Chapter 22: The Elevator

Tessa got to him first. “You been standing down there next to that car for an hour,” she said, pointing the curling iron at Julian’s chest like a switchblade. “I saw you from the window. An hour, in the rain, with the hazards on. Ricky thought you was a cop.”

“I was deciding,” Julian said.

“Deciding what? You got a whole penthouse, you can’t decide indoors like a person?”

Rachel undid the chain. She didn’t invite him in. She stood in the doorway in Tessa’s Yankees sweatpants with a brick in one hand and looked at him, really looked: the water dripping off his hair, the expensive shirt ruined, the fact that a man who had a driver and three umbrellas in his front closet had come up a Bronx stairwell that smelled like somebody’s sofrito with nothing.

“Somebody threw that through Tess’s window,” she said, and held up the brick, photo and all. “With my face keyed out.”

His eyes went to the picture and stayed there. His mouth went flat.

“Then you’re both coming.”

“I’m not going nowhere,” Tessa said. “This is my building. Ricky’s sleeping on the couch with a bat. Take her.” She turned to Rachel and dropped her voice to what she thought was a whisper. “Take him. Rach. Look at him. He’s wet like a dog, that’s love.”

“Tessa.”

“I’m just saying.”

Rachel set the brick on the radiator. She held out her hand to Julian, and when he started to take it, she turned it over so he could see the back. KTV9, in smudged eyeliner.

“Half a plate,” she said. “Gray Chrysler. It followed me from the train. I want to know who it belongs to, and I want to be the one who’s told. Not you deciding what I can handle.”

He took out his phone without a word, typed the four characters, and sent them. Then he showed her the screen: Owen. Delivered.

“Okay,” she said. “Now I’ll get my bag.”

* * *

His car was double-parked on Williamsbridge Road with the hazards ticking, a parking ticket already plastered to the windshield and going soft in the rain. He’d driven himself. She didn’t know he could.

They didn’t talk, not on the Bronx River Parkway, not on the Major Deegan, not even when the wipers squeaked on the dry part of the glass under the overpass and Rachel caught herself looking for Dottie’s spot, the shopping cart, the blue tarp. The heater blew warm on her ankles. Her duffel sat on her lap like a cat. Julian drove with both hands, ten and two, like somebody’s dad, and she wanted to make fun of him for it and couldn’t find the breath.

She thought about the terrace. About him stepping back. She’d spent two days telling herself he did it because she was the help, because he was embarrassed, because men like Julian Cross did not kiss women who used to wash up at a Gulf station.

She’d been wrong. He’d stepped back because he was the one who could have made her say yes. And he didn’t want a yes like that.

That was so much worse. She couldn’t even stay mad.

In the garage under the building, the attendant took one look at Julian and handed him a towel without being asked. Julian gave it to her.

* * *

The elevator was walnut and brass and smelled faintly like the lilies in the lobby. The doors closed. The number said G.

Forty-two floors. She’d timed it once, on her first week, bored and nosy. Fifty-one seconds.

Julian stood on his side. She stood on hers. Water dripped off his sleeve onto the carpet, one drop, two.

At eleven he spoke.

“I need to ask you something, and I need you to not answer it to be polite.”

“I’m never polite. Ask Mrs. Ruiz.”

“Do you want this.” He didn’t look at her when he said it. He looked at the numbers. Fourteen. Fifteen. “Whatever this is. I don’t mean the room or the lawyer. I mean me.”

Rachel thought about saying something smart. She had several lined up.

Instead she crossed the elevator and kissed him.

He made a sound against her mouth, low and surprised, like somebody had knocked the wind out of him, and then his hand came up and cupped her jaw. Careful. So careful, his thumb along her cheekbone like she was a glass he’d been told was expensive. She almost laughed. She’d slept on concrete. She’d been slapped in her own doorway. She was not going to break from a kiss.

So she showed him. She grabbed a fistful of his wet shirt and pulled, and he stopped being careful.

His back hit the brass rail. Her duffel hit the floor. He tasted like rain and the mint he kept in the car and something darker, and he kissed the way he did everything, completely, no wasted motion, like he’d been thinking about how for weeks. Maybe he had. His other hand found the small of her back under her damp sweatshirt, flat and warm, and the whole elevator went hot.

Thirty-one. Thirty-two.

“Rachel,” he said into her mouth.

“Don’t talk.”

“I’m not.”

“You just did.”

He laughed, actually laughed, his forehead dropping against hers, and that was the part that got her, more than the kiss.

Forty-one.

The elevator slowed with a soft little bump. She pulled back. Her lips felt swollen and her blood was going like the 4 train over Jerome.

“Wait,” she said.

He waited. Immediately. His hands lifted off her like she’d said fire.

“I need to know this isn’t…” She hated how small her voice got. “I don’t want to wake up and think I did this because you let me in out of the rain. Because I owe you. I’ve spent eleven years being grateful to a man. I’m not doing it again.”

The doors opened on the penthouse foyer. Neither of them moved.

“Then take the night,” Julian said. “Take as many as you want. I’m not going anywhere. It’s my apartment.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Partly.”

She picked up her duffel. He held the door with his arm, and his phone buzzed in his pocket, then buzzed again. He pulled it out, frowning, and the screen lit up right there under her nose, his arm close enough that she didn’t even have to lean.

Owen.

Partial plate belongs to a Westchester investigator. Dale Pruitt. Client billing goes to a Cross Dynamics expense code.