Chapter 51: Chapter 51
At 3:20 a.m., Laura opened her eyes in the middle of the room in the west wing, not knowing what had woken her.
The lights were still off. The suitcases were still on the floor, unopened. She was still fully dressed, shoes on, lying on top of the sheet she hadn’t bothered to move. The room smelled of an old perfume of Marcela’s, the kind that clings to the pillows in rooms that aren’t used.
Three seconds.
Then she heard it.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three sharp knocks on the door. Not loud. Measured. The kind a man makes when he’s been pacing the hallway for an hour, deciding whether or not to knock.
Laura didn’t move.
Four seconds.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Again. The same rhythm. The same weight. The same hand.
She recognized that tone. For forty-one days, she’d been learning to read Cavalier’s footsteps on the marble hallway, his breathing in the middle of the night, the knocks he made on the door of the transplant room when Vargas was inside examining him. She knew that tone better than her own.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
She took off her shoes.
She walked barefoot to the door. She stood on the inside for three seconds, her hand on the keyhole. Without speaking. Without asking who it was. Without saying a word.
Then she turned the key twice.
She opened the door.
Cavalier was standing in the hallway. Shirtless. Wearing only black pajama pants. The scar on his chest stood out against the light from the hallway lamp. His face looked tired. His hands hung at his sides.
She didn’t speak to him.
Neither did Laura.
Three seconds.
Cavalier took a step. He entered the room. Laura closed the door behind him. She locked it again with the key. Two turns.
“Cavalier.”
Cavalier covered her mouth with his right hand. Gently. Without pressure. Just resting his fingers on her lips.
“Laura.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“Don’t talk. Not tonight.”
Laura held his gaze for five seconds.
“Fine.”
She lowered his hand. She turned her back on him. She took two steps toward the bed. She took off her shirt. She threw it on the floor, on top of the unpacked suitcases. She took off her pants. On the floor, too.
She sat on the edge of the bed, in her underwear. She held his gaze from below.
Cavalier took two steps. He stood in front of her.
He grabbed the hair at the nape of her neck with his right hand. Not gently. Firmly. He pulled her head back two centimeters. He forced her to look at him closely.
“Laura.”
“Yes.”
“If you tell me to leave, I’ll leave. But I’m asking you to decide now.”
Laura grabbed the hand with which he was holding her hair. She squeezed it. But she didn’t pull it away.
“Stay.”
Cavalier kissed her on the mouth first. It wasn’t a kiss of reconciliation. It was one of those other kinds—the ones filled with rage inside that don’t know how to let it out without making a sound. He bit her lower lip. He grabbed her jaw with his other hand.
Laura dug her nails into his right shoulder. She left five scratches on his skin near the balcony railing. She pulled his hair. She bit his neck near his ear.
No words.
Cavalier threw her back onto the bed. He climbed on top of her. He pulled off her bra with one hand, without asking permission, without patience. He pulled down the rest of her clothes. Laura didn’t help him. Nor did she stop him.
They didn’t speak because there was nothing left to say that they hadn’t already shouted at each other at 11:10 in the morning in the studio. And everything else would hurt even more if spoken.
Cavalier grabbed both her hands. He crossed them over her head. He clamped them down with his left hand—the one from the balcony. He kissed her left breast, right over the scar from Elena’s transplant. But this time, not respectfully. He kissed the scar as if he were laying claim to it.
Laura closed her eyes.
She let him.
The sex was brief.
No tenderness. No slow moments. None of what had happened three nights earlier in the suite. This was something else. This was two wounded people confirming through their bodies that they hadn’t yet lost each other, even though they wanted to. Cavalier gripped her hip with his left hand, leaving a five-finger mark. Laura scratched his lower back. Her nails dug into a vertebra.
By the time he was done, Laura had already come twice without telling him. She was crying silently, without sobs, tears streaming down the sides of her eyes and wetting her hair against the pillow.
Cavalier pulled away. He lay down beside her, on his back, staring at the ceiling. Without touching her.
Laura turned to the other side. She turned her back to him.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
“Laura.”
“Cavalier.”
“I’m not going to apologize to you tonight.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t ask me for one either.”
—I wasn’t planning on asking.
—Fine.
Pause.
—Cavalier.
—Yes.
“This will continue tomorrow. It hasn’t been resolved.”
—I know.
—Okay.
—Okay?
—Good that you know that. Just in case you were confused.
—I wasn’t confused.
—Good.
Long pause.
And Laura, without turning around, without touching him, without saying another word, closed her eyes. Three minutes later, she was asleep.
Cavalier stayed awake.
Staring at the ceiling of the room in the west wing where he’d never slept before, in a bed that smelled of Marcela’s old perfume. With the woman who’d been trying for forty-one days to learn to love him, sleeping with her back to him thirty centimeters away, without ever letting him touch her hand after sex.
Jerk.
He’s a bastard. For spending the night at the Plaza without warning. For going down to the bar at eleven at night with rage boiling inside him. For letting Sofía Lansdowne run both her hands down his arm without pulling away the first second. For not answering the three calls. For deciding on twenty-four hours of silence without consulting her for even a second.
She’s a bastard, too. For letting Alex lock her office door without screaming. For not warning Patricio sooner. For not having a security guard on her office floor. For going up to Carla’s apartment last night without even sending her a text.
They’re both bastards.
And now, with a woman sleeping with her back turned, just thirty centimeters away—no forgiveness for either of those two bastards.
He let out a quiet sigh.
He turned onto his left side, slowly, so as not to wake her. He draped his arm over Laura’s torso, without touching her, just covering her. He watched her sleep.
And then, over Laura’s right shoulder, his eyes drifted to the nightstand.
The nightstand on the side of the bed where Laura was sleeping held three things. An empty glass of water. The key to the bedroom lock. And a paper pharmacy bag, folded in half.
Cavalier propped himself up on his elbow.
The bag had the logo of the pharmacy on the corner of Mount Sinai. The one on 102nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The one Laura had been using for twelve years because it was on her way between the hospital and the subway.
He reached out. He grabbed the bag.
Without opening it, just by its weight, he knew what was inside.
He opened it anyway.
Inside was a box. Unopened. Still sealed. Purchased that very morning, according to the receipt stuck to the side, at 9:42 a.m. on Friday.
Pregnancy test. Results in three minutes. Detects as early as the first day of a missed period.
A long pause.
Cavalier set the box down on the nightstand. He turned it face down. As if he could return the information to the paper bag and go back to the ceiling of the room at 4:10 a.m. without knowing anything.
But she already knew.
And she, according to the receipt’s date, suspected it too. But she hadn’t told him. Not him. Not Vargas. Not Carla.
She bought the test. She brought it to the mansion. She put it on the nightstand in the bedroom in the west wing. And she didn’t open it. She chose to fight with her husband first at eleven in the morning, leave the suite with two suitcases, sleep fully clothed in a room that wasn’t hers, and then sleep with him at twenty past three in the morning without opening the test.
Bastard.
Bitch.
Both of them are bastards.
Cavalier lay down on his left side again. Face up.
And at 4:20 a.m. on Saturday, with Elena Mendoza’s new heart beating faster than it had in the last forty-one days, he decided he wasn’t going to open that box without Laura.
But he also decided—without telling her, without telling anyone—that first thing Monday morning he was going to ask Vargas for a routine checkup for his wife.
And that he would be there when Vargas drew her blood.