Chapter 12: Not Forgiveness

The old Hallworth atelier stood on a side street in the Garment District, five floors of brick with a workroom on the ground.

The apartment above it was where his father had slept when the company was small.

I climbed four flights of bare stairs at ten at night.

Light showed under the door.

I knocked once.

Corbin opened it in a gray T-shirt and old jeans, his feet bare, with a pencil behind his ear.

He had been drawing, and sketches lay all over the floor.

He looked at me as if I were something that might vanish.

"Roxie."

"I'm not here to forgive you."

"I wouldn't ask."

"Say it again anyway. The thing about the letter."

"I took seven years from you," he said. "I'd give anything to get them back, and I can't."

"No. You can't."

I stepped past him into the room.

It was one long space with a sagging bed, a drafting table and a window over the street.

I turned around and he was still standing in the doorway.

"Lock the door," I said.

He locked it.

"Come here."

He crossed the room slowly, and stopped an arm's length away.

"This isn't forgiveness," I said. "I want you to be very clear. I'm not taking you back. I'm taking this."

"Whatever you want."

"I want you on that bed."

At twenty-nine years old, I had never once taken what I wanted from him.

His breath went out of him.

He was thirty-three, and he did what I told him. He walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it, looking up at me, hands open on his knees.

I took off my coat and let it drop.

I took off my sweater slowly, and my bra.

I stood in the lamplight with my full breasts bare and my stomach soft.

He stared at me with his mouth parted.

"You're so beautiful," he said hoarsely. "God. Every inch."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Big Wife's Revenge: From Model to Queen from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.