Chapter 6: Mother Knows

He kissed me.

Slow at first.

Then not slow at all.

My back touched the cool mirror of the elevator wall.

His jacket slipped off one of my shoulders.

He didn't pull it back up.

He put his mouth on the bare skin there instead, and I heard myself make a sound I hadn't made in ten years of marriage.

The wine had soaked my dress through. It was cold and clinging, and his hands were hot on top of it.

One slid down my side to my hip and held on.

The other spread across the small of my back and pulled me off the mirror and into him.

I could feel every inch of him through the wet silk.

I didn't step back.

I grabbed his shirt in both fists and kissed him harder.

"Rebecca," he said against my throat, rough, like a warning.

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't be polite about it."

He laughed once, low, and his thumb found the edge of my neckline and traced it, slowly, all the way across.

My knees nearly went.

I forgot the wine.

I forgot the ballroom.

For a few seconds I forgot my own name.

Then the elevator chimed.

I put my hand flat on his chest.

He stopped at once.

"Not yet," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "I was married three weeks ago, Sebastian."

He rested his forehead against mine for a moment.

"Not yet," he repeated. "That isn't no."

"No. It isn't no."

The doors opened on the lobby.

He walked me to the car and put me in it and didn't get in.

On Monday morning my mother was in the lobby of Hale Tower.

I saw her from the escalator.

She was standing at the front desk in her camel coat, arguing with the receptionist.

She had a sheet of paper in her hand.

She slapped it down on the marble counter.

"I am her daughter," she was saying. "I am Evelyn Hale's only daughter. I want to see whoever is in charge."

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