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The elevator doors open and Ana heads straight in. She looks around at me—and for a moment her mask slips, and there it is: my pain reflected on her beautiful face.
No…. Ana. Don’t go.
“Good-bye, Christian.”
“Ana…good-bye.”
The doors close, and she’s gone.
I sink slowly to the floor and put my head in my hands. The void is now cavernous and aching, overwhelming me.
Grey, what the hell have you done?
WHEN I LOOK UP again, the paintings in my foyer, my Madonnas, bring a mirthless smile to my lips. The idealization of motherhood. All of them gazing at their infants, or staring inauspiciously down at me.
They’re right to look at me that way. She’s gone. She’s really gone. The best thing that ever happened to me. After she said she’d never leave. She promised me she’d never leave. I close my eyes, shutting out those lifeless, pitying stares, and tip my head back against the wall. Okay, she said it in her sleep—and like the fool I am, I believed her. I’ve always known deep down I was no good for her, and she was too good for me. This is how it should be.
Then why do I feel like shit? Why is this so painful?
The chime announcing the arrival of the elevator forces my eyes open again, and my heart leaps into my mouth. She’s back. I sit paralyzed, waiting, and the doors pull back—and Taylor steps out and momentarily freezes.
Hell. How long have I been sitting here?
“Miss Steele is home, Mr. Grey,” he says, as if he addresses me while I’m prostrate on the floor every day.
“How was she?” I ask, as dispassionately as I can, though I really want to know.
“Upset, sir,” he says, showing no emotion whatsoever.
I nod, dismissing him. But he doesn’t leave.
“Can I get you anything, sir?” he asks, much too kindly for my liking.
“No.” Go. Leave me alone.
“Sir,” he says, and he exits, leaving me slouched on the foyer floor.
Much as I’d like to sit here all day and wallow in my despair, I can’t. I want an update from Welch, and I need to call Leila’s poor excuse for a husband.
And I need a shower. Perhaps this agony will wash away in the shower.
As I stand I touch the wooden table that dominates the foyer, my fingers absentmindedly tracing its delicate marquetry. I’d have liked to fuck Miss Steele over this. I close my eyes, imagining her sprawled across this table, her head held back, chin up, mouth open in ecstasy, and her luscious hair pooling over the edge. Shit, it makes me hard just thinking about it.
Fuck.
The pain in my gut twists and tightens.
She’s gone, Grey. Get used to it.
And drawing on years of enforced control, I bring my body to heel.
THE SHOWER IS BLISTERING, the temperature just a notch below painful, the way I like it. I stand beneath the cascade, trying to forget her, hoping this heat will scorch her out of my head and wash her scent off my body.
If she’s going to leave, there’s no coming back.
Never.
I scrub my hair with grim determination.
Good riddance.
And I suck in a breath.
No. Not good riddance.
I raise my face to the streaming water. It’s not good riddance at all—I am going to miss her. I lean my forehead against the tiles. Just last night she was in here with me. I stare at my hands, my fingers caressing the line of grout in the tiles where only yesterday her hands were braced against the wall.
Fuck this.
Switching off the water, I step out of the shower cubicle. As I wrap a towel around my waist, it sinks in: each day will be darker and emptier, because she’s no longer in it.
No more facetious, witty e-mails.
No more of her smart mouth.
No more curiosity.
Her bright blue eyes will no longer regard me in thinly veiled amusement…or shock…or lust. I stare at the brooding morose jerk staring back at me in the bathroom mirror.
“What the hell have you done, asshole?” I sneer at him. He mouths the words back at me with vitriolic contempt. And the bastard blinks at me, big gray eyes raw with misery.
“She’s better off without you. You can’t be what she wants. You can’t give her what she needs. She wants hearts and flowers. She deserves better than you, you fucked-up prick.” Repulsed by the image glowering back at me, I turn away from the mirror.
To hell with shaving for today.
I dry off at my chest of drawers and grab some underwear and a clean T-shirt. As I turn I notice a small box on my pillow. The rug is pulled from under me again, revealing once more the abyss beneath, its jaws open, waiting for me, and my anger turns to fear.
It’s something from her. What would she give me? I drop my clothes and, taking a deep breath, sit on the bed and pick up the box.
It’s a glider. A model-making kit for a Blaník L23. A scribbled note falls from the top of the box and wafts onto the bed.
This reminded me of a happy time.
Thank you.
Ana
It’s the perfect present from the perfect girl.
Pain lances through me.
Why is this so painful? Why?
Some long-lost, ugly memory stirs, trying to sink its teeth into the here and now. No. That is not a place I want my mind to return to. I get up, tossing the box onto the bed, and dress hurriedly. When I’m finished I grab the box and the note and head for my study. I will handle this better from my seat of power.
MY CONVERSATION WITH WELCH is brief. My conversation with Russell Reed—the miserable lying bastard who married Leila—is briefer. I didn’t know that they’d wed during one drunken weekend in Vegas. No wonder their marriage failed after just eighteen months. She left him twelve weeks ago. So where are you now, Leila Williams? What have you been doing?