CHAPTER THREE — ONLY FOR YOU (1)

LAYLA

Here is what nobody tells you about being publicly claimed by the most powerful man in America: absolutely nothing in your life improves in any way you can explain, and everything improves in ways you can't.

My rent got paid. Not by me. My studio got a mysterious new shipment of paints—the expensive kind, the kind you have to order from Italy and mortgage a small apartment for. My student-loan servicer called to inform me that a "scholarship" had been applied, which I had definitely not applied for.

And Mr. Whiskers—my ancient, judgmental, tumor-ridden cat—came home from the vet with a clean bill of health and a medical cone encrusted with what appeared to be cubic zirconia.

I stared at the cone for a full minute.

"Max," I said, very calmly. "Max. There are crystals on my cat's medical cone."

Max peered at it. "That's not crystals. That's diamonds. Girl, your cat has better drip than you."

"My cat is wearing a diamond cone. Someone paid for my cat's surgery and then accessorized it."

"Should I be jealous of the cat?"

I called the vet. The vet, in the careful voice of a man who had been paid a life-changing amount of money, said the surgery had been donated by an "anonymous patron" who had, and I quote, "requested the cone be made 'beautiful, because she worries, and I will make her laugh at the cone.'"

I sat with that for a while.

Then I started the mural.

The penthouse of Varga Tower was a cathedral of glass at the top of the sky, and my forty-foot canvas was a wall of light where I was painting Ember and Dawn—the girl made of fire—born large enough to swallow the city. It was the best commission of my life. It was also, I suspected, a very expensive way for a man to keep me within walking distance.

"Mr. Varga," I said, without turning around, on day three, "are you stalking me?"

"I commissioned the mural," Dorian's voice said from the doorway, "because I wanted to see you every day."

"Mmhmm. And the cat cone?"

"It was a medical necessity. The cone was—" He paused. "Aesthetic enhancement."

"You're insane."

"I have been called worse." He came closer, and the air changed the way it always did around him, electric and too warm. "How is the cat?"

"Vain. He'll never emotionally recover from being the most stylish cat in Queens." I turned, finally, to look at him, and my brush hand stopped. He was wearing a suit the color of dusk, and standing in the light of my painting, he looked less like a king and more like a man who'd forgotten what warmth felt like.

"You canceled a board meeting to watch me paint a wall," I said.

"I canceled a merger," he corrected. "The merger was replaceable."

"Everyone else is replaceable," I muttered. "She is my only exception. I know. It's on the internet. You broke the internet, by the way. 'Dorian Varga's mystery girl' has a fan account. It has forty thousand followers. My cat has more influence than me."

"Good," he said simply. "Then the internet knows what I know."

I couldn't think of a single thing to say to that, so I did the only sensible thing: I kept painting, and pretended my heart wasn't doing an interpretive dance in my chest.

· · ·

Day six, Max came to help me stretch a canvas, and he made me laugh the way only Max can—loud, unhinged, the laugh that sounds like a goose being murdered and brings tears to your eyes.

"He called me ma'am at the front desk," Max wheezed. "He asked if I was here to clean the—" and I laughed so hard I had to sit down, and Max laughed until he cried, and neither of us noticed the temperature drop.

The barista's latte had frosted over.

Dorian Varga stood in the doorway of the studio, arms crossed, watching Max make me laugh with the expression of a man who had just discovered that other men were allowed to do this.

"Miss Hayes," he said. "Leon. Please escort Mr.—" a pause, the pause of a man reading a name he wanted to delete from history, "—Max out of the building."

"His name is Max," I said. "He's my friend. He's gay, you dramatic—"

"Gay," Dorian repeated. His expression didn't change. The temperature dropped another degree.

"The grant," Max said suddenly, staring at his phone, "my residency grant. It just got—revoked. By a 'Varga Family Trust.' What the—Layla. Your inhuman boyfriend revoked my grant."

"He's not my—" I started, and then I turned to Dorian. "You did not just revoke my best friend's grant because he made me laugh."

"I did," Dorian said calmly. "It's reversible. Say the word and I'll un-revoke it."

"Un-revoke—you can't just—" I was so mad I laughed, which was the worst possible thing, because it meant the next part came out sounding fond. "You can't buy my friends out of my life, Mr. Varga."

"I can. I did." He said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "I'm sorry. It's the first time I've apologized for something I don't regret. Ask Leon."

"I don't need to ask Leon. I need you to fix Max's grant."

"Deal." He pulled out his phone, tapped twice, and Max's phone dinged with a notification that made him gasp. "Reinstated. With a bonus stipend." He looked at me, and something in his face went very soft. "I'll learn to share. Slowly. It's new for me."

"You're impossible."

"You've said that four times today," he said. "I'm keeping count."

Behind him, Leon appeared in the doorway, clearly having sprinted across the building for the entertainment.

"Boss," Leon said, "you just revoked a man's fellowship because she laughed at his joke. She's laughed at my jokes. You never revoked anything."

"I didn't make you laugh at anything," Dorian said. "You laughed at me."

"You're not wrong," Leon said cheerfully. "Miss Hayes, I want you to know: in nine hundred and seventy-four years, he has never once been this stupid. This is a historic day. I'm adding it to the document."

"What document?" I asked.

"The document of his jokes," Leon said. "It's one line long. Today it doubled."

· · ·

DORIAN

She stayed late that night. The city glowed below the glass, and she painted with her hair up and paint on her cheek, and I stood in the shadows and watched her, because I had discovered that watching her was better than anything I had felt in nine hundred and seventy-four years, which was the problem.

"Are you going to stand there brooding," she said, without turning around, "or are you going to tell me why you keep following me?"

I stepped into the light. "I'm not following you."

"You've been in this room for three hours."

"I own the building."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only reason I'm allowed to give you tonight."