Page 6 of If You Stayed

“Is it that obvious?”

“It is,” she said. “You haven’t even changed out of your pajamas yet. And people are arriving—”

The doorbell rang.

I glanced at my watch.

“Oh shoot!” I yipped, leaping up from the bed. “I have to go get my dress on.”

“You’re lucky that Dad picks out all your clothes for you,” Ava said. “Otherwise, it would take you years to get ready.”

I kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you after dinner. I’ll have Lena send you up a plate.”

Lena was the chef that we’d used every weekday for the past few months. She was brilliant in the kitchen, and the one thing that wasn’t run by some high-tech program. Though, sometimes Lena seemed a littletooperfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a battery pack attached to her spine. Still, I was thankful for Lena during the dinner parties. Most of the time, I snuck into the kitchen to talk to her instead of Henry’s snobby friends.

Lena wasn’t only an amazing chef, but she’d also grown to becoming one of my closest friends. Her bubbly personality made her feel like sunbeams on a chilled evening. My favorite pastime was gossiping to her about how ridiculous the dinner guests always were.

“Can you tell her to add extra spaghetti sauce to my pasta?” Ava asked.

“Will do, but I’m sure she’s already aware.”

Ava Hughes was always an extra-sauce-and-dip girl.

A woman after my own heart.

***

“Where have you been?” Henry whispered as I walked down the steps to the grand dining room. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in for a gentle kiss to the cheek. He smelled like bourbon and cinnamon. The scent of the cologne wafted from his expensive gray suit. The apple-red dress he’d picked out for me paired perfectly with it. Though I would’ve loved to wear one of my original pieces. I’d spent much of my youth in the fashion industry, yet it had been a long time since I’d made pieces for myself and my husband. Henry said it was too on the nose to wear my own clothing line. Then he followed it up with saying he preferred well-known luxury designers.

What a charmer.

I couldn’t remember the last time I used a sewing machine, let alone sketched a design. I missed that part of me a little.

“I had to get changed into the dress.” I smiled at him, feeling his fingers dig a little too deeply into my side. He was irritated with my late arrival, but he wouldn’t complain in front of an audience. “How do I look?” I asked, pulling away from him.

“Late,” he replied with a cocky smile. He then gestured toward the room. “Go ahead and mingle. Freddrick’s wife, Wendy, was asking about you.”

I glanced around the room and put on a brave face. Arobotic machine holding a tray filled with champagne flutes scooted over to Henry and me, pausing right in front of us. “Mrs. Hughes, can I offer you champagne?” the robot asked.

“Thank you, Jacob,” I replied. I chose the champagne flute filled the highest. If I was going to make it through the night, I’d need to find a glass of champagne any chance I could get. I smoothed my hand over my slicked-back ponytail that had taken me way too long to straighten. My hair was normally tightly coiled and set at my shoulders, yet when I straightened it, it swept against my bra line. Mom always said my hair was drenched in our Black heritage, and each tight coil held the love of my ancestors who came before me.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t stand my hair, though the older I grew, the more I learned to love it. It defined me and my personality. When I looked in the mirror, I saw my mother and grandmother staring back at me. I only straightened my hair for the dinner parties because Henry requested it straight. He thought it looked more sophisticated that way. I argued with him once about it, but he never let me win a fight. Somehow, I always ended up being the one to apologize after his clever word-game skills.

Henry caught my hand and reeled me back in for a kiss. “You look remarkably beautiful, Kierra.”

His words dripped with sincerity in a way I didn’t expect. I tilted my head, a bit dazed and confused by the gentleness in his voice. For a split second, the butterflies that used to gather for him when we were younger came back in full swing. His eyes were full of such care that I almost teared up from thesensation they sent throughout my system.

My lips parted slightly, and I hesitated for a moment, wondering if he was speaking to me. “Thank you, Henry,” I replied, completely confused by the private compliment. I’d probably seemed as if I’d just witnessed a ghost. The ghost of my husband’s past when he truly used to love me.

That was until someone behind me cleared their throat and said, “It’s always nice to witness a man who cherishes his wife.”

My pounding heart? It slowed its pace. There had been nothing private about that sweet moment. Shame on me for getting big feelings from something that was nothing more than an act.

“Oh, you made it,” Henry exclaimed, shifting his stare to the person behind me. He then moved in closer to me and placed his hand back around my waist. He began to turn my body around as if I were one of his robots and gestured in front of me. “This is my brilliant wife, Kierra, and Kierra, this is Gabriel Sinclair, the outstanding man I was telling you about earlier.”

Did he say GabrielSinclair?

As my gaze rose to meet the guy in front of me, my heart malfunctioned. My mind turned into a puddle of mush as I stared into his eyes. Eyes that I’d known a littletoowell once upon a time.

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