Chapter 4: Crimson Provocations
The whisper of silk against her skin felt like a betrayal. The dress, a slip of crimson that Dylan had called “breathtaking” and that Jess now understood was a flag waved before a bull, seemed to tighten with every mile that brought them closer to the Abernathy estate. It was Saturday. Family dinner.
“You’re quiet,” Dylan said, his hand warm on her thigh. The setting sun turned the luxury sedan’s interior molten gold.
“Just thinking about that zoning report,” she lied easily. Her capacity for deception, she was discovering, was bottomless. “It’s a mess.”
He laughed, a light, unconcerned sound. “Leave it at the office, babe. Tonight is about wine and my mother’s obsessive perfectionism. Did I tell you she hired a new sommelier? Just for casual weekends at the house.”
Jess managed a smile. “Of course she did.”
The estate rose from manicured grounds, less a home than a proclamation. Ivy clung to Georgian brick like veins. Dylan’s ancestors, rendered in stern oils, watched them cross the marble foyer.
Eleanor awaited them in the drawing room. She was a study in neutral elegance—a cream sheath dress, a single strand of pearls, her hair a smooth platinum helmet. Her eyes, however, held a different temperature. They swept over Jess, from the tousled waves to the dangerous dip of the dress’s back, a slow inventory that felt physical.
“Jessica. That color is… audacious,” Eleanor said, air-kissing the space beside her cheek. “Dylan, darling, your father is boring Robert with golf statistics. Rescue him.”
When Dylan left, the room compressed. Eleanor didn’t move closer. She simply picked up her gin and tonic, the ice clicking a sharp, rhythmic threat. “I trust you’ve considered our last conversation.”
“There’s nothing to consider,” Jess said, her voice lower than she intended. “My answer is the same.”
“We’ll see.” Eleanor took a slow sip. “The dress suggests otherwise. It’s a message. I just wonder if you know what you’re saying.”
Dinner was a performance of normalcy so precise it felt deranged. Crystal gleamed. Silver clinked. Dylan and his father debated sustainable architecture. Throughout, Jess felt the unwavering focus of Eleanor’s gaze on the exposed skin of her back, a pinpoint of heat amidst the chill of the air conditioning.
During the lemon torte, a sliver of Jess’s shawl—a flimsy, beaded thing—slipped from her shoulder. Before she could adjust it, Eleanor was there, rising with fluid grace.
“Allow me,” Eleanor murmured, her voice sweet for the table. Her hands, cool and sure, settled on Jess’s shoulders. They didn’t just rearrange the fabric. The thumbs pressed down, finding the knotted tension beside her spine, massaging with an intimate, knowing pressure. It was a claim, disguised as courtesy. Jess stiffened, a flush rising up her neck.
“There,” Eleanor purred, her fingers trailing once, deliberately, down the naked dip of Jess’s spine before the shawl covered it. “All perfect.”
Dylan smiled, oblivious. “Thanks, Mom.”
Later, in the powder room—a cavern of pink marble and gilt mirrors—Jess splashed cold water on her wrists. Her reflection looked feverish, eyes too bright, the red of the dress like a wound against the pale stone. She was bracing herself to re-enter the fray when the door opened and closed with a soft, definitive click.
Eleanor leaned against it, blocking the exit.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Jess hissed, panic sharp in her throat.
“Doing what? Taking an interest in my future daughter-in-law?” Eleanor pushed off the door and advanced. The quiet click-clack of her heels on marble was the only sound. She stopped behind Jess, their eyes meeting in the mirror. One hand came to rest on Jess’s hip. The other lifted, and a single, manicured finger traced the length of Jess’s exposed backbone, from nape to waist.
Jess shuddered, trapped between the cold sink and Eleanor’s heat.
“Such a good girl,” Eleanor whispered, her breath disturbing the fine hairs at Jess’s temple. Her reflection in the mirror was a mask of cool amusement, belying the possessiveness of her touch. “Playing at wife. Sitting so dutifully. Listening to talk of carbon-neutral skyscrapers.” Her finger pressed into a specific vertebra, a point of remembered weakness. “It’s admirable. And such a waste.”
“Stop.”
“I recall a different version of you.” Eleanor’s hand slid from Jess’s hip to her abdomen, pulling her back flush against her. The embrace in the reflection was a perverse parody of intimacy. “A version who found rules… tedious. Who wanted only sensation. Who understood that some things are too sharp, too bright, to be safe.” Her lips were near Jess’s ear now. “Shall I remind you? Here, in this house of his? Shall I remind you how you screamed when you were bad?”
The word ‘bad’ unspooled a coil of memory so vivid it stole the air from the room. Not the sanitized regret she’d manufactured, but the raw, guilty truth: the blinding Capri sun, the taste of salt and expensive sunscreen, the helpless, unraveling sound she’d made, loud enough to worry about the neighbors. She hadn’t screamed in fear. She’d screamed in release.
A violent, choking sob escaped Jess. She twisted away, breaking the contact, stumbling against the sink. “Get out.”
Eleanor didn’t look offended. She looked satiated, as if she’d gotten the confirmation she needed. She calmly straightened a pearl on her necklace. “The performance is cracking, Jessica. The foundation is rotten. He’ll see it eventually. Or,” she said, moving to the door, “you can save him the heartbreaking discovery and end it yourself. Spare him the mess.”
She opened the door. The sounds of the house—muffled laughter, a piano sonata from a hidden speaker—flowed in. A bastion of normalcy.
“Take a moment,” Eleanor said, her voice once more the perfect hostess. “You look… overwhelmed.”
Then she was gone.
Jess gripped the edge of the marble sink, her knuckles white. She stared at her shattered reflection, the woman in the devastating red dress. Eleanor was right. The foundation was rotten. She couldn’t live inside this lie, a ghost haunting her own life, flinching at every touch, jumping at every family dinner.
But the alternative—losing Dylan, seeing the light in his trusting eyes extinguish—was a different kind of abyss.
She had to get out of this room. She had to go back to Dylan, smile, and finish the wine. The thought made her bones feel leaden. She fumbled in her clutch for her lipstick, her hands trembling violently. The tube rolled from her fingers, clattering across the floor, coming to rest against the toe of a man’s polished shoe.
Robert Abernathy stood in the doorway she hadn’t heard reopen. He bent, retrieving the lipstick with an old-world grace. His expression was unreadable, a careful, neutral mask. But his eyes, usually distant and kind, were acutely present. They held hers in the mirror for a beat too long, seeing the tear tracks she hadn’t yet wiped away, the panic still wild in her gaze.
“Everything all right, Jessica?” he asked, his voice a low rumble. He extended the lipstick, but made no move to enter. He simply held the space, his gaze sweeping from her ravaged face to the closed door behind him, the door Eleanor had just used.