call her that.”
Carissa held his gaze. “What would you prefer? Sister-wife? understudy? replacement model?”
He pushed away from the counter hard enough to rattle the fruit bowl. “You know what your problem is? You make everything uglier than it has to be.”
“No,” she said. “I remove the flattering lighting.”
He left before he could lose.
Men like Damen hated rooms where language belonged to someone else.
On the morning of the reunion, Chicago woke cold and bright. One of those cutting November Saturdays when the sky looks hard enough to crack and every tree seems ashamed of having trusted spring.
Carissa went to the salon.
Not because she needed to look beautiful for him.
Because beauty had been used against her for too long, and she had decided she would wear her version of it like a verdict.
Her hair was smoothed into soft dark waves that made her cheekbones look sharper. Her makeup was understated but precise. She chose a black silk dress with a high neckline and long sleeves, elegant in a way that suggested money without pleading for notice. The red lipstick came last. She stood in front of the mirror at home, fastening diamond studs she had bought herself after winning a major arbitration three years earlier, and watched her own face settle into something she had not seen in a long time.
Not hardness.
Authority.
Downstairs, Damen was already dressed.
Navy suit.
White shirt.
Tie slightly loosened because he imagined that made him look relaxed and successful.
He stared when she entered the room.
For one second, desire crossed his face so plainly it almost made her pity him. Here was the woman he had spent years diminishing, and now that she had stepped fully back into view, he looked at her as if he had just realized what kind of creature he had been insulting in captivity.
“You look…”