by Teagan Kade
She’s gorgeous. I mean, I’ve seen her on my feeds, but in the flesh she blows it all out the window. She shares nothing of her father’s harsh facial features—only his smoky eyes.
“Dawn?” she says, looking up from a series of sketches.
I reach out to shake her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
She smiles at Max, looking confused. “Max. Hi. What are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” he says.
She rolls her eyes. “Why does everyone keep telling me that? Anyhow, like I said. I’m due on stage downtown at nine. She checks a rose gold Cartier Tank Americaine, a good ten-thousand dollars, “Which means we have seven hours. Is that enough time?”
I look around the studio. There are rolls of plush fabrics, top-grade sewing machines, cutting tables, style boards… It’s paradise. “I think so.”
Max makes his way over to a chair in the corner, picking up a copy of Vogue featuring none other than Lucy Barnes herself on the cover. “I’ll wait here.”
I look behind myself, catching sight of Viktor standing by the doorway. The reality of the situation starts to sink in. What if she doesn’t like the design? What if I can’t make it in time?
I clear my head. Think of it like a college assignment.
I look down at the table. “Are these your designs?”
She pushes them into two separate piles. “Mine on the left, Linda’s on the right. I was thinking of something in-between, maybe, but I’m pretty open to suggestion.”
Lucy’s designs aren’t great. Truth be told, they’re awful, but I can see what Linda was trying to get at. Ideas start to come, one in particular. It’s especially risky, but I think it could pay off. I have to take the chance.
I stand up from the table nodding. “Okay. Let’s start with your measurements.”
Lucy opens a drawer and fishes out a manila folder. I open it up and there they are in minute, exacting detail.
“I have them taken every week,” she says matter-of-factly. “Accounting for fluctuations in weight, temperature, and so on.”
I look them over. “O-kay.”
“Oh, they’re accurate. Don’t worry,” she enthuses.
“You’re pretty serious about this, huh?”
She spins around, eyes closed. “I know Daddy spoilt me by building this studio, but there’s a practical side to it, too. There’s wi-fi in here, no cameras. No one can smuggle out designs.”
Now I understand. “So you pay designers to come here and design your outfits?”
She shrugs. “It’s got everything they need.” And she’s not wrong.
I take a seat and a pen, shifting over a fresh sheet of paper. “Here’s what I’m thinking.”
Two hours in and I start to appreciate how tight this is going to be. Thankfully, Lucy is far from the diva I expected, helpful when needed, even if I’m not used to people looking over my shoulder while I work.
I can tell Max is nervous. He sits in the corner tapping his foot, flicking through the same copy of Elle over and over, his eyes darting up to check on progress every now and then.
Four o’clock arrives and I’m starting to get nervous myself. I start to cut the fabric, cursing myself for such an intricate design. I work as quickly as I can, but it’s going to be tight—no doubt about it.
An hour to go until her car arrives and Lucy disappears to do her makeup and hair, leaving Max and I alone. He lets me be, thank god. I don’t think I’ve ever worked as fast as I have in that last half an hour, literally doing the final stitch by hand.
Lucy returns and we have just enough time to get her into the dress, but it’s too tight around the thighs. I have to unpick the hem and start over, barely any time to double-check things before Lucy’s throwing it back on again.
Saul arrives at the same time Lucy looks at herself in the mirror.
“Baby,” he says, beaming. “You look incredible.”
He ignores Max and I completely. “Do you like it?”
She looks down to him, hands on her hips. “I do, but it’s up to my followers. I guess we’ll find out what they think when I take the stage.”
The pressure’s off a little, but it’s not over yet. Saul points between Max and I. “You two sit tight until her performance is over. Sit tight and start praying people like that dress.”
Chapter 25
Max
It’s hell. I’d rather be on death row in a six-by-nine than stuck in this oversized wardrobe. Dawn, on the other hand, seems to be in her element. While I sit there stewing she walks the rows of clothes, pulling the odd dress or jacket out from time to time, fingers playing with the material. How can she even smile so close to death? Is she that confident?
I have to admit, what she did here in the last few hours was a damn miracle. The way her fingers moved, the fabric passing between them, was magical. She was born for this. I promise myself she will have her dream, one way or another. I’m going to make it happen, whatever it takes.
I check my watch. It’s nine o’clock. Lucy will be on stage by now, but here at the apartment, it’s radio silence, only Viktor’s occasional sniffles to make the minutes pass.
“Dawn,” I call.
She comes out of one of the aisles. “Everything okay?”
“Sit.”
She sits on the chair beside me.
I lower my voice so Viktor can’t hear us. I hold her hands, marveling once more how delicate they are. “Whatever happens, I’m proud of you.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it. That dress was amazing.” I point outside. “If they don’t think so, they’re fucking screwed in the head.”
Dawn shrugs. “Fashion’s a fickle business.”
I smile. “You couldn’t have bet our lives on, I don’t know, something less subjective?”
“I told you. It will be okay. Have some faith.”
Faith. I haven’t stepped foot inside a church since I was six, and even then it was only to spit in the holy water. Maybe that’s where it all started, where my life started to take a turn for the gutter. I send up a silent prayer regardless, anything for one more night with this angel.
I hear footsteps. We both turn to find Saul storming in. He stops before us. I can’t get a fix on his emotional state. He’s got his cell in hand.
He shakes it at Dawn.
Fuck.
“Lucy just finished,” Saul says. “Let me read you some comments she forwarded me from her Quitter feed or whatever the fuck it’s called.” He clears his throat.
Please, god.
“BitchesGotBritches says, ‘That dress was dope, girl,’ which I think is a good thing.”
“Another, this one from Dexter23: Stunning, Lucy. Who’s the mystery designer?”
“Lynn Yaeger, who’s some kind of bigshot critic, said, ‘Forget Bruno Mars. Social hotshot Lucy Barnes stole the show with that incredible dress tonight.”
Saul swipes the screen. “And this, from Lucy herself.” He holds the cell up.
It’s a voice message from Lucy, hard to hear because of the background noise, but enough to make out. “Dawn!” she cries. “You’re a wizard. They love it. I love it. I love you! Consider yourself hired.”
Hired?
Saul pockets his cell, but he’s smiling. “Hired? You hear that. Girl’s got more business sense than I give her credit for.” He looks to Dawn. “You fucking did it, Dorothy. Luce is happy, and that makes me happy, so here’s what I’m going to do.”
I’m waiting for the catch.
He pauses a second before continuing. “The extra money? Forgotten… so long as you keep making Lucy happy.”
“You want me to keep making her dresses?” asks Dawn.
“Are you fucking deaf? You heard her.”
“And Max?”
Saul looks at me. “Up to him, but we’ve got no beef, do we, Max?”
“No, sir.”
And bam. It’s over. It’s finally fucking over.
My apartment’
s closer, so it seemed like the natural place to head to. I close the door, my hand on the knob still unable to believe we’ve come through this unscathed. Even more miraculous, I’ve come out of it with Dawn. She was worth all of it.
I sit beside her on the sofa and pull her into my lap.
We kiss, soft and hard, messy and emotional. It’s the kiss we’ve been waiting for, the kiss that cements our freedom.
She pulls back breathless. “That. Was. Incredible.”
I smile, playing with the bottom of her shirt. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “This still feels like a dream.”
“A wet dream?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She looks down at her crotch. “No penis and all that, remember?”
“Touché.”
She shifts in my lap, my cock concrete.
“You heard Lucy on the radio, right?” I say “She killed it out there tonight. Even the hosts commented on her dress.”
“They did, didn’t they?” Dawn replies.
Why wouldn’t they? Even I had to admit, basing the design on my sleeve tattoo was genius. I’ve never seen a dress like it.
“Like you missed that.”
She smiles. “Yeah, I don’t miss much, do I?”
“You’re the ‘mystery designer.’ Once your name’s out there you’ll be able to take your pick of clients.”
Her expression darkens slightly. “As long as they’re Lucy Barnes.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“Working for the Barnes family?”
“Trust me, even Saul answers to Lucy.”
Dawn runs her hand down the side of my face. “You know, I think I’ve lost track of how many times you’ve saved my life now.”
“Why don’t we call it even?”
“Because it’s anything but.”
“So, what’s my reward?”
Her hand snakes down to my crotch. “Whatever you want. Name it and it’s yours.”
But I want to savor this.
“You want a drink?” I ask, standing awkwardly thanks to my diamond-hard erection.
Dawn kneels backwards on the sofa, placing her chin on her hands.
The way her ass is hanging up in the air like that begs me to take it, but that can wait. I don’t intend to go anywhere tomorrow but between the sheets, between her legs, making her come over and over and over again until she can barely breathe.
“What have you got?” she asks.
I take two tumblers out of the cupboard. “Whiskey and whiskey.”
“Guess I’ll have whiskey then… again. But you know what I really want?” she says.
“What’s that?” I call back.
“A proper date.”
I smile from the kitchen. “Yeah, that would be great.”
I’m pouring out the finest whiskey I have when I notice the handwriting on the letter I pulled from the mailbox.
I place the bottle down and pick the letter up. It’s heavy. I run my finger under the seal, turn the envelope upside down. A set of keys falls out along with a small note and folded papers.
I read the note first, can’t help but smile, but the more I read through it, the more my expression grows into one of disbelief.
“What is it?” asks Dawn.
I look up at her. “Everything.”
“Fucking everything.”
Epilogue
Dawn
ONE YEAR LATER
“Have you got the music?” asks Noel.
“Crapola. I almost forgot.” I fish through my bag. I take out a CD and hand it over. “Who even uses these things anymore?”
Noel taps the casing. “New York show producers, apparently.”
Noel darts off to the back of the auditorium while I stand there surveying everything behind the scenes.
I take a breath, partly to remind myself this is real—my own fashion show.
“Hi, Dawn!” calls one of the models, dashing past me in a thong. Get that girl some crackers, stat, I think.
Noel sourced the models. In fact, she did most of the heavy lifting here. Even Max got involved, sorting security. I can’t believe it’s finally happening, after all we’ve been through.
I walk along the racks with my PA double-checking the dresses, but everything seems to be in order. She tells me people have started to gather in the foyer for canapes. “Even Anna Wintour is here,” she giggles excitedly.
I’m nervous-excited—the kind of nervous-excited where your bladder’s about a second away from redecorating the floor.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. I spin. “Lucy?”
She embraces me. “This looks great, Dawn. You’ve really made it.”
I hold her hands. “Thanks to you.”
She flicks her hair back. “Shut up. I had nothing to do with it.”
“By the way, I was sorry to hear about your dad.”
She squeezes my hands. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that.”
“I’ll go check on the guests,” my PA says, taking the hint and zipping off.
It’s been two weeks since Saul was gunned down outside the Red Velvet. They still don’t know who was responsible.
“Anyway,” says Lucy, letting go and looking around, “how are things going here?”
“It’s a little crazy,” I say, but I think Noel’s got things under control.”
Lucy looks past me. “Where is she?”
“Probably stock-piling all the champagne,” I laugh. “But no, she’s been great. I couldn’t have done it without her, and you.”
Lucy’s cell beeps. She pulls it out, scrolling through the message in one eye roll. “I’ve got to go, sorry. See you at the after party?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I watch Lucy go, thumbs tapping on the screen of her cell. The festival dress I made her skyrocketed my career. Finally, I had the recognition I deserved… even if I was technically working for Saul. For the first week or two, I expected to be taken away, shot, something, but I barely saw Saul again after that.
As for Max, his friend Sam in Vegas gave him the keys to his old gym along with the deeds to ten other properties dotted around the city. He gave Max literally everything he owned in his will, right down to his stuffed parrot, which always struck Max as kind of funny given how long it had been since they’d seen each other.
I never met Sam apart from our brief encounter at the cage fight, but Max tells me you wouldn’t have known he was loaded by the way he dressed or acted. He managed to keep his portfolio of properties a secret right up until his death, happy to hand them over to the neighborhood scallywag he remembered so well under the condition he hang onto the gym and make something of it.
Max was reluctant to go back to Vegas initially, given our run-in with Bobby, but he did, using his newly acquired windfall to buy me an apartment in New York and renovate the gym, naming it Sam’s in honor of the man who refused to let it go to the casino giants.
There was trouble, of course, people trying to muscle Max into selling, handing the gym over, but he wouldn’t do it. His roots in that neighborhood go deep. He had people watching his back, but still he wouldn’t let me come out to see him, deeming it too dangerous.
And then Bobby ‘The Nail’ Cervantes disappeared, just like that. Some say it was the Mexicans, others the Russians, but soon afterwards his empire descended into chaos. The great Cervantes crime family was no more.
It was during this lull in the power struggle for Vegas I finally boarded a plane back to the city of sin. Max showed me the gym. He was so proud. There was a framed picture of Sam on one wall, another of Max and his father below. I gave him hell about his bowl cut back then, to which he promptly pinched my ass, daring me to step into the ring.
Membership was free for locals, which meant the place was bustling with kids and youth skipping and sparring and pretending they were in Rocky V. I have to admit, it was impressi
ve—really impressive. I could tell Max was getting such a kick out of it, and although I missed him terribly, I knew this was right.
Some say a long-distance relationship is doomed, but we made it work, skipping back and forth when we had time, sexing ourselves silly before the inevitable countdown started over again. They were so passionate, those encounters. I was almost a little shocked at myself at the nymphomaniac I’d become after three weeks with only my iVibe to keep me company.
Max wasn’t the greatest at phone sex to begin with, but he came around. These days he can say one word and I’ll be insta-wet with anticipation, dreaming about his cock sliding into me again.
Noel wasn’t so easy. She was mad at me for months, refused to take my calls. I understood it, what I’d put her through, so when she did show up at my place one pastel-colored morning, I was surprised. She talked and I listened. I suppose we always knew we’d forgive each other eventually.
I explained the situation and introduced her to Lucy. You should have seen the look on Noel’s face when she stepped into Lucy’s studio for the first time—the dictionary definition of ‘kid in a candy store.’ Noel even had Lucy help her out with a collection, Lucy’s twenty-five-million Twitter followers ensuring it was an immediate sell-out.
Noel and I even made a collection together based on the tattoo design I used for the festival. I even used some of Max’s old sketches. It was another hit. Lucy said we should do a show together, happy to bankroll it, but Noel wanted it to be my show and mine alone. I campaigned bitterly against it, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s just the way she is, always thinking of others.
And voila, here I am.
My PA returns. I hear the music volume increase in the auditorium, hear the bustle and chatter of seats being filled.
I shake out my hands, breathe deep. Here we go.
Models start to line up, ready to take the stage.
My runway director holds up her hand, her fingers counting down in time with the digital clock to her left. She looks to me and winks, tapping the first model on the shoulder. “And go.”
