The Tempting Series (Books 1-4) - Alex Lucian

THE TEMPTING SERIES TEMPTING • BEGUILING • PROVOCATIVE • ADDICTED

ALEX LUCIAN

CONTENTS About the erotic Tempting series TEMPTING Tempting Synopsis Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Acknowledgments BEGUILING Beguiling Synopsis Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12

Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Epilogue Acknowledgments PROVOCATIVE Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31

Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Epilogue Acknowledgments ADDICTED Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Epilogue Acknowledgments Other Books by Alex Lucian

The Tempting Series Box Set by Alex Lucian © 2017 by Alex Lucian All rights reserved. Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs Interior Designer: The Write Assistants No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

ABOUT THE EROTIC TEMPTING SERIES

Book One: Tempting (Part One) A romance between a college student named Adele and her hot professor, Nathan, that is much deeper than just the forbidden aspect of their relationship. Book Two: Beguiling (Standalone) A romance about Leo, the all-star quarterback, and his pain-in-the-ass, preacher’s daughter neighbor, Scarlet whose bucket list will make their summer fly by a little bit faster. Book Three: Provocative (Part Two)

The continuation and conclusion to Adele and Nathan’s tumultuous romance. Book Four: Addicted (Standalone) Elias, a man haunted by his beloved sister’s death, hires an escort named Ruby who is much more than she seems. You can find more info on all books by clicking here.

TEMPTING

© 2015 by Alex Lucian All rights reserved. Cover Designer: Najla Qamber, Najla Qamber Designs, www.najlaqamberdesigns.com/ Interior Designer: The Write Assistants, www.thewriteassistants.com Editing: M. Wiemer, Jon Perry No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

For Jamie, the greatest inspiration

TEMPTING SYNOPSIS

His body climbing over mine. My teeth biting his neck. His scent on my skin. My nails carving a path down his back. His commands whispered in my ear. All of my senses filled with him. I knew it was bad. But I craved more. It had begun innocently enough, bumping into one another in a crowded Boston bar. What followed that night had been anything but innocent. Because I'd known, even as he'd slid inside of me, that he was my professor. I'd pursued him, a predator stalking its prey. And he didn't know I was his student. But he would. *** Author's note: This isn't a jail bait student/teacher novel with a butterflies-inthe-belly kind of romance. The characters portrayed in this novel are consenting adults with functioning brains. If curse words, sex, and hard ass college professors with secrets offend you, move right along.

CHAPTER ONE

Professor Easton, Please bend me over your desk and fuck me until it hurts. Sincerely, Adele Morello ••• I stared at the email for several minutes, my cursor hovering over the “Send” button. And then I hit the backspace button and rewrote.

From: Adele Morello Date: Saturday, September 12, 2015 07:37 PM Subject: A plea To: Nathaniel Easton Professor Easton, Do you have any opportunities for extra credit? In looking over the course syllabus, I’m concerned I will struggle in some areas of this class and would like an opportunity to pre-emptively redeem myself. Sincerely, Adele Morello

••• Much better. Smiling to myself, I clicked “Send” and leaned back in my chair, taking care to not put too much pressure on my ass. The chair swiveled from side to side, squeaking with each twist. I tapped my fingers on the desk, waiting impatiently for his reply. Leaning my head back, I looked to my right, saw my bed, sheets rumpled and pillows scattered across the ground. If I closed my eyes and inhaled, I could still smell him. His hands gripping my hips, fingers biting into bone. His tongue circling my pierced nipple, an assault by his teeth. His grunts as he came inside me, eyes flashing above me in the dark. I could live on the memory of that night for a very long time. But frankly, I didn’t want to. I wanted a round two, three. Four. My phone chirped and I glanced at it, seeing the text from Leo. I ignored it. I felt a little bad that I hadn’t messaged him after my abrupt exit from the bar the night before. The exit that was thanks to one Professor Easton. I looked back at the computer, and when I saw a reply, I sat up straighter, immediately wincing at the quick bite of pain in my ass.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Saturday, September 12, 2015 07:41 PM Subject: Re: A plea To: Adele Morello Ms. Morello, I’m afraid extra credit requires more work for me, therefore it’s not something I typically offer. If you are implying you are incapable of doing the coursework that will be assigned, perhaps you should consider withdrawing from the class now. Your alternative is to hire a tutor. If you have the financial means to do so, I’d be happy to forward you a list of students who would have the time for you. Regards, Nathaniel Easton, EdD Professor - Creative Writing

••• Well. That was basically a big fuck off, Adele. Luckily, I wasn’t easily discouraged. After glancing at the bed again, my eyes fell over the only physical evidence I had that he’d been here. Who knew plastic and a little metal could be so important? He’d regret leaving them here.

From: Adele Morello Date: Saturday, September 12, 2015 07:42 PM Subject: Re: A plea To: Nathaniel Easton Professor Easton, Thank you for your prompt reply. I’ll make do. See you in class, Adele ••• I padded across the worn wooden floor to the bed, grabbed the pair of brownrimmed glasses he’d left behind. My fingertip caressed the gold emblem: the stacked Ms. I’d pulled them off of his shirt when he’d climbed over me, tossing them to the nightstand without either of us giving them a second glance. I knew the glasses cost more than two thousand dollars, so he would likely want them back. Opening the arms, I placed them on my face and turned my head to the full length mirror to my right. Bringing my thumb to my mouth, I chewed on my nail as I regarded my reflection. My hand came up to my mane of pale blonde hair, ruffling it around. And then I smiled, knowing Professor Nathaniel Easton hadn’t recognized the woman he’d gone home with the night before. The woman whose hair he’d held tight in his fist as he flipped her onto her stomach and slid into her from behind. The woman whose ass he had slapped like a man on the verge of losing himself, a man who had let down his guard long enough to show how deeply he needed release. How long had it been since he’d fucked like that? I tilted my head to the side and pushed my hair off my shoulder, exposing the line of love bites across my collarbone. One black-polished fingernail followed their bruising, relishing the way he’d completely consumed me in that bed.

We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, just saliva. There’d been no empty promises of seeing one another again. I’d followed his lead, and we’d fucked like only two strangers with wild abandon could. And best of all, he hadn’t realized I was his student. But he would.

CHAPTER TWO

The Night Before

“Adele!” Someone called my name and my head lifted, searching the crowded bar. I saw bodies moving against each other in a drunken dance, beers being tipped back, and in the middle of the chaos was my best friend, Leo, a glass of beer in each hand, arms above his head. He pushed and turned, maneuvering through the crowd with the ease he owed to being a six-foot-three, broad-shouldered quarterback. “Hey,” he said, breathless as he pushed a beer into my hand. Someone brushed by me, causing the beer to spill across my fingers. I moved the beer to my other hand and shook my wet hand. “Hey yourself,” I returned, bringing the beer to my lips. “What’s up with the costume?” His eyes roamed up and down and I followed his gaze, taking in what he was seeing. Skin-tight leggings, ripped up tank, leather jacket: all black. I wore my thick hair down and I was stacked on stilettos with heels narrow enough to pierce skin. “It’s not a costume.” I tucked my hand into the front pocket of my jacket and sipped my beer again. “It’s just a little different from my school clothes.” “I’d say. That’s some … uh, interesting eye makeup. Are you channeling Catwoman or something?” I rolled my eyes. My eyes searched the bar before coming back to Leo. “I’m just trying something new is all.” “Is this some kind of revenge ploy to burn Garrett?” I shuddered thinking of Garrett, of his slimy hands and slick words, lying to me about the rumors swirling around campus, lying all the way through the moment I found him with his pants down and some pretty blonde coed sucking him off. “She came on to me,” he’d said, as if that absolved him from any guilt. “Hell no, Leo. Come on. I don’t need to load on the eyeliner and slide on leather to make him hurt.” My eyes searched the bar again, seeing if I recognized anyone.

“Then who are you looking for?” Leo had caught me, not that I’d been very subtle. My eyes moved back to his and I narrowed them, shrugging, and sipped more beer. “Not sure yet.” I licked the foam from my upper lip and set the glass down. “So what’s new with you?” Leo leaned against the bar as I sat on the stool immediately next to him, the raucous voices around us requiring him to lean forward so I could hear his answer. “Darcy wants to cool things for a while.” I raised an eyebrow. “Cool things? Why? You guys just started going out.” He shrugged. “She thinks we’re moving too fast.” “Oh, puh-lease,” I groaned. Darcy was Leo’s first real girlfriend out of high school. They had only become official a few weeks ago, over a keg of Sam Adams graciously purchased by Leo’s fancy-pants CEO daddy. She’d trailed him and, by association, me all summer long, hanging over us like a cloud of sparkle and black ringlets. I’d bared my teeth to her a few times, flirted with Leo in front of her more often than I cared to admit, but she’d snuck through his defenses and latched on like an orange-tanned little leech. Leo raised his eyebrows and blew out a breath, seemingly as confused as me. “She’s worried I’ll distract her.” “You?” I asked incredulously. “She’s the one who showed up to your practice and screamed hysterically when you were sacked. She’s worried you’ll distract her?” I laughed. Long, loud. When Leo didn’t laugh along with me, I reached a hand forward and patted his shoulder. “Poor baby, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make fun, really. But you have to admit she’s a little bit over the top.” With a slight nod of his head, he peered down at his beer. “Yeah, okay. She did start washing and folding my boxer briefs when I wasn’t home. I don’t even fold them.” I laughed again. When he didn’t seem to join me still, I squeezed his shoulder and dropped my hand. “Come on, Leo. We’re twenty-one. Darcy isn’t the one you’ll imprison with a ring someday.” Looking around the bar, I said, “Let’s take your mind off of Darcy tonight.” It sounded more sexually suggestive than I’d meant, and Leo glanced up at me, brown eyes searching mine. “Get real, Madsen. Not ever.” I shook my head at him and finally earned a small lift of his lips. “Finish your beer and I’ll buy you some big boy shots.” By the third beer and second shot, my bladder was protesting against the compression of my leggings and I left Leo with some blonde he’d snagged on the way back to the table with round four. I did the need-to-pee dance all the way to the bathroom, the liquor causing me to fumble a few times, falling against the wall. After washing and drying my hands, I ran my fingers through my hair, tousling the slight waves I’d added to it, before reapplying my eyeliner and lip gloss. After I pushed through the door to exit the bathroom, I collided with a wall of heat.

I stumbled backward, a slide reel of my life flashing before my eyes, ending with a vision of my skyscraper heels taking me out, my brains splayed across the bathroom tile. “Whoa.” An arm wrapped around my waist, yanking me up and forward, my body colliding once again with the wall of warmth. My fingers clutched his chest, nails digging into leather. My eyelids slid open; my heartbeat slowed. I met his eyes. “Hey,” he said, in a voice that would have been a whisper were it not for the loud around us. “I got you.” I searched his face. Blue-green eyes, the color of a shallow tropical lake. Jet black hair, sticking up all over. A well-defined jaw line covered in a few weeks’ growth of black facial hair. Brown eye glasses hanging from the front of his cornflower blue shirt, right in the center of his leather jacket he wore open. I waited for him to say something. “You alright?” Not really what I was hoping for. I nodded my head a little more frantically than I’d intended, my blonde hair falling all over my face. I peered up at his eyes, looking for a spark of recognition, looking for anything that told me he recognized me. After staring at one another for several seconds, three things became immediately clear: 1. Professor Easton didn’t recognize me as his student. 2. Professor Easton was fucking hot. I’d only seen him from my seat in his class, yards and yards away. Being mere inches from him made my blood warm, my legs tingle. 3. I was still holding onto him and he was still holding on to me. I tilted my head, causing my hair to fall back over my shoulder. His eyes traveled to my exposed neck and stayed there for a beat, before returning to my eyes. “What’s your name?” I debated telling him a lie. I compromised, telling him a nickname instead. “Add.” “Add?” He raised one thick, well defined eyebrow. “Like Math?” “Yes.” It came out breathier than I wanted. “What’s yours?” “Nathan.” It was also a nickname, I knew, as my syllabus had listed one Nathaniel Easton. He didn’t look old enough to be a professor, but he had a solid ten years on me. “Hi, Nathan.” I licked my lips, coming away with gloss. “Wanna dance?” Nathan looked surprised. His lips opened as if he was going to instantly say no, but he hesitated. I wasn’t usually that bold, but with my all black costume and sex hair and Dr. Easton looking—let’s be honest—absolutely fucking mouth-watering

... well, I would have kicked myself in the ass with my pin needle heels if I hadn’t tried to take advantage of this cliché meet-cute. “Dance?” He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t shift his body to let me go. “I’m not much of a dancer.” He turned back to me, eyes roaming my face, trying to figure me out. “Mm,” I purred, my fingers slowly crawling up his chest, thumbs brushing in their wake. I looked up at him under my lashes. “It’s easy.” My hands clasped his shoulders, squeezing slightly, and I stepped closer, so we were stomach to stomach, my eyes inches from his; my mouth breathing his air. I tilted my head again, letting my hair fall to one side and brought my lips to his ear. “Move with me,” I said, lips brushing his lobe. I pulled back to meet his gaze as I dipped my hips, sliding along his body like water. His reluctance lasted only a moment before the arm around my back tightened, securing me more firmly against him. My entire body hummed, atoms coming alive at his touch. We moved away from the bathroom, toward the dance floor, arms and legs entwined and hips aligned. Nathan’s eyes didn’t stray from mine, holding me in place. The music roared, the speakers bouncing the bass all the way to our space on the middle of the dance floor. The song was a slower one, with a resounding beat. A song that exuded sex, a song that demanded we get so close that we tangled with one another. My face brushed against the stubble on his jawline a couple times, leaving a tingle across my cheeks. Images of his face between my legs, that hair scraping against my thighs, came vividly to the surface, making me ache. I wrapped one hand around his neck, lightly dug my nails into his skin, taking in his warm, spicy cologne. It was subtle, but enough to drive me mad. With my other hand, I explored: fingers along his jaw, hand in his hair, along the muscles of his shoulder. “What are we doing, Add?” He’d narrowed his eyes, and the lights danced across his face as we swayed from song to song, keeping our bodies close. “Dancing.” As another slower song came on, I turned around, bringing my back to his chest, my ass aligned with his crotch. I shivered, feeling his arousal hard against the thin fabric of my leggings. One of his arms came around my stomach, pulling me closer. My breath seized for a second, my own arousal a lightning jolt in between my legs. With his other hand, he moved my hair over one shoulder and brought his mouth down to my exposed neck. But he didn’t touch, just breathed there, warm air traveling up and down the column of my throat. My eyelids closed and my head fell back into him. I brought one arm up behind me, clasping his neck, while my other came around my stomach, linking my fingers with his. It was the most sexual dance I’d ever engaged in. I was bold, but so was he. With our fingers clasped together, his hand roamed up my stomach, coming to rest right under the curve of my breasts. Holy mother fuck.

It was almost as stimulating as if his hands had actually covered my breasts. And with that image, I felt my pussy clench down. Turning my head to him, I whispered loudly over the music, “Wanna get out of here?” He didn’t answer, simply turned me around and clasped my hand, pulling me through the crowd. I gave a thumbs-up to Leo as I passed him, the blonde curled up on his lap. When we hit the sidewalk and the clouds of cigarette smoke, Nathan pulled me down the street, the businesses long closed. The lack of light kept the sidewalks in a shroud of darkness. “Where are—” Before I could finish asking, he pushed me up against the brick wall and I saw a flash of heat in his eyes before his lips crashed on mine. He tasted warm, minty, like sin and heaven in one bite. I couldn’t help it; I groaned, long and deep. His lips nipped at mine and I parted them, allowing him access. Teeth and tongues clashed, his hands pinning mine above my head. I wasn’t a submissive type of girl but damn did his control turn me on. I wriggled my arms and when he let go of me, my hands dug into his hair as I leaned into him, licking along his lower lip before sucking it between my teeth. He pushed into me, his hips rubbing against me. “Fuck,” I groaned, dry humping him like a horny teenager. His hands gripped my hips and yanked my lower body against his as I leaned my upper back against the brick. My hands slid from his hair down his chest, inside his open jacket. Using my thumbnails, I drew a line down each side of his chest, biting through the fabric enough to bring him to a frenzy. Warm hands glided under my tank, over my stomach, up my ribcage. When they met the line of my bra, his fingers dug in just enough to bury themselves between my skin and my underwire. So close but not close enough. “Let’s go somewhere,” I whispered against his mouth, the hard length of his cock digging into my stomach. “My place is only two blocks away.” He seemed to war with himself on whether he wanted to pull away and lose this connection even if only momentarily, or if he wanted to try his luck right here, against the wall, hoping we didn’t get arrested for indecency. “Are you sure you want to do this?” He pulled back, too far for my liking. My breasts heaved as I caught my breath and I pinned him with a stare. Gripping onto the lapels of his leather jacket, I stepped closer to him, decreasing the distance he’d put between us. “Fuck. Yes.” “My two favorite words,” he said, before kissing me once more. “Lead the way.”

CHAPTER THREE

Monday morning, class. I arrived early to guarantee a good seat. Front row, dead center, a pair of Maybach glasses hanging from the center of my shirt. Students piled in, some still reeking of their weekend festivities: booze, sweat and smoke—of the legal and illegal variety. A classmate slid into the seat to my left, bringing with him a cloud of marijuana. He smiled at me, but I paid no attention, tapping the eraser side of my pencil on the blank paper in front of me. My eyes moved to the clock and back toward the door, waiting for Nathan to enter the room. I took in his clean white board, desk free of clutter, chair set perfectly center behind it. My phone pinged and I pulled it from my pocket.

Celeste: Are you coming home for Dad’s birthday this weekend?

I pursed my lips. Celeste, my sister and Dad’s favorite. She was sixteen years my senior, and about ten steps ahead of me in caring one iota about my absentee father.

Me: Unlikely.

I waited for her response, expecting her to be her usual bitchy self when it came to the matter of our dear father, a man who abandoned his youngest child, a daughter born sixteen years after his last one.

Celeste: Don’t be so selfish, Adele. Me: Tell that to dear old Dad on his birthday, won’t you?

I powered off my phone, feeling my blood bubbling just underneath the skin. It was no use; a powered-off phone wouldn’t stop Celeste’s barrage of messages. But it did turn off the echo of everything I’d done to disappoint her. The guy next to me coughed, a wet sound, and I barely contained the distasteful curl of my lips as I leaned away. The seat on my right was quickly filled by a female student who, unlike her fellow peers, had actually given a shit about her appearance today. Her hair was smooth, shiny, reflecting the fluorescents like a mirror. Her makeup carefully applied, her clothing form fitting. It was no surprise that Professor Easton had fans. After all, I was one. A big one. It was a running joke among the students that the shorter the skirt, the more likely for Dr. Easton to ignore you. He was known for being kind of a hard ass, expecting a lot from his students, not only in their classwork but in how they conducted themselves as well. I pulled out the copy of On Writing by Stephen King that had been listed in the course syllabus as required text just before the door opened and the noise in the room silenced. I didn’t lift my head, but I wanted to. I wanted to see if he recognized me. I was wearing jeans and a crisp white button-up blouse—both a departure from my outfit Friday night. But over the blouse I wore the leather jacket and capping my feet were fuck-me red heels. My hair was piled up in a bun. I looked like the Adele from class last week, nondescript apart from the leather, shoes and eyeglasses that cost more than my first car. He placed something on the desk, and I raised my eyes just slightly to make out his movements. He flipped open the flap of his messenger bag, pulling items from it and placing them with such control on the desk. His hands moved quickly, but not nervously, as if he had rehearsed these movements a hundred times. When he turned around, I lifted my head and watched him scrawl something across the board. There was a low murmur across the room as he wrote, the entire class paying attention to what he was writing. I found myself admiring not just the way his slacks fell off his hips, but the power he had over all of our attention. He wasn’t a man to ask for attention; his very presence demanded it. I closed my eyes briefly, as the flash of him thrusting above me, eyes piercing mine in the dark, infiltrated my concentration. The sound of something vibrating across a desk interrupted my thoughts and my eyes popped open, glancing to the left.

All eyes were on the female student two rows back, five seats down, as she hurriedly snapped up her phone and nearly dropped it in her frantic attempts to silence it. His voice was firm, strained. Goosebumps lit up my flesh when he spoke. “Do you need me to go over Student Responsibilities, Miss…?” The girl’s face fell, her brunette curls accentuating her pallor. “Ashley. Ashley McInerney. And n-no,” she stammered. “Apparently you do. Let me enlighten you.” I touched the glasses hanging on the front of my shirt, feeling like they brought me closer to the man I’d fucked on Friday night, the opposite of the man in front of me. “All students are expected to turn off their cell phones or set them on silent— not vibrate—during class. No laptop, cell phone, iPad, tablet, etc. use is permitted for the duration of class. This is a writing class. While your final assignments will be typed, you will not be doing any typing in my class.” Professor Easton walked around the room, slowly, completely sure of himself. “In my class you will be learning, as is your responsibility as my student. You are expected to conduct yourselves in an adult manner and if you are disruptive, you will be withdrawn.” He pinned Ashley with his gaze and she visibly shrunk deeper into her seat. “Now, let’s begin.” He walked over to the whiteboard, slammed his palm under the words he’d written.

Why are you here?

He turned his head, eyes scanning the crowd. His eyes passed over me quickly without a trace of recognition. It was if he was just glazing over us, not really focused on any of us in particular. He pushed away from the board and walked to one end of the room, his hands tucked into his fitted slacks. “Why are you here?” The student he asked looked around him, as if expecting the professor’s singular gaze to be focused on someone else. “Uh…” The student shrugged. “I needed an elective.” It was if all the air was sucked out of the room with his admission. Everyone sat still, waiting for the professor’s reaction. He rocked back on his heels, tilted his head so he looked at the ceiling a moment. And then he brought his head down and pointed a finger at the student. “At least you’re honest.” He walked further down the line, pointed to another student. “What’s your why?” Her answer came quicker, but her tone was less confident. “Because I want to be a writer.”

“No.” His answer was swift. “You don’t want to be a writer. You either are or you’re not. You don’t take my class and—” he held his hands, fingers balled into fists, in the air, “—POOF!” he opened his fists, “become a writer.” He shook his head and the girl visibly shrunk into her seat. “Why are you here?” he asked, moving down the line, steps closer to me. “Because my parents think I can write.” The professor paused with her answer. His eyes narrowed and he brought his finger to the bridge of his nose, made a slight movement. It was then that I realized what he was doing, something out of habit. Pushing his glasses further up. Except he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Because they were hanging from my shirt. Ten feet away. Four students away. He continued asking people as he moved down, but their answers were dull echoes in the room because all I could think about was the fact that he was coming closer and closer. The faintest scent of his aftershave hit me when he was two students away. I took a quiet breath in, inhaling his scent and the memories that came from it. And then I lifted my head just as the slacks came into my view. I stared up at him and watched as his face changed. From indifference to confusion to awareness, he stared at me for a beat longer than he’d stared at any of the other students. He turned his head to the left, giving me a view of his chiseled jaw and I watched as he clenched his teeth, the muscles around his mouth shifting, seemingly composing himself. His profile was strong, sturdy, and when his eyes turned back to mine they were devoid of everything. “Why am I here, Professor Easton?” I prompted, my voice soft. My hand came up to the glasses hanging in my shirt and I watched his eyes follow the movement. One eyebrow lifted in reaction and he flicked his eyes to mine again. “For you, of course.” My words were breathy and seemed to hold him still in my grasp. Leaning back in my chair, I tilted my head and said at a regular volume, “I heard you’re a good teacher.” My lips curved slightly, a wry smile beckoning. His eyes were twin storms of several kinds of frustration and I lifted my shoulders a half inch, the picture of nonchalance. The voices around us were murmured, no doubt people assuming I was just another desperate Professor Easton fangirl, eager for whatever sprinkles of attention he’d bestow upon me. He backed away, turned toward the board, erased the question and began the class as if nothing had been exchanged between us. But I caught him, more than once, glancing at me, to the glasses hooked on my shirt.

CHAPTER FOUR

Almost four years had passed like it was ten times that long. That’s the thing about death—you start measuring your days in a way you’d never done before. Like the fact that the first Tuesday of every October was when she and I would go to the farmer’s market and pick out pumpkins and those stupid fucking little gourds she liked to decorate the house with. But now, the first Tuesday of every October just made me want to punch something. I’d done it for three years when it came around, and I was slowly counting down the days until the fourth time it rolled past my calendar. Just one more day that got covered in a thick black x when it dragged to a close. The sluggish passing of time that never bothered me, because it was all I deserved. Until last week. I’d kept myself out of trouble. I’d refrained from any sort of empty release for almost that long, because if my wife couldn’t be around to breathe the same oxygen as me, then I shouldn’t be able to indulge myself in anything that might make me happy. Might make me forget. But walking down the hallway of a bar that I didn’t really want to be at, she’d ran into me, knocked into me with the subtlety of a rabid nuclear bomb, with her skintight black pants and fake black leather jacket and smirking lips made to drive a man down to his knees. The lips that I had no intention of ever seeing again. Because all I’d needed from her was the perfect moment of oblivion she’d given me; the way she’d let me use her and debase her and bruise her was exactly how I should have introduced my sorely neglected cock after so long of a celibacy. Never, not in a million years, had I expected to look up and see her. Maybe she’d always been hiding in the rows of blank faces that pretended to pay attention to me. Oh, the female students paid attention to me, they always had. Even when I’d had the bright gold ring wrapped around the third finger on my left hand. That had never mattered to them. But I took it off about a year ago, and the attention hadn’t wavered in the slightest, like they hadn’t noticed it in the first place. And at no point had any of them tempted me. Not when Ashley McInerney, the nitwit who could never manage to turn off her phone, had offered to blow me under my desk in order to get a passing grade; or when Bridgett whatever-her-name-was leaned over and shoved her admittedly

excellent cleavage in my face under the guise of handing me her essay. It hadn’t been the cleavage that clued me in her to offer. It had been the handwritten note slipped between the second and third pages with her phone number and the days her daddy would be out of town on it. None of them, not even the other four who’d practically laid themselves out on my desk, had given me even the slightest hesitation in kicking them out into the empty hallway. None of them had been worth losing my job over, or worse, desecrating the memory of Diana. But she, Add, if that was even her real name, stared back at me in a room full of people who had no clue that I knew exactly how her pussy tasted and how it clamped down like a vice when she came. That she liked a touch of pain with her pleasure, just like I did. And the worst part was that I couldn’t break her stare, like she’d shackled my eyes to hers so that they couldn’t stay away from hers for more than a few moments. The rest of class, I don’t even know what the hell I talked about, but nobody was giving me strange looks, so it must have made sense to them. When I told them to read a chapter from the King book and paraphrase it in a way that made sense with whatever work they had in progress, I went to my desk and sat, making sure my eyes stayed far, far away from that middle seat. But without lifting my gaze, I could see her foot swinging at an even tempo. Her shoes looked like torture devices, starkly incongruous from the sedate clothing she wore, the bright red spiked heel making a slow arc in the air as she kicked her foot back and forth, never breaking rhythm. I opened the flap of my messenger and pulled out the folder for this class, Creative Writing 201—Fall Semester 2015, and flipped to the student roster, following my pointer finger down the large list. What a fucking idiot, like she told you her real name. I ignored that sly, mocking voice in my own head and filtered through the names. Only a few were close, Adriane Whitfield, Adele Morello and Addison Brooks, though I’d met Addison once before, so I could rule her out. Filtering out the sounds of pages turning, pens scratching on paper and the occasional cough or whisper, I ran my finger over both names like it would somehow answer the question for me. Like the black ink on the white paper gave any clues as to which one had the same clawing hands and silk-soft skin and perfect tits, the way the right one had a ruby barbell piercing on it that I flicked with my tongue until she was keening beneath me. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I rubbed my forehead, banishing those memories to the far recesses of my mind. She didn’t seem like an Adriane Whitfield; that sounded too preppy, like a girl who was highly unlikely to sleep with her teacher. Giving the paper one last glance, I snapped my eyes up and she was looking straight at me, those moss green eyes lasered onto me in a way that tightened the skin on my scalp and damn it all to hell, made my cock twitch. Breaking her stare, I looked around to make sure nobody else

was looking, and they weren’t, thank God. “Okay, class. Anyone want to tell me what they can apply to their work in progress from the chapter you just read?” A few hands shot up, the same four that always did when I asked for volunteers, and I nodded my chin at the guy to my left, nodding when he mentioned something fairly insightful. With my mind only half paying attention to what a couple other people said, I looked down at my watch. Only five minutes left, and with her eyes burning through the skin on the side of my face, I dismissed the class. In my peripheral vision, I saw her slowly stand, making precisely drawn out movements to put her notebook back into a black leather messenger bag. “Miss Morello?” I said, holding my breath while I waited to see if I’d guessed correctly. She turned toward me, all polite expression on her face, but her eyes glowed with visible triumph. Then she pulled my glasses from where they hung on her shirt, biting one end so that the brown arm disappeared between her bee-stung lips, and walked toward me. When she approached my desk, I leaned back in my chair, and gave a pointed look at the glasses. Slowly pulling the tip from her mouth, Adele smirked when she tossed them onto a stack of papers. “Yes, Professor Easton?” Her voice. It was different today than it had been last weekend when she moaned and gasped into my ear. “Do you have a few moments after this to speak with me in my office?” “Why? Have I been a bad girl?” she whispered, then slicked her tongue over her bottom lip. “Knock it off,” I said just loud enough for her to hear me, keeping my face perfectly pleasant in case anyone was looking in my direction. It didn’t really matter, the room had all but emptied out. Nobody stayed late unless they needed to talk to me. Adele leaned a hip against the corner of my desk and rolled her eyes at me. “I’m just kidding, Nathan. And yes, I have time after this. I have a free hour after your class before my next one.” “You call me that again in this classroom, and I will kick your ass out without a second thought. Is that something I’m going to need to do?” Surprisingly she straightened, shaking her head. “No. That won’t be necessary.” “Good. Meet me in my office in ten minutes. Do you know where it is?” The smile that curved her lips made something sink in my stomach. “Of course I do.” Of course she did. I stood, all but dismissing her with the completely unamused look I gave her. It just made her smile grow. “Ten minutes, Miss Morello.” “Yes, Professor Easton,” she whispered and gave me a mock salute with two black polish-covered fingers. Adele sauntered away from my desk. Such a cliché word, such a trite description for the way she moved, loose-limbed and longlegged, her hips pivoting to the side with each movement.

Well shit. Now what the fuck was I going to do?

CHAPTER FIVE

The walk from the classroom building to my office was short, but the fact that I was keeping my eyes peeled for Adele the entire time made it feel eight times longer. September was the busiest time on campus, all the students still high on the social aspect of starting a new semester, none of the pressures of midterms or finals having started yet. I dodged someone on a scooter, and glared at him when he just shrugged his shoulder at me. Occasionally, there were days when I wondered why I put up with the bullshit at a state university when we were close enough to many of the Ivy League schools on the east coast. The true intellectuals went there, for looming, greenery-covered brick buildings and history so deeply embedded that you could fairly smell it just walking on the grounds. But Eastons were just as embedded in Northern University, my father still serving on the board after retiring as a professor in the business program, so it wasn’t as if I really had a choice. He already thought I was a fuck-up, majoring and teaching in the arts, rather than something that garnered respect. And then Diana, well … that had only served as more ammunition. When your son basically kills his own wife, he isn’t much to brag about. “You’re late.” My head snapped up as I rounded the corner to my office. Adele was leaning up against the wall just next to my office door, only her back touching the surface behind her. The way her lower body stuck out a bit looked horribly uncomfortable, but I knew exactly why she was doing it, jutting her hips out like that. Because it’s how I’d almost fucked her up against the wall in the alley outside the bar. I flicked a glance at my watch and raised an eyebrow at her while I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “Actually, I’m not. You’re early, which is an entirely different issue. When I said ten minutes, I meant it.” Pulling the key from the doorknob, I pushed open the door and gestured Adele ahead of me. For a second, she just stared at me, her eyes roaming my face. “You’re now cutting into the ten minutes, Miss Morello, and I don’t do well with people wasting my time.”

With a sigh, she pushed off the wall and brushed past me, much closer than was necessary. I managed to hold my breath, so as not to inhale any of her scent. I’d done enough of that the other night, when I’d licked up the side of her neck. Walking into my small, cramped office, I didn’t give her another look until I’d made my way to the other side of my massive desk. She hadn’t sat in either of the chairs opposite from me, instead she kept her hands braced on the back of the one closest to the door. In no way was that particular position an accident, because it made her white shirt gap in a way that I could see straight into her cleavage. Far enough down, in fact, that with one quick glance I could see the black lace edges. Same bra. Of course she was wearing the same bra. “Miss Morello, please take a seat,” I said, sounding exactly as annoyed as I felt. The sharp curve of her chin lifted a fraction, and she narrowed her green eyes in a way that I’m sure she thought was playful. All it did was ratchet my annoyance into surging anger at the fact that I was even in this fucking mess to begin with. All because I got into the wrong woman’s pants. “I think I’m more comfortable standing, actually.” “Suit yourself, I’ll make sure this doesn’t take too long.” “Well, that’s a change from the other night.” Bracing my folded hands on my desk, I leaned forward and met her gaze. “I’m not sure if you thought I was joking earlier about kicking you out of my class. I assure you that I’m not.” Adele lifted both hands in mock surrender, then made a motion across her lips like she was locking a key. It was almost humorous, because we both knew—myself with startling, vivid memories—that Adele was not quiet. “Thank you,” I said with a nod and settled back in my chair again. “Obviously I had no idea who you were last week. I don’t make a habit of frequenting that bar, or any other for that matter, and I certainly don’t make a habit of…” she lifted an eyebrow when I cleared my throat, “fraternizing with students. My point is that I’ll give you my word that one night will in no way affect my ability to treat you fairly as a student. I’ll forget it ever happened if you can do the same.” What her reaction would be to that, I hadn’t really given much thought to, because it wasn’t a speech I was making for her benefit. I meant it. Adele Morello was one blip during the course of the last few years. I wasn’t willing to let her, and the few explosive hours we shared together, hold any level of importance over my life. She was young, probably twenty or twenty-one, and she’d find another diversion quickly enough. Suffice it to say, I was mildly surprised when her reaction wasn’t to smile and nod, or make some cheeky comment. Oh no, she stared at me like she was trying to siphon my soul out of my body, and then turned in a smooth circle to quietly close and lock my office door. Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck. She was one of those girls, one that any sort of challenge would be as good as

waving the proverbial scarlet flag in front of the bull. And the look in her eyes when she turned back to face me? I was fucked. Literally, if it was up to her, judging by the way she raked her gaze over my upper body. “Unlock the door, Miss Morello.” She hummed, drawing the tip of one finger around the top button of her shirt. “Unlock the door,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes trained on her face. “Now.” “No,” she said simply, unhooking the button and using her finger to pull aside the white cotton and trace circles on the newly exposed skin. I rubbed at my forehead, the only sign of weariness I would allow her to see, then dragged the hand down my face, holding it over my mouth for a moment while I looked at her. “This isn’t a game.” Still, she didn’t move from her perch in front of the door. Her face softened a touch when I said that, but the resolve in her eyes never wavered. Finally I stood, praying to anyone that would listen that I wouldn’t have to physically remove her from my office. But no matter how well I knew my hands fit on her body—on some really excellent parts, too—she was not worth my job. I came to a stop just in front of her, motioning for her to step aside. She moved all right, stepping up against me and smoothing her hands up my chest. I grabbed her wrists to halt their movement, stupidly not taking them off me altogether. “I don’t think it’s a game either,” she whispered, lifting up onto the balls of her feet so her mouth angled toward mine. I moved my head back when she came close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted and tightened at her proximity, and I felt horribly powerless at the memories that assaulted me from the last time we’d been this close, the way she’d clutched at my skin with her hands. “In fact, I’m being perfectly serious when I tell you that I couldn’t forget that night even if I wanted to. The way you felt inside me, the bruises that you left me with.” I closed my eyes, tightening the grip on her fragile wrists, wishing I could shove bricks in my ears just so I wouldn’t have to hear those words, feel what they did to me. Adele felt my hesitation and tipped her face forward so she could brush her lips against the corner of my jaw. The soft touch of her lips snapped me into the present and I shoved her far enough away from me so that I could unlock the door and open it. Thank God the hallway was quiet. She was staring down at the front of my pants with a sly smile on her face. Come on, any man would be hard after that. With a careless shrug, Adele slipped her bag over her shoulder and then closed up the button she’d undone earlier. “See you in class, Professor Easton.” And then she was gone.

CHAPTER SIX

I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t let me kiss him. Three days later and I was still hung up on the fact that he’d all but shoved me out of his office and slammed the door in my face. I knew I hadn’t misread his clear attraction to me the Friday night before, and even as he told me to leave his office on Monday, there was no mistaking the bulge in his pants. I plopped into my favorite seat of the campus coffee shop I worked at: in the back corner, away from the number of fuckwads who decided the shop was the perfect place to show off their pathetic attempts at flirting. In the back I was almost completely obscured by the napkin dispensers and therefore often left alone. After I popped in earbuds and cranked up my study music, I settled into my seat, pen on paper. Loud, pulsing beats vibrated my cartilage and I paused every once in a while to absently thump my pen onto the paper, catching myself tapping my feet too. I worked for maybe ten minutes before my thoughts strayed to Nathan. Which was how my entire week had been; intense concentration broken by a thought of him. I was particularly thrilled to find how focused and assertive he was as a professor, much like how he’d been in my bed, throwing me down, flipping me over; making what I expected to be a quick romp in the sheets more of an Olympic affair. And as far as my sexual history went, he most definitely won the gold medal in orgasms. And a world record in taking them from me in quick succession. My table shifted and a bag fell onto it, interrupting me from my thoughts. I looked up into Leo’s face as he shrugged off his jacket and set it on the back of the chair opposite me. I tugged on an earbud. Pointing a finger at me, he asked, “Want a pumpkin latte?” I made a face. “Gross. No.” Grinning, he walked around to the counter. I heard the distinct giggles of one of the baristas, having fallen victim to Leo’s flirting. That was his power: his charisma. He used his charms to smoothly talk his way through any sticky situation. It was why we got along strictly as friends, because I possessed the same

power, but I wielded mine with my tongue and not just with words, but with action, too. My phone vibrated across the table and I picked it up.

Celeste: Mom would like you to come home for Dad’s birthday.

I took in a deep breath, willing my mother’s nagging voice away from my head.

Me: Well, I’m not. I have school work to catch up on. Celeste: Already falling behind?

I imagined her saying that, her blonde hair delicately curled to rest upon her shoulders, her green eyes, echoes of mine, narrowed on me with a snide smile spreading her paper thin lips. And the visual was so close to reality that I shook it from my head and turned my phone on silent. Rolling my eyes, I moved my eyes back to the paper, wholly uninspired. My eyes caught on the doodle I’d drawn during class. It was just a small sketch on the upper corner of my paper; a loose white blouse with taut lines from the weight of the eyeglasses that hung from the opening. I may or may not have embellished with the cleavage above it, not that I needed to. Leo returned and unceremoniously deposited a cup in front of me, sending droplets spilling out of the mouth opening and over my notebook. “What’s that?” I asked, eyes flicking from the cup to him as I rubbed the mess on my papers. Leo leaned back in his seat, shrugged. “Try it.” I ran my tongue over my teeth as I mulled it over before taking a tentative sip. Instantly, a spoonful of liquid sugar hit my tongue and I made a face. “What the fuck, Leo?” “Salted caramel hot chocolate.” He shook his head. “Girls like that stuff!” he exclaimed, pulling the offending beverage from my hand. “Not this girl.” I turned my face back to my paper and found myself tapping along again to the beat that came from the lone earbud still in my other ear. “True that.” He drank from the cup he’d given me. “You’re right, this is sickly sweet.” Teasing him, I said, “Like your girlfriend … what’s her name? Darlene?” I waved a hand at the cup. “I bet she’d like that liquid poison.”

“Darcy,” he corrected. “And she’s not my girlfriend, remember? We’re on a break.” I snorted, flipped a page in my textbook. “Oh, that’s right. Who’s the tits-withlegs I saw you with Friday night? Darcy two-point-oh?” “She’s no one,” Leo said flippantly. I gave him a look, the don’t-treat-womenlike-they’re-a-drive-thru look. In and out, that was the Leo way. It was another reason we worked as just friends: because I would never take him seriously. He sighed, losing some of the gloat he’d come in with. “She didn’t give me her number,” he said. I resisted laughing, just barely. Leo seemed actually hurt by it. “She rubbed her body on me for hours, went to the bathroom and never came back. And I sat there like a little bitch, nursing my beers thinking she was coming back.” “Aw.” I reached a hand across the table and rubbed his arm. “Cheer up, pumpkin. There are other fish in the sea, or whatever that nonsense is.” I flipped another page in the textbook, knowing studying was futile but giving it a shot anyways. “What about you? Who was that guy you left with?” My eyes didn’t lift from the page, but my body stilled. “Some guy.” Not lying. “I didn’t get his number, either.” It still stung a bit, knowing he’d left me without making plans to see me again. Which I knew was the reason I wasn’t letting him off the hook easily. That and the fact that I liked to watch him squirm. “You were practically eating his face.” Leo pulled a textbook from his bag and dropped it on the table. My pen rolled off the table and Leo bent down to get it. “Are you going to the party this weekend?” he asked flopping the pen on my notebook, splattering ink everywhere. “Damn it, Leo. Can you do anything gently?” I looked at my ink splattered paper, noting with swift disappointment the droplet that had smeared across my sketch. “What party?” I asked with little interest. I thought of my father’s birthday and felt like celebrating at a party, even when he wasn’t in attendance, was decidedly something I did not want to do. “Delta Whatever-Their-Name-Is. The place where you puked in the refrigerator.” “Ah,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sure they’re eager for me to be in attendance.” I turned back to the ink-splattered page in front of me and frowned. “I’ll pass, thanks.” “Come on, Add. Let’s go out. We haven’t gone out in forever.” Roughly, I flipped to a clean page in my notebook. “Forever as in six days ago?” Leo placed a large, tanned hand on my own, halting me from further movement. “That doesn’t count; we danced with other people and only saw each other for five minutes.” “I’ll think about it,” I conceded, shaking his hand off of mine. “But if—and I mean if—I go, you’re not letting me do Jell-O shots again.” “Come on, babe. You’re a wild animal; ain’t no taming you when your heart is set on something.”

Why did that thought make me think of Nathan? Certainly, I couldn’t deny my thoughts for him weren’t primal in a way that was alarming. I didn’t jump from man to man, I left them when I was done with them, when they were worn out and still wanting. That was what women wanted, right? To leave a man wanting more? So why hadn’t Nathan wanted more?

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next day, Friday, I took careful consideration regarding how I dressed. And as I took in my reflection, I felt sure that I’d capture Nathan’s attention once again. I wore my long blonde hair over my left shoulder, with a tight French braid on the right side, just enough to keep the hair from covering my face on that side. Paired with my black eyeliner and red lips, I felt edgy, as if my look was transforming my attitude too. I wore the tight pants from the Friday before, the ones with little zips from the back of my heels up to my calves. The tank top was new, purchased thanks to Wednesday night’s tips at the cafe, a little black fishnet number. I wore it over a red cami and shrugged on my leather jacket right before I climbed into the red heels that I’d worn on Monday. As I adjusted the lapels of the jacket, I wished it was real leather. I thought of Nathan’s eyeglasses, the ones that cost several month’s rent. And for a brief moment, I doubted myself. Did Nathan see our little interlude as slumming it? With my fake blonde hair, fake leather, and heavy eye makeup, did he see me as someone only as deep as their top layer of skin? I shrugged aside the unwelcome thoughts as I grabbed my messenger bag and took the steps from my fourth floor walk-up to the street. The apartment would be a royal pain in the ass in the winter, when the steps were covered in ice and the railing too frozen to hold comfortably. But it was mine: all mine. No annoying roommates to accuse of stealing my clothes or to argue with over groceries. Sure, I was broke most of the time and my fridge was so empty that nothing ever had the opportunity to go moldy. These were the things people took for granted: that they had so much food that some of it grew mold from being uneaten. With the change I’d scrounged up in my couch cushions, I splurged on a coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts on my way to the T, relishing in its commercialism and honesty, something that the college cafe snubbed its nose at. They could keep their French Vanilla and Pumpkin Spice fraps with extra pumps of garbage and a swirled mess of heart attack whipped cream; give me a black coffee with a hint of burnt beans and I was happy.

When I arrived on campus, I was ten minutes early for class. It was kind of my thing, being early. Early for class, for interviews, for meetings. Years of having a father who was late for everything important, or worse—absent, had conditioned me to prove myself accountable. I slid into the seat I’d occupied on Monday, placing my books and pen just so, as the classroom started filling up. The guy who’d sat next to me Monday resumed his place beside me and I leaned my body away just enough to make it clear that I was in no way interested in engaging in conversation. When the door opened and Nathan walked in, it was as if my body responded to static electricity, all the hair standing up on end. It wasn’t fair that I’d put so much effort into how I looked and he put what was obviously very little and still looked good enough to eat. He wore dark gray slacks with a midnight blue dress shirt tucked in. The belt was black and his shoes were a dark gray and his hair—his fucking hair—looked as if he’d just been thoroughly mauled. He didn’t look at me, not once. Not as he meticulously placed his books and folders and pens on his desk, straightening all of them. Not as he looked around the room and asked discussion questions on our assignment that week. Not even as I’d shrugged off the leather jacket, exposing more of the fishnet tank, crossing my legs in the process. Not once, for the entire class. I was baffled. I didn’t know what game he was playing. Was he ignoring me on purpose, hoping to get a rise out of me? If so, he’d succeeded. Was he completely uninterested in me? Whatever self-conscious thoughts I’d had earlier, I knew he wasn’t uninterested. I’d seen his arousal plain as day, tenting the front of his pants on Monday. After class, Nathan had packed up his things and walked directly out the door, not hesitating even a second. As I roughly shoved my own books into my bag, the student next to me leaned over, giving me a hearty dose of aftershave to inhale, and said, “You going to the party this weekend?” I glanced over at him, taking in his features for the first time. Short blonde hair, beady black eyes, and sweat forming tiny trails of wet along his face. “No,” I answered, not caring to find out which party he was referring to. Hours later, as I sat at my desk and stared at my computer screen, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nathan was ignoring me on purpose. But why? Did he think it would lessen my attraction to him? Given my history, it should have. I was used to being wanted. And Nathan didn’t seem to want me. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal, that I could always revisit the bar we’d met at the Friday before and catch someone new. But I didn’t want someone new. I wanted him. I knew, even as I typed it, that it was a really, really bad idea. But because I couldn’t come up with the exact reasons why it was a bad idea, I composed the email anyway.

From: Adele Morello Date: Friday, September 18, 2015 08:13 PM Subject: Friday To: Nathaniel Easton As I sit here, at home, on a Friday night, with nothing to do … I’m thinking… Have you reconsidered my request for extra credit? Sincerely, Adele Morello ••• I ran my finger over my lips, feeling pleased with myself, and waited for his response. Except, it didn’t come. Not right away, at least, as his reply the Saturday before had. I waited a full twenty minutes, feeling increasingly crazy, when I decided to fix a bowl of cereal for dinner. I carried the laptop to the kitchen and set it down on the tiny bistro set near the dishwasher. The building I lived in was old enough that it couldn’t be called modern by any stretch of the imagination. The dishwasher was portable, and needed to be rolled across the kitchen to be manually screwed into the faucet whenever I wanted to run it. But because I was the clichéd broke college student, I only had two sets of dishes and used the dishwasher for storage more than actual cleaning. As I poured the cereal, I peeked over my shoulder at the computer and saw a popup notice. I barely restrained the swear word that curved my lips as I saw the No Internet notice at the bottom. The shitty part about living on your own was that you had to, you know, pay your own bills. I couldn’t afford internet on top of everything else, so I borrowed the signal from the neighbor next door, but the signal couldn’t be reached past my bedroom, which was why I frequented the library and cafe when I needed consistent internet. With my cereal in tow and my laptop in my other hand, I returned to my bedroom and opened the laptop up, popping the spoon in my mouth as my computer reconnected and refreshed my email. Just as I was loading up my second spoonful of Frosted Flakes, a message came into my inbox.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Friday, September 18, 2015 08:54 PM Subject: Re: Friday To: Adele Morello Miss Morello, I thought I made myself clear in my earlier communications with you. The answer is no. Regards, Nathaniel Easton, EdD Professor - Creative Writing ••• Dick. My eyes narrowed, not missing his double meaning. I mulled his email over while I attempted to study and fill out a packet for my chemistry labs. But my cereal grew mushy and warm, completely forgotten in my annoyance with Nathan’s response. I wasn’t one to normally chase a man, but I wanted to understand his complete reluctance to engage in any further entanglements with me. What I found most puzzling was that his objections hadn’t seemed to be because we had a student-teacher relationship. There was something else. Something else had driven him to the point of insanity that night, the way he slapped my ass and yanked my hair; it wasn’t my so-called magical pussy that drove his demons to the surface. The thought made me smile, but no—I knew there was something more, under his suits and his very expensive glasses, something he didn’t want me to see. I knew, thanks to my colorful history with men, that if he was merely immune to my persuasions he wouldn’t ignore me, as he’d been doing ever since Monday. If there was nothing there, he would meet me head on, eyes clear of interest. But since he did everything in his power to avoid my gaze in class, I knew he didn’t want me to see how he looked at me. Finally, around midnight, I’d decided I was ready to respond to his email. But I wasn’t going to reply from my student account. Instead, I logged into the email account I used only for Craigslist ads, one that didn’t have my real name attached. After pulling off my sweatshirt, I took a photo that didn’t include my face. And then I attached it to an email and sent it to Nathan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Nathaniel, are you ignoring me?” Yes. The word almost slipped out of my mouth, but I lifted my eyes from the papers on my desk and gave my father as apologetic of a smile as I could muster. “Of course not, sir. What can I do for you?” Always sir, never father, definitely not dad. All too informal and grating on the sensibilities of Richard Easton. He sat in the chair across from my desk, propping his ankle on the opposite knee. The way he looked at me, with eyes the exact same shade of blue as mine, it was like he could barely even stand to lower himself enough to spend time in my office. My small, cramped office with no sweeping view of the quad, quite unlike his. “You didn’t answer my email.” “Which email?” I asked on a sigh, tossing the pen in my hand onto the desk, officially giving up on the short story I was grading. Not that my father respected written words of the fiction variety. Honestly, the fact that he and I shared biology never ceased to amaze me. He brushed a nonexistent speck off the dark wool of his pant leg and then glanced up at me, like he hadn’t broached this subject. “Oh, it was details for the scholarship dinner in a few weeks. Obviously, it would be best if the entire family could be present when they acknowledge the recipient for this year.” “I’ll see what I can do. Could you send it to me again?” “I’ve already sent it to you once. Obviously you just didn’t see it. Maybe you could check again before I go through the hassle of finding it.” I stared across at him, holding his steady gaze in the battle of wills that was as familiar to us as breathing. And as he did every time, he won. I pulled my cell out from the top drawer and tapped on the email icon. “It’s not here, sir.” “Check your junk folder then, your phone probably filters me out because it can sense how little you care to hear anything I have to say.” Probably. I wanted to say it. But I didn’t. Scrolling through spam from the last couple days, I saw his name. I was about to click open the message when another email right below his snagged my attention.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Saturday, September 19, 2015 12:19 AM Subject: To: Nathaniel Easton My bruises are fading, but my memory is everlasting. I’d like to be bruised again. The way you debased me, made me feel like what we were doing was forbidden. You punished me for a crime I wasn’t aware I’d committed. I want to be punished again, by your hand. By … your … cock. Please, please, punish me. Hurt me. Take what you need from me, because I need it too. Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle. ••• In an embarrassingly unconscious reaction, my heart started pounding in my chest as I skimmed the email again, not caring in the slightest about my father sitting two feet away from me while I read Adele’s words. “Well?” “Yeah, yeah, I found it,” I all but stammered, ignoring the attachment and clicking back to my father’s email and only giving a cursory glance at the information. “Should be fine.” “Should be?” “Fucking hell, I said it should be fine, and that’s as much of an answer that you’ll get out of me right now,” I snapped. He simply raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in annoyance, standing from the chair and walking out of my office without another word. The way his eyes had widened at my reaction should have brought me pleasure, because I never snapped at him, but it wasn’t there. No glow of pride at surprising him and robbing him of speech, of getting in the last word. Because there was only one reason why I’d even let him get to me, let his condescending bullshit actually get the better of me, and that was Adele. Trying to filter through her words, studying the picture attachment she absolutely should not have been stupid enough to send me, I’d actually lost my temper with my father. “Shit,” I whispered, slamming my phone back into the top drawer of my desk so I wouldn’t look again. I did well, surprisingly enough, for the rest of the day. Kept my eyes off the

email completely until I finally walked through the back door of my house. It was like I managed to evade her pull until I was vulnerable. Which meant the place that she’d catch me at my weakest was at home, in the dark, quiet place where I slept alone. Every time the anniversary of Diana’s death passed, I told myself I’d move, start somewhere that wasn’t tangled up in memories of her. But I couldn’t do it. And now, as I pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and popped it in the microwave, I had to admit something pathetic to myself. Reading that email again, in any room of this house that my wife had once filled with so much love, felt wrong. Like a betrayal. You’d think that would have been enough to stop me, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t because of the empty, aching darkness that always filled my body when I was home alone. It’s what had driven me to that bar last week. And it’s what made me pull my phone out once I’d cleaned up my dinner dishes and fell backward onto the couch. Because there were no other lights on in the room, pulling open her email felt desperate and secretive. No one would see me. She’d have no idea how many times I might run my eyes over her words, the effect they’d have on my flesh and on my brain. Earlier, I hadn’t been able to open the attachment, not with my father standing there and judging every single fucking move I made. I let my thumb hover over the link for a few prolonged seconds, imagining what I might see and never, ever be able to unsee. Click. “Oh fuck,” I said under my breath, even though I was achingly alone in the room and no one could possibly hear me. It was the curve of her breast, taken from a low angle. Her nipple, which I knew was the perfect shade of bronze-hued pink, and the barbell that pierced through it were in the far upper right corner of the photo, just on the edge of being cropped out. But front and center, covering the soft flesh, were four small bruises. Bruises from my teeth, when I’d sucked on her so hard that I thought I might tear the flesh from her body. She’d fucking loved it, too. That particular round was when she’d been riding me, and when I’d bitten down on that perfect, bouncing tit, she almost came on the spot, curse words falling from her mouth in one unending stream. I didn’t let her come, of course. I pinched my eyes shut, wishing very much that I could pour bleach into my ears if it would only scour my brain of memories of Adele. When I opened them again, the screen of my phone had gone dark. Didn’t matter though, I was hard as fucking nails. Keeping the phone tightly gripped in my hand, I used the other one to flip open my belt and slide the leather out of the buckle. I breathed hard for a few seconds, my hand just resting on the button of my pants before I went any further. There was this tiny part of me that was screaming raw in my brain that told me that if I did this, if I took my dick in my own hand and thought about Adele, she had won

whatever little sick game we were playing now. The one that had her taunting and teasing me, the one that I was doing a pretty damn good job of resisting so far. So far. But when she’d sent that fucking picture, she’d known exactly what she was doing. I thought that the sound of my breathing had been loud in the silence of the room, but when I pulled my zipper down, it fucking echoed everywhere, disproportionate to the action itself. When I used a tight fist to pull my cock out from my unzipped pants, I hissed in a breath. Not like I was a martyr, but I just didn’t jerk off all the time, maybe a few times a month. But this, this felt so different, because I was picturing her. The impossibly tight squeeze of her pussy when my grip tightened around myself; her high, round breasts against my tongue when I pumped the skin up and down, rolling my palm over the head of my cock. The way the skin of her ass had reddened perfectly from the strikes of my hand, over and over and over. After a few minutes, memories barraging me one after the other, I felt that tingle, that unfettered electricity race down my spine. With a low groan, I rode the orgasm out with a loosened grip, finally dropping my head back onto the couch. Well. The shirt was probably ruined. I had no intention of ending up like Lewinsky, keeping a memento of my moment of weakness, so I stood from the couch and stripped it off and tossed it into the small waste basket on the other side of the couch that was hidden from view. For a moment I simply stood there in the dark of the family room, hands clasped around back of my neck and my stillopened pants sagging from my hips. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel defeat crawling across my skin, just a tugging sadness that I was in this situation in the first place. Maybe in another life, I’d be able to say something back to her. Something witty and sexy and as much of a tease to her as she was to me. What would that be, I wondered, feeling the words crowd into my brain like I’d actually be able to put them down on paper and give them to her. I remember every bruise I gave you, remember how your satin skin felt under my hands and tongue and teeth and lips, how tight you were around my cock. Every time you hurt me, broke through the skin on my back with your nails, I remember that look in your eye, that evil glint that told me how much you wanted me to hurt you in return. You wanted to be spanked and bruised and fucked, no softness between us, Add, because we’re not those people. That’s what won’t go away in my head, how perfect that felt between us. The hardness, the rawness, the necessary violence. How necessary that night was. I exhaled a bitter sounding laugh, scrubbing the impromptu verse from my brain, patently ignoring how easily it had come out. Then I walked upstairs to my bedroom that was just as dark as every other room in the house, and went to bed alone.

CHAPTER NINE

“I’ll have the Tom Yum. Probably two bowls.” Leo handed his menu to the waitress. “And bring me two waters, I’ll drink both before you come back.” He flashed her a shining smile. “Shrimp Pad Thai, please,” I said as I handed my menu over. When the waitress walked away, I raised an eyebrow toward my lunch date. “Two bowls of soup?” Leo raised his arms over his head, stretching his t-shirt across his pecs. “Game’s in three days.” “Aren’t you supposed to be eating a shit load of chicken or something right about now?” “No, that’s Tuesday night. I’m hydrating today, for the party tonight.” He grabbed the glass of water the waitress placed on the table. “The soup’s good. Now tell me what’s up?” I stirred the straw in my glass, watched as condensation started to form. “Nothing, really.” My thoughts trailed back to when I’d sent Nathan the provocative email and how undeniably silent my own email had been. After sending it just around midnight the night before, I’d woken up early that morning and found myself dismayed over my empty email inbox. And I’d looked at my phone often that day, feeling that same stone of disappointment settle in the pit of my stomach each time my email remained the same. No reply. No acknowledgement. I’m not sure what I expected, honestly. It wasn’t as though he’d explicitly expressed mutual interest, but I knew he felt it. Rationally, I knew baiting him with repeated sexually-suggestive emails would come across as less sexy and more Alicia Silverstone à la The Crush. Which was why I hadn’t followed up with another one even though I really, really wanted to. “Earth to Adele.” Leo interrupted my train of thought and I started, grabbing the straw more firmly and taking a sip to give myself a moment to respond. “Classes have really distracted me, is all.” It was partially true, given that the professor of one such class was the one distracting me. “What’s up with you?” He shrugged, that carefree movement defining Leo so perfectly. “Darcy texted me last night.” I raised an eyebrow. “Booty call?”

His lips twitched. “Probably. I didn’t reply.” I let out a whoop and held up my hand for a high-five. “Proud of you, Leo.” He slapped my hand and sat back, laughing. “Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around, Add? Shouldn’t you be telling me about the guy you’re hung up over and then announcing you’re moving on from him? I can’t pretend I don’t feel a little emasculated right now.” “It’s a big step for you, Leo. Darcy has had your balls in her tiny grasp, her glittery tips biting into your rocks with impressive control all summer long.” I tilted my head. “About time you reminded her whose balls they really were.” “First of all, saying my balls were in her tiny grasp means you assume I have tiny balls. I feel like I need to defend their more than adequate size.” I made a face, shaking my head no. “And secondly, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.” Leo finished his first glass of water and started on his second, flagging the waitress for a refill. “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” He didn’t meet my eyes. “I just said I didn’t reply.” “Ugh,” I groaned. “This is why I don’t have girlfriends; I can’t deal with the back and forth.” As soon as the words slipped from my lips, I realized that it was similar to what I was doing with Nathan. “Are we going to that party tonight?” “If you’re up for it, yeah.” When the waitress brought our food, I mulled over going to the party. I wasn’t really feeling up for partying, but the alternative was moping around my apartment, checking my email obsessively. After our lunch, Leo walked me to my apartment, promising to come pick me up around eight that night. As I dressed for the party, my eyes drifted again and again to my email, flicking my eyes away when I saw nothing waiting. My fingers itched to send him another email, something haunting and sensual. And just as my feet padded across the floor, I halted. What was it about him that called to me, that made me want him to want me? I’d never chased a man, not once. I never waited for a phone call—or, in this case, an email—and I most certainly never pined for the unattainable. Why? Because men had never been unattainable for me. And I say that not to brag, but to illustrate that Adele Morello was a woman who pulled hearts from their chests, leaving them discarded on the floor without a second chance. Adele Morello didn’t want for any man. There’s something to be said for the quintessential college party. “Debauchery” came to mind as we walked into the frat house and two naked women ran screaming down the hallway, followed by one naked man. “Disgusting” was an appropriate adjective for the number of times my shoe got stuck to something sticky on the floor. I wrapped a hand around Leo’s arm as he craned his head back to get a good look

at the naked coeds and tugged him with me to the kitchen. A drink was pushed into my hand and I smiled a thank you before walking around the counter and dumping it into the sink, not willing to trust anyone who handed me a drink unless I knew their intentions. Grabbing the bottle of vodka on the counter, I poured a solid inch into the bottom of the red plastic cup and handed it to Leo. “That’s more than a shot, Add.” He raised an eyebrow in my direction after looking inside the cup. “Pour some Coke in it.” I gestured to the cans stacked on the counter. I poured the same amount in my cup and tossed it back, relishing in the burn as it coated my throat and slid down, mingling with the lingering annoyance in the pit of my stomach. After checking my email for the fiftieth time that day, I gave myself a little pep talk.

Nathan does not have the only dick in town, Adele. Quit acting like it and catch another one.

But upon surveying the choices in front of me, I remembered why I pursued the older guys, the ones with a hint of darkness, the esoteric men in a sea of predictable dudes with predictable habits. Guys who bought you a drink and acted like it bought them a ticket to your vagina. Who thought their mouths served one purpose. Men who treated the bedroom like a race instead of an amusement park. Just the thought of Nathan effortlessly flipping me from my knees to my back and sliding inside of me in one breath caused my arms to erupt in goosebumps. I leaned against the counter as Leo greeted a few of his teammates and brought a hand to my neck, where Nathan had bitten me. If I closed my eyes, I could remember his five-o-clock shadow scraping my sensitive flesh before his teeth bit down, releasing some pent-up primitive need within me. I’d launched myself on him every time he pulled away, legs and arms winding around him. He made me want to be savage. He made me hungry for something I didn’t know I needed, something I knew I wouldn’t find at this party. And as much as I’d thought being his student gave me an advantage, it most certainly didn’t. Because seeing him in such a professional atmosphere all week while my fingers had gripped my pen to the point of discomfort, left me aching for the night we’d had, the night that had ended too soon. “Add,” Leo’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “This is Jeremy.” Jeremy smiled at me, no doubt expecting me to collapse in a puddle of hormones over his baby blues and dimples. “Hey,” he said, looking me up and down. “Hi,” I replied, not batting an eyelash. I glanced at Leo and gave him a Nope, not happening look before turning around and pouring a refill. “Leo says you’re a Creative Writing major.”

Fucking Leo. If Leo thought this guy was remotely my type, he was assuming I was either 1) super drunk, 2) super desperate or 3) not the real Adele, the Adele who didn’t go after college dudes who reeked of drugstore cologne. “Sure am,” I said, tipping back the vodka. “That’s cool.” I barely resisted rolling my eyes. “And you?” “Oh, I’m still undecided.” He bobbed his head in a weird nodding way and looked around the room. “Five year plan, yeah.” When I said nothing to that, he seemed to take my silence as an invitation to tell me all about his life. “My dad threw some money at me and told me to go to school, so I’m kind of just going with the flow, ya know, partying it up and stuff.” Leo was out of his goddamn mind. There wasn’t anything wrong with an undecided major, a person going to school with no direction. But it was so completely opposite of my situation that it felt like Leo was trying to piss me off. “Must be nice,” I commented, keeping my true thoughts to myself. “Oh, yeah. It’s something to do at least.” I thought of my tiny, practically barren apartment, my long hours at the cafe, and the scorn of my entire family for choosing to go to college for what they called a throwaway degree. “Why do you need to go to school to write? Didn’t you learn that in first grade?” It was the same thing they always asked, the entire reason I hadn’t gone home for dear daddy’s birthday and had chosen to go to this party instead. So I could talk to this guy about how bored he was living on daddy’s money. Great choice, Adele. Around the fifth generous shot of vodka, Jeremy was talking about his football stats. I made out something about one hundred yards rushing just as I tossed back the sixth shot and started feeling the warmth of the alcohol not only affecting my jelly limbs, but also my judgement. Jeremy wasn’t so bad, I thought. A second later, Nathan’s stupid face popped in my head, his lips curved the way they’d been when he’d gone down on me. “You want it?” he’d asked, breathing over my pussy. I’d squirmed, nodding furiously. “Do you?” he’d asked again. “Let me hear you.” “Yes!” I’d screamed, writhing wildly underneath him. “My favorite word,” he’d whispered as his mouth touched me where I’d wanted him so desperately. “Yes.” I hadn’t realized the word escaped my lips until the image of Nathan blurred, revealing the significantly less appealing Jeremy. His chapped lips split into a grin. What the fuck had I said yes to? He leaned forward, placing a hand on the counter beside me. Oh, no. And then he started leaning in, his beer breath encroaching on my space, inch by inch.

Fuck, fuck, mother fucking fuck. As Jeremy’s mouth descended toward mine, my hands nervously shot up, my fist coming in contact with his nose as vodka spilled all over our faces.

CHAPTER TEN

“Get up.” The voice was a million miles away, pulling me from my nightmare. I cracked my eyelids open a fraction, letting in the tiniest ray of light. “Mother fuck,” I croaked, throwing an arm over my eyes and reaching for my blankets. “No, just Leo.” I groaned, pulling the comforter harder over my face. I felt his hands pulling it, but I wouldn’t let go. “Leave me alone,” I whined. “I hope you feel terrible.” “You have no idea,” I mumbled under the comforter. A thousand elephants ran across my skull. “What the fuck happened last night?” “You got black-out drunk.” I sighed, let go of the comforter when Leo gave it another tug. “Was I a mess?” I slowly opened one eye, winced and covered the other eye. Leo stood beside my bed in the clothes he’d worn the night before. “Um, yeah.” He nodded, pursing his lips, looking up as if in contemplation. “I thought you couldn’t top the time you barfed in their fridge, but I appeared to have underestimated your ambition.” He reached a hand for me. “Come on, I got you coffee and a croissant sandwich from that artery-clogging bakery downstairs.” Greasy food and coffee = cure for even the worst hangovers. I tumbled out of the bed, literally, holding onto the wall for support. I looked down, taking in my pants and shirt from the night before and was hit with the overall stench of vomit that permeated my clothing. “Fuck,” I muttered. “What do you remember?” Leo asked after I’d sat at my tiny counter and sucked down half my coffee. “I remember Jeremy trying to plant one on me and,” I closed my eyes and touched my forehead, “I think I splashed vodka all over him.” “Uh yeah, all over both of you. And then you needed me to wash it out of your eyes and then you started talking about how you said yes but not to him and he had no life plan and it wasn’t your fault.”

Groaning, I dropped my head into my hands. “What else?” I knew more was coming. “Well, you broke his nose. I think on accident, not that he didn’t deserve it.” I almost smiled, but I knew that wasn’t all. I braced myself, eyes pinched tight. “And then?” “I got you out of there as fast as I could, but you ended up falling in the yard and that’s when the vomit started. It was almost impressive, Exorcist-style.” I still held my head in my hands, unable to look Leo in the face. “Did I puke on you?” “Yeah.” I lifted my head, taking in his clothes. “My shoes,” he said, pointing to the bag hanging on my doorknob. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” Leo shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “Not a big deal. But I need to get going. I wanted to make sure you weren’t comatose before I left.” “Thanks, Leo.” I stood up as if to give him a hug but he quickly jumped back. “Sorry babe, but you need a shower. Wicked bad.” His gaze moved up and down my clothes and I winced, taking in the vomit smell again. “Okay. Thanks for helping me home.” I looked around my nearly-bare apartment, taking in that Leo had tidied up the little mess I knew I’d left. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, halfway out the door. When he closed the door, I picked up my coffee and finished it in one gulp. Thinking of Jeremy and how he’d nearly kissed me made me want to shower more than the barf that crusted my hair. After taking the longest, hottest shower of my life, I plopped down at my desk. I told myself I was just going to check the weather for that week. Yeah, right. I logged into my email, feeling my heart thunder upon seeing the notification of one new message. Impatiently, I tapped my fingers on the desk as I waited for the actual inbox to load. I didn’t even have to read who it was from once I saw the subject line. Most definitely not Nathan.

From: Celeste Morello Date: Sunday, September 20, 2015 11:18 AM Subject: Dad To: Adele Morello Adele, I know you’re probably too busy being a drunk, irresponsible student to actually

acknowledge my email and, more importantly, Dad, but the least you could have done yesterday was call. Mom was very upset. You should not have gotten her hopes up. Celeste ••• The blood roared in my head, the initial dissatisfaction that the email hadn’t been from Nathan being immediately replaced by absolute fury. My older sister and I had never gotten along, and at the very root of our acrimony was the father we shared. To her, he was Dad. To me, he was a father, someone who donated his DNA to help create me, but that was essentially all he’d ever provided me. I drafted three different replies before I finally decided on one.

From: Adele Morello Date: Sunday, September 20, 2015 11:43 AM Subject: Re: Dad To: Celeste Morello You clearly know me so well Celeste, so I’m not sure why you’re surprised I didn’t show up. Especially since I never actually told you I was going. To blame me for Mom’s disappointment is ridiculous. Besides, I’m sure ‘Dad’ would have preferred my absence. Adele ••• I slammed my laptop closed and stalked away from my desk, not caring if Nathan decided to reply to my email. I crawled back into my bed, not caring about anything in that particular moment. After an early morning shift at the cafe, I was regrettably lacking time to run home and wash the French roast scent from my skin before Nathan’s class that morning. I splashed water on my face and let my hair down in the women’s restroom, running my hand furiously over the back, straightening my strands.

Staring at my reflection, I took in my skin—pale and void of color and my eyes— their green drab and lifeless, surrounded by the bruises that colored my skin underneath, the bags especially pronounced. I’d barely slept Sunday night after my prolonged nap, and the effects were wreaking havoc on my looks. I ran a hand down the black shirt I wore, over my jeans, smoothing the wrinkles and dusting away the grounds of coffee that lingered. My sister’s email had repeated over and over in my head, bringing with it a visual of my father, stern disapproval permanently etched on his face whenever he looked at me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I rid myself of the image. I straightened my shoulders, applied red lipstick to my lips and concealer under my eyes. My hair hung limply past my shoulders, there was no fixing it now. When I made it to Nathan’s class, I was later than usual. My front row spot had been taken up by someone else. I stared daggers into the back of her head as I collapsed into a seat in the third row, dropping my books loudly enough to cause her to turn around, taking me in. I gave her a saccharine smile, but I knew my eyes held derision. I wasn’t in the mood to have Nathan’s attention blocked today, especially after his non-reply over the weekend. Had he known the email was me? Alice Carroll was my nod to one of my favorite authors, the author who had essentially saved my childhood when I needed an escape from my father’s taciturn presence. But then I remembered the attachment, of my piercing. If the words in the email hadn’t clued him in, the piercing should. I remembered, distinctly, the care he’d taken with my nipple ring when we’d been together.

My arms were above my head, parallel with the wall behind me. In the dark of my apartment, I could barely make out his eyes, glittering as he lifted my shirt above my head, ripping it from the tops of my hands. His hands clutched my ribcage, squeezing, as his thumbs brushed just under my bra. But instead of diving his hands under my bra, he covered my breasts with both hands, squeezing hard. I yelled out, the sharp squeeze a direct hit between my legs. His lips came to my neck, sucking, biting, licking, as they made a path down my chest. He sucked my left nipple through the fabric of my bra, hard enough that I saw his cheeks hollow. The throbbing between my legs intensified, causing my hands to latch onto his shoulders, nails biting into skin. “You like that, don’t you?” he asked, still squeezing my right breast as he gave attention to my left. “I bet if I touched you, you’d be soaking wet.” “Yes,” I whispered, the only word I could manage when he pushed his hips against mine. His erection pressed against me and I found myself grinding on him, needing relief for the pressure building within me. “No,” he said, abruptly pulling his hips from mine. I could have whined in protest. But then his attention moved to my right breast,

his mouth latching on to my nipple. After a second, he pulled away, meeting my eyes. “What do we have here?” he asked, his voice a gruff whisper. He yanked the cup over my breast down, revealing the barbell in my nipple. He made a sound in his throat as his mouth descended, lightly licking the bud, flicking his tongue back and forth. My hands loosened their grip on his shoulders as I watched him, his eyes on mine, his pointed tongue tracing a circle around the tip. He hummed over my breast, the vibration shuddering into me, and brushed his scruff across the sensitive flesh, back and forth, taking his sweet time with my nipple ring. My legs trembled, the ache in my pussy growing in intensity. “Please…” I whispered. “Shh,” he said sharply, and then bit down hard on my nipple. My hips thrust into him on their own volition, needing relief to the surge of desire that one bite caused. With my nipple still in his mouth, he rubbed his teeth back and forth. I could have come from the sharp sting of pain that blended into the most delicious pleasure alone. No man had ever made me come from nipple play before.

I tucked the memory into the recesses of my brain as the door opened and Nathan entered. He looked freshly showered, his hair glistening under the lights. Without acknowledging his class, he shrugged out of his black suit coat and pulled items from his bag. It was a ritual he performed every class. The mere act of him preparing for class caused me to cross my legs; the juxtaposition of this orderly professor and the man I’d fucked to be inconceivably sexy. With careful attention, he straightened his pens on his desk. Those same hands had dove into my hair, pulling, winding the tresses around his fist. He popped the lid on his thermos and took a long drink, his head tilted back and his throat pulsing as he swallowed. I could make out the flicks of moisture on his lips, a mirror of the way his lips had look after he’d tasted me, his eyes boring into mine. “Do you want to come?” he’d asked, his fingers spreading my lips apart, his thumbs brushing at my entrance. Fuck. I was already forgetting that he’d completely ignored my email to him, leaving me lapsing into the memories of how he’d brought me up each time, only to pull back right before I tumbled into an orgasm. What an asshole. Nathan launched into this week’s focus, his eyes gliding over his students but not really looking at them. As he moved across the room, to the white board and to his desk as he spoke, I noticed something was missing from the week before. The tension that had tightened his shoulders was gone, replaced with a relaxation that he wore all over his body. His eyes didn’t move to my direction once, avoiding my gaze like he avoided my email. But he remained completely at ease in his body language. When he instructed us to read a passage from this week’s required reading, Jane

Eyre, he sank back into his seat and focused on his paperwork. I discretely pulled out my phone and opened up my email application. After darting a glance at him to make sure he wasn’t paying attention, I fired off a quick email.

From: Adele Morello Date: Monday, September 21, 2015 01:29 PM Subject: Friday To: Nathaniel Easton Did you receive my email I sent late Friday? I didn’t receive a reply, so I’m worried you missed it. Adele Morello ••• Smiling to myself, I tucked my phone away and focused on the chapter. Several pages in, I felt eyes on me. I looked up, met Nathan’s gaze. His face would have been expressionless were it not for the tightness around his eyes. I eased up from leaning over my book, keeping my eyes on his. His attention didn’t waver for a second, he was so solely focused on me. I found myself glancing around the room, taking in the students who were completely focused on the book, before I allowed myself to meet his gaze again. There was some kind of taut line of tension between us, and he communicated that completely with his eyes. They weren’t necessarily unkind, but he wasn’t exactly inviting me in with them either. But once I held them, I couldn’t look away. His attention broke only when another student finished, and asked him a question on the text. When class was over, Nathan exited the room like he was in a hurry for something. As I packed up my things, there was a heaviness in me from the look he’d given me, and I wondered what he was trying to tell me when he stared at me like that. My phone buzzed, and I snatched it up from my bag. Incoming call: Celeste. My thumb hovered over the screen and I debated opening it. Curiosity won out and I slid my finger across “Answer” with a liquid kind of dread in my veins. “Celeste.” There was a pause before she spoke. “Mom and I are shopping and she wanted to talk to you.” I ground my teeth together, bit out a “Fine,” before my mother’s breathy voice came over the line.

“Adele,” she said. “Hi, Mom.” I looked around as the students cleared the room, took a deep breath and prepared myself. “How are you, honey?” “Fine. What are you shopping for?” I rubbed my temple, not caring what she was shopping for, but waiting for her to say what she needed to say. “Some winter boots for you. What size are you?” I let out a breath in a whoosh. Maybe that’s the only reason she was calling. “I’m okay, mom. I have last year’s boots still.” “Don’t be silly. Let me buy you some boots.” My mother wasn’t an affectionate person, not in the traditional way at least. She purchased her love for me, in the form of clothing, shoes, or a fat envelope stuffed with cash in the bottom of my purse after a visit with her. It was how she compensated for how completely incompetent she’d been while I was growing up. I wasn’t too proud to accept the cash, which often went toward rent or food, but I felt, in a way, like I was accepting that this was normal. That a mother wouldn’t love her daughter in the way she’d needed her to. “Mom, it’s fine, really.” “Well, what do you need?” The hand rubbing my temple rubbed deeper. What I needed from her couldn’t be purchased. “I’m good.” “Why don’t you come home this weekend? I’ll give you some cash. How much is your rent? Are you eating okay?” I sighed, covering the phone so she couldn’t hear. This was what she wanted from me. To come home. No doubt to see dear old dad. “I’m pretty busy with classes and work.” “Surely you can get someone to cover your shift at the restaurant—” “Not a restaurant, mom. A coffee shop.” Celeste’s voice came through the line and I rolled my eyes, knowing exactly what Celeste thought of my job. And my major. And my very existence. “No, mom. We’re short-staffed.” A lie, but there was no reasoning with her unless I made it abundantly clear that I didn’t want to see anyone at home. “I’ll try to get a weekend off to come visit.” Another lie. Because I had no intentions of skipping a weekend’s worth of pay to spend time with people who I’d like to shank. “Oh, that would be so nice. You know, we missed you on Saturday.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know. I’m sorry.” “Celeste said you went to another party.” Tell Celeste to go fuck herself, I thought. “How does Celeste know?” “Facebook.” Celeste’s voice again. Damn, Leo. He probably tagged me in something from Saturday’s party. “Must have been really important to miss Dad’s birthday for.” “I thought I was talking to mom?” I said, ignoring her statement. “I’m here, honey. I have you on speaker phone.”

Of course. “Okay, well I have another class to get to,” I lied again. “Your dad was really upset you didn’t come, Adele. He wouldn’t talk to anyone about it.” My mom’s voice was strained. “I know it seems impossible, but you should try to stop thinking about yourself for just five minutes and remember your family.” I wanted to reach through the phone and smack the bullshit out of Celeste. But because I couldn’t, I simply pressed “End” on my phone and turned it off, marching out of the classroom and to the computer lab. An hour later, armed with a printed piece of paper, I found myself in front of a large cape cod-style home. I didn’t hesitate walking up the driveway to the front steps. Determination made my eyes sharp, my tongue on fire. After the phone call from my mom and Celeste, I was feeling pretty raw, chastised by them both. But I was a glutton for punishment, especially at Nathan’s hands. Which was why I found myself knocking on his front door in broad daylight.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I wish I could say that when I opened the door and saw Adele that I was immediately angry at her showing up at my house. But that would be a horrific lie. My first gut reaction was a flare of lust so hot and so bright that I thought my skin might melt off the bone. Because the look in her eyes was so full of challenge, practically daring me to slam the door in her face. She’d probably have liked that, actually. But the dance that we’d been dancing the last couple weeks was so far beyond what I could do right now. Not since I’d spent the last hour staring at an email from Elias, my brother-in-law, if you could call him that. The dick who was my dead wife’s brother who hadn’t shown his face in the good ol’ US of A since she died, now suddenly wanted free reign to go through her stuff. Yeah, that had put me in an awesome mood to begin with, so close to a tipping point of bad decisions. “What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed, yanking her by the upper arm into the house. The last thing I needed was some nosy, ‘well-meaning’ neighbor noticing the tall, slender blonde who happened to be one of my students standing at my door. Besides, I didn’t put it past Adele to sit on the front porch for hours just to piss me off. “Can’t a girl swing by to say hello to her favorite professor?” I released her as soon as the door slammed shut, and without removing my eyes from her face, I saw the way that she rubbed at her arm where I’d gripped her. Only with her, she was probably praying I’d leave a mark. “No. You can’t. How the fuck did you find my house?” She clicked her tongue, eyes flitting beyond me to look into the family room that led into the kitchen. “Such a dirty mouth. Though, I suppose I knew that already, didn’t I? In fact, if I had a dollar for every time you said fuck that night we were together—” I grabbed her arm again, marching her back toward the door, because if she finished that sentence … I didn’t know, but there was no way I was in the frame of mind to be tested. “Hey,” she said, yanking her arm out of my grip and walking backward, very much away from the door. “No need to get grabby, okay? I’ll be good.” I almost laughed, the way she batted her eyelashes at me when she said it.

Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and gave her a level look. “How do you know where I live?” Adele dragged a finger along the edge of the entryway table, probably picking up dust along the way, then smiled up at me. It was a real smile, genuine and disconcerting at the same time. “A girl’s gotta have a few secrets, Professor Easton.” Then I did laugh. I couldn’t help it. The entire situation was so absurd, that I kept laughing harder and harder until I had to brace my hands on my knees. When I finally got ahold of myself, I stood up, only to find Adele so close to me that I could reach out and touch her, had I wanted to. Though wanting didn’t have much to do with it, I supposed. Wanting was a strange thing, because so much of it was just out of your reach. Either you couldn’t move your hands far enough to grasp what you wanted, you shouldn’t grab it, or it was perpetually moving. Adele was standing stock-still, right in front of me. For a few moments, all we did was stare at each other, me trying to catch my breath. Finally, she lifted a hand like she was going to lay it on my chest, but I circled her wrist before she could make contact with my shirt, and her hand hovered in the air just a breath away from touching me. Her pulse was frantic and skittish under my fingers, where they wrapped around her skin. The speed of her heart belied the look on her face, which was pure, unadulterated seduction. The fact that I’d touched her at all made her think she’d won, I could see it. “You need to leave,” I said under my breath, trying to regain control of the situation, because I felt horribly out of control. “You don’t want me to though. I can see it in your eyes.” Adele moved toward me again, and even though I tightened the grip on her wrist, she laid her hand over my heart, smoothing up over my shirt until she curled her fingers around the back of my neck, digging her fingernails into the skin just below my hairline. All I could hear was my ragged breaths and my pounding heart, and I didn’t let my eyes leave her emerald gaze, which bored into me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. She probably did. She probably knew exactly what I was thinking because my cock was about to burst the seams of my pants, it was so damn hard. Adele took a step closer, pressing her breasts up against my chest, and I let out a hard exhale. “Do you remember how good it felt?” she whispered, leaning up to my ear. “Because I can’t stop thinking about it.” Me neither. I held those words so deep inside of me, just short of digging my teeth into the soft flesh of my tongue to keep them in. That tiny shred of pride that I was able to grip onto didn’t let me say them out loud. While I struggled not to reply, Adele fitted one toned thigh in between my legs and tilted her hips into me. “The way your cock felt, so hard and so big,” she continued, undeterred by my silence, “you fit inside me so perfectly.” “Shut your fucking mouth,” I ground out between gritted teeth. But the words fell with a hollow thud in between us, because I pushed back against her as the

words came out of my mouth. The feeling of swimming against a riptide overwhelmed me. Adele was the current, and all of my limbs fell in her direction, the hand that wasn’t gripping her wrist came around to clamp on her waist. “No,” she said resolutely, not the quiet resistance I’d expected, but in a firm tone that brooked no arguments. That wasn’t the worst part though, it was that she moved her face even closer to me, so that only a slight turn of my face would mean that our mouths, our lips, those traitorous little swaths of skin, would touch. I looked forward, refusing to give her the satisfaction of closing the gap. “Then you need to leave.” Adele turned her face and I couldn’t help but move my eyes to meet hers head on. “No.” What made my face angle toward her wasn’t the stark stubbornness of her earlier refusal, it was the quietly spoken plea, the slightest tinge of defeat that colored her tone. It snapped any thread of defense I had against her, so I shoved her backward, not away from me, but into the wall behind us. The little slut, she grinned at the same time that her back hit the wall. Then I kissed her, pushed my lips against hers so hard that I hoped they might be branded on hers for everyone to see. Our tongues met instantly, tangling and battling for dominance. When she moaned into my mouth, wrapping a leg around my hip, I ground myself into her, hoping for a bruise. God, I could smell her; she was so fucking turned on. I ripped my hand from her waist and jammed it up her shirt, underneath her bra and filled my palm with one warm breast. She groaned, using her teeth on my bottom lip, trying to open up my belt buckle with one hand, as the other one was gripping my ass. Not willing to give up the nipple that I was rolling against my thumb, pulling so that the piercing dragged her flesh downwards, I brought my other hand down, pinning her hips against the wall with my own. Our fingers tangled on my zipper, and I grabbed her hand, using it to palm my aching cock. We both sank when she made contact, the wall catching our bodies before we heaped onto the floor; me because the relief of getting her hands on me was more than my body could take, and her because … honestly, I couldn’t give a shit why she was making that noise. She was touching me; that was all that mattered. All that could possibly matter, and I was not willing to think too deeply as to why. While she sucked my tongue into her mouth, her fingers wrapped tightly around the base of my cock, I ripped down the zipper of her pants. We both had our eyes open, despite the close proximity making everything else a little blurry. When my hand slid into her opened pants, underneath the scrap of lace and curled into her soaking wet pussy, her eyelids finally fluttered shut. Adele broke her mouth away from mine and let out a long exhale, a restrained and quiet sob, and it made me even harder. She needed this, as much as I did. Maybe more, judging by the utter relief

covering her face when I added a second finger and hooked them, grinding my palm against her clit. Her hips starting moving in slow circles against me, like she was fucking my hand and not the other way around. Adele brought the hand that was behind my neck down to grip a handful of my shirt, her fingers squeezing so tightly that I could feel the seams of the shirt pull at my shoulder. “Oh, yes, yes, Nathan, yes,” she whispered, tilting her head back against the wall. Only after a few moments, I could feel her pussy start to pulse around my fingers, the heat from inside her climbing. Leaning forward, I was about to clamp my teeth down on the long, graceful line of her neck when there was a hard knock on the door only three feet from us, causing both Adele and I to freeze. We breathed on each other’s lips when the knocking became more insistent. I yanked my hand out of her pants and couldn’t help but smile a little at the pissed off look on her face. Whoever was on the other side of that door, Adele probably wanted to fucking kill them, as close as she was to getting off. “Nathaniel, I can see you’re home,” my father’s voice came from the other side of the door. I cursed under my breath, shoving Adele toward the staircase that led upstairs. He’d never go up there, I don’t think he had since the weekend Diana and I moved in. “Who’s that?” Adele whispered after hurrying up the first couple steps, pulling her pants back into place while she did. I clenched my jaw and pointed upstairs. “My father. Now just go into the bathroom, first door on the right and stay right there until I tell you to come down.” The knocking continued and I pulled in a breath and called out, “Coming!” “No,” Adele said and leaned her head around the top of the stairs to look down at me, despite the incredulous glare I leveled at her, “but I was really, really close.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Standing in front of the door, pulling in a steadying breath before opening it for my father, there was a brief, lucid moment of déjà vu that swallowed me like a tidal wave. No question that the outcome would be different, obviously Adele was hiding in my bathroom… Adele was hiding in my bathroom. Fuck. I’d officially regressed to something akin to a hormonal teenage boy, trying to hide his first boner from his parents after sneaking a peek at a Victoria’s Secret catalog. I shook my head briskly and pulled open the door, scowling at my father. “What?” He shouldered past me without actually making contact, which was a true gift, because I backed away as if he had. If there wasn’t a woman hiding about fourteen feet away from us, it might have bothered me more that I’d been the one to move. As it was, I could only focus on looking like I wasn’t on the verge of freaking the hell out. “My assistant told me that you haven’t RSVP’d yet.” I sighed, rubbing at my forehead. “That’s because I forgot. I do have other things that I’m responsible for that are actually more important than sitting at that dinner.” “As much as I love stopping by this godawful house during my free time, I knew you’d just ignore me if I called or emailed again. Your mother wants you there,” I snorted and he continued as if I hadn’t made a noise, “and it reflects positively on our whole family. We’re as much of a legacy at this university as there is without actually building it, and if you plan on continuing your career here as an Easton, then you will be there.” There might have been another time where I’d push the issue, press back against the way he’d always wanted to plan out every detail of my life. Maybe even tell him that I quit, I’d gladly take my degree somewhere else, even if it meant leaving the Easton name behind. But Adele was upstairs doing God knows what, and I just didn’t have any fight in me. Shaking my head, I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my pants and scrolled through my contacts until I found his office number. My father crossed his

arms over his barrel chest and leaned back against the wall next to the entryway table. I met his gaze while his assistant picked up. “Richard Easton’s office.” “Nancy, it’s Nathan.” “Well, Nathan,” her voice warmed immediately, but I didn’t smile, unwilling to give him any ammunition against the only employee of his that I’d liked in the last twenty years, “it’s been far too long since I’ve seen that handsome face of yours. When are you going to come visit me?” “Soon, I promise.” It was a lie. I wouldn’t go near that place as long as I knew he was in the office behind her desk. “Listen, can you put me down for a plate at the family table at the scholarship dinner in a couple weeks? It slipped my mind to RSVP when I received the invitation.” “Of course, dear. Shall I put you down as bringing a guest as well?” Then I did smile, getting a vision of Adele sitting next to me at a $1500 a plate dinner, wearing her black leather pants and horrifying my parents. “No, it’ll just be me. Thank you, Nancy.” I clicked off the call and continued to hold his stare. He broke first, pushing off from the wall and heading back toward the door. “What? No thank you?” I said when he pulled open the door, showing no intention of speaking to me again. I should’ve just let him leave. My father paused long enough to spare me a glance over his shoulder. “Thanks aren’t required when you’re fulfilling a familial obligation, Nathaniel. If you had a modicum of professionalism, you’d understand that.” The door slammed shut behind him and I clenched my teeth together, breathing hard through my nose. I hated him, hated him so much that it sometimes felt like it would burn me alive from the inside out. And yet I was still under his thumb, working where he’d wanted me to work from the day I was born. I braced my hands on my hips, attempting to calm myself down before I went back upstairs to deal with Adele. And what was worse than anything that had happened since my father knocked on that door was the realization of how right he was. As his parting shot was still hanging in the air about my lack of professionalism, I would still probably be able to smell Adele on my fingers had I lifted them to my nose. I took the stairs two at a time, rage billowing up in my chest. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone? I’d never sought out to be this pathetic cliché, fucking my young, beautiful student because I’d felt terrible about myself for so long. When I turned at the top of the stairs toward the bathroom door, I steadied myself. It wasn’t Adele’s fault my dad was a prick. Despite her poor judgement in showing up at my house, she didn’t deserve to be the victim of my misdirected anger. I pushed open the bathroom door, schooling my face, only to find it empty. Okay. Stay calm. She probably just went into the guest room across the hall because it was more comfortable. Except, that room was empty too. My heart

thundered in my chest. Because I highly doubted that Adele was tucked into the linen closet. And my bedroom door was cracked open, like someone hadn’t dared to close it. For a moment before I pushed the door open, I paused, reminding myself that violence toward women was not allowed. I’d just calmly ask her to leave. “Adele, you shouldn’t be—” my voice sliced off, the words jamming in my throat. Skin. I saw so much skin, covered by tiny scraps of black lace. My eyes took everything in at once, like I was reading an entire page of text with one glance. She’d kept her underwear on, but that was it. Maybe she’d wanted me to decimate it like I’d done the first night we were together. Her legs were crossed, one foot swinging lazily against the backdrop of my bluestriped comforter. One hand rested on her knee, and the other was stroking the skin on the upper curve of her right breast. Her nipples were tight little buds, and as pissed off as I was, I wanted to tug at them with my teeth. Make her wonder if I was close to drawing blood. I would, too. If I laid a hand on her right now, I’d hurt her. So I curled them both into tight fists at my sides. But it was her face that made me snap. She was so sure, so fucking sure that I would cave to her. Those green eyes of hers glowed with a sickening level of triumph, not even the tiniest smile curved her lips. “Get out.” I didn’t point toward the door, didn’t move my eyes from hers. Then she did smile, eyes dropping down to the front of my pants. I wasn’t fully hard, my rage at seeing her sitting in a place that no woman had been in since the last night Diana was alive morphing into something that overrode even the basest reaction to a naked woman. I wanted to hurt her, wanted to wound her in a way that she’d never want to look at me again, let alone touch me. “Nathan,” she practically purred, moving to stand. “Let me help—” “There is something wrong with you,” I said evenly, and she froze, face losing a little color. “You come to my house in the middle of the day, take off your clothes in my private room when my father is downstairs, my father who’s on the board of the school you attend and you think that I’d be remotely tempted?” “Don’t act like you didn’t have your fingers inside me less than fifteen minutes ago,” she threw back at me, straightening after she’d picked up her bra off the floor. “Another mistake, I’ll give you that. Men just think with their dicks around you, don’t they?” Adele snapped her mouth shut, using shaking hands to slip her bra on and yank her jeans off the floor. I took a step closer to her, black waves of anger filling my vision as she covered herself. “A stupid little girl who uses her body to get what she wants, not giving a damn about what the consequences might be.” She went perfectly still, the only movement on her was her chest heaving silently, eyes focused down at where she’d been pulling her shirt over her stomach. When she lifted her head, I almost apologized, the pain that was stamped on her

face was so raw that it pulled my breath from my lungs. “Get out of my house,” is what I said instead. And this time, she listened.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The following two weeks could be summed up in the most pathetic diary entry ever:

Dear diary, Two weeks ago, Nathan kicked me out of his house after calling me stupid. What makes it even worse was that he was right. The next day, my neighbor’s internet connection—and therefore my own internet connection—was cut off for non-pay, forcing me out of my apartment and into the rapidly chilling temps of autumn in Boston as I fought for counter space at any café with Wi-Fi I could find. The rest of the week, Nathan ignored me in class. We were back to before. And since I was still licking my wounds, I wasn’t eager to jump him like an animal in heat anytime soon. That didn’t mean my attraction turned off. If anything, the way he ignored me only heightened my desire. Did I mention that he was right in calling me stupid? Because he most definitely was. As that week passed into the next and I understood more clearly that Nathan was most definitely not interested (could have been the way he ignored me when I asked for help on an assignment that made that crystal clear), I did something really, really, really stupid. Because like Nathan said, I was a stupid girl. I kissed Leo. And then I told him to go away. Confused? Tell me about it.

I hadn’t meant to kiss him. Famous last words. It’d been a Wednesday, more than a week since Nathan so callously—but reasonably—booted me from his house. Leo had brought over a couple bottles of wine while he explained my math work to me. Perfect set up, right? Wine? Check. Dim lights (err … lights turned off to save money on the electricity bill)? Check. Math with my completely platonic male best friend? Double check. A recipe for

romance, for sure. Except it wasn’t romance that led me to lean over and plant my lips on his. I took a long gulp, draining the bottle of moscato Leo had deposited in front of me. “So if x is less than negative two, you can assume that x plus two is less than zero.” I rolled my eyes and leaned against the couch at my back. The hardwood under my ass was beginning to be almost comfortable. “There shouldn’t be letters in math.” I rolled my head to the side, looking at Leo with one eye open. The wine hit me quickly on my empty stomach, making him look a little fuzzy. “You really need to pay attention, Adele, if you want to pass this class.” A hiccup bubbled up in my throat but I held it in with puffed cheeks. After letting my cheeks flatten I said, “Maybe I don’t want to pass this class, Leo.” “I’m pretty sure the terms of your scholarship require you pass the classes you take.” He said it mildly, not even close to the level of inebriation I was. I waved a hand dismissively. “Scholarship, smallership. Got any more wine?” “I think you’re set tonight.” Another hiccup. This one released itself as I tried speaking, making my voice high-pitched and distinct. Belatedly, I covered my mouth and laughed. “Oh, don’t be a party pooper, Leo. Gimme wine.” Leo began packing away his things and I was struck then that he was leaving, which meant I’d be alone. “No,” I began, stumbling to my feet. I held the couch for support as my legs wobbled and the room spun. It was harder being drunk in dim lighting. Everything looked so far away. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Leo mumbled as he slung his backpack over his shoulders. “Come on, Leeeeeeo.” I reached a hand out for his jacket, fell against him clumsily. I squeezed his jacket in my fingers. “This is real leather,” I murmured. “My jacket isn’t real.” The feeling made me a little sad and my level of pathetic shot up ten points. “What are you talking about?” Leo tentatively placed his hands on my upper arms as I leaned into him, breathing him in. “You smell good,” I said on an inhale, the spicy aftershave and mint entering my senses. “Do you wear glasses?” “I don’t need glasses.” Thinking of Nathan, I held Leo. “Some people wear them anyway. Maybe you should. You could pick up chicks.” Leo laughed, the rumble causing my cheek to brush against the hard metal buttons on his jacket. “I don’t need help picking up chicks.” “You always chase the same girls. A bunch of Daphnes.” “Her name was Darcy.”

I rolled my eyes again, but he couldn’t see. “Whatever. Stupid name. Sounds like the name for a poodle.” I giggled. “A dog.” I giggled harder, and still he held me. “Do you need help to bed?” “I wish I had a dog.” Images of a curly, fluffy little animal, someone who would love me unconditionally, made me yearn for something unattainable. Everything I wanted was unattainable. “Get a dog then, Adele.” I only barely registered the annoyance in his voice as he tried to maneuver me to sit on the couch. “I can’t. Landlord says no way, Jose.” I pouted, looking up at Leo. “Why do I live in a crappy apartment in Dorchester?” “Because you’re a poor college student.” I blinked, then held my eyes tight to keep the room from spinning. “Oh, yeah.” “Here,” he said, gently pushing me to the couch. My fingers only tightened, pulling him with me. On top of me. His weight on me was unusual, but not wholly unwelcome. I was lonely. Sick of chasing Nathan. Sick of feeling like I wasn’t good enough, again. “Jesus,” Leo swore. “Did you drink before I got here?” I tilted my head back, eyeing the empty bottle of bourbon on the counter. “I was cleaning out my fridge and there wasn’t much left.” I settled into the cushions, feeling comfort from having Leo to hold. Leo angled his weight off me, sitting up on the edge of the cushion as I laid flat. “Whoa. I have so many questions. First, you needed to make room in the fridge? For what? Last I knew all you had was a few jars of salsa in there. And are you even supposed to refrigerate bourbon?” “You ask too many questions, Leo,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. My hand reached for him, and I gripped onto what I assumed was his arm. “My mom sent me money for groceries. And I’m just a stupid little girl, what do I know about bourbon?” The thought, though it hinted at the sadness I felt, curved my lips. “What’s wrong with me?” He sighed and the cushions shifted, bringing him closer to me. “Nothing is necessarily wrong with you Adele, besides the fact that you’re completely shitfaced right now.” I shook my head, my eyes still closed. “I’m bad. Very bad.” I couldn’t make out whatever it was Leo said then, but I felt him pull me up to sitting, bringing me solidly into his arms. “Come on,” he murmured against my hair. “What’s wrong?” There was a soft voice in my wine and bourbon soaked brain that said I should come clean, say what happened with Nathan. But the moment passed almost immediately and I rested my head on his shoulder. “I can’t figure out what’s wrong,” I said, the only honest thing I could come up with. His hands rubbed up and down my back soothingly, and my body started to lean more and more against his, needing this comfort more than I’d realized. After a while, he pulled back and placed a kiss to my forehead. I opened my eyes

and looked at my best friend—double images of his face coming into view. His hands came to either side of my face as if he needed to hold me still himself, so I echoed his movements, holding his face in my hands, trying to stop the double-vision. “How come we never dated?” I blurted out. Both of Leo’s faces contorted, his foreheads making wrinkles as if he was confused. “You’re the one who made it clear that I was—” he pulled his hands from my face and held up his first two fingers, curving them to make air quotes “—not your type. I think your words were, ‘I date guys who have their shit together.’” I felt his words in my chest, felt the pain I must have given him saying that. He dropped his hands to his lap and I missed the warmth they’d given me. “I can be a real bitch, huh?” Leo chuckled softly. “You’re Adele. You’re tough and assertive—it’s why I liked you. But I got over it, don’t worry.” He placed his hands on my wrist and pulled them from his face. “It’s fine.” But it wasn’t fine. I may have been on the verge of blackout drunk, but even I could tell by his body language that he wasn’t being honest with me. “I should go.” He stood up and grabbed his bag and a sudden panic caused me to jump awkwardly to my feet. I tumbled across the room, knocking over the empty bottle of wine. When Leo was about to close the door, I did the one thing I shouldn’t have: I pushed him against the wall and planted my lips on his. His arms came around me, to steady me, but they held on as I kissed him. Instantly, I knew it was wrong. Not just the fact that I was kissing Leo, not even the fact that I was kissing while drunk. But the way our lips felt on one another was wrong. Leo was holding me in place, not pushing me as I’d pushed him. And through my inebriation, I still registered that Leo and I couldn’t work because he didn’t silence the thoughts that ran through my brain. I should feel drunk while kissing someone, not feel myself sobering from it. His fingers climbed up my back, holding me to him as if I was porcelain, something that would crumble in his hands. His lips were soft and moved languidly over mine and all I registered was how totally fucking wrong this was. Even as I pushed him away and stumbled backward, I felt the wrongness of it all. A deep, unshakeable shame came over me as I stared at him, half shocked and half mortified. “What the fuck was that?” Wiping a hand across my lips, I shook my head. “I felt bad I said that to you, before, about how I dated men who had their shit together.” I gestured to the door. “You should go away.” “I don’t need a pity kiss, Adele.” His eyes were angry as he whipped open my door. “Instead of searching for men who have their shit together, maybe you need to get your own shit together.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Counting out my share of tips from my last three shifts at the coffee shop alerted me to two things: 1. I’d need to get another job. 2. My customers were cheap mother fuckers. I leaned back against my couch with a sigh. I had enough in the bank for rent, for my power bill this month—woohoo! And my tips would need to float me for food and my Charlie card for the subway. As much as the subway, the T, pissed me off, riding it was my only option to get around. Leo was one of the few people I knew that had a car in Boston and he’d often given me rides to class or for shopping. But at the moment, Leo wasn’t exactly jumping out of his pants at the opportunity to speak with me. I couldn’t blame him, not after the very unromantic kiss I’d given him. And the fact that I hadn’t texted him or called him since it had happened over a week ago didn’t do me any favors either. It was October eighth, eight days after I had kissed Leo and seventeen days since Nathan had shoved a mirror in front of my face, showing me how stupid I was. And looking around my apartment, bereft of normal things apartments had, I definitely couldn’t disagree. I knew moving into Boston would be risky, financially. I anticipated living paycheck to paycheck, forgoing things like shopping sprees, food that wasn’t ramen, and my own internet connection. I knew I likely wouldn’t make many friends in Boston—that wasn’t different from growing up. But what I hadn’t prepared for was the silence. When I pictured myself moving to Boston, I imagined long walks through the city, whale watching, museum touring, bar hopping, once-in-a-lifetime experiences that only Boston could give me. I’d needed to get away from the people at home with their snide looks and, most of all, his silence. I’d felt heavy at home, buried under the weight of his disappointment.

Except so far, I’d replaced his disappointment for another’s: mine. And I wasn’t just talking about my lack of things, but my behavior. I’d known Leo for more than ten years, beginning the day he’d kept me entertained in gym class after I’d broken my leg and had to sit out. I wouldn’t say that growing up being called “the slut” had made it easy to make friends of the female variety. And men had lost interest in me when I’d told them my own disinterest in sucking their dick. Throughout high school I’d only dated college guys which should have made the girls in my class feel secure that I wouldn’t reel their boyfriends in for a fling. But since it hadn’t and I’d been scarlet-lettered, I’d had the whole don’t-give-a-fuck attitude in high school, only letting my guard down when Leo had tried to make me laugh—not to impress me, but to help me drop the fuck-this-shit attitude. And one drunken night had shown me what a great friend I was to Leo, kissing him because I felt bad, and confused, and lonely. I hung my head, cradling it in my hands. I wanted a good drink, but since spending the last week annihilating whatever pathetic little bit of liquor I had, I was fresh out. A fact that I cursed heavily upon seeing my mother’s name flash across my phone. “Hey, mom.” “Hey, baby.” Her voice was breathy, as usual. I glanced at the time. “You’re calling late.” For her. It was just after nine on a Thursday, a time which was usually reserved for her shows. “I wanted to see how you were doing.” I looked at my fridge, knowing she was talking about the $200 she’d sent me to fill my fridge and cupboards. “I’m good. Thanks for the money, I bought enough food to last me the rest of this month.” “Good, good.” There was something else and I waited, to hear what it was that I’d done this time. Instead of prompting her to tell me what that something was, I waited on the other end of the line, the awkwardness growing between us with each second of silence. “Well,” she began, and I imagined her clutching her necklace—probably pearls —and worrying the gems between her fingers. “Are you coming home for Thanksgiving?” It was still over a month away, but my mother was the embodiment of a housewife with her shit together. “I don’t know,” I said, withholding the sigh. “Dad might be joining us.” The statement from anyone else, anyone who was not my mother, would have sounded like a natural thing to say. But in the words my mother spoke, I heard what she didn’t say: So you should make sure to not upset him. I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure which was worse: a mother who loved me in the only way she knew how to but fell short in the honesty department, or a father

who made his disinterest and disdain completely transparent. “Maybe I won’t then.” “Oh,” she said, her voice airy. I could practically see her worry through the phone. “We’d love to have you.” The only “we” she could be referring to was Celeste and my father and it didn’t take a genius to deduce that the “we” was actually just my mother. Because as much as Celeste had guilt-tripped me for not attending our father’s birthday, she didn’t want me there anymore than he did. That was one of the many fucked up things about the situation: that they guilted me for not attending but if I had attended, I would have been ignored anyway. “Yeah, well classes have me busy…” my voice trailed away. “We haven’t been together as a family for years.” Because of him. That wasn’t on me—that was on him. Years after my mother had insisted on not aborting her surprise pregnancy even though she was forty-five and hadn’t been pregnant in sixteen years, my father had sort-of/kind-of walked out on her, on us. He’d been off doing God-knows-what or who while my mother had raised me solo, her eyes always wandering off, thinking of him, mourning his absence, forgetting me at school or neglecting to brush my hair. She’d lapsed into a silent kind of depression, only getting her spark again when dear old dad showed up on the doorstep just as I was finishing middle school. I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep myself from saying the things I wanted to say and instead said, “I’ll try.” I wouldn’t. “Maybe you all could come out to Boston.” They wouldn’t. It seemed lying to one another and to ourselves was our forte in this family. “Dad’s here right now, do you want to talk to him?” I knew even if I said yes, he wouldn’t talk to me, because he just didn’t. His only form of communication with me existed solely in the glances he gave me. And the fucked up thing about my mother asking me was that she knew. She knew he wouldn’t talk to me, even if I wanted him to. She was an actress, starring in this scripted show where her husband wasn’t a scumbag, who loved his daughters equally. A man who stood by his wife, a man who actually spoke words to his youngest daughter. But my father didn’t speak. He glared, he sighed heavily. He saved all his words for Celeste and my mom and spared not a one for me. Celeste and my mom were the way he communicated with me, relaying messages through them. I was a disappointment, a mistake; one he reluctantly supported financially as she grew up —as if that was all a child needed. “He mentioned your tuition, you know.” “Oh?” I asked, my interest far from piqued. I’d already moved onto the next thing to do: deciding which bill to pay on time and which one I could pay late. “Is he willing to pay for it now?” I couldn’t keep the bite of snark from passing through my lips. “If you make some changes. He just wants you to use the money wisely.”

Anger and frustration warred with the feeling I felt all too well: inadequacy. I mumbled a goodbye to my mom and dropped my phone onto the couch. Rubbing the headache that was just beginning at my temples, I let loose a breath. Since he’d come back into my life at thirteen and silently asserted his disinterest in me, I’d looked for attention elsewhere. It didn’t take a psychologist to conclude I had daddy issues. It was why I never chased a man; I hadn’t needed to. I’d kept them long enough until I was over it, leaving them to chase me. Clearly, that had done such good for me since I was wholly out of my element with Nathan, having no experience with a man who didn’t chase me when I still wanted him. To my father, choosing to study creative writing was a waste of “good money.” Why spend money on something I could do since elementary school when I could focus my attention on something more worthwhile. His words. My phone buzzed, a calendar reminder: Write the monologue for Professor Easton’s class Shit. The assignment was due Friday—as in, tomorrow. And I hadn’t even begun. Scrambling for my notebook, my thoughts raced on what to write. When I saw my mother’s face on my recent calls list, a thought came to me and I wrote and revised until three in the morning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

From my perch at my desk, I watched students filter in through the door, tapping my pencil against my leg. Adele usually came in just a few short minutes before class started, cutting it closer to being late, more often in the last week. That was my fault, I’m sure. I didn’t pride myself on being an asshole, despite what my students probably thought. Saying what I’d said to Adele had been one of those necessary, horrible moments that I couldn’t take back. But the days got easier the less I looked at her, and the less I thought about her. Until I picked up her paper and felt it slam between my ribs. Ten years ago, maybe even five, I could have written that paper word for word. After thirty-four years of silence and minimal attention from my father, it didn’t hurt me the way it used to. But reading her words, I’d known they were hers before I really even noticed her name in the top left corner. Laughter and chatter filled the air in the lecture hall while they waited for me to do something, anything. I kept waiting until the clock was two minutes past when I should have started. Only one student looked back at the clock and gave me a quizzical glance. The back door popped open, and Adele came down the steps until she got to her usual seat. She didn’t look straight at me, which was surprising; it was almost like she’d resigned herself to my disregard the previous week. I cleared my throat, and she finally looked up at me, shock widening her eyes when she saw me looking back at her. Lowering herself into her chair, she tilted her head and I could almost hear the question like she’d asked it. What are you doing? I shook my head once, and stood up from my chair, pushing it back with an obnoxious scrape. The chattering slowly settled down while I walked to the middle of the open area in front of my desk. “I had a lot of reading to do this weekend, going over your monologues. Not all of you failed miserably, which is wonderful. Now, what I didn’t tell you last week is that I typically ask students to come up here and read them out loud, almost like we were in an acting class.” That gained me immediate nervous shifting in their seats, coughed out laughter,

a few audible groans. I held up a hand, moving to lean up against my desk. “The reason I don’t tell you that ahead of time is because monologues demand honesty, as I told you last week. And I often find that if people think they can hide behind their computers, only plan on their horrible creative writing professor seeing the words, then that honesty is much more prevalent.” Leaning back, I snagged the piece of paper off the top of the stack and looked down at it again, then looked up at the class. They were all staring raptly, probably all sweating a little wondering if their monologue was the one I was holding. “This one,” I lifted the paper, looking at a few different faces in a few different rows before landing on Adele’s face, which was about the same shade of white as the paper I was holding in my hand, “this one was my favorite. So I’m going to pull it up on the projection screen behind me, so you can see how it was laid out, and I’m going to read it out loud too.” I tapped my ear. “When you have to listen to someone bleeding out on the page, it’s different, it’s more personal.” I walked around my desk, the squeak of my shoes the only sound in the room. I had never had a classroom full of over a hundred students be so deathly silent. I tapped a few buttons on my laptop and the screen popped to life, the beam from the projector mounted in the ceiling catching dust motes drifting through the air. I faced them, turning away from the screen, and I saw eyes rapidly moving across the display, only Adele’s eyes were not aimed at the words. No, she was staring right at me, begging me with her eyes not to do this. I held her gaze and spoke the words from memory, since I’d read that damn thing dozens of times over the weekend. I didn’t need to look back once to remember it.

Silence leaves a different mark than a bruise No punctured skin, no purple rings. Purple fading to yellow that clings to your skin. In every silent moment with you, every indifferent glance, Each quick pass of your eyes, you suck something from me. You break a bone, slap my face, shove me down and keep me there. You break it all. Something that will never, ever heal. I’m a paperweight, I am heavy, and I’m sitting on all the pieces of me you didn’t want. I’m made from you, your fingerprint is in the shape of my eyes, the color of my hair, the stubborn spine. Isn’t that ironic? The spine I get from you, that steel beam that props me up, was hardened by you. Because you’re silent

Silent Silent Silent You see me across a room and move your eyes elsewhere, the cobwebs in the corner holding more appeal. She gave me my smile You gave me my sneer. She gave me my laugh You gave me my silence. Because you made me quiet when I wanted to be loud. In your silence I am punished—for living, for breathing, for being the one you didn’t want. I hear your disdain, I feel your derision like dirt on my skin, without you saying a word. You don’t see me and still, you hate me. I smile and I laugh and I smirk and I bitch, you mean nothing, your silence means nothing. But I look for something else to soften the steel, something and someone to give the bruises that will fade your silence. I look for places you don’t exist, finding a temporary, hollow pleasure in the men who want me. I’m nothing but an inconvenience. A stupid little girl. Maybe someday I won’t be so little, and I’m already not stupid. But I still need some sound. And someone to see. I finished reciting it, no one in the room missing that my voice sounded like I was holding a brick in my throat by the time I was done. Jaws hung open, a few girls wiped tears from their cheeks, and more than one face was turning and searching, wondering who’d written that. Adele had turned into stone in her seat. Switching off the projector, I sat in my chair again, lifting my hands up in question. “So?” “Wow,” a girl breathed from the front row. “That was … it was really sad.” I let out a sigh. “A simplistic answer, but I’ll take it. Anyone else?” David, one of my more intelligent students, lifted his hand. I motioned toward him. “It felt defensive. Like she knew she was being judged, and she just wanted somebody to hear why she is the way she is.” Honestly, it was kids like him that kept me teaching. I smiled, nodding. “Very

good, David. Very insightful.” I lifted the paper again, keeping my eyes away from her. “That’s what makes this so well done. It’s relatable, even if we’ve never had the same experiences that she has. A well-written monologue will hold a kernel of truth for everyone who hears it. Even if it’s not their truth, right? That’s why we go back and listen to certain parts of certain movies, or dog-ear the pages of a book where the main character finally lets it out. Says their piece, because they want to be heard, and they want people to recognize the truth in it. It’s a way for them to be understood. And this person?” I tapped the page with my free hand, “I understand this person.” For the rest of the class, Adele wouldn’t look at me, but I could see her relax a little as we moved away from the monologues. We wrapped up, me reminding them of what was coming up next week so they wouldn’t forget to think about it. I leaned against my desk, absently watching them pack up their bags and immediately pull their phones out to see what they’d missed in that last fifty-five minutes. As the room emptied, I finally let myself stare at her. She’d slowed her movements as the rest of her classmates stood and left, so that it wouldn’t be noticeable that she had absolutely no intention of leaving the room with them. Our eyes met when the last person left, letting the door swing shut with a clang. The skin on her face was still pale, but she lifted her chin in the air and opened her mouth. Then closed it. I crossed my arms across my chest and waited. “You had no right,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, starting to stand from her chair. I held up a hand and gave a meaningful glance to the open windows in the two doors at the back of the classroom. “Not here, Adele. Could we continue this in my office?” She clenched her jaw and looked away, letting me take my fill of her stony profile. Finally, she gave me a sharp nod and walked out of the room. A short minute later, I followed.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was déjà vu, walking down the gleaming hallway toward my office, Adele leaning up against the wall next to my door. But this time there was no gloating smile, no teasing glint in her eye. She did not want to be here, and I couldn’t blame her in the slightest. I unlocked the door and gestured for her to go in, which she did, arms crossed tightly over her ribs. The door shut with an unassuming click and I stared at her rigid back when she didn’t turn to face me. In the quiet office, it struck me that I hadn’t really studied her, save that first night when we danced. “You had no right, Nathan,” she whispered. I rubbed at the back of my neck, willing her to turn around and look at me. “That was the best thing I’ve seen all semester, from anyone in that class. And if you were brave enough to submit the assignment—” Adele shifted so I could see her profile, and she glanced over her shoulder. “But that was private. I didn’t need those judgmental assholes trying to figure out who has daddy issues.” Moving around her so I could face her, I sat back on my desk and gripped the edge with both hands. Touching wasn’t part of this equation, but the more she shut down about this, the more she fascinated me. I shook my head, watching her take a step back so we weren’t so close. “Look, I shouldn’t have said what I did. You’re not a stupid—” “Don’t,” she said, blinking rapidly and shifting her eyes up to the ceiling. “I don’t need this.” I straightened and stood, dipping my head so I could catch her gaze, which she reluctantly gave me. The sheen of tears made the green of her irises look otherworldly, and when she blinked again, one tear spilled onto her cheek. She pressed a hand to her cheek, mouth dropping open like she was surprised by its existence. “Maybe I need this, Adele.” I lifted a hand to, what? Touching was out. Right? She searched my face while my stupid hand hovered an inch away from her cheek. “You think you’re the only one who’s felt ignored by the man you should look up to more than anyone in the world? You’re not.”

Another blink, another tear hit her cheekbone and I cupped her face, touching my thumb to the drop of water, rubbing it into her silk-soft skin. Her eyes pinched shut and she inhaled in through her nose, trying so damn hard to keep it together. I moved the hand on her cheek and speared it through her hair, cupping the back of her head and pulling her into my arms. I wrapped the other arm around her shaking shoulders and gripped her to me as tightly as I could manage. It only took a second for her arms to come around my waist and her hands to fist into my shirt, like she was keeping me from pulling away. The thought never crossed my mind, not when I made soothing noises and rubbed up and down her back, or rested my cheek on the top of her cool, blonde hair. The rawness that she was feeling chafed at me, because I knew the part I had played in it. When her tears finally quieted, I pressed my lips onto her hair, not in a kiss, just breathing her in. The simple act of a hug was so benign; one of those things you might take for granted if you lived a life with normal, kind parents and a spouse who was actually alive. But for me, aside from the brief moments of anger-tinged passion with Adele in the past month, I hadn’t felt this in years. Comfort for comfort’s sake. No ulterior motives or agendas. Just an exchange of hurt and compassion. I think that hug, that simple circle of arms, moved me more than any of our previous exchanges. And the terror of that realization knocked down one of the bricks that I’d set down years ago to barricade my heart. “When I think about what I said to you, I could rip my tongue out. Because the thought of making you feel for one second what my father has made me feel my whole life, and I wager yours has as well, is unforgivable. But I’m going to apologize all the same.” Adele sniffed and tightened her arms, pressing her forehead into my collarbone. I moved my head down so that the sides of our faces brushed, and she took a shuddering breath. “I am truly sorry.” Her arms loosened just enough so she could pull back to look at me. Her cheeks were damp from tears and the skin around her eyes was slightly red and puffy. She looked terrible. And I felt like I was finally seeing Adele. “Why are you doing this? I was gone, Nathan.” Instead of answering, I pulled my arms from around her and used my thumbs to dry her cheeks. Her eyelids fell shut at the simple sweeps of skin, like she was as parched for this as I was. One hand stayed on her cheek and the other drifted down until my thumb rested on the corner of her mouth. I dragged it across her bottom lip, the smooth skin pulling in the wake of my thumb. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I admitted. Her eyes popped open at my honesty. “I shouldn’t be; I do know that.” Adele extracted herself from my grasp and ran a hand over her hair. “I need to go.” I wrapped a hand around her bicep, feeling a twinge of panic. And confusion. “Hang on a second—” “No, Nathan. I can’t do this back and forth bullshit with you.” Her voice

wavered, still raw from the last couple hours. “I can’t.” She pressed a hand to her chest and looked up at me, eyes so wide that if I looked hard enough, I might understand what she was trying to get out. “It’s too hard to keep doing this. It’s fucking with my head and I don’t like it.” Her voice rose in pitch and color finally started filling her cheeks again. She was so beautiful, and I was the jackass who hadn’t really appreciated it until right now. I didn’t think. Taking advantage of her silence, I gripped the sides of her face and pulled her up on her toes, fitting my mouth over hers. Not the painful, clashing kisses we’d shared before. This was softer, a way that I could finally let myself memorize the texture of her lips. Adele slid her hands up my chest and up around my neck, weaving her fingers into the hair at the base of my skull. She let out the tiniest whimper when I briefly touched my tongue to hers, just a slow lick. It was the spark that detonated us both. Hands started gripping harder, hers on my scalp and mine around her waist, one hand cupping her ass and fitting her tight against my aching erection. This felt so different, so authentic. Just Nathan kissing Adele, regardless of who we were or what we might want to acquire from each other. It wasn’t fueled by desperation like it had been for me that first night, that gluttonous give and take of orgasms, the first from anything other than my hand in almost four long years. I spun us around and hefted her onto my desk, her legs immediately wrapping around my hips. I hitched my hand around one of her thighs and pulled it higher around me so I could grind myself against her core. Her mouth broke away and she dropped her head back. “Oh fuck, that feels good.” I latched my mouth onto the skin beneath her ear and sucked hard. My hand slid up underneath her shirt, and while I had no intention of actually undressing her in my office, as I wasn’t a complete imbecile, I wanted to feel the parts of her that might be the softest. And the patch of skin just beneath the clasp of her bra was sleek and smooth where it wrapped over her spine. I desperately wanted to spend hours just feeling every inch of her, so badly that my hands felt like they were about to start shaking. I wanted the intimacy with her. Adele wedged her hand between us and tried to make quick work of my belt. “Woah, hang on. Not in my office. It’s too risky.” She pushed out her bottom lip in a slight pout, using her clever fingers to wrap around my cock. I groaned and dropped my head onto her shoulder, tilting my hips into her grip. That rocking movement took me straight from craving intimacy to wanting to fuck her until she lost her voice from screaming. Until she couldn’t walk for days. Get inside her so deeply that neither one of us felt like we could pull away. That feeling was top-of-the-roller-coaster scary. “Oh come on,” she whispered, lips grazing the shell of my ear. “I’ll just take the edge off now, then we can go somewhere else.” I lifted my head, still grappling for control, but losing whenever she tightened

her hand and my hips pitched forward in response. “How far away is your place?” I asked in a rough voice. Adele smiled. “Don’t you remember?” “Hey, I was a little busy trying not to fuck you against a wall in the alley. Cut me some slack, okay?” She kept her lips pressed closed and hummed in response, taking her hand away. I tried not to curse, honestly I did. “I guess it depends on what you want to happen next?” I was too busy watching the movements of her lips, finally snapping my eyes up to hers when I realized she was waiting for an answer. “Next, what?” The soft pink tip of her tongue swept across her bottom lip and then she smiled again. There it was, that victorious, slow widening of her mouth. She damn well knew she had me. “Where do you want to be?” She leaned forward, dragging her tongue up the side of my neck, only stopping when she sucked my earlobe into her mouth. “When you come next?” “Uhhhh,” was the most articulate response I could come up with. I felt so fucking out of my depth. It was foreign and terrifying and exhilarating. “Do you want to come in my mouth?” A kiss under my ear. “In my pussy?” Another kiss at the side of my mouth. I turned to capture her lips and she pulled back. “On my tits?” “You little fucking tease,” I ground out, then devoured her waiting mouth, sweeping my tongue against hers. I pulled back, smirking when she followed after me with her kiss-reddened lips. “I choose all of the above. I’ll meet you at your place in ten minutes. And you better not make me wait a second longer.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After slamming the door of my apartment, I ran around the room, shoving the pile of used tissues under the couch, the dirty dishes into the sink, and throwing the comforter I’d left on the floor back on my bed. I straightened the wrinkles, fluffed the pillows and wiggled out of the jacket I was wearing. Looking around my apartment, I suddenly had the oddest of doubts. What would he think upon seeing my apartment in the light of day, with my threadbare thrift store sofa, my mismatched bar stools and my scratched and dented computer desk? I’d seen his home, taken in his things. His walls weren’t covered in patches from previous tenants; his floors didn’t look dull from age and neglect. “He’s a man, Adele. He’s not going to give a shit if you have fine china because he’ll hopefully be too busy banging you into tomorrow.” It was precisely the kind of pep-talk I needed, and not a minute too soon when I heard the knock on my door, signaling his arrival. Fuck. I hadn’t thought to change my underwear. I mentally catalogued what I was wearing that day and swore again. “Let me in,” he said against the door, his voice low. Shivering from the way his words excited me, I took five long strides to the door and twisted the handle open. His eyes latched on mine immediately, the steel blue warmed from his concentration. He had his hands braced on either side of the door frame, leaning in enough to bring his after shave, something spicy and sinful, into my air. I was nervous, something I didn’t expect. When I’d brought him home the first night, after the bar, it had been dark. Now it wasn’t even three in the afternoon, illuminating not only the melancholy state of my apartment, but also—and more startling—me. Under the cloak of the darkness, I’d felt sexy, powerful. In the bright light of the day, with this man I wanted down to my marrow, I felt transparent; a big fat phony. “Come in,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. He walked past me and I placed my palms flat on the door, closing it slowly. Without turning around, I closed my eyes a beat, imagining him taking in my apartment. “I … uh, haven’t been here long,” I began, still not turning around. “I’ve been meaning to add more, but seeing as it’s just me—”

Before I could finish the thought, I felt him at my back, the heat emanating from his body so all-consuming that I forgot what I was going to say. I waited, my blood a thunder in my ears, for him to do something. Anything. To touch me, to turn me around, to tell me to stop talking. But he didn’t need to tell me to stop talking; my body shut the hell up as soon he invaded my air space. I turned my head slightly over my left shoulder, wanting to see his face out of the corner of my eye, but then I felt his fingers on my right shoulder. Just the tips, pushing gently into my flesh, tapping slowly down my shoulder to my arm, as if he was playing piano scales on my skin. Another hand came up, pushing my hair over my left shoulder. His fingers brushed my back as he pushed all the hair away and I nearly trembled. Just from the brush of his fingers. His lips pressed a kiss to the spot where my neck met my back, his mouth warming a trail down my spine. This was tenderer than I was expecting and it was throwing me off. “Nathan…” but I didn’t finish. “Shh,” he murmured against my back, rubbing the lightest stubble over my skin. His hands came to my hips, teasing the skin above my jeans with his thumbs. His fingers wrapped around my hips, sliding under my tank and brushing my lower belly with gentle strokes. He leaned in, his front against my back and I pushed back, needing the pressure. Gripping more tightly to my hips, he squeezed and put a little distance between us. It was a long, slow tease, one that was beginning to make me squirm in my own skin. He kissed the side of my neck he’d pushed the hair from. Soft, open mouth kisses raining from my ear to where my neck met shoulder. “Nathan…” I didn’t know what to do with slow, with soft. I wanted hard, fast, biting, punishing sex. “I know.” He said it against my ear lobe, humming the last word right against my cartilage. Again, I squirmed, trying to push harder against him, but was halted with a sharp bite to my lobe. The jolt caused my head to fall back onto his left shoulder, feeling the bite down to my core. One of his hands left my hips to wrap gently around my neck, rotating my face to his. I finally met his eyes, saw the restraint in them. He knew exactly what he was doing, warming me up to his touch. I watched his eyes move to my mouth, felt his finger pulling down on my lower lip. When the finger let go, his lips descended, finally, thankfully, making contact with my own. The kiss began slowly, with him tasting my lips. God, the man could kiss. His tongue tracing the seam of my lips made me shudder, melting back against him. I brought a hand to his neck, holding him as he explored my mouth with the lightest touch. He pulled away, but didn’t let go. “Are you ready?” he asked. Confused, I furrowed my brow. “Ready?” His eyes narrowed, his hand ran down my chest, brushing against the curve of

my breast but not lingering. “We’re not going to stop this time,” he growled. Fuck. Full on body shudder. I had the sudden urge to squeeze my thighs together, but he still held me so firmly in place that I couldn’t move. There was something uniquely rousing about being at his mercy, at bowing to the demands of his hands. Unable to answer lest I squeak the word, I merely nodded. “Good,” he said, planting a kiss on my shoulder. His hands moved from my waist, under my shirt, over my stomach, until his palms covered the cups of my bra. He squeezed roughly, causing me to cry out from the second sharp bite of pleasure. I pushed my hips back, feeling his erection against my ass. He tugged my tank up and threw it behind him before spinning me around, my back now to the door. His hands once again covered my breasts, his fingers wrapping around the curve of the bra and yanking it down. My breasts spilled out of the top, my nipples pointed and aching for his attention. With a smile curving his full lips, he rolled my nipples between his fingers, scraping the ends of his thumbs against the tips. When he lowered his mouth, he made sure to keep eye contact with me the entire time, sucking one breast into his mouth as he pinched my other nipple with his fingers, twisting just enough to give me another taste of that pleasant kind of pain. “I like this,” he murmured, his eyes still on mine but his lips now on my nipple ring. Watching his cheeks hollow as he sucked my breast into his mouth in the broad daylight made the pulse heavy in between my legs, an ache blooming there. It felt illicit, to be so exposed with a shaft of light from the window slicing across my body. His mouth moved down the center of my chest, teeth scraping my ribs, tongue dipping into my belly button. He hooked his fingers into the top of my jeans, running them back and forth over my skin. I heard the snap of the button on my jeans a half second before his hand dove down, fingers cupping me and squeezing over my panties. “Shiiiiiiit,” I hissed, bucking against his hand. “You’re fucking wet.” His fingers dug against the cotton, touching me intimately with them as a barrier. With his free hand, he unzipped the front of my jeans and tugged the back of them down over my ass. He ran his hand over the back of my panties before gripping my ass in his hand and squeezing—hard enough to bruise. Letting go of my ass, he turned me around but kept his hand on my pussy, fingers stroking just outside of where I wanted him, over and around my lips, but not in between them. I felt him tug my underwear down from behind, joining my jeans at my knees. His face was so close to my ass that I wanted to turn around, to see what he was doing. But just as I was about to look, two things happened in quick succession: his hand came down and slapped one cheek hard, and a second later he pushed two fingers inside of me, pressing his thumb against my clit. A mangled noise tore from my throat as I tried to catch up with the shock and shudder that hit me simultaneously. His fingers thrust into me twice before pulling

out so slowly that I thought I would break down in sobs. Just when I felt his fingers pull all the way out, he circled my entrance once before thrusting again, rubbing the pad of his thumb in circles over my clit. I was so fucking turned on that I knew it wouldn’t take me long to come all over his hand. “Nathan,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the cold door. “I’m close.” “Good.” It came out as a grunt just as he whipped me back around, so I faced him again. He dove his hand into my hair and pulled the strands just as he removed his fingers to thrust them again. I squirmed, trying to hump his hand in my need to get off. It continued on and on, Nathan alternating between tugging my hair, biting my lip, slapping my ass, and pinching my nipple right before each rough thrust. I was spiraling upward, straining for release. I was panting, riding his hand closer and closer to the finish. Finally, his fingers curled inside of me as he pressed hard against my clit and I shouted something unintelligible before crumpling against the door. My legs shook and my breaths came erratically. “Thank you,” I whispered, unthinking. I hadn’t known how badly I’d needed that release until the moment Nathan picked me up because my legs were too wobbly to hold myself up. I barely registered him carrying me to the kitchen, only coming to my senses once he’d plopped me onto the counter, the cold surface a startling contrast to my warmed ass. My jeans and panties were scrunched around my knees and my tits hung out over my bra, and Nathan was still completely dressed. I kicked my jeans and panties off, letting them plop on the floor, out of our way. Reaching behind me, I unclasped my bra, noted his eyes tracing the full curves of my breasts. “You’re a little overdressed for this party,” I said, feeling my heart rate start to subside. Reaching forward, I clasped my hands on his shirt and started undoing the buttons, one by one. I deliberately took my time unbuttoning his shirt, teasing him as he’d teased me. But by the third button, his hand covered mine. “I can’t go slowly,” he said. It was only then that I took in his appearance, blue eyes engulfed in need, tick in his jaw. I knew that if I put my hand on his dick, he’d come undone. So that was exactly what I did. Once he let go of my hand, I reached down, squeezing him through his pants. His eyes closed and he bit out a curse word. “Then don’t go slowly.” I spread my legs on the edge of the counter and squeezed him harder in my hand. “I’ll take whatever you can give me.” I wasn’t sure how he did it, but his pants were down to his ankles and a condom was in his hand a heartbeat later. He put the wrapper to his teeth as if to rip it open, but I clasped his hands with mine and leaned forward, placing my mouth on the edge of the wrapper. I paused, breathing into his mouth as he breathed into mine, until the hands clasped with mine gripped tightly, impatiently. With my teeth on the wrapper, I pulled, opening the wrapper with our mouths. His eyes flashed a look that told me how fucking hot that was—because fucking hell, it was—and he rolled the condom down his impressive dick. His hand cupped

the back of my head as his other hand gripped my thigh and pulled me, bringing my pussy to the edge of the counter. “Watch,” he said, twisting his hand in my hair to hold me taut, angling my head down to his dick, watching as he rubbed its head against my pussy, rubbing it through my folds, before aligning it to my entrance and slamming forward. I couldn’t help it, I was so sensitive from having just come spectacularly that the way he filled me ripped a scream from my throat. He didn’t let up for even a second, hammering into me swiftly, so relentless that I felt his balls smack my ass. I wrapped my legs around his waist and ripped open the rest of his shirt, needing to see more of his golden skin, desperate to touch him as he pounded tirelessly into me. My body warmed, my muscles fluid with each thrust, and I knew I would come again. I felt the quake in my arms as he pushed into me, over and over, with a rhythm that was almost punishing in its increasing speed. I alternated between succumbing to the climb and focusing on helping him get there, but in the end I did both by running my nails down his chest, over his nipples and abs. Fuck, watching his stomach clench with his thrusts was enough to push me completely off the ledge. His hand came between us, flicking my clit. “Ahhh,” I moaned, my head falling back, but still supported by his hand. He leaned forward and licked up the curve of my breast, his fingers pressing into my scalp. He didn’t ask me if I was close, but he seemed to sense it as he closed his lips around my nipple, tonguing my piercing, before biting down hard enough to send a shockwave throughout my entire body. It was the shove I needed to throw me over the edge and into a mind-numbing orgasm; an avalanche of ecstasy carried me from the high, my body limp and my breaths quick. He clutched me to him as he grunted his release, fingers digging into my skin—keeping me from floating away completely. Sex with Nathan was more than just a romp in the proverbial sheets; it obliterated the senses. He was a generous lover, giving and taking in equal measure, aware and in control even as his body lost it. His ability to be restrained, to keep himself in check made me both admire him and want to spin that dominance right out of his hands. But, as I was freshly fucked and rubber-limbed, I just laid in his arms as our breathing slowed and our skin cooled. The orgasm had rocked me so solidly that I felt myself shiver as I calmed in his arms. “Are you cold?” he asked, not letting me go. “A little.” But I didn’t want him to let me go just yet. He kicked off his pants and wrapped an arm around my upper back and one under my ass as he carried me into my bedroom. I worried for a moment that he would tuck me in and go about as his way—a repeat of our first night together—but instead he climbed in behind me, tugging my back against his front. I was soothed by his desire to hold me so soon after sex.

The near-emotional breakdown from class earlier followed by the two perfect orgasms he’d given me had turned me into warm goo, and I found myself melting into sleep with his arm wrapped around my waist.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I woke up to Nathan’s breath in my ear, his words whispering along my skin. “I need to get going.” After opening my eyes, I looked to the clock. “It’s seven?” “At night,” he confirmed. He shifted behind me before sliding off the bed and padding out of my bedroom. I watched his magnificent ass from bed until he disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to gather his clothes. Standing up, I debated whether or not to throw on a t-shirt but decided against it, walking out into the living area and stretching my relaxed limbs. I caught him staring as I arched my back and smiled seductively. “Do you really have to go?” I felt a sudden, baffling sadness at the thought of him leaving, but pushed it back. “Unfortunately, yes.” He started to button up his shirt before he realized there were buttons missing from when I’d ripped it open. “Oops,” I said with a shrug. I walked into the kitchen, completely naked, and pulled two safety pins out of the drawer. “Here.” I pushed his hands away and began securing the openings of his shirt with my pins. “Sorry.” I gave him a sheepish grin. Smiling, he held my face in his hands. “Me too.” He put his lips on my forehead for a second and pulled away. He tucked the ends of his shirt into his pants and then we stared at each other, as if he didn’t know how to end this. Was it an end? Or just a pause? “So…” I began, not finishing my sentence. “Let me give you my personal email address.” I was stupidly giddy, even as the voice in my head muttered, Not his phone number? He scribbled it down on the paper I’d pushed at him and I took the moment to admire his long, thick fingers as they moved across the page. I had a very vivid thought of those fingers inside of me and wanted a repeat. “Here.” He handed me the paper. “Alice Carroll can email me here.” Alice Carroll, my fake email account. I knew he was telling me not to use my school account, much like I shouldn’t send to his work account. “I’ll let her know,” I said, standing still. When he didn’t make a move to leave

and just stood there staring, I blurted out, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay? I can order a pizza?” I couldn’t really afford to order a pizza, but if it meant I’d get a couple more hours with him, I was going to go for it. “I wish I could. I have papers to grade from one of my other classes.” Even though he was shooting me down, he sounded sincere in his desire to stay, so I let it go, walking him to the door. “Are you going to put on clothes?” he asked at the door. I shrugged. “Are you going to stay?” I said it teasingly. He smiled, that one small act transforming his face from sexy intense to stupidly beautiful. “No.” I leaned against the wall next to the door. “I guess Alice Carroll will have to let you know later on, if clothes happen or not.” I took delight in the way his throat moved in response to what I’d said. “I hope she does,” he said, his voice hushed. Leaning in, he kissed me, running his fingers over my ribs. And then he left. I tried to distract myself with a book, with cleaning, but barely an hour after he left, I booted up my computer and logged into my Alice Carroll account.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:29 PM Subject: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton I’m hungry. ••• I laughed at myself for the brief message. His reply came shortly.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:32 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll I heard you say something about pizza. Order some. ••• I wasn’t surprised by his reply, but it didn’t go exactly the direction I’d intended.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:34 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton I was thinking I was hungry for dick. What happened to you coming in my mouth? ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:37 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you coming against my hand and then around the dick you’re after is what happened. There’s always next time. ••• Next time! We hadn’t discussed anything before he’d left my apartment, but I’d hoped this wasn’t a one-time deal. So, to have him suggest it set my worries at ease.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:40 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton I forgot about that. Perhaps you should refresh my memory sometime soon? ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:45 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll You wound me. I’d like to do just that, but this week is busy for me. Next week,

perhaps? ••• I couldn’t help the disappointment that wormed its way into my head. But he wasn’t blowing me off at least.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:49 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton I’ll try to fit you into my schedule. ••• I’d hoped he’d find the humor in my response, and I wasn’t disappointed with his reply.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:53 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll If you don’t fit me into your schedule, I’ll have to punish you. ••• As if it knew I was thinking about it, my ass settled more comfortably in my desk chair.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:55 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton In that case, maybe I won’t fit you in.

I like a good spanking. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 08:59 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll I recall. I feel like I would be remiss in forgetting to mention that we must keep this— whatever this is—between us. And be as discreet as possible. Furthermore, as unpleasant as it is for me to say this, I feel compelled to let you know that our trysts will not influence your grade in my class. ••• From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:05 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton Are you telling me I won’t get extra credit for giving you a blow job? Bummer. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:08 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll I think you should know my stance on extra credit by now. But no, a blow job will get you five gold stars.

••• From: Alice Carroll

Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:11 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton And what does five gold stars get me? ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:14 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll Nothing. Bragging rights? Except you can’t brag about this, so you’ll have to settle for my enthusiastic appreciation. ••• From: Alice Carroll Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:15 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Nathaniel Easton I can settle for that. Goodnight, Nathaniel. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 09:19 PM Subject: Re: Hungry To: Alice Carroll Adele. I hope you sleep well. I still smell you on my skin. I’m not showering tonight. ••• The rest of the week was more emails. They were always more sexual immediately after class, as I’d spent the entire hour wound up tight, struggling to look at him as my teacher and not the man who’d just given me two outstanding orgasms.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 02:15 PM Subject: Hard To: Nathaniel Easton Do you know how hard it is to listen to you talk for an hour and not let my mind wander to what I’d rather employ your lips to do? ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 02:19 PM Subject: Re: Hard To: Alice Carroll I have a feeling it’s similar in difficulty to avoiding your eye contact all throughout class. I smelled your perfume when I came into class. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:19 PM Subject: Today To: Alice Carroll Did you have to wear those fucking shoes to class? ••• Smiling, I stripped down to nothing but my thong and the red high-heels. Standing with my back to my full-length mirror, I looked over my shoulder at my reflection and took a photo. It was a full back shot, from the heels he was cursing up to my long blonde locks hanging down my back. I attached it to my email and sent it along.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:25 PM Subject: Re: Today

To: Nathaniel Easton I did. Maybe I can wear them while you fuck me. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:31 PM Subject: Re: Today To: Alice Carroll Jesus. Do you even know how beautiful you are? ••• The comment caught me off guard, but warmed me up inside of my cold apartment. I’d ignored Leo’s call earlier that day, choosing instead to delay the inevitable. And I was so very impatient to see Nathaniel again, outside of class. The thought made me compose my next email.

From: Alice Carroll Date: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:35 PM Subject: Re: Today To: Nathaniel Easton You know, when I sent that first email to you a month ago, when I’d asked about extra credit? The first draft of the email had said this: Please bend me over your desk and fuck me until it hurts. ••• From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Friday, October 16, 2015 10:36 PM Subject: Re: Today To: Alice Carroll My answer is yes. •••

At the bottom of the email he’d included his cell number and a “Call me.” Gnawing on my lip, I dialed his number. “Adele.” God, his voice warmed me through the freaking receiver. “Nathan.” “I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk today. You seemed to want to chat with me at the end of class.” After class, I’d taken longer than necessary to pack up my things, hoping that my delay would mean some one-on-one time with Nathan. But my plan had been thwarted by the nitwit Ashley, the girl who had taken up spending more and more time at Nathan’s desk at the end of class. She’d brought up her graded monologue, telling Nathan she didn’t understand his criticisms of her work. Nathan had glanced up upon seeing me, an apology in his eyes, before turning back to repeat what I’d known he’d already written on her assignment. “Chatting wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I told him. For some reason, talking on the phone with him made me anxious. Hearing his voice instead of reading his words was more intimate and, incredibly, more arousing. “Ah. Well, maybe another time. By the way, you should bring your coat to class. We’re supposed to get snow over the weekend.” I looked down at the comforter I’d wrapped around myself. “I don’t have a coat yet.” I hadn’t had a chance to buy one, nor the funds for it. But I was too proud to tell him that, so I just said, “But thanks for the tip, mom. I’ll work on it.” “Hey,” he chided. “I’m just looking out for your legs. You wore a skirt to class today—not exactly winter weather appropriate.” “I’m glad you noticed.” He huffed a breath through the phone. “Of course I noticed. The heels, remember?” I smiled. “They’re great heels.” “Hey, I have to go. But text me from now on. It’ll be easy.” “Roger that.” “Get a coat.” “Maybe.” I liked bossy Nathan. But my spine was steel and even if I liked being told what to do, it was in my nature to be contrary.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Walking out into the darkening parking lot, I waved goodbye to one of my colleagues who was making the same quick escape that I was after that boring as hell faculty meeting. Even though Daylight Savings hadn’t kicked in yet, the sun was setting markedly earlier, no longer keeping the already bare trees covered in light much past seven-thirty. Since the fall colors had peaked early and disappeared with the same quickness, dusk held an eerie glow with the way it wrapped around the skeletal trees. It made everything feel colder too, when the trees lost their vibrant clothing. Letting out one shiver, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. The warm reprieve to my fingers was sobering, bringing back the memory of Adele wrapping herself in that threadbare, obviously fake jacket. She’d been embarrassed when I’d brought it up, brushing off her clear financial burden. The simple, worn furnishings definitely hadn’t gone unnoticed either time I was at her place. Okay, they had the first time, I had to admit. I hadn’t been paying attention to a damn thing except her that night. Still, a week after my giving in to her, I felt like I was living in a tunnel. I couldn’t see, hear, feel, or smell anything but her. The sex was so, so good that I walked around in a constant state of improvident arousal, high off of what she was making me feel. I greedily inhaled her emails and fought every instinct to show up at her place in the middle of the night, just so I could touch and taste and devour and claim. So this new feeling, this desire to help her, make her simple life a little easier, was disquieting. I pushed it down though, not feeling equipped to break down and label every single thing I was doing with her. Instead I pulled my phone out and tapped out a text message to her, something I rarely did.

Me: Be outside the back entrance to your building in fifteen min. Adele: Oooh, mysterious. And you text now? Me: Apparently. Time is of the essence. Don’t make me wait.

Adele: Someday, I’ll need a shrink to tell me why you being a dick is so fucking sexy.

I grinned when I saw her last reply, turning the key in my car’s ignition. Instead of replying, like I’m sure she was waiting for me to do, I simply slipped my phone back in my pocket and took off toward her apartment, now very grateful for the impending darkness. “What’s with the cloak and dagger?” Adele asked as she slid into the passenger seat of my running car. I hadn’t gotten out to get her or opened the door like I’d been trained to do my whole life. But that was date behavior, and nothing Adele and I had ever done would approach the same polite courtesies that could qualify as that. “We have an errand to run,” I said, giving her a brief glance and shaking my head at the fact that she wasn’t wearing her jacket at all. “Aren’t you cold?” She shrugged, running a hand over the dashboard of my car. “I’m kind of used to it by now. Umm, this car is sexy. You realize that, right?” Of course I did. I was a guy, and I drove a black 2015 BMW M6 Gran Coupe. It was what would happen if the greatest car in the world got knocked up by the mother of all orgasms and then gave birth. Instead I just smiled and watched her run her thin, graceful fingers over every surface she could touch. I thought she might look out of place in my car, but with her leggings, ratty denim skirt, banged-up cowboy boots, Rolling Stones t-shirt, messy ponytail and fresh face, she looked shockingly at ease against the leather seats. “God,” she moaned and sank into the bucket seat, “I should do you just for letting me ride in this beauty.” “Yes, but then we might mess up the seats.” I looked over at her. “That’s not allowed.” Adele rolled her eyes, and turned to the window, looking at our surroundings. “Seriously, where are you taking me?” I didn’t answer, just reached across the console and gripped the top of her thigh, loving the way that I could feel the heat of her skin clear through the soft material of her leggings. She shifted so she was angled toward me and I dug my fingers harder into her toned flesh. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly impatient?” “A time or two,” she said on a sigh. We drove the rest of the way in contented silence, and I never felt the need to remove my hand, just let it settle on her. For some reason, the fact that she didn’t try to hold my hand back or seduce me during the drive made me happy. It was possible for us to just be in the same space together.

When I swung the car into the parking lot, she gave me a curious look that I could see clearly in my peripheral thanks to the cuts of light that came through the window. Toward the back of the lot, where there weren’t any bright lights illuminating the empty row of spots, I pulled my car and threw it in park. “Is this the part where we do it?” I sighed and leaned up, extracting my wallet from the back pocket of my pants. When I’d pulled the cash from my wallet, I held it up between us, relishing the way her brows folded in toward each other, over her narrowed eyes. “You have two choices—” “I pick the sex,” she said instantly. “—you can go in yourself and find a coat that you like, or you can wait here while I pick something out for you.” Her mouth dropped open, her forehead smoothing instantly. “But just know, I’ll probably get your size wrong and will pick the biggest, puffiest coat that will cover you from the bottom of your chin to your knees.” “You’re buying me a coat,” she said slowly, eyes moving rapidly between mine. I nodded. “You have ten seconds before I go in there and find one. Puffy. To the knee.” Adele reached for the money tentatively, eyes taking on a vulnerable wideness that I’d never seen on her before. I smiled when she finally grabbed it and shoved it into the front pocket of her skirt. Before she left the car, she looked back and gave me a shy smile. “Thank you.” “Go, before I change my mind.” I chuckled at how quickly the door slammed shut and once she was out of the car, I took a deep breath. A lingering smell remained after she’d left, and I shamelessly inhaled it. It wasn’t flowery, wasn’t even all that feminine. It was spicy, almost like sandalwood, something you’d typically find in cologne. But there was the slightest sweet edge to it. Vanilla, maybe. Sandalwood and vanilla. Honestly, it just smelled like sex to me, probably because sex with Adele had redefined what the word meant. Perfect. Thinking the word sex in the same sentence with Adele was making me hard. While I sat there, thinking about Shakespeare and conjugating verbs and dead kittens, anything to take my mind off se—that word I wasn’t going to think about tonight, the passenger door was yanked open. “That didn’t take long.” “No,” she said, tossing the bag into the back seat. I raised my eyebrows. Then they kept going up when she stripped her shirt off over her head, leaving her in just a hot pink satin bra, her breasts pushed up over the cups. “But this is going to.” Then she slid over the console and straddled my lap. I held up my hands, frantically looking out the windows into the yawning darkness. “Adele, what the fuck are you doing?”

She swiveled her hips, grinding on my instantly hard cock. Fucking traitor. Then she dipped in and kissed me. I mean, she kissed the hell out of me, sucking my tongue into her mouth and biting at my lips like she was starving. I slid my hands up her thighs, belatedly noticing that her leggings had disappeared during her trip into the store. So I did what any red-blooded, heterosexual male would do when a half-naked woman wearing cowboy boots straddled his lap and started fucking his mouth. I fucked it right back, making lewd motions with my tongue against hers. After a few minutes, she pulled back and just breathed heavily. “You bought me a coat,” she whispered, voice shaky and eyes bright with moisture. “Hey,” I said, cupping the side of her face, “please don’t cry. I couldn’t take it.” Using the pad of her thumb, Adele followed the bottom curve of my lip all the way around to the top, watching it the whole time. When she rested it in the middle of my mouth, pressing down so that it was like I was kissing her finger, she finally met my eyes. Without a word, Adele shifted backward on my lap so she could reach her hands down and undo the buckle of my belt, pulling down the zipper and reaching in to pull my cock out with a tight fist, making slow twisting motions from root to tip. The lack of light around us made every movement of her hands, every touch of her body against mine heightened. We kissed, slow and deep, tilting our heads so we could explore. I ran my hand up her stomach and only stopped when I reached the satin edge of her bra. Tugging it down, I used my thumb to rim circles around her nipple. The cold metal of her piercing grazed the edge of my thumb, but I didn’t move away from the edge of her areola. The tight, rippled flesh against my skin made my mouth water, because I knew how good it would taste, but I didn’t move to bite at it, because everything in the moment felt slow and steady. Like someone had plunged us underwater, muffling the sounds and sights around us. We laughed into each other’s mouths while she struggled to fit her legs on either side of my hips until I finally reached down to slide my seat back so we could actually fit. When she settled and rose up over me again, we stopped laughing. Our mouths met in long, lingering kisses. Adele canted her hips in small back and forth motions, positioning my cock so that the hot, wet flesh of her pussy slid across it. She’d stop when her clit hit the head of my dick and make these tiny mewling sounds. Sounds that I swallowed with my mouth, not wanting to lose them into the empty spaces of my car. It had gotten so dark out, I could barely make out her facial features. I ran my hands up her back and twisted them into her hair, not gripping and pulling like I normally would have, just luxuriating in the smooth feel of the strands. We both shifted at the same time and my cock almost slipped in. Adele froze at the exact moment I did, our gazes locked. “There’s a condom in the center console,” I whispered against her lips. I

couldn’t tell what her reaction was, whether she was disappointed that I wasn’t ready for that step, that I didn’t trust her enough to slide bare into her hot, drenched pussy. I was clean, that wasn’t the issue. I was clean as a fucking monk, but I wasn’t about to risk any baby Adeles at this point. While she leaned over to open the compartment, she kept poised right where we’d almost slipped. She was so scalding hot, so wet that it would take nothing, just a deep breath, and I’d slide right in and probably want to die at how good it would feel. But I used my hands and coasted them up her thighs again, pushing her skirt up around her waist, coming around to dig my hands into the firm globes of her ass. Using her teeth to rip open the foil package, Adele dragged a free hand down to cup her breast, lifting it up toward my mouth like an offering. I closed my mouth around the nipple, drawing her deeper into my mouth, flicking the piercing with my tongue in short, quick movements that had her cursing and undulating over me again. I released her tit with a loud pop, glaring up at her because I wanted to fuck her so badly I thought my skin might combust. “Get the damn condom on, Adele.” With quick, practiced movements, she pinched the top of the condom and rolled it efficiently down my hard length. I couldn’t even give a flying fuck that she’d obviously done it a few times, I just needed in. Once she took her hands off me and gripped the back of my head again, I fisted the base of my cock, lifted her up slightly with my other hand and notched the head into her pussy. Our eyes met and held while she sank down oh so slowly, until our thighs met, until I was completely wrapped up in her warmth, the walls of her pussy clamping down once like she’d squeezed. “Ohhhhhh shit,” she groaned, staying still for a moment while she adjusted to my size. Then she started to move. Just small movements, up and down and up and down, like she was reticent to rush us through to orgasm. Moving my hands from where I’d been gripping her hips, I wrapped my arms around her waist and dropped my forehead to her throat. My heart beat like a bass drum in my chest and I actively tried not to crush her ribs, I was holding her so tightly. Those tiny rocking motions of her hips went straight from my cock into my veins, the sensations so overwhelming, chasing and rolling after each other until I couldn’t decipher their origin. “You feel so good, Adele. So fucking good.” I started tilting my hips up every time she rocked down and it triggered the telltale tingle at the base of my spine. I held it off, not wanting this to end. Ever. “It’s you, Nathan. It’s only this good with you.” Adele dropped her head back and started moving faster and harder, her tits bouncing and shaking with every downward motion. That quietly spoken admission made me want to beat my chest and howl out into the world. I was making her feel this way. I was taking this untamed, savage being, this woman who could bring any man to his knees, and I was making her shudder and scream with pleasure.

I lifted up harder, pistoning my hips with as much force as I could in the limited space. The white heat shifted and grew, barreling down my spine, making my balls tighten up. So I dropped my head when she lifted up again, latched my mouth onto the side of her throat and bit down, sucking the sensitive skin hard. We came at the same time, her pussy clenching on me in tight pulls, me moaning into the firm flesh of her throat, knowing I'd just marked her. I think she said my name, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d been so busy trying not to stop breathing from the force of the orgasm that I may have blacked out. Sitting in the dark car, wrapped around each other and breathing heavily, I had a hard time remembering the last time I’d felt so good. So content. “Thank you for my coat.” I smiled and pressed a soft kiss onto her shoulder. “I’ll buy you a hundred coats if that’s what I get in return.” The delighted laugh that I got in response made my previous feeling of contentment increase a thousandfold. It didn’t actually hit me right away when I got home. It wasn’t until my phone lit up with a message that I noticed how few lights were on around me. I hadn’t immediately flooded the room with brightness, like I normally did. It felt good. Not needing light bulbs to artificially banish my loneliness. And when I saw that the message was from Adele, who I could still smell on my skin, an easy smile covered my face. So long, it had been so long since I’d felt anything close to this. And then I laughed, shaking my head when I read her words.

Adele: You bought me a coat, so I left a gift for you in your car. If you can find it, we’ll be even.

For a few seconds, I pretended like I was actually capable of not going directly to my car and searching it. About five, to be exact. I didn’t even take the time to respond, grinning while I contemplated what she might have left for me. I was in the car with her the entire time so she’d been sneaky. After opening the door and looking in the console, under my seat, and in the glovebox, finding nothing, I sank into my seat and sighed. It felt like I’d regressed back to high school days, playing silly games that you already know you’ll outgrow as soon as people expect more from you. It was a lightness blanketing my soul that I hadn’t felt in years. Of curiosity and expectations, that feeling where even though you had no idea what would happen

when you opened your eyes the next morning, you just knew it would be good. Adele was making me feel that way; in one short week, I was excited to open my eyes in the morning. That’s when I saw the edge of pink lace sticking out from behind my visor. “How the hell did you manage that?” I snatched the delicate corner and pulled it out. As soon as my eyes caught on the underwear in its entirety, on the row of black ribbons that wove through the edge along the top, my breath whooshed from my lungs. Bright, white spots danced in front of my eyes when I flung it away from me, the memory of one of my last nights with Diana flooding my brain.

“Are you sure you have to leave right now?” Diana asked, poking her head out from around the corner of our walk-in closet. I could see her bare shoulder from where I sat on the bed tying my shoes. I grinned, knowing exactly where she was going with this, but still wanting to play. “Why?” She shrugged lightly, dark brown eyes tripping down my body. “I got something new, thought maybe you could stay home with me tonight. Help me break them in.” Sitting up and stretching my arms over my head, then bracing them behind me on the bed, I jerked my chin up. “Show me.” Her head disappeared in a cloud of slick brown hair. “Oh, I don’t think you deserve to see. Ditching me on this yucky, rainy night to go meet your boys.” “Show me.” Of course, she made me wait for a moment, then walked out and faced me. I was hard instantly. Her trim, lightly muscled body was completely on display, except for a small pair of light pink lace underwear, black ribbons woven through the edge on the top. Her firm, high breasts lifted when she took a breath and set her hands on her hips. “You can look all you want, Easton. But unless you stay home with me tonight, you do not get to touch.” She turned in place, showing me the perfect heart-shaped ass that I loved so much. I let her walk into the bathroom before I chased her, delighting in her surprised squeal that I instantly quieted with my mouth.

I pressed my hands into my eye sockets, focusing on calming my breathing so I didn’t succumb to a panic attack. It was what always happened when I let myself indulge in the good memories, the overwhelming heartbreak of recalling how happy we’d been. Because of course, the next time I had seen her, after walking out the door that night, had been when I was claiming her broken, lifeless body. The tingling started in my hands and shot up my arms, so I launched myself out of the car and braced my hands on the roof. Running through the list of things I’d been told to do to stave off the anxiety that was roiling through me, I focused on

five things. I could feel the cool, smooth roof of my car. I could smell the paint thinner on the shelf behind me. I could count my heartbeat. I could focus on the broken rake hung up on the wall across from me. After going through that list three more times, the feeling returned to my hands and I could close my eyes without seeing Diana laying there, ready to be prepared for her closed casket service. There was no way I could do this anymore. Because if I’d seen those underwear when they’d been on Adele, I’d have lost it. And I didn’t deserve these pockets of happiness that she’d been giving me anyway. Every minute of loneliness and ounce of guilt that had been heaped on my shoulders for the last four years was completely justified. So I walked back into my house, flicking lights on as I walked through the rooms to find my laptop. Numbness crept through my veins as I clicked the keys. I couldn’t even care that I was taking the coward’s way out. But I knew enough to know that facing her right now, after what had happened in the car, I wouldn’t be able to stay strong. I stared at it one more time before I hit send, imagining how she’d take it.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Monday, October 19, 2015 09:32 pm Subject: I’m sorry To: Alice Carroll I can’t do this anymore, Adele. I’m not going to say some dick thing to piss you off enough that you’ll make this decision for me, I’ll just tell you the truth: I can’t do this anymore. This won’t affect your grade in my class, I’ll be able to stay objective. Please don’t fight me on this, because it’s the one thing I won’t be able to do with you. Just respect my decision, and trust that it’s in your best interest. Best, Nathan ••• I clicked send, then deleted all of her emails. Suddenly exhausted, I stared at the blank screen of my computer for a few minutes, struggling to understand why that action made me want to break every item in my home, then set it all on fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I ripped the gloves off my hands, sweat pouring down my heaving chest. When I’d hung the punching bag in my basement, I’d never considered that I’d need it to relieve tension from ending a non-relationship with one of my students. Sleep hadn’t come, even though I’d tried. Instead I’d laid in my dark, quiet room and stared at the ceiling, wondering if Adele had seen my email, or if she’d responded. So I gave up after an hour and went to blow off some steam, the only other way that might work, given that sex wasn’t an option. So I beat the hell out of the red, weighted bag. Not relenting in the slightest until I thought my shoulders might separate from the rest of my body, the muscles hot with overuse. I was taking a pull from my water bottle when there was a pounding on the front door. 12:03 AM. There was only one person who would be attempting to rip my door off its hinges in the middle of the night. “Shit,” I muttered and bounded up the stairs, not keen on letting her in, but definitely not wanting her to wake the neighbors. Wrenching the door open, I didn’t even wait to look at her face, I just yanked her in and slammed it behind her. “What the hell are you doing here?” Oh, she was pissed. Adele squared off in front of me, body shaking with rage. I knew it was rage and not the cold because there was holy fire burning in her eyes. But when she lifted both hands and shoved against my chest, I was so surprised that she actually managed to make me stumble backward. “You are such a fucking coward I can barely even stand to look at you right now,” she seethed through clenched teeth. “Well then maybe you should leave.” She laughed, one sharp burst of sound. “There is no way I’m letting you get off that easy. Not even an hour, not even one hour after I walked into my apartment, you’re telling me it’s over. That you’re doing what’s best for me?” “Adele,” I said, voice low with warning when she went to shove at me again, “you need to leave.” She speared her hands into her hair and stared at me. “This is all so fucking

familiar, isn’t it? Me showing up uninvited, you telling me to get the hell out of your house. But you do not get to write me off so quickly this time, Nathan.” Before I could blink, she ripped her shirt off, still wearing the hot pink bra from earlier, her breasts rising dangerously with her deep, panting breaths. Then she pointed at her neck and I had to look away, struggling to stand still, struggling to keep my temper in check. “You marked me tonight, you asshole. You put your teeth on me and you bit so fucking hard that I’ll have the shape of your mouth on me for days. And before it can even show up on my skin, you’re telling me to trust you, to respect your decision, to not fight you on this?” This time when she dropped her hands and shoved me, I braced my legs so I stayed in place. My fists trembled at my sides from the effort it was taking to not shove right back. When I didn’t move, she got right up in my face. “Fuck you, Nathaniel Easton,” she yelled, so close to me that I could smell wine on her breath. “Fuck you and your patronizing emails and your—” I snapped, my vision clouding at the edges and my pulse roaring in my ears like a freight train about to flatten me. I gripped her upper arms and shook, my fingers denting into her skin so hard that I knew she’d bruise again. “You think you’re the only one pissed off right now, little girl? Huh? Well, I’m fucking pissed too, okay?” Shoving her from me, absolutely terrified that she didn’t look afraid of my reaction, I just needed her away from me. Her lips flattened and her eyes practically froze in her face, they looked so cold. “Oh yes, I could sense a wealth of emotion in that fucking email. Sounded like it was written by a robot. So yes, I’m absolutely overwhelmed by how much you’re feeling right now.” I slammed a fist into the wall to my right, and she finally jumped a little. Good. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her arms flung out to her sides, face incredulous. “Then tell me. You think you can order me not to ask questions, not to wonder just a little bit why you’re shoving me to the side mere hours after you screwed the hell out of me in the driver’s seat of your car?” I almost laughed: here I’d been overwhelmed with guilt at feeling happy. Now I was very much not fucking happy. “I think you need a little reminder of whose idea that was. It wasn’t mine, honey.” “Grow up,” she snapped, eyes flashing. “Did I rape you, Professor Easton? Did I tie you down and take advantage of you? Did I ignore your protestations and just shove your cock inside me? ” God, my veins were humming when she stalked toward me. I gave her a warning glare, but she straight up ignored it. I probably would’ve too, if I’d been her. Because wearing my loose gym shorts, it was painfully obvious that I was hard as fucking nails. Adele leaned up on her tip-toes, tilting her mouth so that we were only a tiny move away from touching. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “You’re a liar and a coward. And you’re scared of how fucking good it is between us. So if you’re not man enough to handle me, then just say it.” As soon as the words left her mouth, I felt my restraint snap like it hadn’t been

this iron bracket that I’d wrapped around myself. With her verbal challenge, it became a gossamer thread, slit clean in half with a butcher knife. “Take your pants off.” Until I’d said, I hadn’t even really noticed that she’d changed since earlier. If she’d been wearing that skirt from before, I may not have even asked, just taken. She started at my quietly spoken words, dropping down to the heels of her feet. “What?” “Take your pants off, turn around and brace your hands on the wall.” I clenched my jaw while she studied my face. She wanted to see how I felt? Wanted to know if I was man enough to handle her? Done. She’d get it in spades. I saw the instant she decided to play, saw the switch flip in her eyes. “No.” Ahh, so that’s how this would go. Instead of smiling like I desperately wanted to, I nodded once. Then I leaned down until our noses almost touched. “Take your fucking pants off, or I will do it for you.” The crack of her hand across my face was so sharp and so unexpected that it stole my breath. If I hadn’t seen the hard points of her nipples through her bra, I’d have thought she seriously wanted to make me angry. We glared at each other, me rubbing a hand across the stinging skin on the side of my face, her taking a small step backward. I stepped forward and we both froze, waiting for the other to make a move. When Adele pivoted and started running toward my family room, I bounded after, catching her after only a few feet. I wrapped an arm around her waist, easily lifting her and swinging her around. She screamed, kicking her feet backward and making contact with my shins. We didn’t kiss. That wasn’t the right word for the way our mouths met. Our teeth clashed and our tongues stabbed, her hands formed claws that she raked down my chest. I tore her bra off and shoved her backward over the arm of my couch. The awkward angle made her ribs stick out from her flat stomach, her breasts aimed like up a gift. Only I wasn’t feeling worshipful. And this wasn’t about her pleasure. It probably wasn’t about mine either, so I didn’t touch them and tug them and taste them like I wanted to. Instead I gripped her hips and easily flipped her over onto her stomach, so that her ass lined up perfectly where I needed it. She kicked backward and I cracked a hand over her ass, stilling her immediately. “You keep fighting me and I won’t let you get off.” “Fuck you, asshole.” I bent forward so that my chest was pressed completely against her back, every breath she took making me lift up. Wrapping my fist in her hair, I yanked it back so that her ear was right next to my mouth. “Don’t worry, Adele. You will.” The groan that came from her mouth made me want to reward her. It was so raw and obscene that I could have come right there. Instead I straightened, yanking the jeans over her ass and down to her knees in one rough movement. They hadn’t

been unbuttoned, so maybe it hurt. I didn’t really care. Her ass was bare underneath her pants, and I ran my hands up and over the firm flesh, spreading them open and running my thumbs down the crack, stopping just shy of dipping them inside of her. Her hips tilted up, following the motion of my hands, and if I hadn’t been able to smell how turned on she was, I damn well could see it. Adele was fucking soaked, clearly loving this as much as I was. I stepped back, pushing my shorts down before I stepped out of them. “Are you just going to stand there or will you eventually do something with that dick of yours?” Adele asked, looking over her shoulder at me, ass still sticking up in the air like it had been her idea. I walked forward, letting my cock rest in between her ass cheeks. When I moved forward, coming over her, her eyelids fell shut from the contact. Instead of gripping her hair again, I wrapped a hand around her throat and turned her head toward me. Her eyes popped open when I lightly squeezed. “I’m going to make you scream, little girl. And by the time I finally let you come, you’ll want to kill me because of how long it will take. But you won’t, because you know I’m the only one who will ever make you feel so fucking good.” Then I rammed my cock into her with one sure thrust. I cursed and she moaned like a damn pornstar, it sounded so lewd. Oh God, why did this feel so fucking good? She was a burning fist around my cock, so tight and so wet, that I took my time pulling out, stopping when just the tip of my cock stayed inside. Then I pushed back in, tilting my hips up right at the end. Adele’s arms stretched out over her head, and the motion made her back curve in toward the couch. The shift in motion pushed her hips up slightly higher. “Fuck yes, that it’s, baby. That’s it right there.” “Harder, Nathan. Please, please, please, harder.” I slowed my movements, even though I always wanted to slap myself because of how difficult it was to do so. That’s when it hit me. No condom. No wonder it felt so damn good. I didn’t halt my movement though, knowing how this would end. I smiled, knowing she couldn’t see my face, because Adele really might want to murder me once this was done. I picked up my speed, the sounds of slapping skin and harsh breaths the only thing in the room. One of her hands pulled down, sliding under her, and I knew she was going to rub her clit, so I snatched it before she could. “Uh-uh, it’s not happening like that.” “I hate you.” She tried to pull her arm from my grip, but I wrenched it behind her back, thrusting back in so hard that she cried out. Then I pulled out, whipping her up and around to face me. Her face was flushed, pupils dilated. She looked perfect. “You have two choices, Adele. I can come in your mouth, or on your tits. What’s it going to be?” Surprisingly, her mouth curved up at the edges. “Tits, please. I want to see what

your come feels like on my skin.” “Good girl.” I lightly pinched her stubborn little chin between my thumb and forefinger, tilting it up. I touched my lips to hers, the only softness I’d allowed since she’d knocked on the door. “Now get on your knees, and don’t even think about touching yourself.” She complied instantly, dropping to the floor and rubbing her hands up my thighs to cup my balls. I fisted my cock, making hard, rough movements. Her eyes never left mine, and the trust that I saw pulsing there made me tug harder, breathe deeper, as I felt my orgasm racing through my body. I grunted my relief when the first stream lashed her skin. The second pulse was slower, hitting her lower. I cupped her face, watching while she dragged a hand across her breast, smearing my come. She licked a finger, humming, then spread the rest around her nipple piercing. Maybe I’d lost this battle by fucking her again. But I couldn’t feel an ounce of regret about it. Not at that moment. I felt invincible. I dragged her up to her feet, crashing my mouth to hers. She wound her arms around my neck, her still-wet breasts pressed up against me. Adele pulled back first, licking her lips and grinning. “My turn?” I watched her face, running a hand down her back, only stopping to slap her ass again. “Do you think you deserve to come?” “Yes, Professor Easton. I think I was a good girl tonight, don’t you?” It was sobering, her attempt to play cute. And she instantly saw the change in my face. “Hey,” she said, giving a light shove at my shoulder, “it was just a joke. If you don’t get me off, I can just do it myself.” I pushed her backward, and she fell back onto the couch with a laugh. I wasn’t smiling though, I crouched in front of her, pulling her legs up over my shoulders. Adele quieted, shifting to get more comfortable. I couldn’t play the game anymore. I didn’t have the strength to draw this out, to tease her like I’d fully planned on doing. It wasn’t until I was about to close my lips over her clit, wanting to suck it into my mouth that I stopped. All of this felt too real and too intense, the way the entire day had been so much more than I’d expected from this thing with her. So I just placed a quick kiss on the inside of her thigh, then curled two fingers inside of her, pulling a moan from her mouth. I added the thumb of my other hand, making slow, tight circles over her clit. I pulled my fingers in and out, pressed down harder and harder onto the hard nub of flesh, watching as her chest heaved. She was so close, I could tell by the tiny pulses around my finger. So I hooked my fingers hard at the same time I flicked her clit, then turned my head to bite down on the toned flesh of her inner thigh. “Ohhhhhhhhhh yes yes yes, oh Nathan,” she said on one long sigh, her whole body relaxing. Those perfect lips spread in a soft, contented smile and it made my heart squeeze. I carefully lifted her legs from off my shoulders and stood, swiping my shorts off the floor and pulling them on.

I turned to the side, wiping a hand down my face, then dropped it quickly, given it still smelled like Adele. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I was completely cleaved down the middle. The part of me that wanted to go sink on the couch with her, feel her warm skin next to me, soak in the moments like this where she was soft and pliant, that was the part that was quietly pounding at my brain. But the other part, the other part was a relentless buzzing. The part that sent the email in the first place. Nothing had changed, other than the fact that I had underestimated Adele. And her hold on me, and my hold on her apparently. “What’s wrong?” I was too pulled apart inside to do anything other than be honest. But I didn’t turn to face her. “Everything should still stay the same, the same thing that I was trying to do before you showed up. But there’s something here, Adele. I don’t understand it and I don’t know why I can’t resist you. But I can’t.” I hung my hands from the back of my neck and finally moved my head so I could see her. She’d pulled her knees up to cover her chest, and her face looked completely lost. “I want to be able to resist you.” “So where does that leave us?” I dropped my hands and lifted my shoulders briefly. “I don’t know.” “I think I’m gonna go home.” Adele stood from the couch, and I couldn’t help but admire how she didn’t rush to put her clothes on, completely comfortable in her skin. Once she’d pulled her shirt over her head, she finally met my eyes again. “You’re not going to tell me why you sent that email, are you?” A flash of Diana laughing at me in the bathroom mirror, like the quick blink of my eyelids, burst through my head. It disappeared quickly enough that the tingling didn’t start in my hands, thank goodness. That was the last thing I needed. “No, not in the way you probably want me to. I’m sorry.” And I was. She shook her head, turning toward the door. “I’m not trying to be cruel, Adele. Or jerk you around. Sometimes it’s just not easy to let yourself enjoy something good while it’s in front of you.” It resonated with her. I could see the understanding, the empathy, fall across her face. Coming back toward me, she lifted a hand and covered the place that she’d hit me earlier. “I’m sorry I slapped you.” I laid my hand on top of hers, noticing how cool her fingers were compared to mine. Then her hand slipped away when she pulled back. “Goodnight, Nathan.” Before I could formulate a thought—even if I knew what the hell to think about everything—she was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I let myself into my apartment shortly after one in the morning, feeling sufficiently pummeled from my head to my vagina. Gingerly, I dropped my things by the door and climbed into bed, hissing from the burn in my muscles. And yet, I had to bite hard on my lip to prevent the smile from forming. I shouldn’t have felt pleased by it, I should have been upset. But, fuck. When Nathan had come unglued and poured all that rage into me—biting, pinching, pounding. I had taken every bit of it, and happily. It was as if he understood my desperate need for sensory stimulation and maybe on some level, he needed that too. But when I reflected on the moments after, when he’d said, “I don’t know,” in that defeated, lost voice—I’d suddenly felt like some kind of villain. He’d asked me not to come to him, and I had. He’d told me to leave, and I hadn’t. Around two in the morning, after replaying in my head the outstanding sex for the fourth time, I resigned myself to not sleeping a wink and fumbled my way into the shower, my body sore and weeping, but my brain wretchedly wired. In the shower, standing under the spray, I pressed a fist to my heart. “I’m not trying to be cruel, Adele. Or jerk you around. Sometimes it’s just not easy to let yourself enjoy something good while it’s in front of you.” Fuck. I could relate to that on a very elementary level. Hadn’t I just been pining for him, for weeks? Especially after all the men I’d trampled over in years past, unwilling to enjoy their kindness and consideration. I wanted men to want me, and while there was no doubt Nathan did, it seemed wanting me was terrorizing him. I tilted my head under the water and cranked up the heat. As my hand traveled down my body, caressing the spots he’d marked, I was overcome with the most miserable kind of loneliness. Would that be the last time I had his lips on my skin? And moreover, what the hell was wrong with me? Why him? Why, when I wasn’t exactly lacking in men to entertain me, was I so focused on Nathan? With his black hair and bright eyes and hands that held me tender and held me tight. What did he awaken inside of me that had remained dormant for so many other men? As I wrapped myself up in a towel and dried off, I decided to send him an email. I wasn’t sure what I’d say, but there was nothing comfortable about silence for me.

I plopped into my seat and wiggled the mouse. Seconds later, my stomach flipflopped and my hand froze. He’d beat me to the punch, sending me an email first.

From: Nathaniel Easton Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 02:11 AM Subject: Condom To: Alice Carroll Hey. I wanted to let you know I didn't use a condom. But I'm clean. ••• I stared at that email for a long, long time. Agitation coiled tightly into my chest, burning bright with a flash of anger. An acrimonious response flashed in my head. That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me? Never mind the fact that you confess this without even a semblance of apology and assume—because you don’t fucking ask—that I’m clean too. Well, Nathan. Fuck. You.

Even as I was deleting my imprudent response, I whispered, “Oh, but fuck him you did, Adele.” I tapped on the keys of my keyboard repeatedly, crafting replies before promptly deleting them. Finally, around three in the morning, I pushed my face into my pillow and willed sleep to come, the email sitting in my account without an answer. I awoke to my phone vibrating off the nightstand, its buzz indecently reminiscent of my favorite vibrator. Craning open one eye, I slapped the screen to turn off the alarm. I was so disoriented from the little sleep that it took me more than usually necessary to remember why I had an alarm going off in the first place. When I remembered, I groaned. Work. Six in the morning, a mere three hours after I’d climbed into bed. It was times like then that I wished my religion was coffee, because I knew I would desperately need caffeine to make it through the day. When my phone buzzed a second time, I cursed and grabbed it, ready to chuck it across the bedroom. But the buzz lasted only a second, alerting me to the fact that it wasn’t another alarm.

Nathan: You didn’t reply to my email. I was hoping for some clarification from you.

I was too Goddamned tired to trifle with forming any kind of intelligent response, so I ignored it for the moment and got ready for work. Two hours into my shift at the coffee shop, I was beginning to lag. After writing down the wrong orders twice and getting questioning looks from my coworkers, I was on the verge of telling them I had the plague just so I could go home. “Large soy mocha, half-sweet.” I pushed the empty cup into my coworker’s hands after handing back the customer’s change. The next girl in line hemmed and hawed over what to get, asking me what was in our cinnamon spice chai and when I dully replied, “Tea and cinnamon,” she seemed to have an epiphany, ordering the chai with extra cinnamon. I wrote her order on the cup and passed it to the next available employee, blowing the hair out of my eyes after she left the register. I angled my head toward my left shoulder and then my right, feeling a very dull satisfaction from the aches. I’d washed my body clean of his scent, but the memory of his touch lingered, especially in the marks he’d left on my skin. The bite on my neck especially screamed his name. I’d attempted covering it with makeup before giving up, praying the collar of my work shirt would hide the bulk of it. During my break, I splashed freezing cold water on my face in the bathroom and redid my hair. The bags under my eyes were more pronounced than they’d been when I’d woken up. There would be no helping them, but I squeezed eye drops into my eyes to hide some of the redness. My listlessness was echoed in the way I moved; slowly like I was in need of a hip replacement. After exiting the bathroom and returning to my shift, I almost didn’t notice. I was so focused on staying awake for the walk to the register that I nearly disregarded the way my surroundings had changed since I’d entered the bathroom. I raised my head, my eyes connecting with the pair of eyes I’d been thinking about all fucking morning. Nathan. The word formed on my lips upon meeting his gaze. I was rooted to the spot right behind the patisserie case, holding his eyes like I was physically incapable of doing anything else. He looked good—damn him—if maybe a little tired. The circles under his eyes weren’t as pronounced with his tanned skin, but in his eyes I saw it all: fatigue, remorse, expectation, desire. His body radiated a calmness that I envied. He blinked, long black lashes sweeping over the tops of his cheekbones like he couldn’t believe I was here. “Adele.” The voice wasn’t his. I whipped my head toward the cash register, coming out of

that shared moment with Nathan to where my head should be: at work. “Are you just going to stand there?” a coworker asked. I swallowed and shook my head, swiftly making my way to the register and my eyes focused down. I smelled him before I saw him: that warm and spicy scent that was tied so closely to the memories of him I liked the most. My traitorous eyes lifted, meeting his. It was alarming, having him within touching distance when the one thing I couldn’t do was actually touch him. “Wh-what can I get you?” I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, feeling out of my element for the first time. Why was he here? What did he want? “Ah.” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and gave me a moment’s respite as he scanned the board. “Just a medium coffee. Light cream.” I wrote the order on the cup and hesitated on writing his name. Initially, I’d written “Nathan.” But my pen had hovered over that last ‘n’ a moment too long and I crossed through it roughly before shoving it in the trash and grabbing a new cup. Deftly, I wrote, “Prof. Easton” on the cup and passed it off to one of the baristas. When I rang up his total and he handed me a five dollar bill, I felt my hands shake as I plucked it from him, careful not to make contact. When I reached my hand over to give him his change, his fingers curled around mine as I deposited the coin into his hand. My eyes snapped to his before darting away. He let go and I backed away. “Have a nice day,” I said dismissively. Nathan looked to the barista making his coffee before he leaned forward. With a low voice, he said, “You didn’t reply.” It took my brain a minute to catch up. His email and text. “I was busy.” He nodded slowly, licking his lower lip as he contemplated my answer. “Do you…” his voice dropped off as he glanced at the only barista behind the counter with me, who was currently focused on pouring cream into his cup. We were running out of time to reasonably maintain a discussion and I was happy to prolong the moment. Tired Adele was more vulnerable than I’d expected. I spun away, not answering him. I took the coffee from my coworker and pressed the lid onto it before setting it on the counter under the “pick up order here” sign. Nathan looked left and right again before walking down to me and placing his hand over mine on the cup, preventing me from being able to walk away without making a scene of extracting his hand from mine. “What do you want?” I asked under my breath, making sure to keep an eye on my coworker. Because this was a campus coffee shop, the professors who frequented it weren’t strangers. He could be recognized by anyone, leaving them to wonder what I was doing talking so intently with him. “I feel like we left things on the wrong foot last night.” “I have to work.” I moved back to the register and gestured for the other barista to take a break.

It took less than ten seconds before Nathan was at the register again. “What do you want?” He stood, staring at me for a moment. “A bagel.” “What?” I shook my head. “A bagel?” “What kinds do you have?” He stepped closer to the register. “I meant to order breakfast with my coffee.” He lifted the cup up between us and I ground my teeth. “Cinnamon raisin, poppy seed, whole wheat.” Nathan made a face. “Raisins? Who willingly chooses raisins in their baked goods?” Because I knew he was stalling so that he could talk to me, I was fuming. Maybe I was experiencing PMS or maybe I was annoyed that he was trying to joke with me after the night before and all the confusing signals he gave me, but whatever it was drove me to say, “You do, today.” I thrust my hand into the case and pulled out a cinnamon bagel, popping it into the toaster and taking his money even as he looked bewildered. This time, when it was time to hand back his change, I dropped it on the counter and turned away to get the cream cheese from the refrigerator. “Adele.” Nathan’s voice over the patisserie case caused me to drop the cream cheese covered knife on my apron, smearing it everywhere. Glaring at him, I plopped the cream cheese onto the bagel and shoved it into a plastic bag. I stalked to the “pick up order here” side and tried to walk away after setting the bagel down, but he stopped me with a hand on my upper arm. He held me neither roughly or with threat, but I still felt frozen. “Don’t make a scene,” he said through his teeth. He casually glanced around us before turning back to me. “We need to talk. Not here.” His thumb grazed the crook of my elbow and I tilted my head, feeling depleted of all the nervous energy seeing him had given me. His eyes paused on the bite on my neck and I watched the movement of his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Did I do that?” he asked on a whisper. I opened my mouth to answer but was interrupted by a booming voice behind him. “Nathaniel.” Nathan’s hand left my arm like I’d burned him, his eyes going wide before he schooled his features. “Sir,” he said turning around. The man was in his fifties, his hair a blend of salt and pepper and his face tanned. He wore a suit and tie and looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him. “Good morning,” the man said, looking between Nathan and me. His gaze paused on mine and he said, “Have we met?” Nervously, I laughed. “I was just wondering the same thing.” “Are you here on a scholarship?” Wow, he didn’t throw any punches. It seemed an odd thing to ask and I struggled over my answer before he spoke again. “I oversee many of the interviews for scholarship applications,” he explained. “What’s your name?” “Adele,” I said, feeling it suddenly click into place. “I was awarded the Margaret

Phillips Memorial Scholarship last year and again this year.” He pointed a finger at me. “Yes, that’s it.” Seemingly pleased with himself, he tucked his hands into his pockets. “Adele Morello.” “You have a great memory.” I vaguely remembered him, but couldn’t recall his name. “I’m sorry, I haven’t absorbed any caffeine through osmosis today,” I joked. “I can’t remember your name.” Displeasure was like a lightning bolt over his face: there and gone so quickly I nearly didn’t see it. “Richard Easton.” I flicked my eyes to Nathan, registered the same look of “fuck me” that must have been on my face. And then I turned back to Richard Easton and held out my hand. “Nice to see you again,” I said softly. He held my hand in his and finally acknowledged Nathan next to him. “Nathaniel, is Ms. Morello one of your students?” Nathan nodded, didn’t meet my eyes. “She is, sir.” Richard turned back to me. “And how is it, being under the tutelage of my son?” If I had been drinking anything, I would have choked. His son. His fucking son. No wonder Nathan looked like he’d swallowed razor blades. “Um, would you like a drink?” I asked, completely avoiding answering his question. “Coffee, with a little cream.” I noticed Nathan stare down at his own cup, the same order as his father, before I busied myself making his order. Richard and Nathan spoke to one another as Richard placed cash on the counter for the coffee. Over the sounds of the coffee maker, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I took the opportunity to watch Nathan squirm under his father’s questions. As I handed Richard his cup, I heard him say, “Are you going to visit Diana? Your anniversary is coming up.” I was so focused on the way Nathan’s face paled that I nearly missed what his father had actually said. I watched as Nathan put an arm on his father’s shoulder, steering him away from the counter. Who the fuck was Diana?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Maybe she didn’t hear him. Maybe she didn’t hear him. I was sure I answered him at some point, said something ambiguous, trying desperately not to look over at Adele, even though I could see her frozen in my peripheral vision. Five minutes ago, I hadn’t thought it possible that I could be derailed from the abject panic at my father knowing her, and realizing that she was a scholarship student. It definitely sharpened the forbidden edges of our—whatever the hell we were calling this—thing. But God, I hope she hadn’t heard what he’d said about Diana. Then I wanted to pull my heart through my chest, possibly use a hacksaw to do it. Because it was only four days away from the anniversary of her death—one of the largest failures in my life. The one that pressed bricks of cement down on my skin every time I thought about it. And I hadn’t thought about it once over the past week. Some sort of horror must have eclipsed my face, because my father paused, giving me a strange glance. “Yes, sometime this week I’ll go, I’m sure.” Adele gave a soft clearing of her throat, and my father reached for his coffee with a smile. I don’t think I’d ever gotten that kind of a look. He rocked back on his heels, one of his tells that he was mildly uncomfortable. When he opened his mouth to say something, I gestured to a table. “I was about to sit; would you care to join me?” We both stood there, so close to Adele, my heart hammering in my chest. “You’re asking me to join you,” he said slowly. I could feel her stare, searing into my skin like a brand. I was probably sweating. “Son, the day will pass like it always has. No need to rehash a tragic accident.” Shit. Damn. Fuck. Fucking shit. And then like a fucking idiot, I stole a glance over at Adele, and her mouth was hanging open. When I snatched my eyes away from her and back at my father, he was justifiably confused. “I don’t particularly need one of my students hearing this, sir.” I didn’t know if I said it softly enough so she wouldn’t hear. I could barely hear past the rushing in

my ears. This was exactly what I did not need, on top of everything else. “Ahh, of course, of course.” He gave another polite smile to Adele. “Good to see you again, Miss Morello. I hope you continue to do well in your studies.” “Thank you,” she said in an uncharacteristically small voice. “Good to see you, too.” Not waiting to speak to him again before he turned to leave, I walked to a small round table by the brick fireplace as he walked past, out the door. I kept my profile to Adele, not wanting to face her directly. Pulling a notebook out of my bag, I stared unseeing at the lined page. She knew my father. And she probably knew something about Diana. Neither one of those things had anywhere to go in my brain in order to process. “Are you finished with your cup?” I looked up at Adele after quickly glancing around to make sure no one was looking. The shop was fairly empty, a student sitting on the opposite side, paying us no attention. Only one other girl was working with Adele, and she was nowhere in sight. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked unsure. Her fingers were tightly woven together in front of her apron, and the look on her face made me want to snap the handle off my coffee mug just so I would have something to stab myself in the eye with. It was curiosity mixed with just a little pity. But on the edge of that was a mulish jaw. This girl was done with me yanking her around. “You know my father.” “That’s not why I came over here, and I think you know it.” I heaved out a sigh, abso-fucking-lutely not willing to bring up Diana first. “Well, we’ll need to discuss it eventually. You being a scholarship recipient makes a huge—” “You have a wife?” she interjected, whispering harshly. “Or girlfriend, I don’t really know. I just know there’s something pretty major that you’re not telling me.” For a moment I wondered whether my face looked as weary as I felt. Pretty major. Yes, it was pretty major. It was also a massive understatement. And not a single word of defense crossed my tongue. Just pictures, memories and nightmares that always hovered at the edges of my sleep. “Just tell me something true, Nathan.” When I looked at her again, her eyes were huge and pleading. She was so young, with moments like that highlighting it for me. At that age, would I have been willing to make that kind of request, the kind that could so easily be rejected? “Please,” she whispered. I drew my thumb across the calloused skin underneath the ring finger on my left hand. Adele immediately honed in on the movement and narrowed her eyes. “I was married. But I’m not anymore.” She lifted both eyebrows. And? I could practically hear her saying it. My brain raced, trying to loosen the iron fisted grip that had been over my tongue for the last almost four years. Something true, that’s all she was asking. “It’s hard for me to talk about this, Adele. To anyone.”

She moved to sit, but stopped herself, looking back over her shoulder. Her coworker still hadn’t returned. “I won’t tell anyone.” “It’s not that,” I reassured her, rubbing a hand down my face. “She … Diana. That’s my wife. She, well, she … died. In a car accident, years ago.” Simplification and omission. They were the grayest of areas when it came to lies, weren’t they? No part of that was a lie. Not a single word. But the way her face fell, the way she looked at me just a little bit differently, that was exactly why I never wanted to talk about this. “I’m so sorry, Nathan,” Adele moved to touch my shoulder but I shook my head. The door to the back room swung open, and the other girl working resumed her place behind the cash register. “How long do you work tonight?” I asked, almost desperate to change the subject. “Until eight.” I nodded, starting to file the items on the table back into my messenger bag. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?” “Here? Yes, Adele. That’s it.” I stood, looping the handle of the bag over my head. “I don’t like to talk about her. It’s too hard. And I’m especially not going to do it in your workplace, where anyone we know could walk in.” She relented, standing back a step after grabbing my still full coffee cup off of the table. “I can respect that.” “Thank you,” I said, and made sure she could see that I meant it, dropping my chin so that our eyes held for a few seconds longer than they should have, considering where we were. My skin prickled, that chain that hadn’t seemed to drop, the one that had shackled us together since that first night, it tightened along the whole length of my body. With a quick glance behind her, I reached forward and slid my fingers along the inside of her wrist. Her eyes fell shut, and I took a step back, not trusting myself any further. “Have a good night, Adele.” She didn’t look at me when I walked away, and once I was out the door, I didn’t look back either.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nothing felt right, nothing felt clear. Not how I felt about Adele, about the fact that she knew about Diana, that she knew my father, albeit not very well. I must have sat at my dining room table for two hours, staring at the blank wall across from me and sifting through my sluggish thoughts. I wanted her, that I knew. Physically, definitely. Emotionally? That was murkier. I didn’t want to talk to her about Diana. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about that, so I was just keeping Adele on an equal playing field with the rest of the world’s population. If I owned a dog or a cat? I wouldn’t tell them, for fear that the animal race might suddenly evolve and gain the ability to speak. I wasn’t looking for marriage or children or any of that. It wasn’t something I needed after losing it once. But she was smart. She was tough. And she’d trusted me enough to show me her biggest vulnerability: her relationship with her father. I nodded my head, and grabbed my phone, where it had stayed silent on the table while I processed.

Me: Could you come over after work? Adele: Sure. It’s not my night to close, so I’ll be there in 30.

Finally pushing myself away from the table, I moved through the kitchen in search of something resembling a meal. While I munched around some cold lo mein noodles, I researched Adele’s scholarship. The Margaret Phillips Memorial Scholarship was awarded to a handful of girls based partly on academics. They’d have to maintain a 3.7 GPA, be working toward a major in journalism, literature or creative writing, and be unmarried. All of those checked boxes afforded Adele half of her tuition, all of her books, no room and board, which explained the small, humble apartment.

I smiled a little reading through Margaret Phillips’ bio. Margaret arrived in Boston at the age of 18, with no family to support her. As an unmarried woman in the 1940’s, she had to work twice as hard to get through college, finally graduating with her degree in literature. She went on to become a high school teacher, and spearheaded many community efforts to support women who were pursuing their education. For years, she was vice president of the Boston chapter of the National Organization of Women. She established this scholarship in 1998. Yes, Margaret Phillips would probably like Adele, scraping her way through school with a giant chip on her shoulder. There wasn’t much I could find that spoke to personal misconduct, and how that might affect her maintaining the financial support being given to her. There was a soft knock on my front door. Wiping my hands on a dish towel, I looked through the peep hole and couldn’t help but grin. Adele had pulled the black hood of her sweatshirt up over her head, and with the blond strands coming out the sides, she looked exactly as young as she was. Maybe younger. “Come on in,” I said when I opened the door. Her smile was tentative, but she attempted one anyway, looking behind her before I closed the door, the darkness of the sky cloaking her arrival. “How was work?” She smiled, taking the hood down and running a hand through her hair. “Boring as hell. Is that why you asked me over here?” “No,” I conceded with a wry smile and gestured to the couch. After she’d chosen the seat closest to her, I sat far enough away that I’d have to stretch to touch her. Adele lifted a thin eyebrow briefly at that, then settled back into the cushions, turning to face me with one leg tucked underneath her. “I didn’t realize you were here on scholarship.” “Ahh, and the picture is becoming clearer.” “Adele.” “Sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes down into her lap for a few long moments. “I knew I wouldn’t get any help from home with my tuition, not if I planned on majoring in writing. And I just don’t want to be one of those people saddled with student loans until I’m thirty-five.” Which was only one year older than me. I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat. I felt ancient, and the knowledge of our thirteen year age gap made my bones creak under my skin, like they’d suddenly adjusted to my line of thinking. “We have to be careful, Adele.” “Careful doing what, exactly? Last time I walked out of this door, it sounded an awful lot like a sayonara, thanks for the orgasms kind of goodbye.” I actively chose to ignore that, probably because I couldn’t disagree with her. It had. “If we get caught, even from anything we’ve done up until this point, I don’t want you losing that scholarship.” “Would you lose your job? If we did?” “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “The Easton name is pretty well-

entrenched here. My father and I might not get along, but he’d never let ‘the family legacy’ get tarnished by a scandal. Trust me.” He’d done a damn fine job of it so far. Adele shifted, moving forward a couple inches. When she hesitated before saying anything, I just waited. If she pushed about Diana, it would clear up a lot of my questions. I wasn’t going there. Not now, maybe not ever. But she stayed quiet, and oddly enough, I found myself unable to be silent. “I wouldn’t lose my job. But you could definitely lose your scholarship. My father wouldn’t be able to, or frankly might not want to, intercede on your behalf if we were discovered. We have to be smart here, okay?” Adele moved one hand forward so slowly that I couldn’t look away. No doubt about it, she was giving me an opportunity to back away. To get off the couch. To tell her to stop. I didn’t want to tell her to stop. I wanted another hit of whatever it was she was injecting into my bloodstream. When she wrapped her strong, supple fingers around my hand, I dropped my head back onto the couch. “I don’t know what we’re doing, Adele. I don’t know how to stop, but I don’t know how to not worry that this is such a hellishly stupid idea.” Her hand traced up my forearm, and through the cotton of my shirt, I could feel the heat of her palm. I kept my eyes closed, because everything was heightened. I could smell her next to me, coffee clinging to her, hiding her normal scent. The place that her hand smoothed up against felt like a concentrated pulse, just one large zing of electricity that I could never attempt to contain. On the side of my neck, her breath warmed the skin. Then her lips touched the spot under my ear in the most innocent of kisses. “You worry too much, old man,” she whispered, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “No one will know.” “You can’t possibly know that.” Shit, my voice sounded rough. Her tongue dragged around the shell of my ear, and my cock was seriously attempting to punch through my slacks. I kept my hands fisted at my sides, not wanting to interrupt whatever fucking amazing thing she was doing. “We can be careful, be quiet about this.” The sharp edges of her teeth caught my jaw and my mouth turned toward her in reaction. Her responding chuckle was lazy and low. Suddenly, her weight pitched to the side, toward me, and she settled herself on my lap. “In fact, I think I should show you just how capable I am of being quiet.” When I opened my eyes, her face was only inches from mine, her hands bracketing my head on the back of the couch. I slid my hands up her legs and her sides, curving my palms around the hard bumps of her rib cage. “You have much more to lose than I do. Are you sure about this?” The smile she gave me in return was so sweet, so unguarded that I smiled back. We kissed that way, not dropping the sides of our lips at first, not wanting to break those expressions of happiness.

Finally, she caved, tilting her head and opening her mouth to mine. Her tongue swept against mine in one long, wet stroke and I groaned, tightening my hands around her. I stood, and she squeaked into my mouth, but wrapped her legs tightly around my waist. Adele wound around me like a python, and we kissed all the way up the flight of stairs. Once I cleared the top step, I hesitated, pulling my mouth away from hers. “How about we shower that coffee smell off of you before bed?” “We?” I nodded, took her lower lip in between my teeth and tugged while I walked us into the bathroom. After I’d lowered her so she could sit on the bathroom counter, neither of us spoke. I tested the water with my hand, her eyes boring into my back, as tangible as a bullet through my skin. She’d unzipped her sweatshirt already, and I stilled her hands before she could remove the shirt underneath. “Let me.” And she did. Every inch of skin that I uncovered, I tasted or smelled. The thin, hard line of her collarbone felt like steel under my lips. The slope of her shoulder held some of that scent that I’d come to love so much, so I lingered there a little longer than I’d planned. Adele let out a soft whimper when I finally slipped her shirt completely off. “You’re supposed to be quiet,” I gently reminded her, no heat present in my tone. She nodded, dropping her forehead to my shoulder so I could reach the clasp of her bra more easily. With the shower running behind us, the air was wet and heavy, steam curling around our bodies while we curled into each other. The straps of her bra slid down her upper arms and caught when she held the cups to her breasts, the heavy skin and beaded nipples still partially hidden behind the lace. I lifted her up so that she had no choice but to stand. Lowering myself to my knees onto the cold tile floor, I placed a slow, open-mouthed kiss on the skin just below her belly button. The room was so warm now, almost stifling in its heat, but she shivered, goosebumps pebbling her stomach. Adele toed off her shoes, and I peeled her pants down her forever-long legs, my mouth following down the toned flesh of her thighs. Once she was uncovered, bare before me save her underwear and the almost-falling-off bra, I stood, digging my hands into her hair and tilting her face up to me. We traded languid kisses, just moving our lips over and over. Her hands made quick work of the buttons on my shirt, only slowing their movement as she tracked down my chest, lingering over the clenching muscles of my abs. Each drag of her fingers made me want to move faster, touch harder, dig into her skin. But I didn’t. There was some unspoken agreement we’d made coming up here together. A shift in the way our bodies wanted to move, wanted to feel and be felt. Finally, I used one finger to pull the bra off of her completely, taking the tip of that same finger to smooth over the tight flesh of her nipple, making small, slow

circles around the edge. Her hips shifted toward me and I pressed back, letting the painfully stiff length of my cock grind against where she wanted me most. My pants were gone with two quick movements of my hands, and hers slid my boxer briefs down over my ass so I could step out of them. Adele went to take off her own underwear, but I stopped her. “No,” I said, stopping her hands and pulling the lace back into place over her perfect, perfect ass, “leave them on for me.” She smiled and turned to pull open the clear glass door the shower. Instead of following her, I stayed and watched while she stood under the steaming water, tilting her head back to wet her hair. The water sluicing down her body made her shine, every inch of her flesh covered now. Her eyes stayed closed, and her hands followed a light path that mirrored the one I’d taken earlier. Slowly circling a nipple with one finger, trailing down her flat stomach to the skin under belly button and dragging back up again. I fisted my cock and tried to even my breathing, but it was impossible. No man, no mere mortal could stand where I was standing and look at her and not feel like the weak fleshly beings that we were. Just by being there, she was giving me everything I’d been missing, been deprived of for years. I released my cock, let it bob back up, and entered the shower. Running my hands around her hips to embrace her from behind. When she relaxed into me, her hands folding over my arms, the simple comfort from her made me want to fall to my knees. So that’s exactly what I set about doing. Using my hands, I turned her so she faced me, not kissing her the way her upturned mouth begged me to. Instead I lightly pushed her back so her shoulders met the tile of the shower wall. She shivered again, the hard surface behind her probably still colder than the sultry air around us. When I used my hands to cup her ass and tilt her hips out from the wall, realization lit in her cat-green eyes. Gripping the bar mounted into the tile next to her, Adele shifted down the wall a fraction at the same time that I sank down onto my knees. I leaned my forehead against her stomach, letting the hot water pound against my back. She wound the fingers from her free hand into my hair, smoothing back the strands in a gesture so sweet and so soothing that I almost wanted to weep. I mouthed the skin along her abdomen, licking the water on her flesh into my mouth. When she angled her hips toward me, I smiled, trailing a hand up her leg, curling it into her inner thigh. I traced my hands over the wet lace of her underwear, using my hand to curve over her pussy, rubbing the fabric into her clit with my palm. The lace felt scratchy over my tongue when I dragged it along the edge. Using my teeth, I pulled it down over one hip, then moved over and did the same on the other side. When it fell with a wet plop onto the tile next to us, I hefted one of her legs up over my shoulder, opening her up to me, and curling two fingers into her slick, hot channel.

The breaths coming out of her were heavy and deep, loud enough that I could hear her over the water. Glancing up, I saw that her head aimed down, her eyes lasered in on me. Holding her gaze, I kissed the mound of her pussy, sucking her clit into my mouth. Adele finally cracked, moaning in one long, drawn out sound. I clutched at the skin under my hands, drew her deeper into my mouth, worked my fingers around, snaking my tongue against her flesh. Her hips moved in tiny circles, riding my face with shameless, wanton pleasure. The hair on my scalp was gripped so tightly in her hands that I pulled back. “What the fu—” “Be nice to my hair. I’d like to keep it on my head.” She grinned, cheeks flushed to pink, and tightened her fingers again. I stood in a sudden movement, the leg that was around my shoulder dropping so that I held it in the crook of my elbow. The way it opened her to me made it so that my cock lined up right where my mouth had been. “Are you going to fuck me now?” I shook my head, placing a chaste kiss on her lips. “No. That’s absolutely not what this will be.” I pushed into her with one long, smooth slide. We stayed pressed up against each other, so tightly wound that the water could barely make room between our bodies. Then I kept my movements so slow, so agonizingly slow, that when we both came, there was barely any sound between us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was his face, serene. His hair was mussed, his lips soft. I wanted to lean over, to see how his lips tasted first thing in the morning, but I didn’t. The worries he wore in the creases of his forehead were smoothed and I wanted him to enjoy the peace that sleep gave him a little longer. Gently pulling the blanket back, I climbed out of bed and put my hair up into a ponytail. I grabbed one of his shirts from the laundry basket by the bed and slipped it on, taking small comfort in the way it stopped at the top of my thighs. It was such a cliché thing, to wear a boyfriend’s shirt, to feel small and feminine and soft. Boyfriend. Had I actually thought of him that way? Pausing by the doorway, I looked back at the bed, his body relaxed and his breaths quiet, easy. We hadn’t discussed what we were, who we were. So much of us was secret. But something had shifted the night before. Every time we’d had sex before had been a result of something, a need we both fed. But last night had been different. More. I glanced at the few photos that he’d hung over the stairs, landscapes in black and white, framed with white mats and black wood surround. I paused on the step, touched a photo of Boston’s skyline, featuring the John Hancock Tower. The lights reflected off the Charles River below. At the very bottom of the photograph, I saw initials: D.A.E. I didn’t have to search my brain for who I guessed it was, because her name hadn’t left my head—Diana. Nathan’s wife. Nathan’s deceased wife. A shudder moved through me and my fingers left the frame. Moving down the stairs, I studiously avoided looking at the rest of the photographs, not wanting to see pieces of a ghost still lingering. Nathan’s kitchen was expansive, separated from an eat-in kitchen by a large island topped with a thick butcher block. The cabinets were shiny white, the countertops a black granite. And it was tidy; whatever small appliances Nathan owned were tucked away, leaving me to marvel at all the space one could use for cooking, baking. The fridge was stocked with juices, milk, a pitcher of what looked like real lemonade and an assortment of beer and wine. More than anything, I noticed how very neat it looked. I counted five different cheeses, several kinds of meats and full

fruit and veggie drawers; everything in its place. I was halfway through taking mental stock of his pantry when I felt the guilt creep in for having snooped. Everything was labeled with neat type face labels and it struck me as not something a man would think to do. As tidy as Nathan seemed, I couldn’t believe he took the time to label his grains and lentils as well. It left an uncomfortable feeling in my belly and I decided I didn’t want to snoop around his things anymore. Grabbing the pancake mix and a bag of chocolate chips, I decided to make him breakfast. Pancake flour coated the island and me by the time Nathan walked into the kitchen wearing only a pair of fleece pajama bottoms. “Hi,” I said with a grin. “Want some coffee?” Instead of replying, his eyes swept the kitchen, not looking right at me. I turned my head and took in the mess I’d made. Flour handprints could be seen on the handle of the stainless steel fridge, and splatters of light batter like polka dots on the dark granite. But none of that was probably as alarming as the chocolate smears on the cupboards to the left of the stove. I should’ve washed my hands before grabbing plates, I realized belatedly. Since he didn’t answer, I poured him a cup from the pot I’d brewed earlier and topped it with a little cream. After wiping away the chocolate thumbprint, I pushed the mug into his hands. “Here, sit.” I gestured to one of the chairs at the island and pushed a plate toward him. He remained agonizingly quiet, taking in the kitchen still. “Don’t tell me you don’t like chocolate chip pancakes,” I said. Finally, he looked at me. His eyes held such wariness, confusion, like he wasn’t sure what to do with me. “I know,” I answered his unspoken thought. Gesturing around at the mess I’d made, I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll clean up.” I pushed the plate toward him again. “Eat.” I started busying myself with wiping down the stove and loading the dishwasher with the pan and bowl I’d used. “By the way, I’m on the pill.” There was a choking noise behind me and I straightened, turning around. Nathan held a fist to his mouth as he stared at me. “Your email and text, from before.” I raised an eyebrow. “We never had a chance to talk about it between coffee and sex yesterday, but I’m on the pill. And I’m clean.” The truth was, I’d never not used a condom with another man before, not even in the heat of the moment. But I’d trusted Nathan with not giving me a raging case of the warts. “You’re choosing now to bring that up?” he finally said. I wiped my hands on my apron. “When would be better? Over a candlelight dinner?” He swallowed a bite and nodded. “I see your point. A pancake breakfast can suffice.” He cut into the pancake and held the bite up on his fork. “Incidentally, these are very good.” He popped it into his mouth and gave me a small smile as he chewed.

“Well thank you.” I curtsied and began wiping down the butcher block. “It’s nice to have a real kitchen to work in. Mine is so small.” “Despite its size, it never looks like a bomb of batter went off.” I shot him a look and he grinned, leaning over the butcher block with his cup of coffee, coming across as more relaxed than when he’d entered the kitchen. “If you haven’t noticed,” I began, spraying the counter and wiping it, “I don’t have very many possessions. Hard to make a mess when you’re living meagerly.” “I did notice, actually.” He took another bite and leaned back, stretching. “But thank you for breakfast, Adele. This was a nice surprise.” I observed the way his muscles flexed as he stretched, thankful for his lack of shirt. But I couldn’t help but want to unsettle him a little bit, after seeing how much more relaxed he became as the kitchen turned from disaster zone into normal again. Trailing my fingers along the counter as I turned toward him, I took heady pleasure in how his own fingers stilled, his eyes trailing me like an invisible cord was pulling me to him. I dipped my finger into the syrup puddle on his plate and brought it to his jaw, sliding my finger along the edge. My lips replaced my finger and I sucked his skin, swiping it with my tongue as I cleaned up the path I’d drawn. His hands cradled my skull and pulled my head up before his lips descended on mine, teeth biting gently into my lower lip. He tasted of chocolate and syrup and coffee and I scratched my nails into his neck, not wanting to separate our lips for even a second. He hauled me into his lap, ran his hands up my thighs and under the shirt I wore. His fingers brushed the underside of my breast before he pulled his lips from mine. “Nice shirt,” he murmured, looking down between us as I straddled him. His hands were warm and I arched into his touch as his fingers explored under the shirt: over my ribs, the curve of my waist, up the center of my chest. His hand gripped the center of the neckline and made a fist, forcing me closer. Our lips just touched, not kissing—just breathing. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered. I didn’t answer; couldn’t answer. Because whatever it was, he was doing it to me too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

In the week since I’d made Nathan breakfast, I’d become a wanton woman. After every class, I’d taken my time putting my things into my bag, hoping to steal a few moments of time with him. I’d taken a chance the last class, planting a kiss on his lips seconds after the last student had left. Each time, he’d told me to leave but not without regret coloring his words. In an effort to protect me—in his words—we’d been hands above the belt for the last week. Students had moved into the apartment across the hall from me, which meant my place was off-limits. And though he hadn’t told me not to go to his house, he hadn’t explicitly invited me over either. So when I’d seen the flier for a Halloween party at Sigma Chi’s frat, I’d taken a photo and texted to it Nathan.

Me: Whatcha think, Nathan? Nathan: Looks like fun. Enjoy yourself, Adele.

Narrowing my eyes, I’d furiously typed another message.

Me: I’ll enjoy myself if you go with me. And I’ll make sure you enjoy it too. Nathan: Tempting. But I’ll pass.

I wasn’t above whining, but I didn’t want to beg him to go with me.

Me: I have this really sweet Alice from Alice in Wonderland costume. Thigh highs, Nathan. Red heels.

His reply had come minutes later.

Nathan: Fuck. We can’t go together because I can’t go at all. It’s too risky. Me: Not if you wear a mask. I bought one for you—the Mad Hatter. Think about it. We could be together, in the open, without anyone knowing. Nathan: Do you have some kind of Lewis Carroll fetish?

The very idea had made me laugh.

Me: Come on, old man. Live a little. Nathan: I’m only ‘old’ because you are so very young. Me: Please. I’m not above begging. I’ll even get on … my .... knees. To beg, of course.

So much for not begging.

Nathan: On your knees, huh? I’ll think about it. Me: The party’s Saturday. When will you tell me? Nathan: You’ll know by Friday. Me: In class? Why, isn’t that very bold of you, Professor Easton? Nathan: You’ll know Friday.

That had been after our Wednesday class, and had been our last contact up until class on Friday, the day before Halloween. Surprisingly, I hadn’t received any texts from Leo all week. We usually went to the frat parties together, but maybe he was realizing that distance was what we both needed. I needed to apologize for kissing him the way I had, but I was so wrapped up in Nathan that I had tunnel vision. And seeing him in class and acknowledging the distance we needed to keep between us for that entire hour was practically torture. He’d looked at me a few times, his eyes warm, and I’d practically dissolved into a puddle in my chair. But it was always subtle because Nathan wasn’t about to let us get caught. As much as I appreciated that he was looking out for me, sometimes I wanted to see him lose some of that control and not just in private, as he’d done countless times with me. I slid into my seat and pulled things out of my bag as students milled around me, talking about the party the following night. “Are you going?” the guy who normally sat next to me in class leaned toward me, muscles bulging under the strain of his tight sleeves. He did nothing for me. I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” Just talking about it put me in a sour mood and so when the door open and Nathan entered the room, it was a welcome reprieve from feeling glum. His hair looked wet, his jawline peppered with several days’ worth of growth. He wore his glasses and looked a little preoccupied as he pulled things from his bag and placed them on his desk. Running a hand over his hair, he turned toward the class and began lecturing on imagery, using an example from a student’s essay the previous week. He displayed the essay on the projector and, using his mouse, he circled ‘Frankenfood.’ “Great use of a portmanteau here, Michael.” Something about the word was familiar but before I could say anything, another student blurted out, “What’s that?” “Excellent question.” Nathan lifted his head. “A portmanteau word is formed by combining two words or their sounds into a new word. For example, the word ‘smog’ is formed from ‘fog’ and ‘smoke.’” Pulling off his glasses, he rose from his chair and moved around the desk. His eyes met mine for an instant before he leaned against the front side of his desk, facing us. “How many of you have used the word ‘chillax’?” There was a low rumble of laughter before most of us raised our hands. “That’s a great example of a portmanteau—combining ‘chill’ and ‘relax’ into one word.” “‘Frenemy’ is one, right?” “Precisely.” Nathan nodded approvingly toward the girl to my left. “They’re often ironic, humorous and the name itself comes from a suitcase that opens in two equal sections.” Again, Nathan leveled his gaze on me for a moment. It was as if he was trying to communicate something with me, but I wasn’t following.

“Can anyone guess which well-known author first used what he called a portmanteau in his writings?” The class was silent, waiting. Nathan looked at me once more before speaking. “Lewis Carroll.” A smile formed on my lips. But I didn’t let my lips spread, still unsure of what he was telling me with this example. “In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, ‘You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.’ And, in fact, Carroll popularized the word 'chortle’ as a blend of chuckle and snort.” He tapped his pen on the desk, smiled at me for a second. My heart galloped in my chest. “And now we’re blessed with others like ‘bromance,’ ‘infomercial,’ and ‘jeggings.’” There was a collective laughter but my heart was thundering, competing with the commotion in the room. When the class ended and the last student departed, Nathan remained on the other side of the room, still leaning against his desk. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?” Slowly, a smile lifted the corners of his lips, bringing with it an ache within me. He looked so young, boyish even, when he smiled like that. Rising from my desk, I walked slowly down the step to the floor, my heels clicking as I approached him. “You seemed very relaxed—dare I say even happy— today. I wonder why?” Biting my lip, I knew my eyes still smiled, happy. His hands were tucked in his pockets and he shrugged. “Do I maybe bring a little something out in you? Some crazy kind of recklessness akin to going to fraternity Halloween parties?” I wanted to touch him, but I knew he wouldn’t invite the touch when we could easily be walked in on. “Maybe you do,” he said softly, thoughtfully. His eyes softened and before I knew what he was doing, he’d reached forward and pulled me to him. “Kiss me before I bend you over this desk.” A thrill raced up my spine and though it was against my nature, I complied, kissing him softly first before pressing my entire body hard against him. When he gently pushed me away, he looked as tortured as I knew I must have. “Where’s my mask?” Pulling it from my bag, I handed it to him, my fingers lingering on his. “The mad hatter.” His eyes lingered on the mask, long fingers running over the grooves and curves. So softly I nearly didn’t hear him, he asked, “Have I gone mad?” My heart tumbled in my chest, tripping right over the Alice in Wonderland quote. He looked at me, eyes patient, as if he was seeing right through me. I brushed the hair from his forehead. “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers.” My lips spread. “But I’ll tell you a secret.” My hand moved down his face, cupping his jaw, my thumb brushing over his bottom lip. I tilted my head to the side,

lowered my voice. “All the best people are.” I kissed him again—my idea this time—and he didn’t push me away. When I finally pulled back, he stopped me, a hand on my hair. Angling his head down so his eyes were in line with mine, he said, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“This isn’t fun yet,” I leaned in to shout into Adele’s ear. Or at least where I think her ear was, behind the wig. She must have heard me though, because she looked over her shoulder and grinned at me. Her face was the same, of course, but the Alice hair she was wearing was a white-blonde wig, almost Bridget Bardot-like, with curled pig-tails on either side of her head and a thick black headband sitting toward the front of her head, long swooping bangs across her forehead. “Don’t be a party pooper, old man.” Then she reached around and pinched my ass underneath the ridiculous black cape I was wearing. When I slipped my hand underneath the ruffled blue skirt to do the same to her, she swatted my arm away, then grabbed it and marched us further into the frat house. She was probably right. I couldn’t remember having any of the Sigma Chi members in my creative writing classes, so between that and my costume, and the copious amounts of alcohol that was currently being consumed by the swaying crush of bodies in the house, it was highly unlikely that anyone would recognize me. The mask that Adele had bought for me completely covered my face. It had a sharp, hawk-like nose, small cutouts all over the face, and showed only the skin around my eyes, the length of the metal going from my forehead to my chin, the opening at the mouth only adequate for taking small drinks through it. She said I was the Mad Hatter, but nobody would have guessed that, so I played along. Truthfully, I didn’t know whether I was The Phantom of the Opera, or a warrior, or a birdman. All I knew was that I was wearing all black like a chump, and I was walking around with the sexiest Alice in Wonderland I’d ever laid eyes on. When we got home, I was going to fuck her with those thigh high socks on, and maybe let her keep the wig on too. I inhaled through the nose, the sharp, pungent smell of marijuana helping to tame the hardening of my cock. But I couldn’t help it, she looked like a wet dream, in that tiny blue dress with the frilly white apron over it, her cleavage pushing up and over the neckline of the dress. Men’s eyes followed her with every step of those fuck-me red stilettos, then moved on when they saw her gripping me close to her. Which was good, because I didn’t want to have to beat the hell out of anyone here.

Pounding bass shook the foundation of the house, and the half-naked women that embodied well more than half of the party attendees ensured that their attention span on my half-naked woman was blissfully short. The lights were dim, only strings of orange and purple lights stretching across the ceiling lit the way toward the alcohol, which I was unlikely to drink. But, I’d promised to come out and have fun with her. Someone knocked into my shoulder and I glared, realizing how ineffectual that was. Nobody could see my damn face. So I shifted and walked directly behind Adele, taking one hedonistic moment to grip her hips and pull her ass back into me while we waited for a line of cheerleaders to wind past us. She pushed back into me, making a slight grinding motion to the beat of the music, hardening me instantly. Then she stopped, yelling over her shoulder at me. “Drinks! We need drinks first.” I nodded and we continued to slow trek to the kitchen. God, if any faculty knew I was here. I shook that off when the lights finally brightened. Apparently they all needed to be able to see to get inebriated. Adele chatted with the guy at the keg and I actively didn’t listen. I absolutely did not need to hear what men said to her at parties like this. Because if I knew? I’d probably never let her go. Actually, maybe I did want to hear. She laughed, said thanks, and turned to me with two full red cups. After handing me one, she watched over the rim while I took a sip. Then laughed when I grimaced. “Well, it’s certainly not my favorite.” “And what kind of beer would that be?” She lifted the hand that held her own cup, took a long drink. I watched, transfixed, while she licked some foam off her upper lip. “Nathan?” “Oh. Right.” Her lips curved up in a slow smile, and the lights in the kitchen made her look like an evil Alice, like she should have tiny little horns sticking up from the wig. “I prefer Belgian style ales. Not warm domestics that taste like recycled piss.” She tilted her head back and gave a delighted laugh. “Shit, you are such a snob. Didn’t you ever drink in college?” “Sure. But I don’t remember it tasting this bad.” With another long drink, she set her cup down. Her empty cup. Then she grabbed mine. “Okaaaaay. You trying to set a record?” Adele shook her head, then took another swallow. “Just wanted to empty it enough so we can go dance and I don’t have to worry about spilling it down my dress.” The tip of her pointer finger followed the front of the pale blue material that was pushing her breasts up and out. It was so low cut that I could see the white lace edge of her bra from where I stood over her. Some idiot behind me obviously saw her doing it too. “Holy hell,” he said, voice full of awe. “This is the greatest party ever.”

I turned and narrowed my eyes, but of course, he wasn’t paying me one lick of attention. His blurry eyes were focused right on Adele’s spectacular cleavage. “Hey,” I snapped and he blinked over at me. “Go the fuck away.” Even with my voice slightly muffled by the mask, he got the message, and stumbled out of the room. And Adele leaned into me, wrapping her free arm around my waist, which pushed her breasts into my chest. “Mm, I love it when you go all caveman. You don’t even know what it makes me want to do to you.” “Come on, trouble-maker. Let’s go dance and get this over with.” We wove our way back to the main room, the dark, writhing space having a much safer feel than the brightness in the kitchen. When there was a slight opening among the people who were dancing, Adele turned to me, and smoothed her hands up my chest until she gripped the back of my neck. I fit one leg in between hers, and we started to move. Beyoncé sang to a faster beat than we moved to, we were setting our own pace, grinding against each other, her hands tightening in my hair when I’d use my hands to tilt her hips harder into my own. I wanted to rip my mask off and claim her mouth. The way she looking up at me, she was fucking me with her eyes. And I’d seen that look on her before, the very first night we were together. The way our bodies moved, not even cognizant of the beat, just moved together to something that no one else could hear. It was raw attraction. An unfettered, clawing lust that I’d never experienced in my entire life. I ripped her arms from around my neck and turned her around so that her ass pressed against me. She pushed into me even further, making slow circles with her hips, driving me absolutely fucking insane. My arms were wrapped so tightly around her, one just under the curve of her breasts, and one lower, so I could push my hand down on her pelvis. The skin under the mask was so hot, like I’d covered it with the sun, instead of some cheap metal. I couldn’t take it. My hands itched to work under her skirt and into her underwear, feel how wet she was for me. So I grabbed her hand and yanked her behind me, weaving through the increasingly drunk crowds until I found a door that would take us out. There were more people outside, laughing maniacally and speaking so much more loudly than the situation demanded. I took a sharp curve around the building and followed the red brick until I turned again, this time going around the perimeter of the next house. I could hear the clicking of Adele’s heels behind me, but I didn’t look. I couldn’t. Because if I did, I’d take her right there. Not giving one shit if anyone could see us. When we reached the side of the house far opposite of the frat, the sounds of the party were muffled. The thin, dark alley was completely covered in shadow. My blood was boiling in my veins, the thrill of no one knowing who I was, of holding her in my arms and practically fucking her on that dance floor was heady and thick. I pushed her up against the brick wall and ripped my mask off. We kissed like we

were lighting ourselves on fire, moaning and groaning and grabbing at anything we could reach. My hand into her top, palming her breast roughly, her fingers around my still-covered dick, a tight vise that didn’t feel nearly as good as her pussy would. There were voices close enough that I could differentiate men and women, but not hear what they were saying. I felt invincible. I ripped the zipper down on my pants and hefted her up on the wall. “This?” I said against her mouth while I pulled my cock out. “This is what I wanted to do to you that first night.” “Yes,” she hissed, scoring her fingernails against the back of my neck. Keeping one arm wrapped firmly around her back, I found the edge of her underwear and wrenched it aside. I didn’t have the mobility to let go of her so I could test her, but I didn’t fucking care. And neither did she. Adele was just a writhing mass of impatience, shifting down so that the head of my cock lined up with her. She shoved down while I shoved up and my balls slapped against her ass. I fucked her against that wall, the way our movements were limited making it nothing other than a rutting, thrusting, dirty thing. I could still taste the tang of beer on her tongue when I sucked it into my mouth, and it made her pussy clench in tiny pulses when I did it. “God, Nathan,” she moaned. “Fuck me. Harder, harder.” So I did. Who could’ve said no to her? I slammed into her, over and over, until I couldn’t hold back the racing fire in my body. She stiffened and cried out, clenching my dick in an impossibly tight fist. With one last thrust, I came, groaning into her mouth and then sinking my forehead into the crook of her neck. When I pulled out, the rush of liquid that followed gave me a sick sense of pleasure. We had no way to clean up, so she’d feel me like that, coating the insides of her thighs while the stupid little boys in the house gawked at her. She was still slumped against the wall, breathing hard and smiling. “That was pretty epic, Professor Easton.” I shushed her, even though no one could have heard her. Her face was flushed, and I traced my thumb along her cheekbone. “Have I ever told you that you look exceptionally gorgeous after you come?” She laughed, leaning in to hug me. We stayed that way for a couple moments, stealing a sweet embrace in the darkness. “Can we go home now?” she asked when she finally pulled back. “I don’t want to share you anymore tonight.” “I don’t want to share you anymore, either,” I said back, and the truth of those words didn’t feel as scary, hidden as we were. I placed the mask back over my face and wrapped my arm around her while we walked back toward where we could hail a cab. When the yellow car was pulling up to the curb, she turned back to me and smiled. “You realize that we’re going to have to do that again, right?” “What?”

Right before she opened the door, she leaned up and whispered in my ear. “You. Fucking me in public.” “Get in the car, Alice,” I admonished with absolutely no heat in my tone. When she turned to slide in, I grinned. Because hell yeah we were doing that again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

November passed quickly, the red and gold leaves curling up and turning brown and brittle. Between class, picking up a few extra shifts so I could pay for the Wi-Fi I had finally signed up for, and trying to sneak in time with Nathan, I’d barely registered that winter was on the horizon until I’d slipped on my ass on the sidewalk in front of my apartment, landing on ice. My hand had hit knuckles first into the ice and the sharp sting of the blow made me loudly groan, “Mother fucker!” I tried rolling over to my knees to pull to standing but that resulted in another swear. My knees were bruised from the blow job I’d given Nathan in his shower, the blow job I’d purposefully taken a very long time in giving—just so he could experience an explosive orgasm of his own. He’d given me so many, after all. But then I’d been stuck on the floor, my knees bearing imprints of his tile. We’d laughed as he’d picked me up and set me on the counter to dry me off, but days later they were still bruised and aching. I pulled myself to the steps to my building and pulled off my glove, checking my knuckles for bleeding. They were red, maybe beginning to swell a little, but when I flexed them, I didn’t feel pain apart from the stretch in the tissue where I’d hit. My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Celeste: What’s your major again?

I stared at my phone, puzzled. Either Celeste was looking to drag me down for what she called my “fake” major or she genuinely couldn’t remember. The former would be her acting like a bitch and the latter would be her being an uncaring bitch. One way or another, I wouldn’t win.

Me: Creative writing. Why? Celeste: Ah, that’s right. I just wondered if you’d changed your mind yet.

I had to bite my tongue to keep the anger from taking over.

Me: Why would I change my mind? Celeste: Dad would be more than happy to support you, financially, if you were going to school for something that you didn’t already know how to do.

I resisted the urge to throw my phone across the ice, mostly because I couldn’t afford to replace it at the time. Because Celeste was right; I wasn’t supported financially because of my choice of study. When I’d announced my major, my dad had been silent, as usual, but he hadn’t offered any kind of financial support—the only thing he could have offered me. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been tempted by the idea of changing my major to have his help. Being broke and living meagerly was stressful. But I’d stuck to my guns all the year before and this year—too proud to admit I needed anything from him. But Ramen and toast for the majority of my meals was getting old. And the student loans looming over my head were another reminder that post-graduation, the Ramen and toast situation wouldn’t likely change.

Celeste: Mom worries about you. And Dad wanted me to let you know if you changed your major, he’d support you fully. Tuition and rent.

Fuck. The word dragged out in my head. The offer was tempting. But I couldn’t give up writing, not when I loved it as much as I did.

Me: That’s nice.

It was the only reply I could come up with. I clicked back to my list of messages, glancing my eyes from Leo’s unread message from days earlier. I only saw a preview of it: I think we should… I wasn’t ready to read what he thought. I was miles away from where I’d been when I’d sloppily kissed him. I’d been confused, lonely. Now, I was being thoroughly fucked by my professor and getting high off just being around him. So I continually put Leo off, hoping that by Thanksgiving I’d yank the tail out between my legs and apologize. I clicked on Nathan’s name.

Me: What are you doing right now?

His reply took a minute and I tucked my hand into my jacket to warm up my fingers until his message popped through.

Nathan: Waiting for you to come to my office. Me: Oh? Nathan: I recall you wanting me to bend you over my desk once.

My thighs clenched in excitement. Gingerly, I stepped around the ice and made my way to campus, a smile on my face. “Come in,” he answered my knock. Entering the office, I took in the lone light from his desk lamp. The rest of the room was washed in darkness. “Nathan,” I said softly. He lifted his head from his book and peered at me, eyes traveling the length of my body. “You’re quick.” My lips twitched. “I can be.” My innuendo didn’t go unnoticed. Swiftly he stood, coming around his desk and reaching behind me to lock the door. He turned me around and pulled the zipper of my coat down, pulling it off me quickly and gracefully. He tossed the coat into the chair and turned back to me. “How are your knees?”

The immediate blush warmed my cheeks. “Sore.” He smiled, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m glad.” His eyes moved over my face. “Look at you. Flushed cheeks. Messy hair. Were you excited to see me?” The unexpected tenderness of his words softened the thudding of my heart. “I’m always excited to see you,” I admitted quietly. He brushed the hair from my eyes and cradled my face with his hands. The warmth from his fingers burned into my windblown skin and I sank into his hold. “You’re beautiful, you know that, right?” I’d expected a quick fuck, something fast but satisfying. But instead, he held me carefully as if I might break under the pressure of his touch. He disarmed me when he touched me like this, and surprisingly—to me—I seemed to need what he gave me, whether his movements were quick and punishing or slow and tender. I was an animal begging for scraps from him, but he always nourished me no matter how he fed the desire that burned within. Leaning forward, he brushed his lips over mine. He wasn’t hurried in his tasting, savoring the moment with me. His hand cupped my ass and squeezed, causing me to hiss. “Ouch.” He let go, his eyes searching mine. “What’s wrong?” Sheepishly, I smiled. “I ate it out in front of my apartment today. The fucking ice.” “Oh,” he pressed his lips against my forehead. “My,” he said, pressing his lips against my temple, “poor,” he pressed a kiss to my lips, “baby.” He breathed the word right into my mouth, causing my complete undoing in his hands. My hands found his chest, fingers digging into the softness of his sweater. “Nathan…” I murmured. “I have class.” “Ah.” His breath fluttered against my mouth. “So we’ll have to make this quick? Pity.” His fingers opened the buttons of my blouse, exposing my stomach to him first. His thumbs caressed the skin there and as delicious as it felt, I knew I couldn’t let him prolong this. “I’ll be late,” I said, leaning forward and planting a kiss on his lips. “Fast. I want fast.” He sighed, but turned me around and pushed me against his desk. My stomach pressed into the wood and I reached my hands forward to grip the other side of his desk. One of his hands slid up, over the back of my shirt to the nape of my neck, brushing the hair aside to get a firm grip. I breathed across the wood; ready, waiting. I heard the jingle of his belt buckle seconds before I heard the firm but insistent knock on his office door. “Professor Easton?” I froze at the feminine voice, as if I was stuck to his desk. “Fuck,” he hissed under his breath, letting go of me and backing away.

Slowly, I straightened, but nerves made my fingers fumble on the buttons of my shirt. Fear sat like a weighted ball in my throat and I couldn’t say a single word as Nathan pushed my hands away and took over the buttoning for me. “Just a moment,” he called. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. The words were on repeat in my head. I’d danced too close to fire this time, taunting it with my fearlessness. I was too focused on seeing what Nathan could give me that I didn’t give a single care to what I could lose. I could have not only compromised Nathan’s reputation, but mine too—as well as my fucking scholarship … the only reason I could attend school. Nathan’s fingers were hurried and my legs felt like they’d crumble underneath me, but I kept my breathing even and soft. When my shirt was buttoned, Nathan thrust my coat into my hands and began brushing my hair with his fingers, as if he was trying to manage some semblance of normalcy. I pushed my arms into the sleeves of my coat but left it unzipped, my heart loud in my ears. I opened my mouth to say something but Nathan pressed his fingers over my lips and shook his head. “Shh. Come over after class?” he whispered. I nodded my head jerkily as he ran his hands through his own hair and straightened his shirt. He gestured for me to move toward the door and when he opened it, I tried to fake a smile. “Thanks, Professor Easton,” I said cheerily as I took in the female student waiting for his attention. I didn’t miss the way she narrowed her eyes, looking over us both before turning her attention to Nathan and clearing her throat. “I need to drop class,” she said. “It’s your last day to,” Nathan replied. I squeezed past her and moved down the hallway, my cheeks warm with the excitement of that moment, as unwelcome as it was. It wasn’t until I was outside that I looked down to zip my coat and noticed the opening in my shirt, the button we’d missed, exposing the center of my bra. All through my next class, I had sweated bullets of worry. I’d glanced at my phone a dozen times, willing Nathan to message me. We could have been caught. And if the female student had missed the way my cheeks were flushed, she most certainly wouldn’t have missed the flash of my bright red bra peeking out of the unbuttoned gap in my blouse. I couldn’t afford to lose my scholarship and if I wanted to continue to be with Nathan—which I most definitely did—I had to figure something out. My feelings had shifted from wanting him to something more profound: wanting to keep him. It wasn’t something I was used to, but because it was new and special, I wasn’t

willing to give it up yet. After checking my phone for the hundredth time, I clicked on Celeste’s message and read it again.

Me: Were you serious? I can’t see Dad wanting to support me at all, after defying him.

Her reply came at the end of class.

Celeste: I’m serious, Adele. We’re all sick of watching Mom worry over you. You know Dad would have supported you if you’d taken a more practical choice of study.

I waited until I’d exited the classroom to call her. “Adele,” she answered. I gnawed on my lip, feeling like I was making a deal with the devil just by talking with her. “Why are you reminding me now?” Celeste’s sigh caused me to roll my eyes. “Because Thanksgiving is next week and it would be really great if we could have a relaxed holiday without you and Dad ignoring one another. You know he’d be proud if you chose another vocation.” Was I really listening to her and considering what she was offering? I wanted to correct her: Dad was the one who did the ignoring. And how fucking hard was it for him to be proud of me anyway? “And we’re both sick to death hearing Mom worrying over your weight.” “I’ve actually gained weight.” “Probably your carbohydrate diet finally kicking in. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend your money on actual food instead of packaged crap?” “I didn’t call for a lecture, Celeste.” “Why did you call? Are you considering changing your major?” Was I? Celeste had dangled the carrot in front of my face and everything it offered me was like a seductive whisper in my ear: no more long hours at the coffee shop, no more cold thermostat settings, time with Nathan that wasn’t stolen moments here and there. Changing my major would mean a lot of things, but it would mean I could be with Nathan more publicly. If having him as my professor wasn’t a complication to my academic credibility, I could see him without the cloak and dagger. “Maybe.”

“I thought so.” The triumph soaked Celeste’s words so heavily I could practically feel their weight on my end of the line. “Let me know if you do. See you next week.” “Fuck.” I put my phone in my pocket and began the walk to the subway, but the vibrating of my phone halted my movements. Seeing my mom’s name, I knew instantly Celeste had called her. “Hey, Mom.” “Baby,” she said, her voice a hundred degrees warmer than the weather around me. “Are you okay?” The million dollar question. The last few weeks of sneaking around with Nathan, working extra hours, and choosing between paying my electric bill or putting food in my fridge had really begun to wear on me and in that moment, all I could think to answer was, “No.” The word came from my lips before I’d realized I’d spoken it. I desperately wanted a wall to sink against. “Oh, honey. Why don’t you come home?” Pinching the skin between my eyebrows, I sighed. “Mom, I can’t. I have school and my job. I can’t just quit.” “Okay. But perhaps you can change?” And there it was. My hand fell and I inhaled through my nose. “I don’t know—” “You know I worry about you,” she interrupted. “All alone in that big city. Leo told me you didn’t even have internet hooked up.” I narrowed my eyes, now convinced that Leo’s true first name was ‘Fucking’ with the amount of times I referred to him as ‘Fucking Leo.’ Just like in that moment. “I was bumming off the neighbors, but I have my own now.” “Adele, there’s another way. You’re just like your father—stubborn.” Shit. The gravity of her words shifted the ground beneath me. Was I just like him? Stubborn, unwilling to be deterred. Doing what I wanted, no matter what anyone else thought. That was my father defined. And, it was me. “You can still write, Adele. But this way, you can study something more lucrative, more secure.” She was knocking me down, nick by nick. Defeat was beckoning my name. Suddenly, I didn’t want to fight anymore. When we ended the phone call, I stood by the stairs to the subway, fully intending to go to Nathan’s house as planned. But instead, I turned back toward campus and entered the registration office with my heart in my throat.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Truthfully, I don’t know how the hell this happened. All I’d wanted from the very first night was just a release. I wanted to feel someone next to me, even for a short amount of time. And some way, somehow, I found myself staring into my refrigerator, wondering what I could make Adele for dinner, since I knew she had to work late. She hated mushrooms, so I stopped keeping them in my fridge. And she, against all my warnings, loved eating whipped cream straight from the bottle. So that too, had found its way onto my shelves. Her smiles became my currency. Like the goodness or badness of my day was dependent on whether I saw her, saw that snarky narrowing of her eyes and heard that cutting tongue, read the words that she put in front of me, held me against her when I fell asleep, marveled at the mess she was able to make with such a small number of items, studied the different shades of gold in her hair when the sun hit it, hurt when I saw how moved she was by simple affection, the same way I used to be when I first started dating. I’d fucked my way into a relationship. Who the hell had I become? At the age of thirty-four, I was someone’s boyfriend. I looked forward, down to the minute, to that moment where she’d walk through the door and give me that secret little smile. The one that said, “These people? They don’t know you. I know you. I understand you.” I’d become addicted to her skin, to feeling every part of her that had been previously neglected. The freckle on the inside of her right arm and the light birthmark on the bottom of her left thigh had been discovered in the last week. I wanted to make her feel so good and so beautiful and so wanted that she couldn’t fathom having any man touch her but me. And every single part of that scared the ever-loving shit out of me. Because I hadn’t been looking for it. And I certainly didn’t think I deserved it. But nevertheless, she was there. I didn’t want that to change. We could just stay like this, keep our heads down while she was finishing her classes. I was thinking about the future again. The realization that Adele had embedded herself so deeply underneath my skin

is what drove me to sit on my couch, staring at the wedding picture of me and Diana. Diana had fought her mother for that veil, the one with tiny pearls along the edge, that had sat anchored underneath all her dark hair. I remember sitting with her, railing and cursing at how her mother was a fascist tyrant who couldn’t fathom doing something new if it jammed her in the asshole. Our relationship had been so smooth and so real, we knew everything about the other person, knew when to soothe and when to push the buttons that would immediately turn a disagreement into a fight. Losing her had been like chopping off both of my arms in one fell swoop. And it had taken this long for them to grow back. I sat there, staring at our young, smiling faces, not knowing what to feel. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew Diana wouldn’t expect me to stay single and celibate for the rest of my life. But she hadn’t had cancer, something where we’d had time to talk about what might happen in my future. One second she was there, the next, I’d blinked, and she was gone. We’d never had the opportunity to have those conversations. About kids and love and regrets. I knew my regrets. That wasn’t the issue. They were never far from my thoughts, especially when I was sitting in this home by myself. While I sat there, turning those things over in my head, there was a knock on the door. Like the universe, or God, or quite possibly Lucifer himself knew that it was the very last thing I needed. Adele was working, so I knew it wasn’t her. When I looked through the peephole, I almost lost my breath. The eyes that looked back at me were the exact same shade of deep brown, so dark that you couldn’t read much of anything, unless you really knew them. “Open the fucking door, Nathan. I can see you looking at me.” So I did. I opened the door and stared at my former brother in law for the first time in four years. Since the day we lowered my wife, his sister, into the ground. He was bigger than he used to be, and a beard fell inches past his chin, the same dark brown that his whole family had. “Elias,” I said in greeting, opening the door to let him in. He shouldered past me, pushing just hard enough that I had to step back, or get shoved. I set my jaw and faced him once the door was shut. “Where’s your car? Did you lose it again?” He’d plopped onto my couch, stretching his long, tree trunk legs out onto the mahogany coffee table. “I haven’t had a car in years, dickface. Cabs and trains and buses and planes take me everywhere I need to go.” “What are you doing here?” He scratched his jaw, hidden somewhere under all that fucking hair, and peered up at me. “I missed you.” I almost laughed. But the coldness in his eyes kept my mouth shut. I didn’t sit. I didn’t want to grant him the smallest comfort in my home. “I bet. Seriously, what do you want, Elias? It’s been too long for a simple social call.” He leaned forward, and the motion made his shoulders pop with muscles that

gave me pause. There was a good chance that he’d take any opportunity to pound the hell out of me. And from the looks of it, he probably could. “It’s been over four years.” I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know. Do you honestly think I don’t remember?” Elias shrugged, his coal colored eyes never leaving mine. “I’m sure you do, Nathaniel. And you should. It’s your fucking fault she’s dead.” I sank into the chair behind me, dropping my head into my hands. “I know.” “Good.” When I finally looked up at him, the silence in the room too heavy for me to shoulder any longer, he looked less angry and more sad. “And you needed to remind me?” “Yes. I’ll remind you for as long as it takes me not miss my sister so much that I feel like someone’s ripping my goddamned heart out of my chest.” When I stood, he did too. “Why are you here?” “I’m here because I’ve stayed away for too fucking long. She was my sister, Easton. I didn’t have a single memory that didn't include her, until you came along.” “So why now?” He shook his head, looking around the room, which was the exact same way as it had been the last time he’d been here, a month before Diana had died. “Because I needed to know that you still suffered. Still surrounded yourself with everything that she’d put here.” He pointed a shaking finger at me, and I felt it like a knife in my chest. “You were the reason she was out on the road that night. You are the reason some drunk asshole wrapped her car around a tree, because you didn’t feel safe driving home after your three pussy-ass beers. Why she was stuck in that car until she bled out. So I need to know that you still feel like shit. The same way I do.” Every word spat from his mouth felt like flames licking up my skin. I kept every thought of that night so far from my memory, that being thrust into it singed every part of me. “And you really think I wouldn’t?” I whispered, voice cracking. “I loved her. You know I loved her. And she would have been home safe if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t need you coming here, after all these years to remind me of that.” We stared at each other, the violence in his eyes just making me feel so incredibly tired. So bone-deep exhausted that I wanted to curl into myself and not come out for weeks. “I know you don’t need it,” he finally said. Then he pointed at his own chest. “But maybe I do.” “Then take your issues somewhere else. I’m not going to offer up a place for you to lay it down.” There was second where he looked like he might relax. But then his eyes narrowed in on the driveway. I turned to look and cursed under my breath when I

saw Adele walking up toward the house with a smile on her face. “I need you to leave.” He laughed. That fucker just laughed. “And why the hell should I?” “Because I don’t need her involved in this. Nobody but you is hanging on to this anger over Diana. And it’s not her fault,” I said, pointing back at where Adele was nearing the door. The locked door, thank God. “If she walks in while you’re still here, then we’re going to have a problem.” We stared at each other, neither of us moving while Adele tried the door. Then knocked. “Nathan? Can you let me in?” “Please, Elias,” I ground out. And the look at utter satisfaction that covered his face made me feel sick to my stomach. “How long? Just answer me that. Just tell me how it took before you moved on.” She knocked again, a little harder, a little more insistent. “Nathan?” No part of me wanted to answer his question. Not a single one. He’d use it against me somehow, even if it wasn’t today. “Four years. I waited over four years before I touched another woman. And she’s the only one that I have.” Elias nodded, and I couldn’t read the look in his eyes even if I wanted to. He could cloak every genuine feeling from his face, it was one of his best gifts. The only reason I knew he believed me is because no man would want to admit to being that pathetic. Being celibate for that long. “I’ll show myself out the back.” “You remember how to get out?” Then he smiled, without a trace of humor in it, showing all his stark white teeth against the dark hair of his beard. “I remember everything, Easton. Everything.” I let out a slow breath when he turned and walked through the kitchen, finally pulling it back in when the back door slammed shut so hard that the windows rattled. Dick. I still felt shaken when I opened the door for Adele, but she was smiling so big that she didn’t even notice. She just threw herself into my arms as soon as the door closed behind her, hoisting her legs up and around my waist. “Woah,” I said, feeling calmed by her tactile greeting and her wide smile. It was one I didn’t see on her often, such a broad, genuinely happy grin. “Someone’s having a good day.” Adele nodded, leaning in to give me a sweet, close-mouthed kiss. “I am.” I braced one arm under her ass, and smoothed the other hand up her back until it tangled in the edges of her hair. Her cold hands cupped my face and we stared at each other. After just looking at Elias, wondering how anyone could decipher his emotions, it was such a stark relief to see everything in Adele’s emerald eyes. They glowed. She glowed. “I’m very glad you’re here right now,” I said, though the words were such a simplistic statement of the overwhelming tidal wave of emotions raging through me. She smiled again, and peppered tiny kisses all over my face, lingering on my

lips after she’d covered every other inch she could reach. “I am too, Professor Easton. Now, take me to bed.” “Yes, ma’am.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Hooking a hand in the front of his jeans, I pulled him up the stairs, feeling high on my decision. Everything would be okay. How could it not be, when I had Nathan looking at me like I was something—someone—powerful? He made me feel invincible. His blue eyes were so warm, his smile cutting into his cheeks so deeply; it was a heady feeling, to know I’d made him happy merely with my presence. Something clicked in my heart, a kind of unlocking, and I knew with complete certainty that I’d made the right decision, for me … for us. “Mm,” he said, holding me closely at the threshold to his bedroom. “You smell fucking amazing. All the time.” I leaned into him, relishing his warmth as the cold made my teeth chatter. “Even when I reek of coffee beans?” “Especially when you reek of coffee beans.” He pulled back and placed a kiss to my lips. “You’re an aphrodisiac all by yourself.” He placed another kiss, softer this time. “I’m glad you’re here.” My heart was putty in his hands. The way he said the simplest things shouldn’t have affected me so deeply, but they did. I placed my hands on his neck and he let out a breath. “Your hands are freezing. Come, let’s shower.” While he turned the water to warm, I stripped out of my coat and leggings, shivering a little when my bare feet touched the cold tile. When he turned back around, I grasped his shirt and pulled it from his waistband, unbuttoning all the way up. As more of his chest came into view, I placed soft kisses along his skin until the shirt was completely undone and he grabbed my face, pressing his lips fully on mine. He let out a sigh and unsnapped my bra before pulling me with him into the shower. “Come here.” He grasped my hands in his and pulled me close, skin to skin, under the shower head. “Put your arms around me, warm up.” The water beat down on us and I let out a sigh at the welcome warmth of it. Wrapping my arms around him, he squeezed me tightly. I felt the warming down to my bones, wondered if I would turn to jelly just by him holding me so fiercely. The water poured from the showerhead over us and I became dimly aware of

Nathan’s hand running down my hair soothingly. How had he known I’d needed this? After making such a big decision, I needed to be held like this, to feel myself just existing in the moment with Nathan. Despite our nakedness, there was nothing sexual about this moment. It was just us, holding one another, being what we both needed. The water slid in rivulets over my face, my closed eyes, falling into the little space that existed between our bodies. Neither of us moved, content to just be. That’s how I knew what I felt for Nathan wasn’t merely lust. Lust was blind to what we desired most: an emotional connection. And any misgivings I had about changing my major were eliminated with each drop of water down the drain. Whatever this was, it was worth exploring. I didn’t want Nathan to be my secret anymore. I pressed my lips into his shoulder and felt his at my forehead. Nothing could have dragged me from his embrace in that moment. I felt him murmur something in my hair, but the water was too loud that I couldn’t hear him. “Hm?” I asked, leaning my head to hum the word in his ear. His hands gripped tighter into my back, as if he was afraid I’d move away. “I like this,” he said, as if admitting it was some big secret. I laughed softly. “Judging by the bulge against my belly, I’d say you do.” “Shh,” he admonished, still holding me tightly. “I’d have to be dead not to get a hard on for you, Adele. But this—just holding you.” He paused, running a finger over my spine. “We don’t do this enough.” His words wound around my heart, squeezing. If I wasn’t careful, I knew he could bruise my heart very easily. I lazily kissed his neck and said, “I concur.” A contented sigh slipped past my lips and we continued to stay still under the water, just holding on to each other. The comforting rise and fall of his chest against me could have lulled me into a very peaceful sleep, but as soon as I yawned into his chest, he pulled back. “Do you want me to wash your hair?” Again, the noose around my heart squeezed. Unable to say anything, I just nodded. Our surroundings were fogged from the steam, so even if I wanted to look away from him, I wouldn’t be able to see anything but us. I watched him pour a handful of shampoo into his palm before he rubbed it between his hands and began massaging my scalp. It was heavenly, having his fingers pressing into my skin. The tension I hadn’t known I carried released and I nearly groaned in the sheer ecstasy of it. Pressing a finger beneath my chin, he tilted my head back under the spray, allowing the water to wash away the soap. His finger moved down the center of my neck and came to my shoulders. His other hand came up and both cradled the back of my head under the spray, massaging against the roots as he rinsed my hair. I felt exposed to him like this, with my eyes closed and my head back, my chest stretched in front of him. Slowly, his fingers moved to my neck, rubbing circles into the skin. He continued over my shoulders, his fingers working magic into my muscles. His

thumbs pressed into the spot where my neck met my shoulder and rubbed away every bit of tension I carried. “Ahhh,” I sighed, spellbound. “You have miracles in your hands.” He chuckled, cupping one hand at the base of my scalp and moving the other to my chest. I lifted my head, opening my eyes weakly. His eyes were the brightest specks of blue, even in the mist that surrounded us. And the way he looked at me, as if I’d just pleasured him instead of the other way around, was quietly, but somehow delightfully, unnerving. “I definitely owe you for that,” I said, reaching my hands into his hair. He placed his hands on my wrists and pulled my hands away. “No,” he said, pressing a kiss to my open palm. “I did that because I wanted to.” This serious Nathan was different from the other serious Nathan I knew. Maybe it was because he seemed to be serious about us, about me. I wasn’t just a student or even a woman he was fucking; I was something more. And it relieved me. I wasn’t alone. The profound impact of that realization nearly knocked me off my feet. I’d felt so alone most of my life between a mother who longed for her husband and a father who had treated me like an intrusion. Even with Leo, I’d felt a little out of place with my impulsivity. But, with Nathan I found a place I belonged. Nathan pulled me out of the shower and wrapped a towel around me before wrapping one around himself. As he towel dried my hair, I was overcome with gratefulness and leaned forward, kissing him deeply. Somehow we made it into the bedroom. Nathan threw back the sheets before hooking a finger in the knot at the center of my towel, opening it and letting it fall to the floor. He lifted me onto the bed gently, as if I was made of porcelain. With his palms, he spread my knees to allow him room to step between them and then he framed my face in his hands. The kiss was gentle at first, his lips just teasing mine, back and forth. But my lips were hungry, and I bit down before soothing it with a lick. Over and over I bit and licked until Nathan climbed over me on the bed. His lips paused above mine when I took control and wrapped my legs around his waist, placing my pussy right against his cock. A breath passed between us, from his lips into mine, before he rocked forward, sliding into me. When my orgasm built and crested, Nathan gripped a fistful of my hair in his hands, giving me the bite of pain I needed to fall over the edge with him. “Adele?” his words were soft, whispered in the dark. “Hm?” I mumbled, rolling over. My hands met his chest and I sighed. My muscles felt deliciously relaxed from the shower massage and the sex. “We fell asleep. We should eat something.” “Let’s go out,” I said, remembering that we could now. I felt the shake his head. “No. I’ll order pizza.”

“No,” I moaned, rubbing a hand over his chest. “Let’s go out to dinner. Out of town. Just you and me and two giant plates of spaghetti.” I pressed a kiss to his perfectly sculpted pectoral. “Say, ‘Yes, Adele. Not only are you pretty and charming, but you’re full of great ideas, Adele.’” His laugh bounced my head off his chest and he flipped me over, pinning me underneath him. “You are very pretty,” he murmured, kissing the corner of my lips. “And charming.” He kissed the other side of my lips. “And while I like most of your ideas, there’s that pesky little thing like me possibly losing my job and you losing your scholarship if people find out. But let me show you where you can get the greatest pizza in Boston and we’ll eat it naked,” he rubbed a hand down my chest, pulling the sheet down, “in bed.” He kissed me fully and then rolled over to his side. I needed to tell him about changing my major. “Do you have to pick it up?” After rolling over, I nuzzled into the pillow. He kissed the top of my head and ran a hand over my hair. “I’ll order delivery, but I left the menu downstairs. What do you like on your pizza?” “Anything is fine. Do you have wine?” “Wine and pizza?” I felt him leave the bed and heard the sounds of him grabbing our clothes from the bathroom and bringing them back to the bedroom. “Sure. I feel like celebrating.” A smile spread my lips, but he couldn’t see me in the darkness. I held a hand to my chest, hoping to hold on to the happy for a while. “Celebrating what?” As I was about to answer, I heard the sound of glass falling and Nathan muttering a curse. The lamp on his nightstand switched on, and I blinked as I adjusted. “What happened?” Nathan, towel wrapped around his waist, gestured to the puddle of water on the nightstand and the floor. “I was trying to turn on the light, but I knocked over the water.” “Just go,” I said, climbing out of bed and picking up my discarded towel. “Order pizza and I’ll wipe this up.” “Okay. I’ll be right back.” I heard his footsteps leave the room. I wrapped the sheet around me and grabbed the towel. I sopped up the mess on the floor and moved up the wood, sliding the towel under the handles of the drawers. As I wiped the water from the table top, I realized the top drawer was slightly ajar and I opened it to wipe out the water that had surely dripped inside. The papers on top were wet with angry, large splotches blurring the words in their center. Pulling them out, I saw a small, redwood box. Even as my hand reached in to pick up the box, a small voice in my head registered that I shouldn’t pick it up. But I was deaf to anything but the rush of blood in my ears as I snapped the lid open. Cushioned inside the box was a simple gold band, topped with a single small, but

quality, diamond. Holding it to the light of the lamp, I was mesmerized by its sparkle and pulled it from its cushion, sliding it over my ring finger before I even knew what I was doing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

When I walked back into the room carrying the delivery menu for Crazy Dough, I’m sure I still wore the same contented smile that I’d seen in the fogged up bathroom mirror. It wasn’t even that it got better every time we were together; it got sweeter and softer, got deeper into my pores, like I’d never be able to pull her out. And because that’s where my brain was at, it was also why I didn’t notice the strange look on her face when I cleared the door. She was just sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in my sheets, hair rumpled and cheeks still flushed. But it wasn’t the sated, almost tender look that I was used to seeing in her eyes. I was about to ask her what was wrong, when my mouth closed and I narrowed my eyes. It was guilt. She looked guilty as hell. And then her eyes flicked down to her left hand. The light from the lamp on the bedside table hit the ring, that modest speck of diamond Grandma Coulton had given to me before she’d died. My heart stuttered to a stop, a cold flush covering my skin, and for a second I actually wondered if I was going to pass out. “Where did you find that?” I croaked out. The icy flush of my skin fanned to heat, making me blink against the sudden swing in my temperature. Adele fisted her left hand underneath her right and pressed them against the bunched-up sheet covering her breasts. I’d never seen her look so … terrified. She looked terrified. “I’m so sorry, Nathan. I didn’t think … I didn’t—” I held up a hand for her to stop, pinching my eyes shut for a few seconds while I tried to collect my thoughts. My gut reaction was to rip it off her finger, clench it in my hand and feel the cold metal against my skin. But I’d never told her a single significant thing about Diana. Not how she died, not the guilt I’d carried on my shoulders since the day she had. And I’d never told Adele that sometimes, even when I was wrapped around her, I was afraid that I’d never love anyone the way I loved Diana. She stayed quiet, only the sound of her uneven breaths filling my ears. “I’m not,” I wiped a hand over my mouth and let it stay there while I finally opened my eyes, “I’m not mad, Adele.”

I half meant it. Her ghost-white face helped ease my racing heart a little. She nodded and I walked over toward her, making sure my towel was tightly knotted around my hips. “Why did you go looking through my stuff?” Her nostrils flared, and she blinked rapidly, like she was fighting tears. “I don’t know, honestly. I was just happy, Nathan. I was so happy, what happened in the shower and ordering naked pizza in bed and … and we’ve never done that. And you were so happy to see me when I got here,” she paused, looking up at me with giant pleading eyes, and I could see the pulse hammering in her throat. “Weren’t you?” “Happy?” I repeated, trying very hard not to sound snappish, since her nerves were obviously limiting her vocabulary. “Yes. You seemed like it, at least. And it felt real, like I was coming home to you. Like we were real. And with what I did today, it just… I don’t know, all bubbled over, and I was cleaning up water and—” My brain had caught mid-way through her rambling, tripping words. “What did you do today?” “Oh.” She swallowed, shifting on the bed and hiking the sheets a little higher on her chest. “I did something for us. So we didn’t have to hide as much.” Suddenly, I needed clothes for this conversation. I reached down to grab my fleece pants, hiking them up my legs, only dropping the towel when I was covered. “Adele, what are you talking about?” The smile she tried to push across her face was shaky at best, but her eyes were so genuine and beseeching, asking me for something when I didn’t even know what the question was yet. “I changed my major.” “What?” I yelled, ice prickling over my skin again. “You did what?” “I changed my major,” she repeated, her voice stronger this time, her chin tilted up an inch. “Why? You’re a damn good writer, Adele. Why the hell would you do that?” Holding her head up like a queen, instead of a girl wearing a wrinkled sheet, she stood from the bed. “I changed it because of what happened today in your office. Because it will make our lives easier. So I don’t have to constantly worry about who’s looking at us and who suspects something. I changed it for you. And I changed it for me.” I spun, hands gripping my hips, because I had a split second where I actually wanted to throw something across the room. “Nathan, I can do anything else and still be satisfied. I’m smart, it’ll be easy for me to find something else. And now once this class is done, I’m not technically your student any more. I’ll be twenty two in three months, there’s nothing anyone can say about us.” The walls pressed in on me, the pale grayish blue that always used to soothe me now felt like I was being swallowed by salt water, filling my lungs until I couldn’t breathe. That was the thing about guilt, it filled every part of you until you couldn’t get the oxygen that you needed to survive.

I felt guilt over Diana, how I’d not only ruined, but ended her life. And now Adele, making a unilateral decision about her future, which seemed so long and unending given how young she was, throwing away something that she was so talented at. Because of me. I think my skin started vibrating, because I clenched my stomach muscles tight to try and stop my shaking. When she laid a hand on my shoulder, I erupted, whipping around and shoving it off of me. “Why would you do this?” I bellowed at her face, and she shrank back. “Did we have a talk about our future that I missed?” “Okay,” she said, staying remarkably calm considering I was ready to shatter my entire room, “I get that I surprised you. And I’m sorry that I put on Diana’s ring—” “Don’t you dare,” I whispered. “Don’t you fucking dare say her name right now. My wife has nothing to do with this bullshit conversation we’re having right now.” Her face paled even more, but the black bile churning in my head wouldn’t slow, wouldn’t settle. My body wanted it out, like the words I aimed at her would somehow purge them from me forever. “You don’t just flippantly make those decisions, Adele. A grown-up would know that.” “Fuck you,” she snapped. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And if you’d calm down for one second so I could explain, you’d know that.” “Explain? Oh yes, please explain to me how any of this makes goddamn sense.” “You know what? I’m going to go. You need to chill the fuck out before we talk about this again.” She moved over to where her clothes laid in a pile on the floor. For the first time since I’d met her, she hid her body from me. She kept her back turned while she slipped on her leggings, kept the sheet wrapped around her shoulder while she put her bra on. “Ahh, so now you want to talk to me about things. I get it. You’re one of those girls.” Her body stilled, shoulders curved in while she’d been attempting the awkward task of pulling her shirt on while not exposing herself to me. “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? You come in here and think that getting me off, that screwing me before you tell me is somehow going to make it better that you made a huge fucking decision about a future that we have never talked about.” “You’re being an ass, Nathan,” she said on a slightly wavering voice, avoiding my gaze at all costs. “And I’m done talking to you about this until you’ve calmed down.” She finished dressing, tossing the sheet back onto the bed that we’d found release on together only a few moments earlier. “You’re right,” I said, and her eyes finally found mine. “You are absolutely right, Miss Morello. We are done talking about this.” “What does that mean?” Her voice sounded shrill, taking on a panicky edge. “I bet you’ll figure it out when you grow up.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Like it wasn’t controlled by my brain, my left arm reached out and my hand swiftly slapped him across the face. The resulting stinging in my palm paled in comparison to the pain splitting my chest down the middle. “Fuck. You.” The words were laced with venom, the power behind them causing my voice to sound cold, furious. But my limbs shook from the boiling in my veins. “Grow up? Are you fucking kidding me?” He stared at me, unmoved, and I badly, desperately, wanted to throw something across the room, if only for the satisfaction of seeing it break into a million pieces. I wanted to scream, to punch a hole in his chest, anything to make him feel what I was feeling. I grabbed my jacket off the floor and shoved my arms through the holes, my mind a storm of anguish and humiliation. My palm still stung, but I wouldn’t let him see me in pain. A sob climbed up my throat, but I refused its release as I pushed past him, flying down the stairs and out the door. The slam of the door behind me was completely unsatisfying. It wasn’t until I’d reached the nearest subway station that I allowed myself to crumble onto a bench. I’d held it in, the vinegar that burned my throat—a product of unshed tears. But now that I was far from the cause of my heartache, I was safe to grieve. Sobs shook my chest and I held a fist to my mouth, pressing hard against my lips to keep me from crying aloud. I let my hair form a curtain around me as my composure dissolved on the cold cement bench. When my train arrived, I sent up a silent thanks for the empty seat and leaned my head against the glass, desperate to disappear. Fortunately, no good Samaritans were after making me feel better, so the tears rolled freely and endlessly down my face as the crack in my chest split more and more each time I replayed his words in my head. “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? You come in here and think that getting me off, that screwing me before you tell me is somehow going to make it better that you made a huge fucking decision about a future that we have never talked about.” It was a mother fucking echo in my head. “…a future that we have never talked

about” echoing the loudest, painting his own thoughts for us perfectly clear. While I’d been imagining spending more time with Nathan, his thoughts had run a different way. He hadn’t been making plans, I had; Alone. When I was back in the safety of my apartment, I turned my phone on silent and curled into my bed, the down comforter like a cocoon around me, over my head. The quiet of my apartment was unwelcome, but it was all I had. And that realization pressed upon my chest, causing me to cry once again. The worst thing about what Nathan had said hadn’t been the delivery—which was fucking horrible in and of itself—but what he’d said. He’d essentially called me a manipulator, a child, and an idiot. He’d assumed I’d buttered him up with sex, had made this big decision about my future without thinking things through. And he’d insinuated that I wasn’t mature enough to understand the gravity of the situation. All of it hurt, but the fact that he’d questioned my intelligence hurt the most. Given the way I’d been feeling toward him over the last several weeks, I’d finally accepted that Nathan was more than a fuck, a conquest. He was the real deal, a man worth holding onto. And after running from dozens of men, it was a big fucking deal for me to find the one I wanted to stick around. “Fucking asshole,” I blubbered into my pillow. I’d surrendered to him, given him things I’d never given another man. And he’d reduced me to what essentially amounted to nothing. In my head, I’d seen the whole situation going differently. I’d imagined Nathan taking my news in, realizing it was ultimately my decision and while I would have respected his opinion—had it been delivered more kindly—I would have ultimately stuck to my guns. Because that was who I was. I’d never bent for a man, chased a man, wanted a man the way I wanted Nathan. Not that it mattered anymore. I rubbed a tissue over my nose and winced when I felt the sharp cut against my nostril. To my sheer horror, when I pulled my hand back I realized I was still wearing the engagement ring. The very catalyst to our fight. Wrapping the fingers of my other hand around the band, I yanked to pull it off, but it wouldn’t budge. Fuck. I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, rubbing lotion around my finger before twisting. The lotion loosened it enough to help it spin, but it still wouldn’t slip past the first knuckle. “No, no, no,” I said, tears of frustration now falling. I couldn’t wear this. I couldn’t have this on my finger still. After trying to remove it, unsuccessfully, for twenty minutes I gave up. I was a shitty friend, but luckily for me, Leo wasn’t. So I dialed his number. “Hey, stranger.” I closed my eyes, breathed a sigh of relief into the phone. “Leo. I’m sorry. For the last month, for ignoring you. I need you.”

“I’ll be there in a few.” True to his word, he arrived at my apartment just when I was on the verge of hysterics. I threw myself into his arms, clinging to him like the savior he was. “Hey, hey.” Leo pulled me back and looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?” I held up my hand with the ring on it, my lips turned down. “This.” His brown eyes grew as wide as saucers. “Holy shit, Add. You got engaged?” If I thought this situation couldn’t possibly get more humiliating, I was sorely wrong. “No. This isn’t mine and I need to return it. But it’s stuck!” To illustrate my point, I tried to pull it from my finger but it wouldn’t do anything but twist, almost mockingly so. “Okay, it’s fine. We’ll get it off.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I blurted. It wasn’t just because of the ring situation, but until he was in front of me I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed him. “I’m sorry I’m such a dumbass.” He smiled his trademark Hollywood smile, the one that could get him anything he wanted. I wished I had such a weapon in my arsenal, to make him forgive me. “It’s okay. You’re still my friend.” He said it in a little kid voice, and I laughed. Just like that, my kissing him and ignoring him was forgotten and we were back to the friends we were supposed to be. Just friends. He held my hand in his and turned it over. “It’s a little swollen. Did you hit a wall or something?” I thought of the slap I’d delivered to Nathan’s face. “Or something,” I admitted. “Is that why it won’t come off?” Nodding, he rubbed at the skin around the band. “Probably. But I saw a video on YouTube, I know just what to do.” He strode into my bathroom, returning with floss. “Do you have olive oil?” “Hell no. I have vegetable oil. What do you think this is, The Ritz?” Leo laughed and grabbed the oil from where I’d pointed. When we were both settled on my couch, he started wrapping the floss around my finger, just above the band, all the way to my knuckle. I watched the compression on my skin, the way it turned almost purple. “Hold this so it stays taut,” he said, pressing the end of the floss in my hand. He poured a little of the oil into a cup and dipped his finger in, rubbing over the top of the floss and around my finger. The floss was wrapped so tightly that when he tried to tug the ring over the floss, it slid a lot more easily up my finger. Encouraged, he wrapped more floss right around my knuckle, squeezing my finger. Within seconds, the ring slid completely off and he quickly unwrapped the floss from my finger. “You’re a genius,” I praised, rubbing the feeling back into my finger. He was holding the ring between two fingers, examining it. “What’s the story with this?” I moved to the kitchen sink to wash the oil from my fingers as I contemplated

what to say. I didn’t want to reveal too much, but so much had happened in the time that Leo and I didn’t speak that I couldn’t blow him off. “I met this guy and we’ve been seeing each other for a while now.” Leo joined me at the sink. “And what? He proposed?” I shook my head almost violently. “No. I … I found the ring and tried it on. I don’t even know why. But it belonged to his dead wife.” My stomach clenched at the thought. “And we got into a fight. I left still wearing it.” Leo nodded thoughtfully as he washed his hands. “I’m surprised he kept it.” “What do you mean?” He shrugged. “Well, wouldn’t you bury your wife with her ring? Why would you keep it? Unless it’s a family heirloom.” Bile shot up my throat. “Fuck, don’t talk so morbidly, please.” But what Leo said had made sense. The setting looked old, the gold a little dull. And I’d run out of his house wearing it. Really, my humiliation was growing by the minute. But it was no match for the pain in my heart, the pain that had eased some by Leo’s presence and reassurance. When he left later that night after promising to see me over Thanksgiving break, I only cried for ten minutes instead of all night, like I’d anticipated. I slept until noon. It was almost stubborn, as if my body had taken initiative to force me to be either incredibly late for Nathan’s class or to skip it entirely. I opted for the latter, but visited campus ten minutes before class was over, the ring sealed in an envelope, and slipped it under his door. I’d held onto the frame of the door longer than I cared to admit, almost wishing he’d end class early and come find me. But he didn’t. And he wouldn’t. It wasn’t until I was on the train out of the city that I received Nathan’s first communication with me since our argument. I had been expecting it, after missing class, but didn’t think he’d actually message me until he noticed my absence the following Monday, as I wasn’t planning to return until after Thanksgiving.

To: Alice Carroll Date: Friday, November 20, 2015 02:27 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: I’m sorry I thought I’d get the chance to see you today, but I don’t blame you for skipping class. I’m so sorry, Adele. I hate what I said to you. Please, let me know that you got this. You didn’t answer my call or my text. N

••• I debated for several minutes whether or not I should reply. On the one hand, getting an apology from him was like a temporary reprieve from the non-stop churning heartache I was feeling. But on the other hand, once I closed my phone and allowed myself to fall into thought, I was still so deeply hurt that I feared talking to him would only open my heart up for more destruction. And considering I was on my way home, willingly placing me in the clutches of my family, I needed to avoid whatever stress I could, to steel myself for whatever I faced at home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Here.” My father handing me a beer was the most gracious he’d been in all twenty-one years of my life. I accepted it almost unwillingly, looking at the brown bottle as if it held poison. “I’m pleased you’ve changed your major.” They were six words, but they were the most my father had spoken to me in years. And the first time, in recent memory at least, that the words weren’t coated with revulsion. I’d need to drink to process this. I tipped the beer back, absorbed the bite of the fancy shit and then held the bottle out in front of me as I swallowed. I knew, because this was a craftsman brew, that this bottle alone cost two to three bucks. And to think of the cases my father had in garage, to imagine the hundreds of dollars he owned in beer, made me a little ill. I had scraped change together for my Charlie card for the subway more times than not, often bumming a ride off of Leo’s card when funds were low. And one of these beers could have paid my daily fare to class. “What did you change it to?” Finally, he said something that required an answer. Often when my father spoke, it wasn’t to receive an answer but to simply express his thoughts, because his thoughts were of value. I was going to milk him for all he was worth. “Journalism.” I saw the twitch of his lips and continued before he could tell me it, like creative writing, was another unworthy degree. “It relies heavily on English still, yes, but it can transition me to a number of careers.” He stared forward, at the fireplace before us. “What? Like newspapers? You do realize that traditional circulation for mediums like magazines and newspapers is declining, right?” I’d braced myself for this conversation the moment I’d arrived home the Friday before. The fact that it had taken my dad six days until Thanksgiving Day to bring this up, a day before I was to return to campus, was telling. He’d kept silent for six

whole days, letting me sweat his reaction while my mom busied me with her new curtains and latest dessert recipes she’d tried. All the hobbies she’d filled her life with since becoming an empty nester, married to a man who spoke little. No. My father waited until Thanksgiving Day, hours before we were all to gather around the table for our first meal together, to discuss my future and how his wallet factored heavily in my plans. It was so like him, to let me walk around on eggshells, waiting for him to ask. He loved the control it gave him, the fact that I needed him was a power trip. And because I knew him and because I was still trying to heal from the heartache that was thanks to another man who had taken my news not so well, I nearly slumped in my seat, letting him tell me in so few words how stupid I was to choose a degree like journalism. Instead, I straightened the spine he’d forced upon me—that line of steel—and said, “You’re right. With the evolvement of print publications moving to a digital format, there’s been a decline in newspaper and magazine subscriptions, but that’s because that content is now easily accessible online. The internet is the new frontier for journalism, and demand is high. And that’s still only one route I can take with a journalism degree.” I paused, waited for his rebuttal, but when he remained silent I continued. “Because journalism focuses on critical and analytical thinking, I can transition into other fields. Many public relations firms hire people with a journalism background. I can work in advertising, as a copywriter, or I work as a market researcher. These are all occupations that have need and won’t become obsolete.” I waited, for him to say something, anything. “Well, I suppose it’s better than going to school to learn something you already know how to do. You shouldn’t have to study creative writing; you should be born inclined to be creative.” It was how he delivered what amounted to praise from him, with a bite reminding you how absurd he thought you were. But because he hadn’t asked me a question, I knew that was my sign to not continue. He’d heard enough. And, blessedly, he’d decided to support me. Some people spoke the loudest when they said nothing at all, and my father was a prime example of that. Two hours later and a belly full of three very expensive bottles of beer, I received a text from Leo.

Leo: Wanna escape? Adele: Pleeeeease.

Leo showed up at the door, snow in his brown hair. He hugged my mom and Celeste, and shook hands with my father. My father had always admired Leo, though I knew that was because Leo was athletic and his family was, like my father, well off. When I thought of my father’s study and its expensive furnishings, I imagined that had he seen my apartment in person, he would have considered it squalor. Leo held his arm out for me to grab hold of and I looped my arm in his. When we were halfway down the block, our boots covered in snow, Leo said what I’d been waiting for him to ask. “About the kiss…” “Yeah, about that…” He rubbed one gloved hand over his hair, brushing the snowflakes away. “I’d always wondered, you know? About you and me. If it was meant to be.” I stopped walking, turned to face him. Please, please don’t tell me my kiss made you realize you loved me in that way, I thought. “And when you kissed me, there was just … nothing.” I was silent for a beat, absorbing that. “There was nothing for me too.” I tucked my hands into my coat pockets. “I was drunk, and I know that doesn’t excuse my behavior. But I guess…” my voice trailed off and I looked down the road, thinking. “I guess I wanted to kiss you and have it be you, you know?” I turned back to him and he nodded. “I feel the same way. After the shit with Darcy and the girls since, I’m just over it. I’m not cut out for this game.” He lifted his shoulders and dropped them a second later. “It’d be easy if kissing you solved my commitment issues.” “It’d be easy if kissing you solved my bad luck.” I stepped forward and wrapped my arm around his back. “Aw, Leo. You don’t have bad luck. Just bad taste.” He laughed, his head bobbing back. “Just that. No bigs. I’ll just train my dick to zero in on a different type.” “See? Easy?” I laughed along with him and squeezed him to me. He sighed and wrapped both arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. “To be honest? I’m kinda glad you kissed me. Because I was never going to work up the nerve to do it, even as I wondered.” I leaned my head back to meet his eyes. “What? That’s crazy. Why not?” Gesturing with a hand from my head downward, he said, “Because you’re intimidating as fuck. When you want something, you don’t just go after it—you stalk it. You grab it by the balls and demand its attention. You’re like that bitch from Fatal Attraction, without the crazy.” I laughed, nearly slipping on the snow under my feet and held on to him. His eyes grew serious. “And you’d never looked at me that way.” “Yeah,” I said solemnly, shrugging. “That doesn’t mean I know my type either.”

“What about the guy? With the ring.” It was the first time someone had mentioned him to me since I’d left him, but that wasn’t exactly surprising given the very secretive nature of our relationship. I hadn’t even told my best friend about him. But bringing him front and center in the conversation brought all of the baggage along with it and I rubbed my chest absently. It turned out a week away from Nathan, even while ignoring the legions of emails he’d sent me since then, wasn’t enough time to turn me back to normal, to heal the hairline fracture on my heart. It was what I imagined the pain must be from, because nothing else made sense. I pulled back from him, so we were at arm’s length. “So.” I exhaled, watched my air cloud up. “That night I left the bar with that guy? Well, he was my professor.” Leo didn’t say anything, but looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish. “Well, you were on the money with the Fatal Attraction comparison, because I’d known he was my professor when I’d taken him home with me. And he hadn’t known that I was his student.” Just admitting it aloud highlighted how very villainous that action was, but I continued. “And when he found out, he pushed me away and was very insistent that we not continue. But you know me; I’m not easily deterred. It turned into a month of back-and-forths and another month of accepting that we couldn’t get enough of each other. Until last week.” He nodded, taking it all in. “What happened last week?” “Oh, fuck. This is a long story. But basically, I changed my major.” Leo’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked incredulously. Nodding, I said, “I know! A lot has happened! Anyway. I changed my major because I’m sick of choosing rent over groceries that don’t have a shelf life of a hundred years. All that ramen was really wearing me down. And—long story short —my dad offered, because my mom worries, to support me financially if I changed my degree to something more practical.” I heaved a breath, the words having come out in a rush. “And because the professor and I had kept sneaking around, I saw this as a way for us to date publicly, especially since I wouldn’t be his student anymore.” I looked around, almost expecting someone to be listening in to our conversation. “But when I told him, he called me stupid and I happened to be wearing his dead wife’s ring at the time, so that didn’t help things and well, I haven’t talked to him since then.” “Holy shit, Adele.” “Right?” There wasn’t much else for me to say, so I just waited while Leo processed. “Have you heard from him since?” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “He’s emailed me almost every day since.” “Have you replied?” I shook my head. “I haven’t even read them.” I opened my phone, scrolled through the eleven missed calls—all from him. I probably would have answered if I hadn’t been asleep, the sheer number was cause for alarm. But when I’d seen the

subject line of his follow up email this morning, The mortification of a hangover. And another apology, I’d deduced that he’d drunk dialed me repeatedly. I still hadn’t read the email. “Why haven’t you read them?” There was no easy answer to that, because there were many reasons why I couldn’t: Because despite how much he’d hurt me, I still wanted him. Because wanting him made me feel as stupid as he’d said I was. Because stupid or not, I wasn’t over him. Because I had a feeling that reading his emails would either break my heart completely or propel me back into arms. Because either option was gut-wrenchingly terrifying. “Maybe you should read them. Take it from me, Add—guys aren’t always the best at communicating. You and I have said a lot of things to one another in the heat of the moment that we’ve regretted later on.” He raised his eyebrows, hinting at the whole drunk-sloppy-kiss thing. “And even if he apologizes to you, it doesn’t mean you have to forgive him.” “Maybe,” I replied unconvincingly. “Or maybe I’ll keep chilling out here, on the island of denial. Population of one.” He tugged me forward for another hug. “Just think about it. Maybe he’s as sad as you clearly are. Either that or he’s already on the rebound.” I shoved him playfully away. “Whatever, Leo.” The thought itself stung a little and piqued my curiosity enough that I considered what he was saying. As we walked back to my home, I realized that talking to Leo was just what I needed to shove me to the right direction. After settling on the leather recliner next to the fireplace, I pulled my email up on my phone and took a deep breath before I clicked the first one, sent this past Sunday.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

To: Alice Carroll Date: Sunday, November 22, 2015 04:32 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: Please I hope to see you in class tomorrow. I called you again, and didn’t receive a reply to my email on Friday. I don’t blame you for being upset, I was callous and patronizing. My shock at seeing you with the ring on isn’t what did it, and someday I hope to tell you why you changing your major affected me so much. But not here. Not like this. Right now, I’m hoping you’ll at least read an email from me. And when I say this, it’s not because I’m angry about it anymore, but I believe you still had the ring on when you left my house. Above anything else it may have been, it was a gift from my grandmother on my mom’s side, and she was one the few family members I had a truly close relationship with. I’d appreciate it if you could bring it to class with you tomorrow. My brain hasn’t stopped moving, Adele, not since you slammed the door and left. I don’t think it’s slowed in the last 72 hours. I know it certainly hasn’t allowed me to sleep. Please, just let me know you’ve at least seen these. Sincerely, Nathan (I’m hoping that my formality will appeal to you. I’m not trying to be a pretentious prick.) ••• To: Alice Carroll

Date: Monday, November 23, 2015 02:16 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: (no subject) While the return of the ring is something that I’m appreciative of, it was sorely tempered by your empty chair mocking me during class today. I can feel you still punishing me for what I did, in the way that you didn’t even write my name on the envelope, how the only item sandwiched in between the plain white paper was the ring itself. No note, nothing. Maybe you didn’t intend for it to hurt as much as it did, but let me assure you if that was your goal, I felt it like you’d hammered a single, rusty nail into my heart. In fact, I was late to class for the first time all semester, because it took me ten fucking minutes before I could even take the ring out of the envelope. Maybe that seems strange to you, but to me, it felt like I was accepting your goodbye in doing so. By the time I arrived, only half the class was there, and the remaining students who filled the seats barely paid attention, their heads already on break, already back home. But you and I? We don’t count down to moments like that, do we? I don’t know what your house looks like, or how many siblings you have. I don’t know if there are friends that you will connect with while you’re in town, but God, Adele, I want to know those things. There’s a possibility in relationships such as ours, to know someone on a bone-deep level, to recognize the soul of the other person, but not have a single notion of what the ins and outs of their life is. Let me know both sides of you. Please? Nathan ••• To: Alice Carroll Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 09:59 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: (no subject) Every day, I wake up and I think, maybe she wrote me back today. Can you believe that I actually thought that I could give you space? Not email you, let you breathe without me begging for scraps. Every morning that I’ve ended up sending you some woefully inadequate words, I’ve started the day with resolve. Women need space sometimes. And that’s okay. If I were you, I’d have a hard time forgiving me too. But I’m weaker than that, Adele. I can’t make it through the waking hours with an ache like that, the one sitting like

an anvil in my stomach that I carry around with me all day long. And it doesn’t abate until I try, just one more time. Most cordially, Nathaniel Robert Easton (I wish I knew your middle name, will you please tell me? That’s all you need to put in an email. Just your middle name in the subject line, and I might be able to breathe again.) (Also, I’m trying very hard not to drink every day that I don’t hear from you. It doesn’t always work, so if that happens, I’ll most likely try to call you again. Could you please pick up this time?) ••• To: Alice Carroll Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 10:15 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: (no subject) I forgot to include this in my email yesterday: What did you switch your major to? I can’t even fathom that I forgot to ask that. And as much as I’ll try not to sound like a boring professor by saying this, I’m sure it will come out that way. You’re so talented, Adele. I hope you don’t give up writing, because that would be a tragedy. And as much as I thought I’d be able to abstain tonight, this topic of discussion and the thought of spending the day with my family tomorrow has me pouring myself some whiskey. I’ll try not to call you too many times, but I can’t make any promises. When my defenses are down, you’re always the first thing I want. Unapologetically. N ••• To: Alice Carroll Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 01:16 AM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: (no subject) YOu never answer my phone callsd. and I cann’t even be mad. Because I was

suuuuuuch a fucking dick. Can you beleive that I’ve never been SUCH A DICK to anyone before? I don’t know why. Maybe I do. Maaybe it’s because you’re you. You are so far under my fucking skin, adele, and I’m glad. I like you there. Please don’t try to remove yourslef. BUT I had to try a couple tiems, just to be sure you weren’t going away. Dont go away, please. please please please and Ive never asked someone so nicely to taslk to me again. You’ve turned me intlo a pussy. I miss you. A fucking lot. So it’s okay. ••• To: Alice Carroll Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 10:16 AM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: The mortification of a hangover. And another apology. I woke this morning, wanting to die in my bed, yet still wishing I could roll over and see your face. Apparently even the mother of all hangovers doesn’t erase that particular desire. It seems as though I need to apologize to you for yet another set of embarrassing actions. Only instead of anger and inexcusable vitriol, I must beg your forgiveness for my behavior last night. Upon looking at my phone, I see that I attempted to call you just about a dozen times and wrote you an email that includes misspellings, grammar and punctuation errors that make me want to stab myself in the eye (they really should revoke my status as a professor of the English language after that). I just can’t move on from this, it appears. I’m starting to hate myself for how much I must have hurt you. But you know what else I’ve learned about you from this extended, awful silence? I’ve learned just precisely how strong of a woman you are. I knew it before, but knowing something in theory, and then experiencing that steel, being held at bay with it, is another thing entirely. Any woman worth her salt should make a man beg and grovel and work harder than he’s ever worked before in his life to gain her forgiveness, especially if he’s spoken

to her the way that I did to you. So I will. I’m about to leave for my parents' house. The only one I’m looking forward to seeing is their giant Schnauzer, Randall. And that’s because he’s probably the only one who will greet me with happiness. ••• To: Alice Carroll Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 05:42 PM From: Nathaniel Easton Subject: The ghost of Thanksgiving Past Maybe Charles Dickens wrote that story for the wrong holiday, because there’s no fucking way I could’ve waited until Christmas to learn this lesson. I know that I’m not Ebenezer Scrooge in the literal sense, but he and I share many similarities. In fact, it truly didn’t hit me until I was driving home from my parents' cold and empty mansion. My car was so quiet, since I tend to not want to listen to music when I’m driving in the snow, and hand over my heart, I heard someone speak to me. I’ve never believed in angels, and my view of God or a higher power is the slimmest version of being a theist, but it was almost like I knew what they were saying to me before the moment the voice hit my ears. You need to give more, Nathaniel. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it was a memory, something Diana told me once upon a time, but it sounds like something she might have said. I’ve never wanted to tell anyone this story, Adele. Not in four years. Only my father, Diana’s brother (who hates my guts, incidentally), and now you, know this. And me not wanting to tell it is pretty irrelevant. Because the moment you slammed that door at my house, I knew exactly how much I’d fucked up. I had ripped the still-beating heart out of the one person who had made me find my own again. So that’s why I’m telling you this. Because I trust you enough to show you what’s inside of me, what’s been gnawing at my guts and my heart for over four years. You may not even want it anymore, but I’m giving it to you nonetheless. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I don’t think you need a background on my relationship with Diana. It was a good one, a solid one that made me happy, made her happy, too. We’d been married for three years, four months, and twenty one

days on the day that she died. It hadn’t been anything but a normal day, other than the way it ended. I had some friends, at that time, and we often got together to play poker and drink some beer. Nothing crazy, just blowing off steam. It had been a few weeks since I’d seen them, and Maurice sent me a text before Diana got home from work, asking if I could come out to his place. He lived about forty five minutes from us, from the house you know, and it had been raining all day. Diana was disappointed I was going to be gone all evening, but she didn’t forbid it, because that wasn’t her way. She just gave me a kiss and told me to be safe. Once I was with the guys, I had more to drink than I should have. Honestly, I didn’t even realize it until I went to grab another beer and it was the last in the six pack. I knew myself well enough to know I shouldn’t have been driving, but nobody else lived remotely close to where we did, so I called her, asked if she’d come and get me. It was about eleven when I’d called, so I knew she was probably in bed. She was pretty quiet after I asked, quite apologetically, may I add. But she agreed, because she didn’t want me to attempt the drive on the slick, wet roads in my condition. I was saying “I love you,” when she hung up, and the guys ribbed me about having to sleep on the couch when I got home. They all left, leaving just me and Maurice. I told him to go to bed, I’d wait on the porch for Diana, since it was warm, despite the rain. In my buzzed state, I remember sitting on his porch swing and thinking it was the greatest night ever. An hour passed, and she still wasn’t there. I wasn’t terribly worried, given that I’d probably woken her when I called. But when I stared at the phone until the numbers clicked to the next hour, I pounded on the door until Maurice woke up. I’d called Diana’s cell about twenty times by the time I got back home, the house completely dark upon my arrival. It was six hours later that a police officer knocked on the door. Maurice told me that I spoke with the cop, but I don’t remember anything from the conversation. In truth, I don’t remember much until I had to identify her body in the morgue and they told me what had happened. A drunk driver had T-boned her car, and the force of the impact made her small car skid so far off the road that the front of the car slammed into a tree just off the curb. The drunk died on impact as well, but that wasn’t much of a comfort to me. All I knew was that my wife, the woman I loved more than my own life, who always told me to be safe when I left the house, bled out in her driver’s seat, her face cut so badly from the glass that they needed me to identify her. And the only reason she was there was because of me. I killed her, just as much as that man had. And when I grabbed her lacerated face in my hands, my tears coating her cold skin, I wished I had died right along with her. I've always thought that I kind of died with her.

That’s what I’ve carried with me, every day since she died. The knowledge of my complicity. It was nothing that could ever be punishable by law, and the papers never even picked up that she was only out because I’d called her. But every day, I had to remind myself to breathe, remind myself that it was no one’s fault but mine that I was alone, and would probably die that way. Until you, my beautiful, vibrant Adele. I felt like I was touching fire when I held you that first night. And every night since. And I’ll never stop trying, not until you look me in the eyes and ask me to. So this? This is as much as I can give you. You have it all, and I hope you want to keep it. Yours, Nathan ••• I hit send and sank back into my chair, stretching my fingers out. Nope. No tingling. “Holy shit, I can’t believe I just did that,” I said into the quiet room. None of this, none of this felt like enough. Every fucking word I’d sent her in the last week hadn’t been enough. Maybe this last one wasn’t either. She was probably going to get home after a shitty day at her parents’ and groan when she saw the email there from me. But if this didn’t do it? Then she was done with me. I’d all but gouged my heart out and served it to her, still bloody and pumping. I slammed my laptop shut and stood, suddenly wanting to break something. Break a lot of somethings. What if it didn’t work? The thought snaked through my brain, planting a horrible seed that grew and grew and grew. What if all this time, she didn’t want to be left alone. Maybe she wanted to be chased. That no matter what I could say to her, how much of myself I could spill out into those emails, it wasn’t going to be enough. She needed to see. See what a miserable fucking wreck I’d become in the last week. I yanked my coat out of the closet outside of my office, shoving my black knit cap into the pockets, and sprinted down the hallway to the garage. The snowy roads forced me to drive slowly. “Fuck!” I yelled, banging my hand on the steering wheel when I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending another fishtailing car. I couldn’t even feel the cold. Not when I whipped into a parking spot across from her building, not when I jogged across the slushy street, not when I hit the buzzer for her apartment. Nothing. No answer. Hell, I would have been happy with a “Fuck you” in response through that tinny speaker. I braced my hands on the metal grates that covered the door, absolutely loathing that she needed to live in such a shit hole. I pushed back and went back out onto the sidewalk, peering up at the window that was hers. What an idiot. It was dark in there, which I would have been able to notice

before ringing the bell eighty four times if I’d just looked up when I’d crossed the street. With a huff, I jammed the cap over my head and fisted my hands in the meager warmth that my coat pockets provided. A woman walked by and clutched her purse tighter around her shoulder. With the beard growth on my face, given I hadn’t shaved in ten days, and the fact that I was wearing all black, I probably looked like a mugger. When I attempted to give her a polite smile, she glared at me. “Okay then,” I said into the frigid air. “You have a happy Thanksgiving, too.” I’m not sure how long I leaned up against the brick wall behind me. But it was long enough that my feet were now chunks of ice in my tennis shoes, my nose had probably frozen off about forty five minutes ago, and I’d probably never convince my balls to drop again, for fear that they’d fall off. I looked at my watch. 7:18. “You’re such a fucking idiot,” I said out loud. “She probably isn’t even coming home tonight.” I pushed off from the wall, shocked that my legs even still held enough warmth to keep me standing when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to see her, looking perfect. And confused. “Nathan? What are you doing here?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I didn’t answer her right away. I couldn’t. I was too busy just looking. While I looked like a crazy bearded mugger, she looked flawless. More polished than I’d ever seen her, actually. Thinner, though, if that were possible after only a week. Like her cheekbones were sharper than they’d been before. I opened my mouth to say something and she raised her eyebrows expectantly. That’s when it hit me. She hadn’t cussed me out, hadn’t stormed past me, hadn’t run in the opposite direction. She was listening. We were only a handful of feet away, and all the words that I thought about saying to her just dissipated, frozen in my head before they could get out. Falling forward, I sank to my knees in front of her, ignoring the wet slush that seeped into my jeans and wrapped my arms around her legs. My forehead rested on the black wool of her coat, the coat that I’d bought for her, and I just breathed her in. “I’m so damn sorry, Adele. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.” My words were muffled, but I didn’t want to let go of her, content to stay at her feet until she forgave me, or I froze to death, which was an actual possibility. She wasn’t touching me, and I didn’t dare look up. Because if I saw pity or steely resolve in her face, saw anything but forgiveness and want and desire, I’d lose it. “Please,” I whispered, “please tell me you forgive me.” “How about you stand up and we’ll discuss it.” I scrambled back, wiping chunks of snow off my knees while I stood. Adele folded her arms across her chest, and the red scarf she wore around her neck made her eyes look so goddamned green, I almost lost my breath. I couldn’t read anything in her face. Not a fucking thing. We stood there in silence, snow falling quietly around us, covering the slushy mess with a fresh coat of white. The black of her coat, the red of her scarf, and the sleek gold of her hair stood against it so starkly, like someone had painted her like that, a picture of inscrutability. Thank fuck she spoke first, I was liable to fall to my knees again. “You were pretty forthcoming this week.” “You read them?” She nodded with a slight narrowing of her eyes that made me fidget where I

stood. “Good. I’m glad. I meant … I meant every word. I hope you know that.” “To do that, I’d have to trust you again, wouldn’t I?” The words were so evenly spoken, her face so unwavering, that I felt my heart pinch. She was done with me. She was so fucking done with me. I pulled the cap off my head and rubbed a hand over my hair, just for something to do. “Somehow,” I started, watched her tilt her head in quiet regard, “somehow I thought that my age meant I was better, smarter, on more solid footing than you were. But I was so fucking wrong. And my biggest regret is that you might have ever believed it. I’m sorry for that too.” Somewhere in the middle, she took a step closer, the heels on her boots making her mouth only a few inches beneath mine. “Nathan?” My eyes fell shut, hearing her say my name like that. Finally, there was warmth wrapped around those letters, like she’d savored it in her mouth before releasing it to me. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get my eyes to open. “Can we go upstairs now?” They popped open just as she lifted a freezing cold hand to cup my face. “What?” “I’d really like to kiss you, but I don’t think we should do it out on the street.” My eyes searched hers, finally seeing the melting that had happened since she said my name. Then her lips curved up, and my whole body lit up with a blinding, visceral blast. I wrapped her up in my arms and lowered my face to hers. “I don’t give a fuck who sees this.” She gave me a brilliant smile, arms tightening around my neck. I paused right before our lips touched. “Wait, I need you to say it.” “One of those men, huh? That need the words to do the dirty?” Because she grinned when she said it, I growled and moved forward, fitting her bottom lip between both of mine in a perfectly soft kiss. When I pulled back, her face was serious again. “Of course, I forgive you, Nathaniel. I’ve been miserable this week. It’s like my heart wasn’t beating the same way.” Finally, finally I kissed her, relishing in the feel and taste of her icy cold lips between my own. We wound around each other, deepening the kiss with tongues and roaming hands. Adele grabbed my hand and started walking to the door to her place. I stopped her just after she unlocked it to let us in. “Hey,” I said, not letting her go in just yet. She turned to me with a smile, drawing me closer with the hand I was gripping. “Thank you.” “For what?” she asked, placing a soft kiss on my lips. I took her face in both of my hands, rubbed the length of my nose against hers. “I’ll never do that again, I promise. Because I never expected to find something like this. To feel like this.” Adele drew her head back, clearly surprised by my declaration. I didn’t think she was any closer than I was to being ready to say those other words, but I’d give her everything I could. “I mean it. You’ve got me, Adele. And I’ll protect your heart, always give you a safe place.”

“That’s good,” she said with a shaky voice, resting her hands on top of mine where they still cupped her cheeks. “Because if anyone could catch me when I fall, it should be the one I’m falling for.” I wrapped her in my arms, and we stood in that dark, cold stairwell, me holding her, her holding me, until the snow stopped.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Three Months Later

I pulled my car into the garage and didn’t get out right away, just taking a minute to not have an incredibly unprofessional freak-out. I’m talking full on yelling, screaming, bouncing off the walls celebration. Instead I kept my hands on the steering wheel and grinned, imagining Adele’s reaction when I went inside and told her. Harvard. I was going to teach at mother fucking Harvard. She was going to lose it. When I’d pulled in the driveway, I saw a light on in the family room, so I knew she’d let herself in with the key I had given her about a month prior. For all intents and purposes she lived with me, only spending about one night a week at her apartment, since I was technically still an employee of Northern University, and she was a student there, regardless of the fact that she was no longer in classes I taught. So we kept it low key—driving out of town when we wanted go out, her maintaining the lease on her apartment and me making a point not to look her direction if we passed each other on campus. But in four months’ time, we’d be able to do whatever the hell we wanted. I let out a relieved laugh and opened the door to go in. God, what a relief. What a fucking relief. She’d be thrilled. No more being careful, no more wondering whose eyes were on us. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Hmm. Using my key to turn the deadbolt, I called her name when I walked in. But only silence greeted me. “Adele?” I said again, a little louder. The kitchen was clean, a miracle when she’d been home by herself. On the island was the vintage Smith-Corona typewriter I’d bought her for Christmas. With a shake of my head, I pulled the cream colored paper out and brought it close enough to read.

I’ve been a very bad girl. You’d better come find me and see what I’ve done. -A

That was the thing about living with Adele, or … sort of living with her, I guess. The number of times I’d come to home to find her in the mood to play still boggled my mind. I could feel myself harden, and I dropped my coat and car keys on the counter. My shoes stayed behind too, as I didn’t want her to hear me coming. I was just starting to loosen my tie when I passed my office and froze. “Fucking hell, Adele.” She was leaning against my desk, a tiny red plaid skirt barely covering her and a white cropped button-down tied just underneath a red lace bra that could hardly contain her breasts. She wore thick-framed glasses and had smoothed her hair into long blonde pigtails on either side of her face. White thigh-high stockings that tied with a red bow covered her legs, and on her feet were those red heels. The ones that I sometimes saw in my dreams. I braced my hands on the doorway and we drank each other in. “What have we here?” I said, finally walking toward her. She blinked up at me, face painted with comical innocence. “Professor Easton, I was so naughty.” With one finger, I traced the skin from the base of her throat and over the firm skin of her tits. “Is that so?” Adele nodded, biting her lip and thrusting her chest toward me. “I don’t know what came over me. I started looking through your computer and found some … things.” I hummed, using one hand to untie the knot on her shirt, the other to carefully pull the glasses off her perfect face. “What’d you find, little girl?” “Pictures,” she whispered and started to take my tie off. I gripped her wrists and pulled them away with a stern shake of my head. Her pupils dilated and she acquiesced easily. “Show me.” The quick flick of her eyes toward my laptop screen broke the connection long enough that I could let myself look down the length of her body. That skirt was so tiny, I’d be shocked if it covered her entire ass. The screen flickered to life and I grinned. They were all pictures of her, some naked, some not. All incredible. And I’d be looking at them in detail later. “My, my. Somebody had a lot of time on her hands today.” For a split second, she dropped her role, let the fire show in hers eyes and slugged me in the shoulder. “Hey. Don’t be a jackass.” She softened though, when I smiled down at her and tipped her chin up with my thumb. “Which one is your favorite?”

Adele twisted so she could face my computer again, and it did marvelous things to her body. And no, the skirt did not cover her ass, which was fantastic, because I could smooth my hands up her skin unencumbered. Her hips wiggled backward in response to my touch and I leaned over her so my chest covered her back. While my right hand came around her front so I could make smooth circles over her clit, I finally noticed the picture she’d chosen. One of her hands was slipped down into the skirt and it showed the smooth expanse of her stomach, the curve of one breast. “Interesting choice.” I pulled my hand away and she cursed, which made me smile again. I did that so often now, every single day. But she stopped when she heard the sound of me dropping my belt onto the floor next to us. “I was thinking about you when I took it. What you’d do to me when you got home.” “Good girl,” I said and opened my pants, flipping the small skirt up. “I have exciting news for you.” “Yeah?” she asked, voice ragged. “Mmhmm. But I don’t know if I’ll tell you just yet. Even though it means you can stay here. All the time.” Her head whipped to the side to look at me, eyes wide. “What?” I chose that exact moment to thrust into her and we both groaned. As always, she met me move for move, my equal, always pushing me to go faster and harder until we both slumped with exhaustion. It wasn’t until we were tangled up on the floor, her head cushioned on my chest, that I actually told her that Harvard had offered me a job. “It’ll be a huge change, no doubt about that. More money, more prestige, but probably a lot more stress, too.” “And this, this change will make you happy?” she asked, drawing a slow finger under the curve of my pectoral. “Hmm. It means no more dealing with my father, right?” “Yes.” “And I’ll no longer be teaching at the same school where you will be a student for the next two years.” “Uh-huh.” The skin on her spine was so soft when I coasted a hand up it. “And that means you’ll get to stay here. Every night. As long as you want.” Adele propped her chin on me and met my gaze so directly that my heart halted. “And what if I want forever?” “Well then,” I said and gathered her closer, even though it still wasn’t close enough, “far be it from me to try to get in between you and what you want. I’m helpless in the wake of your desires.” The smile that spread across her face stole my heart, it was so full of elation. And truthfully? I was perfectly okay with that. I didn’t want it back anyway.

The End

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I give thanks to my parents. Even though they don’t know that this book exists, without them I wouldn’t have the drive to write, the acuity to see where I needed help, nor the intellect to string words together. Thank you for these brains. Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid. While this endeavor was kept secret from those I loved, there are a select few of you who have entrusted me with your secrets—may they stay buried at the bottom of the Charles River—and you know mine. Thank you for your advice and discretion. I’d like to extend a most heartfelt thank you to Jena Campbell with Indie Girl Promotions, for taking me under her wing and guiding me along this process. You are profoundly underpaid for everything you do. To my beta readers: Christina, thank you for your quick proofreading and your praise; Leigh, for your thorough notes and eagle eye; Anna, for giving me the first feedback as a reader. To the number of people who have gone out of their way to help me through this process via Facebook: Tammy, Jacquie, and Kimie—your support has been a most welcome surprise. Thank you for sharing my posts and teasers; it means a great deal to me. Paula-Flossie, ah. You’ve been wonderful. I hope you don’t hate this book, because that will make things very awkward between us. Heh. Thank you for being a ray of sunshine armed with animal gifs. To Jade, with The Write Assistants. You are phenomenal. Thank you for being willing to work with my tight schedule and for guiding me through this process. To Jamie. You’ve provided me with endless amounts of inspiration. And you’ll never know about this book—a blessing and a shame. But you deserve every bit of acknowledgement that I can give you, no matter how insignificant. You haunt me still. And finally, to the reader. Thank you for purchasing this novel, for leaving a review (if you do), for sharing with your friends. This book would serve no purpose if it weren’t for you.

BEGUILING

Beguiling (Book Two in the Tempting series) by Alex Lucian © 2016 by Alex Lucian All rights reserved. Cover Photography: K Keeton Designs Cover Model: Tessi Le’Anne Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs Interior Designer: The Write Assistants Editing: M. Wiemer, Jon Perry No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

To Jamie, the one who beguiles me. I never once minded.

BEGUILING SYNOPSIS

Hate: to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward. Scarlet Jennings, the preacher’s daughter who lived across the street, was a royal, uptight pain in my ass. When she looked at me, she saw a college quarterback asshole with rocks for brains, but she didn’t have a single word for what was happening between us. When we were forced to ride together every single day that summer, there was definitely some dislike going on. Extreme hostility was a given, considering that we were spending so much time together in close quarters. One night of bed-breaking, body-shattering, lose-your-voice-from-screaming passion had surprised us both, but it was only just the beginning…

CHAPTER ONE

I don’t remember the first time I threw a football. My dad didn’t teach me, and it wasn’t in my blood to be able to do it; I just could. It was just there, the way it fit in my palm, the rough edge of the white laces between my spread fingers, how it left my hand and lifted in the air. Playing football was the only thing that came naturally to me. School definitely didn’t, because I had to study my ass off to maintain the three-point-five GPA that my parents demanded. And women definitely, a million percent definitely, did not. Women, though I loved them, did not come easily to me. And they should have, which pissed me off even more. I’m good-looking—that’s not the issue. In fact, if I polled a hundred straight women on the street, I bet ninety percent of them would say I was fuckable. The other ten? They probably wanted the guy with the pierced dick and the nasty man-bun and tattoos covering every inch of his skin. But for whatever fucking reason, I always picked the crazy chick. Or the one who secretly had a boyfriend and didn’t tell me until after he found out I was screwing his girlfriend and he bashed my car lights out. A generic example, I promise. The guys on the team, the football team at Northern University that is, fucking loved it. Leo Madsen, the reigning quarterback, had shit luck with women. Which is why I found myself throwing the football a little harder than necessary at one of my tight ends, Cameron Hunter, who’d stopped by my house because he was ‘bored as fuck’ and decided to make me suffer with his tales of ‘hot sorority pussy that tasted like unicorns and candy’ since I ‘couldn’t land any’ on my own. When he took off across my front yard for a good ten yards, then ran a post route that led him toward the sidewalk, I let go of the ball with a bit more zip than normal, hoping to take off his head. Unfortunately, he lifted his big ass hands just in time before it hit him square in the nose. “Nice throw, dickwad.” He jogged back across the perfect emerald grass of my front yard, tossing the ball back at me, aimed directly at my balls. I caught it easily, shoving into him with my shoulder when he passed me. I wasn’t exactly tiny—tall for a QB at six-four—but Cameron Hunter had me by at least two inches and about forty pounds of muscle, so I didn’t really do any damage. Fucker just laughed at me. “You’re lucky you caught it,” I said. “If I’d broken that pretty nose of yours, no

Alpha Phi sisters would be givin’ up their unicorn pussy to you anymore.” “Oh bullshit, Madsen. I could be a hunchback with a pencil dick and still get more than you.” I glared at him for a second before I burst out laughing. “You’re such an ass, Hunter. You wonder why I never want to hang out with you during school? It’s no surprise you’re so fucking pathetic that you have to show up to my house during the summer.” He grinned, flipping up his middle finger at me, then his eyes narrowed over my shoulder. “Okay. Who the hell is that?” There was no point in looking, because I knew. But if I admitted that I knew who he was asking about, he’d probably act like a chick and read way too much into it, so I turned and shaded my eyes from the midday sun. Yup. Scarlet Jennings. “Oh, just my neighbor.” I went for nonchalant, hoping he’d drop it. “Just your neighbor?” Cameron repeated, incredulous. “Are you screwing with me right now? Just your neighbor is fucking hot.” “So? You don’t want to know this chick, trust me.” I spun the football in my hands, very much not looking back across the street at that stupidly perfect red hair and tight ass. “Uhh, yeah I do.” “No. You don’t.” “Well why the fuck not? She looks like a Playboy bunny, Madsen. Of course I want to know her.” He gaped at me when I rolled my eyes. “Dude. Do you even have a dick? I want to know anyone with a rack like that.” “Trust me,” I said, raising my eyebrows so he knew I was serious as a fucking heart attack. “You don’t want to know her.” “I’m going over there right now unless you give me a reason.” He was serious as a fucking heart attack too. I sighed, shaking my head. “She’s … she’s a bitch, man. Just a straight up bitch. I’ve known her since kindergarten, and she’s always had a giant stick up her ass.” Cameron narrowed his eyes, then looked back at Scarlet where she was watering the flower pots in her front yard. And I hated, really hated admitting it, but she did look hot as hell. Wearing little denim shorts that showed off long-ass legs—longer than they should look considering she wasn’t all that tall—and a simple white tank top that showcased a pretty spectacular rack. And while I was looking, I totally missed Cameron marching down the driveway toward her. “Hunter,” I hissed. “Get bent,” he said back. “I don’t care if she’s a bitch. And besides, she’s probably just like that to you.” Shaking my head, I leaned back against his car and watched while he crossed the street and started up her driveway. Our yards were big enough that I could hear him talk, but not what he was saying. Scarlet lifted her head at the sound of his voice, then looked over at me, narrowing her eyes in a glare. I lifted a hand in greeting,

giving her the same thin smile that I always did when I ran into her and she gave me that I wish you could freeze to death in front of me look. Scarlet crossed her arms and said something to Cameron, lifting her mouth in a small, polite smile. I swear, if I ever saw her smile wide enough to show teeth, I’d have an aneurysm from pure, undiluted shock. When Cameron stopped a couple feet away from her and stretched a hand out, I couldn’t help but laugh when Scarlet didn’t shake it, just tightened her arms even further. He said something and gestured back at me, which made her glare over at me again. God, I hated Hunter. She spoke, but I couldn’t even hear the tone of her voice, she was speaking so quietly. Hunter tipped his head back and laughed, but then stopped when he saw her face. She had one eyebrow lifted, lips twisted in displeasure. He shook his head and then turned to walk back toward me, face hard and cheeks flushed. Scarlet gave me one last look and then stomped into her garage. When Cameron got closer, I clucked my tongue. “Told you so.” He didn’t answer, just waited until he was right in front of me and then punched me in the balls. I may have blacked out for a second, but when I opened my eyes and stared up at the cloudless blue sky, the throbbing mass of pain where my dick used to be slowly ebbed. “You are such a dick, Hunter.” He snorted and held a hand out to help me up off the lawn. “So what did she say to you?” “No way,” he said firmly. “I’m not telling you that.” After I stood with a groan, I shoved at his shoulder. “I can’t believe you hit me in the junk. That’s not cool, man.” “Well, it’s your fault. You said she was a bitch, but you failed to mention that she was a real one; not just like feisty redhead bitchy, because those are pretty different.” He stared over at the Jennings' house again, shaking his head. “She scared me a little bit.” I laughed, because I absolutely believed him. “She really doesn’t like you, Madsen. When I said I was a friend of yours, her face got so cold that I think my dick shrank up for a second.” “Leo, honey,” my mom called from behind us. “Do you boys need anything to drink?” We both turned to where she was leaning out of the front door. I shook my head. “Cameron was just leaving, but thanks.” “I was not,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “I’ll take some of that famous lemonade, Mrs. Madsen. If you’ve got it.” My mom giggled and ran a hand over her short blonde hair. “Of course I have

some. I’ll go pour a glass.” I stared over at Cameron when the door slammed shut. Finally, he looked back. “What?” “Dude. You cannot flirt with my mom.” “Course I can.” He jabbed me with his sharp-ass elbow. “Your mom is hot as hell. Total MILF.” I pulled in a deep breath, just about to throat punch him when my mom walked back out balancing two tall glasses on a tray. “Thank you, Mrs. Madsen,” Cameron said with a wink. I cleared my throat sharply and he just grinned. “Thanks, Mom,” I said as I took the glass. “Leo, don’t forget you have to come to that party with us later tonight, for at least thirty minutes.” “What party?” “At the Jennings. For Scarlet starting vet school in the fall?” She scoffed when I groaned. “I told them we would all come when she invited me at church. So don’t give me any lip. You know Scarlet; it won’t kill you to be nice to her.” Cameron was choking on his lemonade and I thumped him on the back harder than necessary. My mom pointed a finger at me when I made some pitiful attempt to get out of the party, something about needing to do laundry, and then walked back into the house. “Oh man,” Cameron wiped at the tears of laughter making his eyes all shiny. “To be a fly on the wall tonight. Careful she doesn’t rip your nutsack off for saying hello.” “Screw you,” I said with no conviction. He just laughed and got in his car, and I could still see the dickhead chuckling as he drove away. I stared over at the Jennings house, a red brick colonial that was a little bit more modestly sized than ours. Even though I tried, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even been in her house. And the other thing I couldn’t remember was what the hell I’d ever done to make Scarlet hate me so much. Maybe because the blood flow hadn’t fully returned to my brain after Cameron had junk-punched me, but it suddenly seemed like the greatest idea in the world to go to this party. I was home for the whole summer, without a car for reasons that I still didn’t like thinking about, and the hot redhead across the street had just provided me with the greatest challenge ever. She didn’t know it yet, but Scarlet Jennings would definitely not hate me by the end of this summer. In fact, she was going to change my luck with women, starting tonight.

CHAPTER TWO

“Congratulations on vet school.” A thick hand patted my shoulder, the fingers accidentally getting tangled with my hair and pulling it taut. I half smiled and half winced my response before quickly moving among the clusters of people. “Scarlet, check on the rolls, won’t you?” My mother’s voice spun me around as I was headed to the back deck, away from the talk of church and din of my father’s favorite jazz. I nodded and turned toward the kitchen, but was stopped on my way. “Scarlet, just the girl I wanted to talk to.” I took a deep, silent breath in through my nose. “Hi, Mrs. Freeman.” I gave the neighbor a smile and kept my face free of frustration. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and she seemed to sway a little in place. She leaned toward me and squinted, before she opened her mouth and washed me with the scent of peach-scented liquor. “Congrats, honey. You must be so excited.” It was the same thing I’d heard fifty times already—the words rearranged a little —but the conversation was the same. As was my answer. “Thrilled.” I clasped my hands in front of me, feeling the pull on the neckline of my sleeveless black dress. “What are you studying?” It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard that question, which only illuminated the fact that the people attending my graduation party weren’t my friends, but friends of the family; people who sent you Christmas cards and brought casseroles when there was a death, but not people who actually knew you. “My degree is in animal medicine,” I said blandly. I squeezed my hands together. “I’m going to vet school.” “Oh, that’s right.” Mrs. Freeman nodded, a smile stretching her cardboard skin. “You must be excited.” As you already said, Mrs. Freeman, I thought. Luckily, my mom stepped in to talk with Mrs. Freeman and mouthed “rolls” to me with a nod to the kitchen. I took the back way, from the living room through the foyer, the dining room, and the kitchen, wanting to bypass the audience that awaited in the living room and adjoining family room.

The kitchen was blissfully empty and quiet. After pulling the rolls out of the oven and setting them on the island, I walked to the sink first and opened the window above it, letting the early June air wash over my face. Bracing my hands on either side of the sink, I just stood there for a minute as I breathed. The party was my mom’s idea; she was always the one to entertain the neighbors and the members of dad’s congregation. Which was great for Tupperware parties, maybe, but not exactly what you’d expect for a college graduation. The repetitive questioning and kind smiling and the weight of expectation from everyone around me had been nearly too much to bear. In high school I’d been the valedictorian, and in college when they’d announced I was salutatorian of my class, the feeling of failure had made my mouth slack. I'd put so much pressure on myself that letting everyone around me pile on their hopes for me was suffocating. I’d taken a full load of classes for three continuous years so I could graduate and move on, and after having the last couple weeks off, I was finally realizing how stressed out I’d been that entire time. I sighed, the action causing tension at the top of my dress. I looked down at the matte black fabric that stopped at my knees. With its round neck and straight line to my knees, it absolutely did not scream, “I just graduated from college and I’m celebrating!” “Where’s the good stuff at?” I whipped around, gripping the sink now at my back. Leo, the neighborhood manwhore, started opening cabinets opposite of me and I swallowed hard. “Not there.” He turned around, raising an eyebrow. His blue eyes narrowed on me. “Come on. I know your mom used to keep a good booze cabinet.” His implied familiarity raised my hackles. I crossed my arms over my chest. “How would you know that?” He closed the cabinet above his head and leaned over the island that separated us. As his hand reached for the rolls, I leaned over the island and slapped his hand away. He eyed me and we engaged in a momentary standoff until he made a gruffsounding noise and moved away from the rolls. Not wanting to be so close that I was sharing the air with him, I backed up to the sink again. He grabbed a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl in the center and tossed them, one by one, in his mouth. “It’s that cabinet, isn’t it?” he asked, tilting his head at the cabinet to my left that did indeed house my mom’s stash. Before I could answer, I watched as his eyes slid over me. “Or do you want to keep all the top shelf stuff to yourself?” He pointed a finger at my dress before popping another grape in his mouth. “I didn’t realize this was a funeral.” Whenever I was annoyed, the blood rushed to the surface of my neck, making it red. I felt it doing that now, as Leo laughed at me. “It’s a party. But maybe that’s too hard for your thick skull to register.” I uncrossed my arms only to cross them again once I didn’t know what to do with them. I pushed off from the counter.

“You wound me,” he said with a hand to his chest. “And whose party? Yours, or your parents?” He knew it was mine. We both knew he was just ribbing me. From anyone else, I would have tolerated it. But from the tormentor of my high school days, it was just aggravating. “It’s mine.” “Probably should tell Old Man Freeman’s wife, because girlfriend is getting down on the schnapps out there,” he said, jerking his thumb out to the party. “She’s taking your spotlight.” “Yeah, well she can have it.” I tightened my arms across themselves and scratched at my elbows, feeling the nerves from being in the same room as Leo getting to me. "You're going to vet school?" he asked, and I actually heard the sneer in his voice. "Yeah, so?" "You don't even have a pet, what makes you think you can take care of animals?" My blood was boiling, and I itched at the skin around my neck to keep me from saying anything in return. That was what he wanted after all—to make me cause a scene at my own party. He resumed opening cabinets, poking through my mother’s many party platters. “Where are your friends?” “Liza is working,” I began before I stopped. I watched as he turned around with a question on his face. “Liza? Life of the party Liza? You’re still friends?” His insinuation that I was not the life of the party was not lost on me. Why did he have to be such a dick? The sharp edges of my teeth clamped down on my tongue, keeping the words in my head until I didn’t want them in my head anymore. Not with him smirking at me like that. “Why are you such a dick?” Leo held up his hands in surrender. “It’s just a question,” he said. “Chill.” He moved around the island and walked right into my space. The shock of having him so close, my gaze meeting that sharp jawline and my mouth inches from a heavily muscled shoulder, caused my eyes to bulge. Leo was a manwhore, and for good reason. He smelled just like what a man should smell like. Swallowing the traitorous saliva that pooled in my mouth, I raised my eyes to his. “It is up there, isn’t it?” he asked, completely oblivious to my struggle with hating him and being attracted to him at the same time. I didn’t want to have the same effect on him—of course not. Because we hated one another. But having a near-meltdown from the sharp angles of his jawline wasn’t convenient when he was close enough to breathe on me. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Instead I stood there, just breathing in his scent and trying not to let the flush spread to my face. Being a redhead with pale skin was a real pain in the ass sometimes. His eyes searched mine, waiting. And then his lips spread, carving those

terrible, sexy dimples into his cheeks. He reached up, opening the cabinet. His eyes were hooded and his smile was a lazy kind of sexy. Like he knew who he was, he knew his appeal, and more significantly, he knew the effect it was having on me. “Come on, Jennings, let’s make this a real party.” The clack of approaching heels distracted me and I recognized the hushed voices approaching. On impulse, I put my hands on Leo’s torso and pushed—not wanting my mom to see him rifling through her secret stash—but I caught him off balance and he crashed into the island, immediately wincing and grabbing his hip as he eyed me darkly. “What the fu—” Quickly, I slapped a hand over his mouth, interrupting him, just as my mother said, “Oh, there you two are.” Leo’s hand came up, covered the hand I was still holding to his mouth and then, with his eyes on mine, he bit my palm and a second later swiped his tongue over the bite, almost soothingly. But the warmth in his eyes made something in my stomach flutter. My pulse galloped and my eyes widened before I snatched my hand away and obviously wiped it on my dress, giving him all the hate I could muster in my eyes. “Leo?” As if suddenly realizing we weren’t alone, Leo spun around. “Oh, hey moms.” My mom’s face instantly warmed, the crinkle around her eyes showing her affection for Leo. And I mentally rolled my eyes, because doing it in front of my mom and company would be inappropriate. He had that innate charm about him—I was sure he could charm the pants off of Mrs. Freeman, especially now that she was feeling the schnapps. “It’s so nice to see you two together,” Leo’s mom, Annette, said as my mom handed her a bottle of water from the fridge. My mom used the bottle in her hand to point to each of us. “Yes, it is. We were just talking about you both.” Annette smiled at each of us. “We were discussing your summer plans.” My head bobbed back and forth between them, like a ping pong ball, and I couldn’t quiet the buzzing in my head that this was not a good thing. “Since Scarlet has summer classes…” Oh, no. “And Leo,” Annette raised her eyebrow at Leo, “is car-less and has summer workouts…” This is going to be bad. “And Scarlet is saving money for vet school…” I braced myself for the hell they were about to unleash. “We thought it only makes sense for Scarlet to give Leo rides into the city…” “And then Leo can pay her gas money.” Annette looked pointedly at Leo as she

delivered that, and I was sure I saw Leo visibly shrink under her focus—which was impressive considering his sheer size. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream, hell no. I wanted to push Leo a little harder into the island because our moms’ announcement and the lingering sting on my palm made me all the more angry with him. Instead, I pulled my shoulders back and swallowed my frustration. I smiled, nodded, and said, “Sounds great.”

CHAPTER THREE

There weren’t many things that could make me feel like a chump. One surefire way? Standing in my driveway while I waited for my stick-up-the-ass preacher’s daughter neighbor to pick me up so she could drive me to workouts. Yup. That was definitely the number one way. Of course, it wasn’t like I could be mad at anyone but myself. I was two seconds away from just going inside to call one of the guys, even though it was out of the way for pretty much anyone who was still in town to come and get me, when Scarlet honked the horn from her driveway. I narrowed my eyes. Of course she would make me walk to her instead of coming to pick me up. It was early enough in the morning that I had my pants on over my shorts, but while I walked very slowly down the driveway toward Scarlet’s house, I yanked my long sleeved shirt over my head and pulled it down. When I paused to zip up my backpack again, Scarlet laid on the horn with one loud, piercing burst. I couldn’t stop the grin, because even though I’d failed spectacularly at getting her to be even remotely nice to me at her party, she was going to be stuck with me twice a day while she played my chauffeur. Her car was a modest one, a maroon Toyota Corolla with a rust spot on the passenger side bumper. Opening the back door, I tossed my backpack next to her laptop messenger bag. Before opening the passenger door, I stopped, bracing my hands on the roof for a second. I wasn’t a complete misogynist, okay? It wasn’t like I hated a woman driving me around, but the second I shut that door and buckled myself in, I’d be giving her control of my life. A woman who was more likely to let me get t-boned by a semi than be kind to me. The window framing my stomach rolled down. “Are you going to ride that way? Holding on to the side of the car? Because you might ingest a lot of bugs with that giant mouth of yours.” I tsked my tongue when I opened the door and sank into the seat. Her lips twitched when I was practically eating my knees. Jerking the handle of the seat, I pushed it back as far as it would go, hissing a little when the bruise on my side twinged. “Good morning to you, too, Sunshine.” I clicked my seatbelt and grinned over at

her. “You’re looking especially chipper today. Excited to see me?” She may have rolled her eyes, but I couldn’t really tell given that she didn’t look anywhere near me. After she pulled off of our street, I waited a few minutes of heavy silence before I leaned forward to turn the radio on. She smacked my hand away from the dial. “Ouch. You know, you hit me a lot. Are you sure you don’t have any unresolved anger issues I should know about? I’m not sure how I feel about riding with a crazy person.” Instead of answering, Scarlet let out a heavy sigh while she merged onto I-90. “Oh, and my hip hurts like a bitch, thanks. That will be fun when I’m doing pass drills and some lineman decides to sack my ass.” Nothing. Not even a glance in my direction. “So, vet school, huh? You like cutting up animals? Isn’t that the number one trait of a sociopath?” “Yup,” she said, eyes straight ahead on the road. “That’s exactly it, Leo. I’m racking up thousands and thousands of dollars in student loans and spending years of my life studying veterinary science because I’m a sociopath.” I gasped. “You do know my name. So very surprising.” “What’s surprising is that you know what a sociopath is.” Finally she cut her eyes over to me, lifting her eyebrows. “I assumed any word with more than two syllables would trip you up.” I pointed a finger forward. “Eyes on the road, cupcake. Can’t have you crashing now. Then we’d both have to ride the bus.” Scarlet shook her head slowly but did what I said. We rode in silence for a few more minutes before she gave me a quick look. “What?” I said when she didn’t say anything. “Nothing.” “Just checking me out then?” She huffed out a laugh, one that meant she did not find me funny in the slightest. “So what happened to your car? I mean, if I’m stuck with you all summer, I deserve to know why.” Shifting in my seat, I actively ignored her, flipping through my phone. Scarlet laughed, a light tinkling sound, and I glanced up to see if she was smiling, but I must have missed it. “So let me guess,” she continued in my silence, “you were getting it detailed, and the person hand-etching your initials in the custom leather got it wrong, and they have to go skin a new cow to start over.” Annoyance licked up my skin, but I just smiled. “Yup, got it on the first guess, genius.” “You’re seriously not going to tell me?” “Not if you’re going to be so damn judgey.” Obviously she heard the defensive edge in my voice, because she looked over at me and our eyes held. “Okay, I won’t. I promise.” And she sounded sincere, the dark brown of her big

eyes looking honest enough. So I shrugged my shoulders, glancing away because the way she was holding my gaze made my skin feel tight. “I crashed it. Totaled it, actually. And normally my parents would just pay to fix it or buy a new one, but my dad is feeling like teaching me a lesson, I guess.” “You guess?” Honestly, this was quickly feeling like the longest car ride ever. What should have taken thirty quick minutes already felt like three times that long. I didn’t talk about this shit with people. Ever. I don’t think I’d ever even told Adele, my best friend, how much it chafed that my own parents didn’t think I was capable of anything other than chucking a football across the field. But for whatever reason, I knew that Scarlet wouldn’t laugh at me if I told her this. “Football is my job, right?” And she nodded, so I continued, glad she got it. “And because it doesn’t make me any money, I know my dad thinks it’s just something fun I’m doing in college since I happen to be good at it.” I paused, trying to filter my thoughts before they all spewed from my mouth in a rushed confession. Scarlet looked over at me when she stopped the car at the red light of the off ramp for our exit. “What does that have to do with your car?” “You know my brother, Grant?” She nodded and I dropped my head back onto the headrest. “He’s already a VP at my dad’s company, and when Dad retires in ten years, we all know Grant will take over. It’s what he wants to do. So, my older brother is the serious one, you know? I’m the football player. And when I totaled my car and they said I could wait until the fall to get a replacement, it was like they were saying I needed to deal with something challenging for once in my life. Like I’d never done that before.” She scoffed, the sound coming out of her mouth quickly. “You have?” “Yeah, I have,” I snapped, easily pissed off at her disbelief. That tone, that mocking tone in her voice, uncapped whatever filter was over my tongue. “You think it’s easy growing up and knowing that your own family doesn’t expect much of anything from you? I assure you, it’s not fucking easy.” My cheeks flushed hot from snapping the words out, but the mortification that swept through me was worse, knowing she didn’t deserve that being dumped on her shoulders. “Leo—” “Sorry,” I interjected. “That wasn’t very nice.” Scarlet paused, giving me another narrow-eyed look, but this time it wasn’t a glare. It was definite confusion. And then she smiled, nothing big, just a tiny curve of her lips. “No, it’s wasn’t,” she agreed, still with that little smile on her face. I shifted in my seat. “What’s so funny?” “Not funny. Not precisely. Just ironic.” She glanced over at me when I pointed at the parking lot she needed to pull into for workouts.

“What’s ironic?” I asked while she pulled the car to a stop. “Your family doesn’t expect much from you. And my family expects everything from me.” The look on her face when she said it was so serious, and kinda sad, that I clamped down on whatever joking comment I might have made next. The pause that came after her admission felt important somehow, like the fact that we’d shared something personal, something honest, was uncomfortable in equal measure for each of us. A blush covered her cheeks and she dipped her head down so fast that a large swath of red hair slipped over her shoulder and fell in a curtain. I swear, I couldn’t help the instant hardening of my cock at the sight of the long, shiny strands. The only thing I could picture was how perfect her hair would look fisted in my hand while I fucked her. Shoving the door open so fast I almost fell out, I took a deep breath before I opened up the back door to get my backpack. Scarlet was oblivious to my mental porno, thank the Lord. “Uhh, the class I have after workouts gets done at noon. I’ll meet you back here after that, so you don’t have to drive through campus. That okay?” Not surprisingly, she was giving me a guarded look at my hurried exit from her car, but she nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine.” Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I jogged toward the tunnel that led on to the field, suddenly ready to pound on something, anything, to clear my head from that fucking weirdness.

CHAPTER FOUR

Obviously my mere presence was enough to piss the living hell out of Scarlet. Why was I even surprised? I mean, it didn’t burr under my skin that we’d found something in common. Common, but opposite, I guess. But it was enough for me. It was the first time I’d ever felt like she wasn’t that prissy preacher’s daughter who loathed me for existing. But apparently, that was not the case for her. The car ride home on that first day? Silence. I figured hey, maybe she’d had a shitty day at class cutting up puppies. But then day two of our little arrangement came and went with barely a hello. So when I walked across the street on day three? Oh, I was suited up for war. I slammed my door shut a little harder than necessary after I sat down. I immediately pulled up Facebook on my phone and scrolled through some pictures from the last Delta Zeta party, spending longer than necessary looking at the girls. When I pinched my fingers on the screen to zoom in on one that included four sets of cleavage so spectacular that they all defied the laws of gravity, she finally showed a tiny crack in her armor. Scarlet huffed out a breath, the small sound chock full of derision. I clicked out of Facebook and looked over at her, at the tight line of her lips, the way her eyes lasered in on the windshield in front of her, and since we’d barely made it out of our neighborhood yet, we were still waiting at the first light. If that wasn’t the face of a woman who needed to have multiple orgasms, then I didn’t know what was. My face split into a smile. I couldn’t help it. The thought of saying that to her, given that we hadn’t spoken in the last two days, was too much to hold the silence. Scarlet Jennings needed to get laid so fucking bad. I chuckled under my breath and saw her face snap over to me, which made me laugh a little bit harder. “What?” she snapped, not taking her eyes off the road. “Nothing.” Even though I said it lightly, I could see her small, pale hands grip the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles went white. “You’re just in such a pleasant mood this morning. Did someone take a shit in your Wheaties?” Her cheeks flushed bright red and I could see a muscle tick in her cheek. I wasn’t normally an asshole, but I felt very much out of my element. Hence me being a dick

and not apologizing. If anything, it just stoked that tiny kindling burning in my gut into a roaring fire. The thing with Scarlet was foreign to me. She hated me. And that did something strange to me, like I wanted to pick her apart to figure out exactly why, figure out exactly how to fix it. What didn’t help was that little scene that had played out in my head on the first day, the dirty things that her hair made me want to do to her. Fuck her hard, be so good that she’d have no choice to end up sweaty and breathless and finally fucking relaxed. I needed out of the car. Stat. Because this shit was making me twitchy. Breathing the same air as her, that smelled like her, was making my brain melt into this weird alien person who wanted to bang Scarlet Jennings. She didn’t say anything else, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to break the silence. Because what would I say? Oh, I was laughing because you need to get off, and I will gladly offer use of both of my hands, most likely my mouth and definitely my dick to get the job done. No, no, no. Shifting in my seat, I pinched the bridge of my nose, like it would stop those thoughts from circulating through my brain and down into the aforementioned appendages. Her silence was different from mine though. Hers was pretty much throbbing with violence, like she’d enjoy shoving me out of the car while she merged onto the highway. Mine was … I don’t even know. A little desperate. Because while I’d thought it might be fun to mess with Scarlet at her party, flirt with her and throw her off a little just to see what she’d do, I didn’t think it would really do anything. And the worst part was that it was only doing something to me. I couldn’t even risk a glance over at her, because I’d have a full blown erection in about four seconds, and my gym shorts wouldn’t hide that for shit. That’s what was so stupid, because what she was wearing? Despite my slamming of the car door when I first got in, I had a mental snapshot of her already. Fuck my life. Her hair was in a high ponytail, so her face was on display in a way that showed the complete lack of makeup that she wore. Her perfect tits were covered in a light yellow t-shirt that should have looked simple, but it didn’t. Son of a bitch, it didn’t. With the red hair and the pale skin and dark jeans that she had on, she looked … summery, or something. “Fuck,” I said under my breath, turning to look out of the window. “You know what, Leo?” Scarlet snapped, obviously having heard me, so I pinched my eyes shut and clamped my teeth down to keep from responding. “I don’t have to drive you anywhere, and if you can’t figure out how to act like a normal, well-balanced person without cursing at me, then feel free to find a new ride.” “It wasn’t aimed at you,” I said grudgingly. She snorted. “Oh, I’ll bet. You must be a dumbass if you think I believe that.” Yup. Fuck my life was right. I was a dumbass if I was thinking things like

summery and perfect about this little harpy. Fire bubbled under my skin, defensiveness prickled along my scalp and the overwhelming need to make her see something else almost exploded out of me. Never. I’d never had this feeling before. It wasn’t even about impressing her, not really. Shutting her up? Possibly. And yes, impressing her a little bit. I opened my mouth to say something snarky, but closed it again, feeling too exposed to be anything but honest. God, what was up with her fucking car? It was like being locked in confessional booth for thirty minutes. But you can bet your ass I clamped that mofo down tight. “Yeah, it’s so easy to get drafted into the NFL. They only let us degenerates in.” It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t immediately respond, but the fact that she didn’t apologize either just kinda pissed me off even more. I wanted to tell her how many hours of film I studied on a weekly basis during the season, how often I found myself up late looking at offensive schemes, the sheer insanity of what I put my body through to keep myself fast and strong and agile on the field. “The NFL, huh?” Her tone was flat, not curious or consoling. Definitely not apologetic. “I mean, I won’t be saving little Fluffy’s life or anything. No clipping a cat’s toenails or shoving my arm up a cow’s ass.” “No. No, you won’t,” Scarlet clipped out as she turned the car into the parking lot next to the field. “You’ll be chucking a ball down the field. That’s so terribly impressive, Leo.” Anger licked across my skin, so hot and fast that I felt it to the tips of my fingers and toes. Every muscle locked in place, and even though she’d stopped the car, I didn’t move, staring at the side of her face where she refused to look at me. With rough movements that made her shift away from me, I grabbed my backpack from the seat behind me and leaned toward her, pulling in a slow, deep breath. She smelled like wildflowers. And right then, I kinda fucking hated wildflowers. “You know what, church girl?” She flicked her brown eyes over to me, color still high in her face and mouth pinched shut. “I’d tell you to suck my dick right now, but I don’t think you’d know what to do with it.” Then I pushed out of the car, slammed the door and didn’t look back. My mood—the black cloud shrouding me—served as a pretty effective wall once I was out on the field. Instead of moving to do some passing drills like I normally would have, I stalked over to the edge of the field where Coach had the large tractor tires. Mostly our defensive backs and linemen would flip these across the field, working their arms, chest and legs with the five hundred pound rings of heavy rubber. So I took a deep breath, hooked my hands underneath one and pushed up, using my right knee to brace under the tire when I’d lifted it enough. With a harsh breath, I surged up, muscles screaming in my biceps and shoulders. Again and

again and again, I flipped the tire, sweat building up on my forehead and neck, the shaking of my muscles the only thing making me feel better. I’d told Scarlet Jennings to suck my dick. I would have laughed if I wasn’t still so fucking pissed off. When the tire smacked against the grass of the field, I stopped, bracing my hands on my hips and breathing hard. About forty yards away, I could hear the chatter of my teammates, but I didn’t look over. “Madsen,” Coach Cook called from behind me, the sharp bark of his voice making me close my eyes. I’d known him long enough now that I could tell he was pissed, just by how he said my name. “Yeah, Coach?” I turned and wiped the sweat from my forehead with my forearm. “What the hell is wrong with you?” His sharp, beak-like nose, dark eyes, and white shock of hair always made me think of him as a bald eagle. Majestic when they wanted to be, but completely capable of fucking you up if they wanted. “Did you even warm up?” Clenching my jaw, I shook my head. He sighed, tucking his clipboard under his arm. When he shoved the bill of his hat up to rub at his hairline, I relaxed a little. That was his I’m disappointed in you, not rip you a new asshole angry tell. “I need you to be smarter than that, Madsen.” Shame made me look away from him, because he was right. I was the starting quarterback, and if I fucked up my arm from doing a stupid exercise that I hadn’t warmed up for, then the impact on my college career and our team’s season wouldn’t be good. “I know, Coach. Sorry.” “If you know, then why did you do it?” “Just … just had a shit morning. It won’t happen again.” The assessing look he gave me was enough to make me stand up straighter. He was that kind of guy. He didn’t scream at us, didn’t berate us, but if he was disappointed in us, we’d all break our backs trying to make it up to him. “Good,” he said after a few more seconds. “You’re allowed to have stuff in life that makes you want to work harder, train harder. Sometimes that’s the shit that will win you games, too. But you’re the guy that needs to try to keep your head on straight. Because if you let that stuff fuck with your head, then you start making stupid mistakes. And I expect more than that from you.” I held his eye contact, because he’d been the guy for three years that fed the part of me that didn’t get that kind of respect anywhere else. And one of the things he’d taught me was that you look people in the eye when they’re talking to you; it’s what men do. “I know you do, Coach.” As soon as I watched him nod and walk off, I knew he would have kicked my ass if he’d heard what I’d said to Scarlet in the car. Some coaches in college or the NFL didn’t care what kind of men their players were off the field as long as they did their job on the field, but Coach Cook was not one of them. Every guy that played for him knew to treat their elders, their teammates, and women with respect. If we slacked on our studies or broke an NCAA rule for

conduct, or for drug or alcohol use, he’d bench us so fast our head would spin. He was the one who told me I had a shot at the NFL—that if I kept my head on straight, kept my ass in line, I could probably go in the second or third round of the draft. I'd probably play backup somewhere my first few years and hopefully get a shot after learning the ropes. When he’d told me that, it was the first time in my life that the weight of someone else’s expectations felt good and heavy, a welcome burden to bear. My shoulders slumped. I blew out a long breath through puffed cheeks. I’d probably be riding the bus home after my little outburst in the car. And I couldn’t even say that I didn’t deserve it. She had no idea what it had been like for me my entire life, and even though I loved my parents and my brother, the fact they didn’t expect a whole lot from me had dug under my skin much deeper than anyone could realize. I’d do better. No more snapping at Scarlet for not knowing what was going on in my head. No more calling her names. At least not out loud. Yes, I’d do better. Or I’d try to at least, if she ever spoke to me again.

CHAPTER FIVE

He’d told me to suck his dick. Hours later, I still couldn’t get those words, and the way he’d bit them off, out of my head. Church girl, he’d said. Church girl. He’d made me feel like I was fifteen all over again, waiting with my friends by their lockers as he passed me by. “Hey church girl,” he’d said then, though with considerably less derision. Back then, it had been a joke. If I separated the words and analyzed them individually—which I did, because overthinking was innate for me—the girl part of the nickname particularly rubbed me raw. Three years since high school and he still saw me as a girl. It shouldn’t bother me, I knew that in the most logical part of my brain, but the part that wanted to be seen as a woman was insulted and annoyed. Things had changed considerably in the years since awkward glasses, bras with extra padding, and metal braces. I’d been the most cliché of clichés—boy figure and frizzy hair—but once the freshman fifteen hit and filled out all my womanly curves? Well, I’d seen myself differently. Again, I chastised myself for even being bothered by it. We were talking about Leo—whose only brain seemed to hang between his legs. Why would someone like me appeal to someone like him—a guy who’d dated more than three quarters of the females in our high school class. Being in the very narrow margin of girls who hadn’t succumbed to his dimples and seemingly irresistible charm should earn me a mental pat on the back, but all it did was make me wish I’d been more daring. Instead I’d buckled down after high school, taking classes non-stop. Filling the void of boys with books and spending my nights studying instead of discovering what was so spectacular about sex. When I’d hit my sophomore year of college with nary a boyfriend, my best friend Liza had all but shoved me on the first guy to look my way at a bar we’d snuck into with our fake IDs. I’d dated him for an unreasonably short amount of time before I’d let him follow me back to the dorm. Even now I cringed, remembering how I’d been over-thinking the moment while he’d been pulling his pants down, revealing his pale, white chicken legs. I’d tried not to laugh when he’d fallen over as he had yanked off his socks.

Later, when he’d fumbled with the condom and slid inside of me without even bothering to pay attention to my breasts, I’d wondered what all the fuss was about. Ten pumps and he was done, passed out beside me and snoring five minutes later on my pillow. And I’d lain there, my panties stuck around my ankles and my center sore and empty, feeling like Liza had set me up for disappointment. Sighing, I looked at my watch and tapped my feet on the brake pedal. I’d turned the car off twenty minutes earlier while waiting for Leo outside of his locker room. I was running out of patience. Tempted to go home without him, I put my hand on the key in the ignition. The guilt of even thinking of leaving him halted me from turning the key. But it didn’t stop the impatient tap of my feet. Two minutes and twenty seconds later, the door to the locker room opened and Leo stepped out. When his eyes fell on my car and moved up to meet my eyes, I knew by his expression that he was surprised to see me. He had a bag slung over one shoulder and his hair was wet like he’d just taken a shower. He started for the car, slow at first and then quickened his pace when I narrowed my eyes and grit my teeth. The passenger door opened and he slid in, bringing with him a wall of Boston heat and man. He smelled clean and just like what a man should smell like. I wished I had just taken off minutes earlier. I was pissed that he was so late and pissed that his scent was distracting me from remembering why I was annoyed. “Hey,” he said as he buckled. I didn’t respond, just gunned it out of the parking lot, speeding much more than I ever did. “Whoa, where’s the fire?” Again, I didn’t say anything as I whipped around streets to get to the interstate. My anger was palpable and my attraction to him was warring with my brain, asking me why I was intensely annoyed with him. His words from earlier came to me again. I’d tell you to suck my dick right now, but I don’t think you’d know what to do with it. Oh, right. That. Once I’d merged into traffic on the interstate, I started to relax. Breathing in and out of my mouth had calmed my hormones, because I wasn’t smelling him as strongly. But I knew my rage was still ever-present when his hand reached out and turned up the air conditioning. My first instinct had been to slap his hand, but I’d waited until his hand had moved from the console before I turned the air conditioning back to where it was. He waited longer the next time, changing the radio station when an advertisement came on. In truth, I was so caught up in my thoughts of why I was pissed off at him that I hadn’t even noticed the ad until he turned it to an alternative rock station. But nonetheless, a second later I changed it back to the advertisements, just because I could. When he reached for the air conditioning again, I snapped, slapping his hand away. I gave him a quick glare before turning my eyes back to the road, my knuckles

turning white on the steering wheel. When he reached again, I didn’t even wait to see out of my peripheral vision what he was going for before I reached out and slapped his hand hard enough that my own fingers stung. “You should have let me know you were going to be running so late,” I said, breaking my silence. I clenched my jaw again, pissed with myself for not controlling my anger around him. “What?” he asked, and I sensed his body shift in his seat so he was angled toward me. “Got a hot date or something?” The way he said it raised my hackles. He was always doing that—subtly or noisily expressing his disbelief in my ability to have a social life. But I wanted to be the bigger person, so I stayed silent—at least on the outside. Internally, my blood was boiling. When we pulled on to our street, I saw him shift in my periphery. “Hey,” he said, placing one large, warm palm on my shoulder. I nearly ran the car into Mrs. Freeman’s mailbox from the contact. I hoped Leo hadn’t noticed the way the car had jerked and pulled into my driveway with more control than I felt. I took in the dark and empty windows. My parents had left on sabbatical the day earlier, leaving me with the run of the house for the next six weeks. “Scarlet,” he said. When he spoke my name, I paused, listening, but not looking at him. “Let me take you out for a beer or two. An apology.” Though he sounded genuine, it pissed me off that instead of simply saying “I’m sorry,” he wanted to take me to a bar, a place he knew I didn’t frequent as a rule, and buy me a two-dollar mea culpa beer. “Leo,” I said, turning so that I was looking at him out the corner of my eye. “Get out of my car.”

CHAPTER SIX

After spending three solid hours with microscopic anatomy, my eyes were tired and my brain was fried because, against my better judgement, all I could think about was Leo, and his invitation to go grab an apology beer. I clicked out of my school email and opened up Facebook as I nursed the weak wine cooler I’d found in the garage refrigerator. It was too sweet for my liking, the sugar practically drilling a hole right through my teeth. I scrolled through the most recent posts, including all of Liza’s posts from her job at The Hole, one of the local bars. I liked her most recent photo, because it was a typical Liza shot. It was taken from behind the bar, with two of the bartenders in mid-throw, tossing bottles of liquor over her head. Her hands were on her cheeks, her bright-red lips in a surprised ‘O’ and her eyes so large she looked like a caricature. She had a dozen comments on the photo. Didn’t know you were working tonight! I’ll come ‘round! Nice lips, said another comment with a wink emoticon. It was from one of Liza’s former flings, so I understood what the wink face was for. Are you working tomorrow? asked another commenter, with a bunch of drink emoticons. Get the slippery nipples ready! I’m on my way! I moved away from the photo, suddenly feeling guilty for not ever visiting her at work. She worked most nights and every weekend, and when she wasn’t at the bar she was working her day job at the mall. With my class schedule and preparing for my move to school, we didn’t have a lot of free time that overlapped. And ever since I’d graduated, I’d avoided most social situations. I did not need distractions right before vet school. I scrolled down, past Liza’s posts and kept going further down the page until a familiar face caused me to pause. Cameron Hunter, the sleaze who had hit on me earlier that week, had tagged Leo in a photo that was simply captioned “Beast.” In the photo, Leo’s arms were wrapped underneath a very large tire, his jaw clenched and his face red and his hair dripping with sweat. His biceps bulged and the angle— with him leaning forward as he seemed to be flipping the tire over—was, well, impressive. Even though it was a profile shot, I could see the determined squint of

his gaze and the way his shirt clung to his chest was more than a little distracting, as my eyes traveled over that particular area of his anatomy more than once. It was bad enough that he was sexy when he was relaxed, smiling with dimples in his cheeks, eyes twinkling in humor. But, it was even worse that he was so incredibly, undeniably hot when he was that focused, that determined. Unwittingly, a vision of him staring at me with that same kind of determination liquefied my insides. I snapped the lid of my laptop closed and stood up, chewing on my thumb as I paced my bedroom. I stared into my closet and contemplated for a moment before picking up my phone and shooting him a text.

Scarlet: Does the offer still stand?

I ran my tongue over my teeth, full of nervous energy, as I alternated between staring at my phone and pretending to be distracted by the chipped nail polish on my fingertips. But out of the corner of my eye, I watched my phone, waiting for it to light up with his reply. Ten minutes later, I opened up my home screen on my phone after convincing myself my notifications must be off, because surely he would have replied by now. But no. Nothing. “Whatever,” I said in a huff, dropping my phone down and pounding the last dregs of my wine cooler. The aftertaste left something to be desired, so I left my bedroom in search of something else to drown my embarrassment in. But before completely leaving, I grabbed my phone and shoved it in my back pocket. Just in case. I climbed onto the counter, opening my mom’s not-so-secret stash. She had an assortment of vodkas, so I grabbed one that looked like dessert and poured a generous shot into a cup. After sniffing it, I decided it was probably not best taken straight, so I rooted through the fridge for a mixer of some kind when a sound at the sliding glass door caused me to jump out of my skin. Whirling around, my eyes met Leo’s on the other side of the glass. I pressed a hand to my racing heart and closed the fridge. After undoing the lock, I pulled the door open and Leo stepped in. “Hey, Jennings.” He stepped into the kitchen and started looking around, as if we’d suddenly remodeled it since the last time he was at the house. “What are you doing?” I asked, wary. “I rang the bell, but you didn’t answer. And I’ve always wanted to come through your back door,” he said, jerking a thumb behind him. Rolling my eyes, I said, “Really? You just had to work that in, didn’t you?” He turned from his place at the sink, “Hey, no need for hostility, Scarlet. You

wanted to go out, didn’t you? I’m at your service.” He motioned with his hand a loose sort-of bow and then picked up my glass of vodka. I watched as he sniffed it and then looked at me curiously. “Straight vodka? You’re more hardcore than you let on.” His eyes traveled up and down my body. “Or maybe you’re just desperate?” “Shut up.” I took the glass from him and poured it down the drain. “That’s alcohol abuse.” Ignoring him, I said, “Give me a minute to get dressed.” “Good idea.” He nodded and tucked a hand under his chin as he peered at my clothing. “Because I was trying to decide where I could take you that would be pajama appropriate.” “Shut up,” I repeated, leaving the kitchen and running upstairs. An hour later, we were at some hole in the wall Leo had insisted on, which I let him choose only because I had insisted on driving to said hole in the wall. I knew I wouldn’t drink so much that I couldn’t drive, and given Leo’s rather expensive history in matters of automobiles, it only made sense for me to be the one behind the wheel. I was nursing my one and only drink when Leo slapped a palm on the wooden bar top. “Come on, Scar. Let’s get some shots.” “Scar?” My lip curled at the nickname. “I’m not interested in shots.” I traced the rim of my beer, but felt Leo’s eyes burning a hole in my face. “I won’t order anything gross,” he promised, “and it’s my treat. Let’s do a shot. Watching you take tiny sips of that now-warm beer is killing my will to live.” “Really?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. He nodded, face serious. “Okay, fine. But it better not taste like garbage.” “Joe,” he said, hailing the bartender over to us. He knew everyone here—the staff and the patrons had all come up in the last hour and chatted with him about football and his visit there a week earlier. It was a solid reminder that he was a much more social animal than I was. It was part of the reason I’d relented to the shot—because I wanted to be the person that people remembered, who was invited to parties and get-togethers. And besides, the last three years of classes back to back had kind of limited my party experiences, so I knew I’d missed out on some fun. “Can you get us two cowboy cocksuckers?” Leo said, holding up two fingers. “What?” My octave was a little higher than normal because he’d thrown me way off with the name of the drink. “It’s a bitch shot,” Leo said, leaning toward me. “You’ll like it.” I took slight offense at his assumption, but I accepted the creamy tan shot from Joe the bartender anyway. He held up the shot as he turned to me. “Here’s to burying the hatchet?” He raised an eyebrow. I gave a slight nod. “Sorry for calling you a meathead,” I said before tipping the

shot back and letting the cool liquid slide back. He was right; I did like it. It was like butterscotch milk. He set his empty shot glass on the bar and turned to me. “You didn’t call me a meathead.” He motioned to Joe to pour us another round and I didn’t object. “Oh, I didn’t?” I asked. Shrugging, I said, “Well, I thought it in my head then.” He squinted at me for a moment, until the second round of shots arrived and he pushed one my way. As I tossed it back, he said, “Sorry for telling you to suck my dick.” That time, the liquor burned because I choked on it. His hand slapped my back several times as I gripped the counter like it was the only thing keeping me from falling backward. “You had to say that?” I coughed out before giving a grateful smile to Joe for the water he placed in front of me. “Hey,” he said holding up his hands in surrender. “I said I was sorry.” He emphasized the sorry in a teasing tone and I drank enough water so that my throat wasn’t on fire anymore. But I still had that yummy butterscotch taste in my mouth and wanted more. “Hey,” I said, playfully pushing at his shoulder. “Order me another bitch shot.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Walking on the wild side tonight? I like it.” He raised a hand for Joe, held up two fingers. “Two blowjobs.” I scrunched up my nose. “God, is every shot you know named after fellatio?” “Not every one,” he said, a smile widening his mouth. The smile was deadly, a promise of some other torture he would inflict upon me. And the scary thing was that it didn’t feel like torture. It felt fun. Sexy. Joe set two shots in front of us, each topped with whipped cream. As I set my fingers on it, Leo placed a hand on mine. “No, you have to keep your hands behind your back and pick it up with your mouth.” My cheeks warmed and I cursed my ginger coloring for clearly displaying my naiveté. “Okay.” I put my hands behind me and he gestured for me to go first. I didn’t allow myself time to think or time to talk myself out of it, and leaned on the table, my hair coming down and shielding the sides of my face as my lips closed around the rim and sucked to keep it in my mouth. My tongue dipped into the whipped cream, lapping it up into my mouth before I lifted the shot from the table and tilted my head back, letting it all pour down my throat. It was like drinking a shot of a really good milky coffee and I surprised myself by immediately wanting another. “Here,” he said, pushing the one in front of him toward me. “You’re a natural.” Again, my cheeks warmed but I took this shot much quicker, leaning back so far that the glass came out of my lips. “Whoa, easy, Killer,” Leo said, jumping up and catching the glass as it flew behind my head. As I laughed, my body warming and softening, he set the glass on the counter. “Want another?” I licked my lips, feeling the pleasurable burn of the alcohol ripple through me. I

nodded. “Joe, two redheaded sluts.” He looked at me with a very smug expression as if he expected a reaction, but I shrugged like it was no big deal. The liquor had loosened the bar of steel that normally kept me upright and rigid. I was having fun. I was fun. When Joe placed the shots in front of us, I looked at it dubiously. “This one isn’t creamy like the other ones.” I dipped my forefinger in it and tasted it. “Licorice?” “Good job. It’s Jager. And cranberry and peach schnapps.” It sounded delicious, and from the small taste I’d gotten from licking my finger, I knew I’d like it too. “These bitch shots are good,” I told him, as I picked up the glass. “I think that’s the first compliment you’ve given me, Scarlet.” He gave me a polite, sarcastic clap before picking up his shot and clinking it against mine. “To redheaded sluts.” I rolled my eyes, not completely under alcohol’s influence and not a bit under the influence of how damn sexy he looked in his tight black shirt and worn jeans. My eyes glided over the way the sleeves hugged his biceps and how the shallow V of the tee’s neck revealed just a slight glimpse of the muscles underneath. I felt other parts of myself warm and squirmed on the bar stool. Nope, I wasn’t under the influence of his innate sexual appeal at all. My last sober thought was that he looked like a guy who could show me exactly what was so damn great about sex. I lost track of the number of shots I’d had somewhere around the time I lost track of Leo. It was a little hard to see more than five feet in front of my face and Leo had left the bar for a moment to say hi to some people he knew, leaving me alone with the two blowjob shots he’d ordered before stepping away. This time, I straight-up licked the whipped cream off the top, almost defiantly so, as I squinted and searched along the bar for Leo. Joe refilled the shot glass with whipped cream when I’d become distracted by looking for Leo and I smiled at him. I assumed it was Joe, but he was blurry enough that I couldn’t tell for sure. “Another one?” Leo asked as he approached. I watched as he moved toward me in an almost slow motion, blurry figure becoming clearer as he took each step. “They’re yummmmmmy,” I exaggerated, giving him a closed-eyes smile. It was too much work for me to keep my eyes open and smile at the same time. He leaned against the bar next to me, all warm and great-smelling, and my vision cleared enough that he was perfectly clear in my gaze. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?” I pursed my lips and squinted my eyes. “Maaaaybe? What’s it to you?” “Well,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. “You’re not going to be driving us home.” I had a brief moment of clarity. “Oh, I drove.”

“You did. And you’re drunk.” He winked at me, or maybe I winked. I wasn’t entirely sure. All I knew was that he was smiling that ridiculously sexy smile and I couldn’t concentrate much past that. “And you’re sexy. God,” I said with disdain, “why do you have to be so hot?” He laughed, which did nothing to decrease his sex appeal. He opened his mouth, but he was distracted as a woman walked by and gave him a quick hug. I got a whiff of fancy perfume, caught a glimpse of long brown hair and a leather jacket before Leo said goodbye to her. “You could have any one of them,” I said, wildly gesturing to the area behind me. His forehead scrunched together. “No, they play the game. They act interested, but then they play hard to get. It gets old.” Something flashed in his eyes as he looked at me, but I was too far into la-la-land to decipher what it was. “So,” I said, lowering my voice and letting the liquor play on my tongue as my hand gripped his forearm. “Do you like a woman who is more direct, then?” He shrugged. “I haven’t really been around a woman who is like that with me.” “Okay.” I picked up the shot Joe had garnished with more whipped cream and tossed it back like I meant business. After licking my lips clear of the whipped cream, I opened my eyes, saw the way he was staring at my mouth, so I squeezed his forearm—nails pressing into skin— and said, “Come home with me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Scarlet Jennings just told me to come home with her. Not like a question; no polite request present in her tone. Probably because her tone was slightly slurred. “Probably shouldn’t have ordered that last round of shots,” I said under my breath, but she was too busy swaying in her seat to hear me. Then I noticed she wasn’t swaying, not exactly, she was kinda dancing. The music blaring from the speakers over the bar was slower, and she was moving perfectly to the beat of the woman singing. She’d said I was hot. Sexy. But given that hell was not currently covered in ice, and no pigs had flown out of my ass, she didn’t mean come home with me, more like bring my drunk ass back to my house so I don’t kill us both getting back there. “Welllllll?” She waved a hand in front of my face. The floppy movement made me wish I was feeling whatever she was feeling. I smiled a little, and she smiled back, spreading her lips so wide that her flushed cheeks lifted and I could see all of her teeth. Son of a mother fucking bitch and damn it all to hell. Scarlet Jennings had one of the most perfect, gorgeous smiles I’d ever seen. I cleared my throat and stood, holding out a hand so she could too. Right before she took my hand, she tucked a piece of red hair behind her ear and peered up at me. The slow blink she gave was the only thing that reminded me that she wasn’t sober, because her eyes lasered onto my face. “Oh, umm yeah, we can go back to your place.” Scarlet shot off the chair, bypassing my hand. Oh no, instead of grabbing my hand, she flung her arms around my neck and hugged me. And by hug, I mean she practically assaulted me with how tightly she wrapped herself around me. I was giving her back an awkward pat, but the second my palm touched her cool, silky hair, I left it in place. I thought she was thanking me profusely, but the blood was rushing into my ears so fast and loud that I couldn’t be sure. Call me a typical guy, what the hell ever, but the way her full breasts pressed against my chest almost stopped my heart, and the feel of her hair around my fingers, the way she felt so much smaller than me, made me want to beat my chest and drag her back into my room.

And that thought made me pull back really quickly. She’d have me arrested if she knew that. I steadied her when my jerky movement caused her to fall forward, and she was still smiling at me. “Fuck,” I whispered and turned away, anxious to not see her smile again, because I was likely to do something crazy. “Okay!” she said cheerfully and marched toward the exit. With a sigh, I grabbed the purse that she’d left hanging over the back of her chair and jogged to catch up with her. With the sound of catcalls from my friends in our wake, I finally reached Scarlet just before she pushed through the door and into the dark parking lot. We didn’t say anything in the car, especially since she had leaned her head back against the seat with her eyes closed. Just before I turned into our neighborhood, I had to stop at a red light. Looking over at Scarlet, eyes closed and a small smile on her face, I almost didn’t want to disturb her. But, I also didn’t want her puking anywhere near me. The water bottle she took with her every day to class was still in the center console, so I lifted it and set it on her lap. She sat up with a start, then looked down at the metal container. “Oh.” “Drink it, you’ll thank me in the morning.” She did so quietly, taking small sips until I pulled the car into her driveway. The house was completely dark, which didn’t surprise me too much. I figured her parents were the kind of people who marched upstairs to bed at nine every night, clad in flannel pajamas. When I’d pulled the keys from the ignition and stood up out of the car, she didn’t immediately follow me. I braced my hands on the roof of her car, tapping my fingers for a while before I finally ducked my head to look at her, assuming she’d closed her eyes again and gone to sleep. Also known as passing the fuck out. But she was awake, staring at the handle of the door like she didn’t know how to work it. With a sigh, I walked around the hood of her car, then pulled the door open for her, careful to make sure she didn’t spill out onto the driveway. But instead, she pulled herself up and stood in the opening like a queen or some shit, her red hair spilling over her shoulders and her dark eyes looking almost black given the late hour. And her lips… Nope. No. Not looking at her lips. Scarlet walked past me, so close that I felt her brush up against my back where I still held the door open like a jackass. “Aren’t you coming in?” she asked from behind me. I shut the door with a soft click and then turned to face her. With a nod toward the house, I smirked a little, knowing it would probably piss her off. “Why? Afraid of the dark?” “No.” I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. She just stood there on the walkway leading to her front door, looking very much like the soberest drunk person I’d ever met. Then she swayed a little in place, so I walked toward her, making sure she

wasn’t going to bite it on the pavement. She steadied herself, holding her hands out like there was something she could grab onto. Then she smiled again at me, and something stabbed me in the heart. But like, a little stab. Nothing to freak out about. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” “Let’s get us inside.” “Uh-huh, let’s do that,” I said gently, rifling through the set of keys that I still had, trying a couple before finding the one that unlocked the front door. The slight haze of alcohol that lingered in my head from earlier was screaming like a bitch that I probably shouldn’t go in with her. If Pastor Jennings found me bringing his shit-faced daughter inside, he’d probably drown my ass in holy water with a smile on his face. But the house was silent as a tomb when we walked in, not a single light on as far as I could tell. “Scarlet,” I whispered to her back as she beelined it to the kitchen and flicked on every light on her way. The hallway light was so damn bright, and so jarring after being in the darkened car and house that I squinted. With a worried glance up the stairs, I followed after her when she started slamming cupboard doors and giggling. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said when I turned into the kitchen. Scarlet was standing, standing on the kitchen counter, her tight ass in those dark jeans swaying like she was listening to music. Then she shook out her hair and it messed up her rhythm so she had to brace herself on the upper cabinet doors. “Scarlet, what the hell are you doing? Get down from there.” She laughed, carefully moving her feet so she could turn and face me. Her facial expression was all unpracticed vixen, the way she was biting her lip and narrowing her eyes was almost enough to make me laugh. But I wanted to get her down before she fell and died or something. “I’m breaking into the stash,” she said far too loudly to make me comfortable. I reached my hands up, trying to grab around her hips and pull her down, but she swatted them away. “Quit hitting my hands. You’ve done that enough today, okay? Let’s just get you down.” “Nooooooo,” she wailed, pushing out her bottom lip in a ridiculous pout that should not have been cute. “Lemme just get this one bottle in the back. Real quick.” “Scarlet, lean down and let me help you.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I want to keep drinking.” “No problem, but let’s just do this quietly; I don’t want to wake up your parents.” Then she tipped her head back and laughed, a light tinkling sort of sound. But any fascination I may have had at hearing it was abruptly halted when her laughter made her sway to the side. I clamped my hands on her waist, feeling the press of

her hip bones against my palm. I gripped tighter, clamping my teeth at the same time, because this was so fucking inconvenient. “Quit laughing and let me help you get down.” “Fine. Party pooper.” “Well, that’s a first for me. Now come on.” Her hands slid up my forearms and stopped on my biceps, the action making her lean forward, her hair falling over her shoulders in one long slide. When I swallowed, it was noisy as fuck, but she didn’t seem to notice, her eyes locked on my shoulders and chest. Her breathing picked up when I slid my hands up her side to brace under her arms. The sides of her breasts were hot against my skin. Scarlet bent at the knees and stepped down from the counter, holding me so tightly I knew I’d have marks from her fingernails. Once her feet finally touched the floor, she looked up at me and grinned. Then grabbed my ass. “Thanks, champ. You’re so handy to have around.” I jumped back from her, looking around like I was waiting for her dad to walk in shooting flaming arrows at me. Holy fire flaming arrows. She pointed up at the top cupboard. “Snap to it. It’s the blue bottle in the back.” I rubbed a hand on my ass and narrowed my eyes at her. “I don’t think we should do this.” “Why not?” “Well, I don’t think your parents will appreciate us getting smashed in the house while they’re asleep.” Scarlet kept staring at me, eyes never leaving my face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes just a little bit glassy, but they were so dark and direct that I stood a little bit straighter. “They’re not here.” When I nodded and opened my mouth to respond, she moved forward and slapped a hand over my lips. “They’re not here for six weeks.” “Oooomph,” I mumbled from behind her hand, then plucked it away from me. “Ouch. What is it with you? You either slap my hands or cover my mouth. It’s not fucking cool.” Then I narrowed my eyes at her. “Where are they?” She leaned a hip on the counter behind her and shrugged. “My dad takes a sabbatical every summer to study and pray and plan out sermons. I’ll probably meet up with them the last week so we can vacation together.” She wetted her lips, not in a way that was practiced or even meant to be seductive, but my cock stiffened anyway. I had two choices: I could leave, make her chug some water, take some Advil and go to bed; or I could open that fucking cupboard, pull down the vodka and get wasted with the preacher’s daughter on a night when she didn’t want to castrate me. Naturally, I made a sharp pivot and yanked the door open. Lifting my eyebrows briefly at the size of the bottle, because you didn’t buy that shit if you were a casual drinker, I set it down on the counter with a thunk. “Shot glasses?” I asked, looking at her over my shoulder.

She’d hopped up on the island and crossed her legs. Without speaking, she pointed at the cupboard next to the one that I’d just opened. I pulled down a stack of six, because naturally they had that many. When I pulled two from the top and went to put the rest back up, Scarlet jumped off the counter and stilled my hand. With efficient movements that belied the amount of alcohol coursing through her veins, she lined up all six shot glasses, then leaned past me to grab the vodka. Her hair fell across my arm and I stiffened, fisting my hands. Completely oblivious of my discomfort, or at least I thought she was, Scarlet straightened and uncapped the bottle, tilting it to the side so she could pour straight across the line of shot glasses. Clear liquid spilled between them, pooling on the dark granite, but she didn’t stop until the last one was filled. “So,” she said once she was done, pushing three shot glasses toward me. “These are yours.” “No, no, no.” I grabbed two from her pile and slid them next to the three she’d given me. She pouted again, so I used my finger to tilt her chin up toward me. “You’re already drunk. Don’t you want me to catch up?” “An excellent point.” “I make them on occasion.” She rolled her eyes and it made me laugh. Her gaze zeroed in on my mouth, and I had the sudden urge to kiss the absolute shit out of her, which made me slam two shots in quick succession. The vodka was smooth, but it was still vodka. I winced, but Scarlet started coughing once she’d finished hers. I grabbed a lemon from the fruit basket and a knife from the block next to the sink. Slicing off the end, I cut a generous size piece and handed it to her. Her face was still pinched from the shot, so she took it gratefully, sucking it between her lips with a moan. I turned and started washing the lemon off my hands, partially because … well, I just had to. She was the most unintentionally sexy woman I’d ever met. And somehow that made it even sexier. While I was wiping my hands on the towel, she poured some more vodka in her empty glass. “No way,” I said, snatching the bottle from her and setting it back up in the cupboard. “Well then hurry up with your shots, Madsen. I’m sick of being the fun one in this duo.” I gave her a long look which made her giggle again, and when I took the next two shots, I did it with a smile on my face. When I sucked in a breath, she leaned forward and grabbed one of the extra slices of lemon and held it up to me. We stared at each other for a few pulsing seconds, but instead of taking it from her, I held her eyes and grabbed the last of my shots, taking it in one long swallow. The empty glass hit the counter with a sharp click, and her breathing stuttered, making her chest heave. I opened my mouth and moved forward, clamping down on the lemon with my teeth, catching the tender skin of her fingertips while I did it. Her mouth dropped open, only a tiny bit, but it was enough to take me to a full, raging erection.

I wanted to fuck that mouth. But not when I was drunk. Definitely not when she was drunk. So I pulled back, sucking the rest of the lemon and then tossing it in the sink. I took a second before facing her again, because my head was spinning from a hell of a lot more than the alcohol. Suddenly this thing with Scarlet felt like I could grab it with both hands. Like it would have form and shape and texture—texture that would probably feel like her skin and her hair. And I’d never want to let it go. Not ever. “I, uhh, I’ll be right back,” I said, giving her a quick glance over my shoulder before fleeing like a fucking coward. But all she did was nod, looking at me like she already knew what I looked like naked, like she already knew the stuff I could do to her. Because, holy hell, could I do some stuff to her. I saw it in that look. It was not because she was drunk. Scarlet Jennings wanted to fuck me. The alcohol was just the vehicle that was allowing her to show it to me. So naturally, I walked pretty quickly to the bathroom off the kitchen and shut the door with a relieved breath. After thunking my forehead against the dark wood a few times, I turned to sit on the closed toilet lid. “What the hell am I going to do now?” I whispered into the small room. I could not, under any circumstance, do anything with Scarlet tonight. She’d hate me in the morning and probably accuse me of taking advantage of her. And with the rapidly approaching fog of five vodka shots creeping over my body, I’d probably hate myself in the morning too if she gave me a look of disgust and horror. Five shots. What an idiot. I’d be lucky if I could sneak into my house unscathed, because it wouldn’t help my dad’s little life lesson with my car if I came inside like this on a weeknight. I sank my head in my hands, already feeling my head swim a little from the vodka. Which meant Scarlet was probably two minutes from passing the hell out. That was it! Just wait her out. Perfect. I pulled my phone out from my back pocket and starting scrolling through Facebook. I moved on to Twitter when nothing held my interest. Then Instagram. For a moment, I thought about posting a picture of my shoes against the dark wood floor of the Jennings’ half bath. But my brain was too fuzzy to think of some clever caption, like Holy wood floors. Or The Pulpit. I snickered, then kept scrolling. Somehow I managed to kill about twenty minutes on my phone. Yeah, she would definitely be passed out by now. I’d set some water next to where she was sleeping, leave her a note to make sure she knew I’d done something nice for her. I stretched when I stood, then gripped the edge of the counter. “Holy shit,” I said, blinking a few times at my reflection. There was still only one of me in the mirror, but even I wasn’t used to downing so many shots so quickly. Especially not when I was in the middle of summer workouts. As much as I took football seriously, and I did, there was something fucking awesome about the feeling of being drunk and weightless. And with that fucking deep thought, I left the bathroom and closed the door with a click. It was louder than I’d hoped, and I

cringed, hoping it wouldn’t wake up Scarlet. When I turned, I froze. It did not wake Scarlet. Because she was still very much not passed out. And that’s because she was waiting for me, waiting like one of those plants. You know. The plant that eats men. A Venus Fly Trap. Those things ate men, right? That was Scarlet. She’d already taken off her pants. And when our eyes met and held, she gripped the bottom of her light gray shirt and peeled it up over her head, leaving her in a white bra and matching white underwear. Tiny, tiny underwear. My brain short-circuited. Straight-up crashed. “Whaaaaaaaaaat are you doing?” I couldn’t look away. I didn’t even want to. “What the hell does it look like?” And she reached behind herself to unhook her bra. “I’m getting naked for you.” Fuck. Me.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Scarlet moved closer, one slow step at a time, and I was still frozen like a chump with the bathroom door behind me. Her bra fell away from her shoulders, catching on the tips of her nipples. I swallowed, desperately searching for the resolve that I’d found behind the closed door. But that promptly went to hell when the cups fell away from her, down her arms and then to the floor. Did my eyes follow the bra? Not exactly. They didn’t move from her holy hell I couldn’t believe they were that perfect perfect tits. With each step, they bounced a little. And the bounce made me so fucking hard. She paused to shimmy the underwear over her slender hips and down her legs. But even they couldn’t tear my gaze from her breasts. Probably the most ideal set I’d ever seen in my life. They weren’t huge, but they were high and firm with small pink nipples. They’d fill my hands easily and were full enough that I’d love pushing them around my cock and fucking them. I’d never done that. But I could with Scarlet. “Scarlet,” I whispered. “We can’t.” There was no way she heard me, because she stepped up in front of me, lifting her hands to touch me. I darted sideways, almost tripped and fell over my own feet, but righted myself with one hand on the wall. The smile on her face slayed me. Fucking slayed me. Because she looked so pleasantly surprised that I’d almost tripped because of her nakedness. Not thinking, I grabbed the back of my shirt and ripped it over my head. The exultant look on her face was short lived, partially because I blocked my view of her face when I pulled my shirt over her head, tugging it in short jerks over her shoulders. “Arms in,” I instructed her. She shook her head, red hair shimmering under the bright lights over us. “Now, Scarlet.” Surprisingly, she listened. But with slow movements that didn’t help me in the slightest, because it just showed the shift and stretch of her tits underneath the dark cotton of my shirt. I blinked slowly, trying to break whatever magic spell was doing this—putting this seductress in front of me, smelling so good and looking so

good that it seemed impossible that I wouldn’t touch her. When the shirt fell over her stomach, I got a glimpse of the short, trimmed red hair above the v between her legs. Stupid fucking mouth, it watered. I wanted to run my tongue up the seam of her pussy and suck her clit in my mouth. I pinched my eyes shut, breathing hard through my nose. My head swam. Between the shots and her scent, I felt like I’d been shoved onto a tilt-a-whirl and I wanted off. I mean, I kinda did. She smelled so good. And looked so good. I kept thinking good, because she was. Pulling in one last breath, I steeled myself to force her to drink some water and … and, I don’t know what I was going to do, because she laid a cool hand on my abs. “Oh,” she said in a hushed voice. “These are … really nice.” Her fingers moved down, tracing the lines of muscles and I curled my fingers into tight fists, aching to grab her and pull her to me. She pushed her hand up over my stomach, stopping to trace the line underneath my pecs, and I started shaking my head. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be this guy. “Scarlet,” I warned, but it sounded weak, even to my drunk-ass ears. “Hmm?” “You don’t want to do this.” “No?” My eyes were still closed, the only weapon I had left in my arsenal. When she swiped her thumb over my right nipple, my dick jumped and my hands shot out to grab her, shove her away from me. They landed somewhere around her hips. Of fucking course. I tightened to push, bunching the cotton in my hands, when she went up on tip-toe and licked a long line up the side of my neck, stopping at my jaw. Good. Yes. It was really, really good. She moaned and sucked on a small spot of skin when she’d licked as far as she could reach. I dug my fingers into her hips and held her in place, not pushing, not pulling. Just holding. Gripping. “I do want this, Leo.” Her voice sounded so lucid, so sure, that my eyes popped open without me giving them permission to. Her gaze was piercing in a way that I couldn’t breathe for a second. I wanted her to mean it. I wanted her to remember it, and remember me, and remember what I could make her feel. “Have you,” I swallowed, tugging her an inch closer, still leaving space between us, “have you done this before?” “Are you asking if I’m a virgin?” I nodded, fully prepared to say no if she was. But the smile on her face made me exhale in relief. I didn’t want to say no anymore. We’d just be drunk and fuck, and if we regretted it in the morning, then it was on both of us. Her smile faded though while she dragged her hands down my chest, down my abs until she cupped my dick through my jeans. I pushed my hips against the pressure, but it was nowhere close to what I needed. “Oh no, I know exactly what I’m asking for here, because the only one of these

that I’ve seen and felt before,” she curved her fingers and squeezed, smiling when I cursed, “was much smaller than this. And he did not know how to use it.” “I sure as fuck do.” “I know you will,” she said quickly, leaning up to place a kiss at the bottom of my jaw. “And I need you to give me sex that does not suck.” She kissed my chin. “Plus, you owe me for that naughty, naughty thing that you said to me earlier.” For three long seconds, our eyes held. Three seconds that felt sexier and more important than my last dozen sexual encounters combined. My hands released the shirt covering her and slid down until I met warm skin. Then I curved them around until I cupped Scarlet’s ass and yanked her forward. I tugged the cheeks apart, rocking myself against her, and she dropped her forehead onto my chest with a moan. “Please, Leo,” she begged on a whisper. Like I’d say no right now. I pulled in a deep breath of her hair. Scarlet lifted her head to look at me, our lips so close that the damp breaths from her mouth hit my lips in short, heavy bursts. “Make me feel good.” So I did. I let my lips rest on hers while I took one hand up her side, smoothing over her rib cage until I met the curve of one breast. She whimpered when I didn’t move right away, and when the sound moved through my lips and into my mouth, I fucking snapped, shoving my tongue into her mouth, wanting to absolutely devour her. Scarlet wrapped her arms around my neck, meeting the thrusts of my tongue with wet, frantic ones of her own. I palmed her breast, groaning at the hardened pebble of her nipple against my skin. My other hand left her ass, coming around the front of her thigh until I could drag a finger through the wet crease of her cunt. It felt crude to think that about her. And when I pushed a finger in, hooking it inside of her and grinding my palm against her clit all while our mouths ate at each other, her knees buckled and I barely caught her. Swinging her up in my arms, I moved toward the stairs. She laughed, running her hands through my hair while I made my way up. “The couch would have worked fine.” I cleared the landing and dropped her legs, letting her slide against me while I lowered her. Then I shook my head and grabbed the edges of the shirt she still wore. I don’t know why I thought I could do it quickly and not about die at the way she looked underneath it. But the action made her stretch up, revealing her flat stomach that felt as soft as it looked. It did particularly amazing things to her tits— lifting them up when her arms were raised over her head, bouncing back down when the shirt came off. I pressed both thumbs to her nipples, then pushed them together. This didn’t feel like the rushed, groping drunk sex I’d expected, but I didn’t know if it felt like that for her. Knowing the couch would have ‘worked fine’ for her swamped me with white heat, making me want to prove her so fucking wrong. I gripped the sides of her face and dragged my nose along her cheek until I

reached her ear. “No, it wouldn’t have,” I said, licking along the shell of her ear. “Because the things I want to do to you require more space than that.” “Oh my God, yes,” she said in a rush, stroking my stomach again and moving down to my belt buckle, which she eagerly opened before ripping down the zipper. Scarlet dipped her hand into my boxers, wrapping her small fist around my cock. “That’s it, right there. Oh fuck, Scarlet.” She twisted, tightened and gripped harder, only loosening her grip to trace her thumb over the slit where I’d leaked a drop of pre-come. “Where’s your room? Or else you’re going to find out what it’s like to get fucked against the wall next to your parents’ bedroom.” With a small smile, she grabbed my hand and led me down the hallway, then turned around and backed into the dark room. When she went to close the door, I stopped her. “No way. I want you to fill every room in the house with your screams.” I watched her eyes darken before I gripped her hips and backed her onto the bed. Never breaking her stare, I shoved my jeans and boxers off. Her legs fell open and I pumped my cock a few times, loving the way she licked her lips. When I grabbed behind her knees and yanked her to the edge of the bed, she moaned, throwing her head back on the mattress. I smoothed both hands up the inside of her thighs, dragging both thumbs along the edge of her pussy, then sank to my knees on the floor in front of her. She lifted her head, brows bunched in confusion. “What are—” “Shut up, Scarlet.” I dragged the flat of my tongue up along her length, groaning at her taste, at how wet she was. Dropping a kiss over her clit, I flicked my tongue against it, fucking loving the moans that were coming out of her mouth. I dipped my tongue inside of her, making lewd movements and sounds until she was moving her hips in tiny circles. The pitch of her voice rose, and I moved a hand so I could rub against her clit in short, fast movements with my thumb. She screamed, detonating instantly, and I could feel it around my tongue. I just might die when she did that around my cock. I gentled the motions of my tongue and took my thumb away from her clit. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” she said, breathing hard, her rib cage and chest heaving. My heart raced, my head spun, and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath while I kissed up her body. Stopping to suck on one tit, I rubbed my mouth against her so that I could lick the shining wetness from her pussy off of her skin. Her hands flew up to grab my head and I laughed when she dragged me up so she could kiss me. I gripped under her ass and shuffled us higher on the bed, the soft pull of her lips and tongue raising goosebumps along my skin. “You taste so fucking amazing, Scarlet,” I breathed in between kisses. “I’ve,” she stopped to pull back and look me in the eye, “I’ve never felt anything like that.” With a grin, I reached down to fist my cock, rubbing the tip over her clit. “Just

wait,” I promised and notched the tip inside the tight fist of her. “Don’t make me,” she said with a fierceness that took me by surprise. I could still taste the vodka and lemon on her tongue and it gave me a brief pause. But then she gripped my ass and pushed me until I was in. Not fully, but enough that we made matching sounds of relief and desperation. Then I snapped my hips forward until our skin met with a slap. “Holy fuck, Scarlet,” I said, overcome and overwhelmed, my whole body tense with the wash of heat that was crushing me, the wet slide when I pulled back and did it again. Over and over and over until I was sweating and she was dragging that sweat down over my chest with her fingernails. My muscles screamed at me, but Scarlet never stopped touching me. Soon enough, I couldn’t discern where she was touching me and I was touching her, or who was making what sound. She was close, I could feel it around my dick, so I propped on my elbow and pressed down on her clit in fast circles. And then I died. Absolutely fucking died.

CHAPTER NINE

When I was in my junior year of college, I pulled a legitimate all-nighter, doing labs from seven at night until eight the next morning. I must have consumed eight energy drinks and briefly considered taping my eyelids open at one point, and around the time I crawled into bed, my head hurt so bad that I couldn’t have told you my own name. But that experience paled in comparison to the way my head felt now, as I opened my eyes and squeezed them shut, as if the mere presence of light was a drill into my skull by way of my corneas. My mouth tasted like I’d eaten dog shit. This must be what it’s like to be hungover, I thought as I breathed in some courage and opened my eyes again. My memory was like the tide, coming in before hurling back out. I saw shots of milky liquid, clear liquid, Leo’s hands. Leo. I opened and closed my mouth, attempting to get my tongue to work normally, despite the very foul taste it drummed up. My stomach revolted and I pressed a hand against it under the blanket, which caused my eyes to widen in alarm. As my hand slid up my chest, the realization hit me quickly. Yup, that was bare skin. I was in bed completely naked. I dropped my arm, coming into contact with another very warm limb and my stomach clenched. I didn’t need to turn my head to confirm who I knew to be in bed with me, because my memory was catching up again, staying longer. Visions of me standing on my kitchen counter, stripping my clothes from my body in front of Leo. And the most embarrassing of the three; begging him for sex. “Oh God,” I whispered, but it came out cracked and growly. Memories of his face between my legs burned my vision and I closed my eyes, absolutely out of my mind with embarrassment. Slowly, I moved myself to a sitting position, refraining from making any noise lest I disturb him as he slept. But once I was sitting straight up, my back popped from having slept in one position all night and I groaned. I wasn’t sure if Leo always woke up like that, shooting straight up like someone had set off a fire alarm. But it startled me nonetheless, causing me to clutch the

comforter to my chest as I stared at him with absolutely no expression on my face, despite the revolt in my head. When he saw me, his jaw dropped and he repeated, “Shit,” over and over like a mantra, peppering each instance with a grip of his head, a search around the room, an uncomfortable glance at me, over and over on repeat. As he muttered one very long, “Shiiiiit,” he finally hopped out of the bed only to fall immediately to the floor, saying a very loud and angry “Shit” in the process. When he stood up again, he looked around like a wild animal looking for its escape. He walked around the bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor and I averted my eyes. What was the protocol for this sort of thing? Was I allowed to peruse his naked body, now that I could see him clearly? Or was that creepy? I rubbed my lips together and tried to think of what to say. “Your parents are out of town, right?” I looked up, eyes colliding with his bare chest as he buttoned his jeans. He was focused on his task, not meeting my eyes, so I replied. “Yeah. For six weeks.” And then I swiftly, mentally kicked myself for adding that on when he seemed so intent on getting the hell out of my room. He walked into the hall and I waited until I heard the click of the hallway bathroom door closing before standing up from the bed and carefully putting on clothing while my mind raced. A flash of him rubbing his face over my chest hit me like a train as I put a bra on, my nipples sore against the lining. “Shit is right,” I murmured, wanting to hate myself for letting it happen but not completely able to. It wasn’t until that moment that I acknowledged what had happened. Leo had made me realize what was so great about sex. Finally. Or maybe it was just sex with Leo that made it great, all that simmering hate brewing into a sort of teeming passion. I couldn’t see the whole picture, and my memory flashes were synchronizing with each place on my body I touched—in no way was I able to grasp the entire night in chronological order. Lots of begging—I knew that. I saw it at the bar and at home, though at home I’d taken a more direct approach by getting completely naked in front of him. Okay, if I could hate myself for anything, I could hate myself for that. After brushing my dark copper-colored lion’s mane and scrubbing the sweater of gross from my teeth, I walked past the closed bathroom door, thankful for small mercies when I still wasn’t sure what to say. So far, I’d said a whole four words to him. And those four words weren’t, “Thanks for the orgasms,” which is what I wanted to say, but would never be able to say. I put a pot of coffee on to brew and pulled the cardigan around me tighter as I stared out the sliding glass door that led to our backyard. Just twelve hours earlier,

Leo had knocked on that glass and I’d invited him in. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing in the bathroom that was taking so long. Maybe he was examining his body for needle holes, imagining that I would have had to drug him to make what happened possible. And why did I keep saying, “what happened” instead of just announcing “the sex”—because that’s what it was. What happened was Leo put his giant cock inside of you and you liked it a lot, but not before you begged desperately for it. I winced, realizing that I’d never be able to erase that memory of me begging for sex. I started clearing up our shot glasses and discarded lemon peels. As I replaced the giant bottle of vodka in my mom’s cupboard, I felt the ache all the way down my spine. Was this normal? I tried to remember how I’d felt after having sex with the chicken legs guy, but the sex itself was so unmemorable that I shouldn’t be surprised that the morning after was even more unmemorable. A sound from behind me caused me to turn after closing the cabinet. He was standing in the doorway, one hand tucked in his pocket as he looked at me. I couldn’t read his expression, so I busied myself with doctoring up a cup of coffee. “Scarlet.” “Hmm?” I didn’t look up from where I stirred the spoon in my mug. “Hey.” He said it more solidly, clearly desiring a reaction from me. I raised my head, met his uncertain gaze. “Yeah?” “Are you okay?” What a question to ask. Part of me wanted to reply, “Well, besides the aching between my legs and the fact that I do not know how I’ll ever get over begging you to sleep with me, I’m just peachy.” But I brought my coffee to my lips, holding its warmth against my flesh for a few seconds. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He blinked and frowned. He turned his head toward the stairs and I took in his wrinkled clothes and messed up hair. He still looked hot. And even though I now knew him in a very Biblical way—sorry, Dad—I didn’t think I could easily switch gears from hating him to gushing over him, panting after him. “Did you…” he started, before rubbing a hand in his hair and stepping forward, placing his jacket on the counter. “Do you…” he tried again, still unsuccessful in completing his question. I made a decision then to fake amnesia. “What happened last night?” His eyes widened and then narrowed as he stared at me, like he was trying to decide if I was genuinely unsure. I kept my face cool, emotionless, steadying my breathing. I was in complete control of my external reactions to him, even though my insides were quivering, wanting me to reach over and touch him, to prove to myself that this was real. This had happened. “You don’t remember?”

I took a sip of my coffee and shrugged. I wasn’t ready to admit that I’d begged for what had happened. I’d give him this easy out, so he didn’t feel some kind of obligation to talk to me about how he wasn’t really a "relationship-kinda-guy" and how he wasn’t looking for a "girlfriend," complete with air quotes. I’d never known Leo to hold on to a girl longer than a handful of days and I didn’t need the humiliation of him reminding me of that fact. “Don’t you have things to do today?” I waited two breaths as his face changed, smoothing over. I couldn’t tell if it was relief that I saw reflected in his eyes, or if he’d schooled his features to mirror mine. “Not particularly, why?” I wasn’t expecting a why. That meant he wanted something from me, in some way. And I wasn’t expecting or ready for that. “I have things I need to get done today.” I set my coffee cup on the counter and looked beyond him to the door. “So, if you want to get going…” I let my own voice trail off with that. He waited a beat longer before he picked up his jacket and looked at it between his hands. And without a second glance, he was out the door.

CHAPTER TEN

When I opened the door and saw Liza, holding a bottle of cheap wine and wearing a look of expectation on her face, I nearly laughed. “Do we need booze for this?” she asked, holding the bottle up higher as if I hadn’t seen it already. I gestured her in and shut the door, praying Leo hadn’t been looking out the window at the moment she’d arrived. Because I did not want him to seeing Liza here and possibly guessing what that meant. “It’s only eleven, Liza.” I plopped onto the couch as she joined me after retrieving the wine opener from the kitchen. She tucked her chin-length blonde bob behind her ears. “In Europe, people drink all day long.” The cork came out of the bottle with a very crisp popping sound and she poured some into two glasses. Peering over my glasses, I raised an eyebrow. “That’s very indeterminate. I could say that ‘fact’ about Americans too.” “Right.” She lifted both glasses and handed me one. “And we’re American, so we’re going to drink while you explain to me why you’re wearing eyeglasses in the middle of the day. I’ve only seen you do that once, and it was that time you got a B on the test you should’ve aced and cried all day over it.” “Ugh.” Its reminder was unwelcome and my mouth curved in distaste. “I’m still not over that, thanks for bringing it up.” “You’re welcome. Now tell me. What’s up?” I sighed and stared down into my glass. “Shit. I didn’t pour you enough, did I?” Shaking my head, I set the glass back down on the coffee table. “I’m too full from breakfast. And the very last thing I need is more alcohol.” Liza shifted in her cushion, her blue eyes widening. “More alcohol? Ooh, this is gonna be good. Maybe I need more wine for this.” She picked up my glass and dumped it into hers. “By the way, why does it reek of eggs in here?” she asked with a dramatic sniff. “Because I had five scrambled eggs.” When Liza continued to stare at me, I continued. “Eggs have an amino acid that helps with the hangover headache.” “No shit,” Liza said thoughtfully. “Thanks for sparing me the sciencey parts of

that.” “You’re welcome. Anyway,” I waved a hand at the kitchen, “that’s why it reeks of eggs.” I waited a beat, then two, then watched as Liza’s eyes widened and she leaned forward, placing her hand on my arm. “You were hungover?” she whisper-yelled. “Present tense.” After closing my eyes, I placed a hand to my head and rubbed my temple. “And yes.” I opened my eyes, leveled her with a look. “There’s more.” Liza sat up straighter, unable to contain her excitement. “I love more.” “I know you do,” I said with a laugh. “You little hussy,” Liza proclaimed, her voice accusing. “You did the dirty, didn’t you?” Was I that obvious? I pushed my glasses up my nose and avoided her eyes. “Maybe.” “Oh my God. You did! You couldn’t have told me in your text?” I’d sent her a very brief, Come over right now please, text an hour earlier. I still hadn’t wrapped my head over the night before and how I felt about it. “Okay, fine. Yes. I had sex.” I reached for the wine glass and took a sip against my better judgement and then wisely handed it back to her. “A one-night stand.” “Scarlet!” Liza pushed at me with her hand. “Two bucket list items in one night? What’s gotten into you?” Leo. Leo had gotten into me. “I wasn’t thinking.” “Wait,” Liza said, holding up a hand. “Was the drinking before the sex or after the sex. This is important.” “How is that important?” “Were you drinking because,” she raised her eyebrows and nodded solemnly, “it was bad sex?” “No. I got drunk before the sex. It was drunk sex.” “Oh.” Liza deflated, sitting against the cushions as she held the wine glass in her hands. “What?” I asked, wondering at her sudden disappointment. “I thought you had sober sex for once.” “Okay, first of all—I’ve had sex an entire two times in my life. ‘For once’ is a little bit dramatic, don’t you think? And second—just because I was drunk doesn’t mean I don’t remember it.” I looked down at my hands, which I had twisted in my lap. “Or that it wasn’t great sex. I mean, not that I know what great sex is when I’ve had it twice.” “Okay, hold up. Great sex is great sex. It’s like eating cheesecake from The Shoppe versus cheesecake from the grocery store. You just know it’s fucking delicious because it tastes fucking delicious. So if it was great, if you felt great, it was great. The end.” “I like the cheesecake from the grocery store,” I mumbled. “Yeah, well you haven’t had cheesecake from The Shoppe.” “But if I think grocery store cheesecake is good, then maybe I’m wrong about

what great sex is.” “But you’re not, because you knew that the dipshit you first let up in your business was bad sex. This is good,” she said encouragingly. “So, spill. What was it like?” I leaned against the cushions. “Well, I do remember most of it. And the parts I remember…” my cheeks warmed and I tried to brush it off by shrugging. I was embarrassed by my inexperience, even around Liza. “Let’s just say he has a very talented mouth.” My cheeks burst into flames and I had to keep my hands locked together in my lap to keep from pressing my palms against my face. “Who is he? I mean, I get it—one night stand and all. But did he have a name you remember?” This was the part I was dreading—telling Liza who my mysterious lothario was, because she knew Leo to be a real-life asshole, someone whose mere presence in high school had made me feel so very small. As I racked my brain for an explanation or a way to break it to her easily, Liza’s own silence became very apparent. I chanced a glance at her, seeing her eyes narrowed on me. “Who?” she asked, her voice lower than before. “Leo.” “Oh!” she exclaimed, standing up with her wine glass as if her favorite team had just made a bad play. The metaphor wasn’t entirely off-base though. “You fucked Leeeo?” she screeched, pointing her finger out the window. “Leo, the dickwad?” I didn’t bother nodding, confirming her question. Liza was getting a bachelors in show production, which was perfect for her because she frequently displayed a large range of emotion, but bad for me at the moment because she was staring at me like I’d just told her I’d drop kicked a baby. When I opened my mouth to explain, she pointed a finger at me. “Oh, I knew this was going to happen. I just knew it!” She stalked back over to the couch, but didn’t sit. “I knew as soon as you told me you were giving him rides. I thought to myself, ‘Scarlet is going to combust from all that hate and yank him into her backseat and let him punt it right between your uprights.” “My uprights?” “Yeah,” she huffed. “Your legs. Up in the air. Field goal.” She said it so seriously, with such rage coloring her voice that I couldn’t help but laugh, much to her irritation. “We didn’t do it in my backseat. Chill.” Liza liked that even less. “It doesn’t matter. Scarlet. Ugh!” She set her glass on the coffee table. “I thought you didn’t even like him. He was a dick to you in high school.” But he hadn’t been, not really. I’d misunderstood—our childhood friendship was bound to change once we were launched into two separate cliques and I let myself be hurt by assuming otherwise. My own admission of guilt didn’t stop me from still hating him. “Well it’s not like we’re dating. We had sex. Big deal.” “It is a big deal,” Liza said, trying to make me see why this was such a problem.

Years had passed since high school, and even if I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about the stellar sex, I wasn’t going to disparage him for what had happened years earlier. “It’s not. Liza, we had sex one night. And this morning was awkward enough that it’ll never happen again.” Liza seemed to cool down, already interested in our next discussion. “Awkward?” she asked as she lowered herself back to the couch. “He was in a hurry to get out of bed and hid in the bathroom for a solid twenty minutes. And then I pretended like I didn’t remember what happened—which is partly true as I don’t remember all of it—and then I kind of kicked him out.” “Wow. That’s a lot to take in.” Liza relaxed into the couch as she thought. “Why did you pretend to forget?” “I wanted to spare him the obligatory, ‘hey, I’m not looking for anything serious’ talk because we both know he’s not looking for that. And, well, I might’ve begged him for sex in the first place.” I desperately needed a pillow to cover my face. “Oh, well then.” Liza stared into her glass. “Exactly.” “Well, console yourself with the fact that he probably wanted it too. How couldn’t he? Leo isn’t going to dip his dick in every girl who begs for it.” “Just probably most of them,” I lamented. “Gross.” Liza stuck out her tongue in disgust. “The good news is that you used protection, so you’re not going to catch the warts.” A thought crossed my mind and I rewound my memory, trying to remember at what point Leo put a condom on. But nothing came through, which terrified me down to my bones. “Oh, God.” “What?” I turned to her with what I knew must have been pure terror in my eyes. “I don’t remember him putting on a condom.” Her eyes widened too, which didn’t make me feel better as my blood raced. “Oh, fuck.” I didn’t say it often, but when it was warranted—like right fucking now—it was practically the only word I could articulate. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” “Shh,” she hushed me. “It’s fine. Come on. Leo might be a dick, but for one, he knows your dad. And we both know your dad would unleash some serious asswhooping if Leo had given you a souvenir of your night.” The thought calmed me, but only slightly. “And two,” she continued, “we’re talking Leo Madsen here. If his list of sex partners is as lengthy as we assume it be, everyone in this city would have warts and we’d know about it. Think about Tony Saccarino from high school. Everybody knew that dude was carrying the herpes.” “Ugh,” I said, cradling my head. I was unconvinced. “Maybe they have to test for sports or something?” she added, reaching for straws. “Come on, it’s going to be okay. You’re on the pill and I’m sure he’s clean.

He’s not going to swing an infected peen around town without someone knowing about it.” “You’re sure? Really, Liza? You were sure your vagina was dying the first time you got your period. So sure. And now you’re sure Leo is clean.” “Hey, don’t be a dick. I was twelve and my dad hadn’t exactly told me what to expect.” “Sorry,” I said, pushing my bangs from my face. It would be okay. Liza made some very valid points. “I guess I have to talk to him about that.” Which would mean admitting to him that I had remembered at least some of it. “Dude. We need to cross these off of your bucket list,” Liza chirped, bringing me out of my inner thoughts. “You still have it, don’t you?” “No,” I said quickly. “First you’re a hussy and now you’re a liar? C’mon, Scarlet. You think I don’t know what those shifty eyes mean? Get it.” Against my better judgement, I grabbed the list from my room where I’d kept it tucked inside an old microbiology textbook. If my mom snooped, the last place she’d look would be in between the pages of anything sciencey. When I returned to the living room, I held it in my fingers, thumbnail running along the crease. As I turned to sit beside her again, Liza ripped it from my hands. “I knew you still had this!” “Do you have yours?” We’d made these stupid bucket lists right after high school and added to them as we realized all that we were missing out on. And as the years had passed, Liza had scratched off all nearly-sixty of hers while mine, still in the teens, were left mostly unmarred. “Probably not,” Liza said as she chewed on her lip, studying the sheet. “Fake ID? You should’ve crossed that one off by now.” I shrugged. “I didn’t think about it.” “I can’t believe you crossed off ‘Have sex’ from this list.” “Well, I did have sex.” She raised an eyebrow. “Did he even hang out long enough to break your hymen?” I gave her a look, an are-you-serious expression. “You can’t tell me I was still a virgin until last night.” “Practically.” “I don’t think, scientifically-speaking, you can be practically a virgin.” “Well, what do you know anyway?” “True,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Let me see the list.” Liza handed it over and I took in my chicken scratch handwriting and the halfhearted line through ‘Have sex.’ I must have crossed that off with a lot of disappointment in my hand, based on the incomplete line. Liza produced a bright purple pen from her bag and grabbed the list back from me. She pressed the paper against her lap and bent over as she made revisions to the list. Her hair hung in front of her face, obstructing my view. When she giggled, I

pushed her backward, so I could see the list. She’d added a carrot between ‘Have’ and ‘sex’ and put ‘GREAT’ in all caps with a bunch of miniature purple hearts around it. And on the side of the page, she’d doodled a heart with Leo’s name in it, in that same purple color. “Come on, Liza. You’re such a third grader sometimes.” “Well, you kinda deserve it. You let him sully you with his possibly crab-infested junk. It’s not often the princess of control makes an ill-advised decision, so,” she nodded, her hair bobbing back and forth, “I’m going to relish this moment.” She stood and picked up the empty wine glass off the table before retreating to the kitchen. “Thanks,” I mumbled ungratefully as I took in the lines though ‘one-night stand’ and ‘get drunk’ before folding it up and following Liza. “I have to go to work in a few hours, so I need a siesta.” She walked around the island and gave me a squeeze. “And you need to see a boy about his dick.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My phone had been dinging at me for the last hour while I threw a ball in the backyard. I never checked it. Because every single text was probably Scarlet rubbing it the hell in that she didn’t remember. She didn’t fucking remember. How was that even possible? I get it, I was pretty drunk too, but there was no way that any moment of that mind-blowing, earthshattering, body-numbing sex would ever be erased from my mind. All the cliché phrases in the world didn’t seem like enough when I tried to think of ways to describe it. Which pissed me off even more. Because that? That thing that I’d felt in her bed and when I touched her and tasted her? I’d never felt that before, which was scary as fuck by itself. But factor in that Scarlet had a blank slate, and I was pretty much vibrating with tension. Another chime from my phone, where it sat on the edge of the deck behind me, and I hurled the ball toward the throwing net that I used in the summer, throwing a little harder than necessary. “Too much spiral,” a voice said from behind me, and I turned to find my best friend Adele slouched in a patio chair, shading her eyes from the sun. “Or was it not enough?” I shook my head and walked toward her. “What are you doing here?” “Well, I had to come home today for some bullshit with my sister, and since you haven’t answered a single text from me, I figured I should make sure you’re alive.” I started dragging another chair to face her when she stood up and motioned for me to follow her. “It’s too damn hot in the sun back here, let’s go in the front.” Ugh. Great. Then I could face Scarlet’s house and think about her a little more. Fucking perfect. But Adele was already off the deck and walking around the side of the house. “Pick up the pace, Madsen. I don’t have all day.” She snapped her fingers up by her face and smiled at me, but I knew that smile was bullshit. She meant it. So, of course, I followed her. “Maybe the sun wouldn’t feel so hot if you wore something other than black.” “I wear other colors.”

I glanced at her while we crossed the driveway and climbed the couple steps onto our front porch. “Uh-huh.” “I have on pink underwear, thank you very much.” She pulled at the waist of her black jeans and pulled up a thin band of lace that was hot pink. I rolled my eyes when she snapped it back against her skin and pulled her shirt back down. “Thanks for that,” I drawled and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs. Adele laughed, leaning back into the other chair and stretching her arms above her head, her light blonde hair looking unfamiliar to me after seeing Scarlet’s thick red locks all week. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said after we’d been quiet for a few minutes, me glaring across the street, and her watching me with a curious expression on her face. “That’s because you haven’t.” I rubbed at a spot of dirt on the arm of my chair, not meeting her eyes right away. When I did, she was giving me a narrow-eyed look like she couldn’t figure out what language I was speaking. It made me fidget in my seat. “What?” “Are you on your period?” I rolled my eyes. “Nice, Adele. And you wonder why I haven’t seen you in weeks.” “See, right there,” she said and pointed a finger at me. “Nothing. No smile, no joke, no teasing. What’s wrong with you?” I knew that my friendship with Adele wasn’t typical. We’d never slept together, which most people didn’t believe, and even though we’d had one awkward kiss that felt like sucking on a rock for how little we both enjoyed it, I’d never looked at her as someone I’d wanted. Again, probably something that most people didn’t believe, because Adele was fucking hot. Like scary hot, in the way that you weren’t sure if she’d fuck you or kill you if you said the wrong thing to her. But you’d probably give it a shot either way because of how she looked. She had sharp facial features and green eyes that could slice through you if she wanted them to. And moments like this, when she just straight up wasn’t taking my bullshit, immediately zeroing in on the fact that I wanted to punch something, made me remember why I needed her in my life. Which is why it was pointless for me to lie to her. I dropped my head back onto the chair. “I think I’ve lost my mojo.” When she cackled a little, I lifted my hand to flip her off and she just laughed harder. “Leo, remind me when you regained your mojo? I’m assuming you mean your inability to attract normal, sane chicks?” Instead of putting up a lame attempt to argue with her, because she was fucking right, I just nodded, lifting my head and squinting across the street at Scarlet’s car. “There’s this girl,” I started and Adele leaned forward in her seat to listen. “I never thought it would happen with her. I mean, ever.”

“Why not?” I worked my jaw back and forth, trying to decide how to answer. Adele knew Scarlet from high school too, and I really didn’t want her name coming up. “She doesn’t like me very much.” An understatement, of course, but it made Adele smile all the same. “Thinks athletes are meatheads.” “Ahh, that kind of girl.” “Seriously, Adele, I’ve said meaner shit to her than any woman I know. And she dishes it right back. And the whole time, it felt like this fucked-up foreplay, at least in my mind.” I ran my hands down the tops of my thighs, shaking my head a little. “And last night …” “Oooooh, finally,” Adele rubbed her hands together. I smiled, for what felt like the first time all day and Adele smiled back. “We were both pretty drunk, and I was going to be good, I swear. But then she was begging me. And kissing me. And it’s not like my decision making skills were as sharp as possible.” For the first time since I started talking, Adele’s face tightened with concern. Not sure if it was for me, though. “So we did it. And this morning, she didn’t remember what happened.” Adele nodded, opening her mouth before closing it again. She wet her lips and angled herself in the chair to pull one leg up. “Was she mad at you? Or scared?” “No,” I said quickly. “More like, I don’t know, detached, I guess.” “That’s good. So … how was it?” I groaned. “You don’t want to hear this.” “Yes, I do!” she practically yelled. “I’m a total sexual deviant.” “Fine. It was fucking amazing, like the kind of sex you’d think is only in a really believable porno. Except better. Is that what you want to know?” “Yup,” she said with an unrepentant smile. Then she narrowed her eyes again. “So who is it?” “Uh-uh. I’m not telling you that.” “Oh come on.” She batted her eyelids. “Pretty please?” “No.” “You’re such a dick.” “I know.” She watched me. I watched her. Finally, she held up her hands like she wanted to pop my head off my shoulders. “I can’t believe you’re not going to tell me!” “How’s the Professor?” Adele huffed, clearly not impressed with my change of subject. “Nathan is fine. Busy, but what the fuck ever. You must not want me to know because I do know her.” Ahh. I saw it, in the way her cheeks got a little pink and her jaw set in a hard line. “So, he’s finally fucking up, huh?” Adele had been living with Nathan Easton for a few months now, given that he’d switched jobs and was no longer her professor. Now he was at Harvard, because apparently he was smart and blah blah blah. I’d

only met him once, but it was brief, and he obviously felt uncomfortable about the fact that Adele and I were so close. Or maybe he’d felt uncomfortable because he was like thirteen years older than us, and she and I had been on our way out to a bar, and he’d had to watch us walk out the door together. “No,” she said after a second. Then she waved a hand in front of her face. “That’s not what we’re talking about right now.” “Well maybe we should, Adele.” This time I meant it, and I sat forward, balancing my arms over my knees so she could see it in my face. “Is everything okay?” The sigh she let out told me everything. So did the way her slim shoulders slumped. We were quiet again for a few minutes, but I knew she’d talk when she was ready. With her fingers picking at the edge of her shirt, she finally opened her mouth. “He’s not fucking up. He’s just … busy.” It sounded so lame to me, and she must have picked up on my silent judgment. “I know how it sounds, Leo, but he has so much more pressure at Harvard. He’s adjusting. And so am I. It’ll just take some time for this to be normal.” I waited for her to meet my eyes, and when she finally did, the hurt that she was trying to hide was all there. “Adele …” She whipped up a hand to stop me. “No, don’t say my name like that. My boyfriend is busy because he’s in a new job at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Don’t take that pitying tone with me, Madsen. If you really want to make me feel better, you’d tell me the name of your new fuck buddy.” “She’s not my—” Then the front door opened and my mom’s head popped out, a huge smile on her face when she saw Adele. “Oh, Adele, sweetheart, how are you?” “Good, Mrs. Madsen. Just making sure your son is still alive and kickin’.” I rolled my eyes while they laughed. “We certainly don’t see him much either while he’s home in the summer. But you know, at least someone is.” And she winked. And I really wanted Adele not to notice. But, of course, life was crueler than that. “Oh yeah? Who’s that?” My mom touched a hand to Adele’s shoulder. “Scarlet Jennings from across the street. You know, Pastor Jennings’ daughter.” Adele’s mouth dropped open, and my mother was oblivious as to why, thank God. “Did you need something, Mom?” She tittered, then dropped a kiss onto the top of Adele’s head. “Okay, okay. I’ll let you two talk. Don’t be a stranger, sweetheart.” “I won’t, Mrs. Madsen,” Adele replied, never taking her eyes off of mine, head

shaking in disbelief. We both held that way until the door clicked shut and we heard the sounds of my mom’s heels click down the hallway. “You’re screwing the preacher’s daughter?!” Adele screeched. “Would you pipe down?” I hissed, glaring at her, and then looked across the street to make sure that Scarlet hadn’t chosen that exact moment to come outside. But Adele was too busy laughing to pay attention to me. When she finally started settling down, she apologized. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. It’s just too good. That chick was wound so tight in high school, I can’t believe you loosened her up enough that she even got off.” I rubbed at my temples. “I am not having this discussion with you.” “The preacher’s daughter. I can’t believe it.” “Oh, like you can lecture me on taboo relationships, miss I fucked my college professor.” She laughed again, wiping under her eye with one finger, the middle finger. “Oh, Leo, I’m not lecturing. I just can’t wait to see how this one plays out.” Yeah. I couldn’t either.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Adele’s visit didn’t make me feel better. If anything, I was even more pissed off. Considering I had a chick best friend, you’d think she’d have been able to give me some more useful advice. Instead, as she was about to slide back into the driver’s seat of her car, she’d shrugged her shoulder, looked back at Scarlet’s house, and started laughing all over again. “Good luck, Leo. I think you’re going to need it if you want to conquer the amnesiac unicorn pussy.” Come to think of it, talking to Adele didn’t feel much different than some of the guys on the team half the time. Throughout the day, I’d started composing half a dozen texts to Scarlet. I had a few favorites: What’s up? Wanna hang out again? I’ll bring the vodka. Are you bored? Because I am. Not that I only want to hang out with you when I’m bored. Are you sure you don’t remember what happened last night? Do you need me to tell you what happened last night? I think if I had to relive the details out loud, I’d be hard for the rest of my life. Scarlet, you’re seriously pissing me off. That’s the kind of sex that makes you tattoo shit on your body and you don’t REMEMBER IT. What the FUCK? Basically, I felt more desperate every time I typed up a message I knew I’d never send. I was about to write a haiku about her tits when there was a hard knock on my bedroom door. I slipped the headphones off my ears and told whoever it was to

come in. When my brother’s head popped through the opened door, I sat up in surprise. “What are you doing here?” Grant laughed and rolled his eyes. “Nice to see you, too. Come on, we’re going to go grab a drink.” “Really?” It probably sounded pathetic, to ask that of him. But he was older than me by enough years that it was odd for us to actually hang out. We’d never overlapped stages of life. By the time I hit high school, he was into college. When I started at Northern, he was working on his MBA. And now, he was firmly entrenched at our dad’s firm, while I was still studying for midterms and taking spring break. “Really. I’ll meet you in the driveway in five.” “Yeah, umm, sure. Sounds good, man.” When I pulled a nicer shirt on, I took my time buttoning it. Knowing Grant, he’d make us go to some snobby-ass place for a beer. But when I met him by his car, he was wearing a Pats t-shirt and a Red Sox ball cap. “Brew City?” he asked when I latched my seat belt. “Yeah, sure,” I said quickly. That place was cool, but not somewhere I’d peg my brother as wanting to go. We were quiet as he drove us toward Shrewsbury Street, until I couldn’t handle it anymore. “Not that I’m not cool with hanging out with you, Grant—” “But what the hell am I doing?” he interrupted with an easy smile. “—but what the hell are you doing?” Our eyes met in the dark interior of his car, and when we both started laughing, the yellow cuts of light coming through the windshield showed me a smile and face that made me feel like I was looking in the mirror. “Just want to see how my little brother is doing. That okay with you?” A little humbled by the fact that I was pushing it so hard right away, I looked out of the passenger side window for a minute. “Yeah. Of course.” He nodded in response, and neither of us said anything for the rest of the way. When we walked into Brew City, a table of women near the door turned in tandem to look at me and Grant. I wasn’t all that surprised, he was only about two inches shorter than I was, and had the same build, even if he wasn’t quite as big as me. Grant grinned at them while we were seated at one of the open tables. We both ordered the Goose Island IPA and clam chowder. One of the women at the first table caught my eye, her dark hair falling around her shoulder in big curls, and the way her eyes touched over my chest and biceps made it painfully clear that I wouldn’t have too much work to get something from her. Grant turned his head, then with raised brows back in my direction. “Brunette?” “Not really interested,” I mumbled into my beer. The disbelief on Grant’s face was obvious, and when he laughed, it grated on my already piqued nerves. “Is that so hard to believe? That I wouldn’t want to fuck every woman who looks

at me? Sorry to disappoint the family’s opinion of me as the brainless manwhore, but I do have standards beyond a woman’s passing interest.” My brother sank back in his chair, giving me a hard look. “I never said any of that shit. Don’t put the old man’s words in my mouth.” Sufficiently chastened, I kept my eyes down at my bowl of soup, then pushed it away. I didn't think this was a good idea. Grant and I had one of those coasting relationships, like we were cousins who saw each other a couple times a year. You would talk about the surface shit, but not even blink at the fact that you didn’t really know what was going on in each other’s lives. And when something big happened, it was surprising, because you’d never talked about anything deeper than sports scores or weather or polite family inquisitions. “What is it?” I just shook my head. “Forget it, it’s nothing.” “Oh bullshit. Just because I work with him doesn’t mean I’m a clone of dad. He’s hard on you? Big deal. He’s hard on me too. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Did you ever think that he was doing you a favor?” Then I laughed. “I’m where I am today because I work my ass off to stay on that field, and it’s not because of dad. It’s in spite of him. He’s never pushed me a day in my life, that’s the problem.” Grant stayed quiet, giving me a narrow-eyed look. Not one of judgement, just consideration. It lodged under my skin like a hot burr, because now he was going to try and figure me out. “And you know what else? You and everyone else who thinks I’m just some dumb fucking jock can kiss my ass. I don’t need to prove shit to you.” “What’s her name?” he asked quietly, not even remotely joking. I slammed the rest of my beer, setting the glass down on the table so hard that I was shocked it didn’t crack. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” When I stood from my seat and pulled my wallet out, he held up his hands in concession. “Look, I know you,” he paused when I gave him a long look, “it may not seem like it, but I do know you. And you’re one of the most easy-going guys I know. So if you’re getting this defensive when it’s not even football season then it considerably narrows the field of why.” Even though I was listening, I pulled my wallet out and fished some cash from inside of it. I was just about to toss it on the table when he grabbed my forearm. “You want to go? Then go. I don’t give a flying fuck if you want to spend forty bucks to take a cab home, but if there’s something serious going on, you can talk to me about it. Whether it's about a girl or not. But women are pretty reasonable, Leo, if you're just honest with them and don’t play any fucking games, you’ll have a lot better luck.” “Thanks for the advice, big brother. You’re always there when I need you the most.” I didn’t even attempt to keep the bite out of my voice when I tossed the twenty on the table. It did in fact cost me about forty bucks to get back home, and after I’d tipped the

driver, I was sure he was ready to be rid of me. My mood was foul, an inky thing hanging over me, and shock of the fucking century, Scarlet was yet again the cause of it. How was it even possible that she didn’t feel what I had felt? Even if I wanted to, I couldn't erase the way she’d tasted, the way she’d moved under me, the way she’d looked after that first explosion. The unpracticed way she did everything just fucking undid me, and it undid me in a way that I’d never experienced before. And that much was obvious in what a prick I felt like. I wanted to lash out at everyone who encountered me, because what? Scarlet was drunk and didn’t remember boinking me? I wasn’t this guy. I was the guy who everyone counted on to smile and make a joke and ease the tension. That was my role, for as long as I could remember it. As I stood in my driveway after the cab squealed down the street, I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s why it had been so good with Scarlet, because I wasn’t trying to play the Leo that people expected. I had just been me. My eyes snapped over to her house, and through the front windows, I could see a light on toward the back of the house. Not giving myself any time to second guess the decision, I jogged across the street. Instead of going around to the back slider like I’d done before, I walked up the front porch and rang the doorbell. There was no answer, and no porch lights turning on in response, so I rapped my knuckle against the dark wood. “Scarlet?” I called out, not too loudly, but enough that she’d know it was me if she was listening by the door. Behind the three or four inches of wood separating us, there was a muffled sound. I knocked again. “Come on, please? Are you going to make me beg for all the neighbors to see?” It was impossible not to smile when that immediately made the deadbolt turn with a fast click. By the time I walked through the opened door, Scarlet was already marching back toward the kitchen, tight little ass twitching underneath her gray yoga pants with the fast movements of her legs. Almost immediately, I felt my blood pressure go down, which was mildly concerning. If Scarlet Jennings was my idea of stress relief, then I might need a fucking shrink to make sure that I wasn't a masochist. The light I’d seen through the front window came from above the kitchen table. Scarlet had piles of papers and binders strewn across it. When I picked one up, there was a diagram on it that looked roughly like intestines, so I dropped it just as quickly. “What are you doing here, Leo?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of water and definitely not meeting my eyes. Well, fuck. I hadn’t thought this part out. And I couldn’t very well say, oh, I’m here because it seriously threatens my manhood that you don’t seem to remember the thorough fucking I gave you. That you don't remember how every inch of you

was shaking from the force of your orgasm. “Just wanted to make sure that you’re okay staying here by yourself.” It came out so smoothly that I almost believed it. The way she looked up at me told that she actually did too. The soft look in her eyes was … I don’t know, like she was touched by that. But she flicked her gaze away from me again, taking a drink from her glass with jerky movements. While she did that, I walked closer to her with slow, deliberate steps. From the way her shirt fluttered against her stomach, I could tell her breathing had picked up. She was nervous. But not in the scared way. Not even close. I knew Scarlet well enough that if she was scared of me, she’d never have let me in the door. The skin below her collarbone was even a little flushed. I wanted to touch it, see how it tasted. By the time I was standing next to her, she’d finished her water. Only a sliver of air separated us, and it pulsed with the same thick, honeyed tension from the other night. “Because I hate the idea that you might be here in this big house, hating the fact that you’re alone. Especially when I could do something to make you feel better,” I pushed the hair away from her face and leaned in, fully prepared that she’d stop me since I was laying it on a bit thicker than I’d anticipated. Only she didn’t. Her breath hitched, making her luscious tits press against the cotton of her shirt. My pointer finger followed the length of her hair until all of it was behind her slender shoulder. And like I willed it, she turned toward me, just slightly, dragging her eyes up my torso and chest, stopping somewhere around my throat, at the place where my pulse was probably throbbing the same way that my now rock-hard dick was. What a fucking idiot I was, thinking I was coming over here to prove to myself that she’d felt something. All I really wanted to do was feel it again too. My hands lifted, cupping the sides of her face, something I hadn’t really done our first night together. Before I even had the time to see what her eyes looked like with my fingers framing her face, she let them flutter close. I fucking knew it. If she felt nothing, knew nothing from our night, those brown eyes would have stayed the fuck open. Maybe I really was a masochist, because I wanted to see how far I could push this, so I dipped down and licked a line along her plump bottom lip. When she didn’t immediately knee me in the balls, I sank in again, fitting my lips in between hers and taking a long pull. I moaned at the taste, something that wasn’t a conscious decision. But she just tasted so fucking good. Scarlet may not have moaned back, but when my tongue snaked in to lick along hers, she did more than push hers back, she gripped the front of my shirt with two tight fists and moved up on her tiptoes. One of my hands moved around her face to grip into her hair, the other

following the line of her back until I could palm one ass cheek. I angled my head, diving in again, imagining all the ways I could fuck her in this kitchen. First would be to bend her over the table and grip her hips from behind. Second would be to flip her around, lay her back and wrap her legs around my waist while I stood at the edge of the table, fucking her so hard that I’d see her tits bounce with every thrust. My mind was already there, grinding my hips against hers to find some relief that I barely registered that she’d shoved my shoulders back. Once I did, I lifted my hands in the air and stepped back. Scarlet held a hand in front of her mouth, eyes big and face pale. I clenched my teeth and turned around. If I had to stare at her, I’d probably do something fucking stupid again. My hands curled into fists, and I propped them on the cold surface of the granite, hanging my head down so I could breathe through the fact that she was probably about to kick my ass out. I opened my eyes and looked down, blinking a few times in confusion at what I saw. When I picked up the piece of notebook paper and started to turn, Scarlet gasped. “Give that to me!” she all but yelled, lunging at me. And considering that I was like a foot taller than her, I lifted the paper above my head and started to read. Well, well, well. What the hell had I just stumbled upon?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Give me that,” I demanded, jumping up for the paper. “Are all these purple marks recent?” He squinted as he held the paper well above both of our heads. “Give it back, Leo.” I all but growled as I tried to jump again. “No way.” He pulled the paper closer to his face as he mouthed what he was reading. I took that opportunity and laid a hand on his chest, fingers finding one of his nipples and squeezing as I twisted it. He made a loud yelp and brought his arm down instinctively, giving me a chance to grab it out of his hands and step back, so that the island separated us. “A titty twister, really? It’s like middle school all over again.” As I folded the paper quickly and neatly, I shook my head. “No, because I actually didn’t think you were an ass in middle school.” “Just high school then?” “More like since high school.” I tucked the paper in my back pocket and picked up my empty glass of water so I could refill it. “What’s with the list?” he asked, leaning on the island as I drank my second glass. I ran a thumb over the water that had collected on my cupid’s bow and didn’t miss the way his eyes followed its path. “It’s just a stupid bucket list. It was Liza’s doing. That…” I gestured my hand in a circle, feeling completely embarrassed by it and by the fact that he was turning my brain off by leaning over the counter, his biceps practically exclamation marks on his arms. Look at us! they said. He mimicked my hand movement, circling his hand, “And…?” “It’s just a bucket list,” I repeated. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t have one.” He pursed his lips, eyes narrowing as he thought. “Oh, sure. Hunter and I, we sit around in our underwear and braid each other’s hair and make adorable bucket lists with glittery purple pens practically every weekend.” “Do you really think girls sit around in their underwear to chat?” He grinned lasciviously. “I want to think that. Especially if they’re as hot as the little white number you wore last night.”

I would not blush. “Don’t be such a dick.” He came around the island and I backed away before my back was stopped by the wall. “You do remember what happened last night.” There was no question on his face, instead there was heat. A whole lot of heat. I placed my hands on the wall behind me as he leaned into me, not wanting to throw myself at him as wantonly as I had the night before. “Some of it,” I quipped. “But what I can’t remember,” I swallowed, “is if you used protection.” At that, his eyes cleared and the arm he was bracing beside my head against the wall tensed. “Shit.” “Yeah,” I nodded, finally feeling like I had a little more control with what was going on. “Did you forget to wrap it up?” I spun my finger in his face and looked down near his belt area to illustrate my question. “A little hard for me to remember protection when you were practically climbing me like a rabid monkey.” I scoffed. “That’s a stupid excuse.” “It goes both ways, Scarlet. You didn’t say anything either.” He was right, but that didn’t mean I was going to tell him that. “Well? Any diseases I should know about?” “God,” he pushed away from the wall, finally giving me some breathing space. “No. Fuck no. You really think I’d fuck you if I carried something?” When I just shrugged, his annoyance flared. “Yeah, well what about you? How do I know you’re clean? No offense, but you didn’t exactly seem inexperienced yourself last night.” My cheeks burned and I pushed off the wall, into his face, so that he was backing all the way up to the island. “Because I’ve had sex one other time and he used a condom.” Leo’s eyes cleared again as he stared at me and I realized I’d given him a very interesting piece of information. “Only one other time?” “It doesn’t matter.” I clenched my jaw. “When was the last time you got tested?” He crossed his arms over his chest, bringing his muscles right in my face. “Every six months. But.” he seemed to be choosing his words carefully, “I haven’t had sex since my last clean test.” My shoulders dropped in relief. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been stressing over that until that moment. “Thank God.” “But the clap isn’t the only thing I could’ve given you, if—you know—I’d been infected with it.” “You’re gross.” “You know what else is gross? Babies.” He gave a pointed look at my stomach. “Are you on birth control?” “Yes, thankfully. We wouldn’t want to populate the world with a bunch of little assholes.” “You’d be lucky to procreate with me.” He flexed a muscle, perpetuating his football superstar status, and did it so comically that I couldn’t help but laugh at

the image. “Procreate. Big word for you.” “I’m learning. A little hard to fit academics in my brain, you know, with football always running on a loop and all.” He pointed to his skull and I frowned slightly. He seemed a little tender over that at the moment, so I decided to move on. “Why’d you come over?” “To see if you really remembered what happened.” The fact that it had bothered him so much surprised me. “I...” I took a deep breath. “I remember a lot of it.” I thought of the begging and winced a little. While looking him in the eyes, I said, “Sorry I was so out of control that night. Begging you and all…” He smirked. “Are you seriously apologizing for that?” When I said nothing he said, “Come on. I’m not that nice of a guy. It wasn’t a pity fuck, if that’s what you’re thinking.” It was what I was thinking, but I knew my cheeks were hot pink in my embarrassment. “I don’t know what came over me.” His lips twitched. “You were drunk and horny. Pretty sure that’s what did you in.” He tapped his temple. “I’m keeping that up in here, for future reference. ‘Scarlet loosens up with a little bit of vodka, Leo. Remember that.’” I rolled my eyes, but then immediately turned around to the sink, suddenly needing a lot of water again, since my face must have been covered in a bright blush. I put my hands in the cold water, needing to lower my temperature, but a second later I felt him behind me, all that rock hard muscle resting against my back. I froze. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said against my shoulder. His warm breath tickled my skin there and I felt it all the way down to my bare feet. A hand touched the curve of my shoulder and slid across skin and over the strap of my tank until it reached the part of where my shoulder met my neck. I couldn’t be embarrassed when he said that, while he did that, because I couldn’t think at all, except of how clearly responsive my body was to his touch. I knew it was improbable, but I swore I stopped breathing when his lips met my neck. Just slightly, I leaned my head to the left, stretching the skin that was available to him as his hands came to my waist, cupping the curve there. His thumbs pressed into my back, rubbing at my spine and I could have groaned from how incredible it felt. But I’d stopped breathing, so I made no sound, not even when one hand came down and down. “Hey—” I started when his hand dipped into the waistband of my yoga pants. I spun around just as he stepped back, holding the bucket list up like a flag of triumph. “We’re not done talking about this,” he said as he waved it. “Ugh,” I groaned, giving up when he unfolded it. “Remember I was young when I made it.”

“‘Get a fake ID,’” he quoted and raised an eyebrow. “That one could’ve been crossed off.” “Whoa. Pastor Jennings’ daughter was once in possession of a fake ID?” I leaned against the island and grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl in the center. “She was,” I said, rolling the orange fruit between both my hands. “But don’t tell my parents.” “You’re of the legal drinking age now, what are they going to do about it?” I leveled him with a come on, you know who my parents are look. He nodded. “Right, they’d probably force you to take over the Sunday school again.” I shuddered because it was a punishment they’d given me before. “Poor decisions make mistakes,” my mother had said. “Next thing you know, it’ll be drugs and teen pregnancy.” To say my parents were the kind of people that were prone to dramatics was an understatement. “Wait. You’ve never masturbated?” Leo asked, looking up from the list. “No wonder you’re so uptight.” I tossed the orange at him hard enough to hit his chest, but he caught it deftly, giving me a charming smile. “Thanks, I wanted a snack.” He set the list on the counter in front of him as he began peeling the orange, oblivious to my annoyance. “‘Have sex’…wait, have GREAT sex.” He pointed to the purple hearts Liza had drawn around it. “Is this why my name is doodled with purple ink?” There was no way I could not be embarrassed about that. “Liza’s idea of a joke.” “So the first time you had sex wasn’t great? Because I know you weren’t a virgin last night, but this addition of ‘great’ is in purple pen. I think I can safely deduce that all the purple marks are thanks to me.” “You’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you?” He ignored me, biting into a section of orange. “Let’s see what she crossed off. Hm. ‘Have an orgasm,’” he put his arm out, curled his fingers in a fist and pulled back, like he was congratulating himself. “‘Have oral sex,’” he grinned at me and I thought of his mouth. “‘This should be crossed off.’” “Yeah, well, I didn’t give Liza every minute detail.” “I wouldn’t call that minute.” Considering it was my first orgasm, I wouldn’t have either, but if I had to suffer through Leo reading off my all my immature goals—many of them embarrassingly sexual—I wasn’t going to stroke his ego any more than he was already doing himself. “She crossed off, ‘Have a one-night stand.’” I shrugged. “I certainly didn’t expect it to happen again.” “Didn’t expect it to happen again,” he asked, pausing, “or didn’t want it to happen again?” There was a difference and I knew my answer was important to him for some reason. “Like I said, I didn’t expect it to happen again.”

He nodded, content with my answer, and turned back to the list. “Let’s see: have an orgasm,” he did that little arm pump again, “get drunk—oh, that’s crossed off in purple pen too. Interesting.” It was terribly difficult not to roll my eyes at his tone when I knew he was essentially congratulating himself for his major skills. “‘Give oral sex, shoplift, ride a rollercoaster, ride a motorcycle, get a tattoo, get a piercing,’” he said, stopping there and looking at me. “Where would you get the piercing?” His eyes lingered on my chest and I crossed my arms. “My ears, perv.” Shrugging, he returned to the list. “‘Sex in public’?” His voice was a little louder, as if he was shocked. “What’s so surprising about that?” I asked defensively. “Well, you go from preschool shit like ear piercings straight to the rated R, having sex in public.” “I didn’t exactly have any organizational strategy when I wrote that list.” “Clearly, because you put ‘fake ID’ before ‘have sex.’” “Are you done humiliating me yet?” I asked, extending an arm for the list. “Not yet.” He moved the list out of my reach, “Just a few more.” He popped a segment of the orange in his mouth. “Great,” I replied without a trace of enthusiasm. “‘Road trip, sext someone, break someone’s heart…’” “Give me the list,” I said, pulling it from his hand. I grabbed a nearby pen and drew a line through the last one, shaking my head. “You broke someone’s heart?” “No,” I said firmly. I’ve never even been in love, I said to myself. How could I break anyone’s heart? “I just don’t want that on the list anymore.” “Scarlet.” I pushed the bucket list away, not needing to touch it now that Leo knew many of my bigger secrets. “Yeah?” “This list?” He raised an eyebrow. “Is some sad, sad shit. Like, I want to talk to a therapist about it. For you.” “Shut up, Leo.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious. You have a lot to do before you go away to vet school and spend the next several years killing yourself with studying.” “What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “Think about it.” He laid a hand on the list, pulled it across the granite with a swish sound toward us. “You have this summer, right? Before you’re off, ripping tiny animals open and examining their guts—wearing a super gender-neutral, and probably too large, lab coat and goggles that swallow your face. I doubt there’s going to be a whole lot of romancing happening then.” “You’re really great at painting a picture,” I said, but it wasn’t a compliment. “Thanks. But I’m serious. You have one summer to live out your preschool and R-rated dreams. And be honest, you know that fun is kind of my thing.” He held

his hands out and open, nodding for me to agree. “If anyone can help you loosen up and live a little,” he pointed his thumbs at his chest, “it’s this guy.” “I don’t know, Leo.” But I wouldn’t lie and say it wasn’t a tempting offer. There was no doubt that when I wasn’t hating his guts, I was wanting him. As annoying as he was, he had a point. I’d thought I’d spend the summer before vet school saving money and spending time with Liza. That didn’t necessarily mean I couldn’t also spend time with Leo. I stood up, turned to grab that water I always seemed to need when I was in his presence. “Just think about it, Scarlet. I gotta run.” I turned around after I heard the door close and knew I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When I walked through the kitchen before going upstairs, my mom asked me what was so funny. For a brief moment, I imagined what the look on her face would be if I told her that I was smiling because Santa had come early for me. With the best present I never knew I wanted. Scarlet Jennings had an inner sex kitten that needed to be unleashed, and I’d be the best fucking pussy tamer she’d ever find. Instead, I distracted my mom by telling her she looked nice, which she always did and jogged up the steps to my bedroom. I turned on the TV after I walked in and flipped through the guide until I found Sports Center, but muted it when I laid back in the black leather recliner in the corner of my room. My conversation with Scarlet played on a loop in my head. The way her cheeks turned bright-ass red, her embarrassment a palpable thing in the room. But more than that, the other thing I couldn’t move past was the moment when I’d made her laugh, the way we’d talked easily. Not yelling, no name calling, no rampant antagonism. Maybe her Kama Sutra bucket list was the key to world peace. At least in the world of Scarlet and Leo. With the television still on mute, I pulled my phone out, scrolling until I pulled up a text message to her. The last exchange we’d had was the night we went out. It had taken her somewhere around four hours to decide that my idea had been a good one. Scarlet probably always needed that kind of time to process something that had been thrown at her unexpectedly. And what I’d just offered her was more than likely the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in her mind. With a grin, I started typing something out. This, this I could offer her. Not help with her homework, or an emotional bedrock to weather life’s storms. But I could help her check off every damn item on that pathetic little list. Everyone should do that shit. By the time the summer was over, she’d be like Scarlet 2.0, a fun, relaxed, non-harpy version of the girl from a couple weeks ago at her staid graduation party.

Leo: I can’t stop thinking about how you tasted. After it said the text was delivered, I grinned and put my phone away, fully expecting her to send some token protest. Gross, Leo. Quit talking to me, perv. Or, I’ll get a restraining order tomorrow. She should be happy though because it was one hundred percent, unadulterated truth. My phone vibrated on the end table next to me, and my face spread in a smile imagining what her response might be. The smile dropped pretty damn quick though. Scarlet: Really? That must be one of the things I don’t remember. I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. The sheer audacity of this girl floored me. It was like she wanted me to never leave her alone, to keep this game going as long as we could both stand it. Leo: You really wanna do it like this, Scarlet? Scarlet: Like what, Leo? Unmemorably? I licked along my bottom lip, closing my eyes when I tipped my head back. My sexting game may not have been up-to-date, but one thing I could do was dirty talk with the best of ‘em. Leo: No. Not unmemorably. Slowly, like when I slid my tongue inside you and fucked you with it. We’d do it slowly next time. I’d started typing something else, then backed up, wanting to see what she’d do. Damn it. I had a semi already, thinking about the way her hips had circled my mouth, when she’d shamelessly fucked my face. Scarlet: So this is sexting? I’m unimpressed. I thought you were supposed to paint me a picture, Mr. Quarterback. Leo: No. This is me warming you up. By the time I let you touch your clit and feel your soaking wet pussy with your fingers, you’ll be ready to explode. Scarlet: I am NOT doing that. Leo: Why? Does it embarrass you? The little bouncing dots, the ones that told me she was typing, kept starting and

stopping, she’d delete and then type something else. You’d think it would dampen the sexy images I had going on in my head, right? Not exactly. What happened instead was a vivid mental picture of Scarlet, sitting in the dark, quiet house and biting down on her lip with bright red cheeks. Maybe she’d be playing with the hem of her shirt while she decided how to answer. Maybe she was dragging a thumb across her collarbone. The fact was that either of those things made me harder, so that my dick was pressing against my zipper. Taking my palm, I ran it slowly against the front of my jeans, seeking the tiniest bit of relief from this fucking affliction that she’d cursed me with. Scarlet: Yes. Her simple honesty made my hand halt its movement. I couldn’t fathom feeling an insecurity in my own skin to the point that I was unsure as to how make myself feel pleasure. I’d had that particular skill since I was like … twelve. With that yes, Scarlet sealed her fate this summer, even if she didn’t know This was something I could do for her. But in order for her to open herself up to she’d have to know, without a sliver of doubt, that she could trust me with this.

it, to it. it,

Leo: I’m going to give you something, and it means I’m trusting you, so don’t make me regret it. Scarlet: … I’m waiting. I took a deep breath and unhooked my belt buckle, pulled the zipper down and eased my hips lower in my chair so I could lift the edge of my cotton t-shirt and slide my hand down against the skin of my abs. When I’d gripped my cock with a tight fist, I moved it so that it pushed out of the confines of my gray boxers and then lifted my phone up with my other hand. This was probably so fucking stupid. I’d never sent a dick pic to anyone in my life. Now I was going to Scarlet Jennings’ phone? I moved my fist up so that only the swollen head showed through my hand, and the base was visible on the other side. The click of the camera echoed. I mean, was I supposed to crop it? Put a filter on this bitch? Maybe put it in black and white so it looked more artsy fartsy? “Dude, grow a pair,” I muttered to myself and added the picture to our message thread, then hit send. Leo: Do you see this? This is what happens to me when I think about you. When I think about your tight, perfect pussy.

Scarlet: Holy shit, Leo! Scarlet: I cannot believe you just sent me a picture of your PENIS. Scarlet: What do you expect me to say to that?! Leo: If that’s a serious question, I’ll tell you exactly what to say … come on, where’s the brave girl who stripped for me? Who begged me to make her feel good? I know she’s in there. And I know she’s the only person right now making me this fucking hard. Help me out, Scarlet. I’m in pain. I stroked myself a few times, taking deep and even breaths through my nose while I thought of her, imagined what I’d do the next time I could get my hands on her. Scarlet: Ok. Leo: Good girl. If you were here right now, what would you want me to do to you? Scarlet: I can’t do this. Leo: Yes, you can. God, I’m so damn hard thinking about you. Ok, I’ll start. I know where I’d start on your body if you were in front of me again. Scarlet: Where? I grinned, making slow, tight circles with my fist. Leo: Your nipples. I only got a small taste the other night. But it wasn’t enough. Do you know why? Scarlet: … Am I supposed to guess? Or was that rhetorical? The bark of laughter bounced around my room, and I couldn’t help but shake my head. As much as I wanted to tease her about that, if I broke the mood now, the whole thing would be ruined. Leo: I’d start with your nipples because I didn’t really get to taste them. The only time my mouth was on them was after I’d wiped your cum from my mouth around your tits. I tasted you, naughty girl, on your own skin, and I need to see how it’s different without it. How they’ll taste when I lick them and bite them and suck on them with my tongue.

Scarlet: Umm Scarlet: I think I’m getting it. Scarlet: You know, how this might work. Leo: Good. Is it making you wet? Scarlet: I feel … squirmy. Like if I don’t tighten my thighs together… Leo: Yes, that’s it. Fuck, Scarlet, I feel like I can’t work my cock fast enough or hard enough when I think about you. Scarlet: I’d help. If I was there. Scarlet: OMG, I feel so stupid. That was so stupid. I groaned, tugging harder. “No, not stupid. So fucking perfect,” I said like she could hear me. I was close, which felt ridiculous, considering she hadn’t given me much to work with. But the thought of her offering to help me tightened my skin all over my body. Heat burned through my spine, my hips arching up so I could fuck my own hand. Leo: How. Tell me. Scarlet: With my hands. I’d umm, I’d straddle your legs so I could face you while I did it. Leo: Holy fucking hell, that’s perfect. I’d want to suck on your tits while you did it. Scarlet: Oh God, Leo, this is insane. Leo: No, keep going. Tell me. Scarlet: My breasts felt heavy when you said you wanted to suck on them. Like if I touched them right now, I might come just from that. Leo: Fuck yes, Scarlet. That’s it. The muscles in my forearm burned, the head of my cock was angry and red, the air sawed in and out of my lungs with rough bursts. My eyes pinched shut so hard

that I saw white spots. But it was the image of her sitting on my lap when I came from her hands that finally made me come with a low groan. While I caught my breath, I lifted my phone again, aiming it down at my stomach, lightly grabbing my still semi-hard dick so only the top showed. I cropped it so my chin wasn’t showing, and all you could see was my hand gripping my cock, and the lashes of cum on my skin. I sent it to her. Leo: You were perfect. Now show me something good. I didn’t expect a titty shot or anything, but I laughed when she attached a closeup shot of her hand holding a pen and drawing a line through number fourteen on the list: sext with someone. I shook my head, grabbing a tissue from the box on the floor next to my bed. Once I was cleaned up and had pulled my pants back up, I sent her another one. Leo: Cheater. You know that’s not what I meant. Scarlet: What could you possibly have to complain about right now? Seems as though you got the better end of this deal. Leo: Don’t ruin my post-orgasmic bliss. We’ll work on your happy ending later. Scarlet: I haven’t agreed to anything, Leo. Don’t put words in my mouth. Leo: Oh, I’ll put something in your mouth, sweetheart. Scarlet: *rolls eyes* Leo: You agreed the second you didn’t argue with the picture I sent. And you’re welcome, btw, for raising your erectile expectations for the rest of your life. Scarlet: Whatever you say, Leo. Leo: Oh yeah. This is already working for me. Sweet dreams, my little sext fiend. I know what I’ll be dreaming of tonight. With that, I silenced my phone and stripped down to my boxers so I could go to bed. And wouldn’t you fucking know it, I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Sunday passed without a word from Scarlet and she greeted me on Monday with a polite smile and the facial expression of a corpse, I knew we’d officially taken a few steps back. Part of me wanted to be like, “okay, maybe the dick pic was too much.” But then again, she should be thanking me. I just gave her all the ammo necessary for her to Brett Favre me after I made it into the NFL. On the ride home Monday, I kinda thought she’d have thawed a little, but nary a word was spoken – not until I started walking down her driveway to go back home and she called out to me. “I have to leave a couple minutes earlier tomorrow. Is that okay?” I nodded wordlessly, and she gave me a tight smile and walked away. I stared after her until the door into her house shut behind her. By the time Tuesday came, and I was waiting for her next to her car before she ever walked outside, I knew I’d underestimated her. Maybe I’d even overestimated myself, on what that night together and the texting the following night had done to her. For some reason, her memory of Friday night was synonymous with good feelings or warm fuzzies or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it. It was probably arrogance on my part to assume that, that all she needed to do was remember that it happened, and she would what? Be begging to do it again? By the time those thoughts were unfurling in my head, she was heading toward the car, and stopped short when she saw me waiting for her. The shock blanketing her face was enough to mute me on the car ride to school. Scarlet was the kind of girl who equated physical intimacy with … I don’t know, feelings. With trust and respect. I physically shuddered. Not out of terror or anything, but because I felt so fucking lost. After these last couple of weeks, no matter what I’d said to her or shared with her, Scarlet still probably expected very little from me. And to her, a few orgasms ranked low on her list of priorities. But that was probably the only thing she thought I could give to her. That chafed, considering that I’d been idiot enough to share shit with her that no one else knew. I mumbled a goodbye to her when she pulled the car in front of the field, but my abrupt manner didn’t seem to bother her. She’d sat stiffly next to me the whole

ride, yesterday too, so she may have not even noticed that I was stuck inside my own head. Believe me, it wasn’t a place that I got trapped often. Cameron and Denard were tossing a ball to each other, zig zagging across the grass before tossing it back. D faked a pass to Cameron, then pivoted toward me, pitching the ball at me. I caught it with an oomph. “Thanks, dick.” I tossed my backpack on the field behind me, and told him to run a fade route. D took off like a shot, Cameron sprinting after him to act as the corner back. They shoved at each other after about fifteen yards, then D veered to the left, getting a few feet of separation from Cam. I danced back a few steps and heaved the ball into the air, whooping when the tight spiral sailed right over Cameron and dropped into D’s outstretched hands about thirty yards down the field. They jogged back toward me, Cameron elbowing Denard when D tried to trip him. “There was some heat on the ball, man,” D said, tossing the ball at me. “You want to run a few more of those?” I pushed up on my tip toes, bouncing on the balls of my feet a little and then stretched my left arm across my chest. “Nah, it’s fine.” “Cheapest therapy around.” His dark brown, almost black eyes watched me carefully. Of all the guys on our team, Denard was the most weirdly intuitive. He had six older sisters—they were raised by a single mother after his dad died in a car accident—so he always joked that the estrogen level from his childhood rewired his brain a little bit. He’d had the same girlfriend since the age of sixteen, so anyone who needed relationship or girl advice ended up talking to him about it. “Who says I need therapy?” I walked past both of them, shouldering Cam hard and laughing when he cursed. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it,” D said easily, keeping pace with me. “Just noticed you’ve been a little quiet.” “Oh fuck,” I muttered. “Here we go.” “You dating someone?” “D, seriously.” Leaning down to grab my left ankle, I stretched out one side of my leg and then the other, praying to all things holy that he would fucking drop it. But then it kinda pissed me off that I was even in this situation in the first place. “I just don’t even know why it’s so fucking hard with women,” I said in a rush, not making eye contact with D and hoping that Cameron had wandered off because he saw something shiny. “I mean; we all enjoy ourselves in bed. We have to fuck it up with stupid games and second guessing and complications. It’s fucking stupid.” My breath left my lungs in a rush, and D straightened up to his impressive sixsix height, folding his muscled biceps and meeting me straight on.

“So you like a girl,” Cameron crowed from behind me. I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like her. I want to fuck her. Don’t read into it.” Wanted to fuck her again, technically. And so much more than that, but there was no damn way I’d be admitting that to those two, especially Cameron. “If that’s all it is, why does it piss you off so much? Just find someone else,” D said. “I’m not pissed off,” I yelled in a voice that sounded like I was pissed off. “It’s just dumb.” “Getting defensive,” Cameron mused, tapping a finger against his chin. “Yup, yup. The signs are all there, D.” I tried to laugh, but it sounded tight and uncomfortable. “What the hell ever, douchebags. Just go run your sprints. I can deal with my chick problems on my own.” Cameron ran down the field to where Coach was barking orders. D waited though, his hands propped on his hips. “Oh God, what?” “Say all you want, Madsen. If it’s more with whoever she is, that’s okay. But if you have to talk about her behind her back in a way that you wouldn’t talk to her face? Don’t be that guy.” He gestured behind us to the groups of guys on the field, doing various workouts under the hot June sun. “You think I give a shit whether they call me pussy whipped?” “No, because Tasha is fucking awesome.” He laughed, his white teeth practically blinding against his dark skin. “I know, man. She really is. But if it’s something? Don’t downplay it, I don’t care who you’re talking to. Because if you’re downplaying it to people, whether they matter in your life or not, then why would she think she matters to you?” Then he slugged me in the shoulder and ran off, his advice curling around my scattered head. As much as I wanted to shrug it off as the ramblings of a kept man, D was right. I was so pissed off this morning by the fact that Scarlet clearly didn’t expect anything more from me than something under the heading of wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. And why should she? I’d done nothing to persuade her otherwise. And maybe I didn’t want to shuffle too closely to saying she mattered to me, but I couldn’t deny that in a short window of time, her opinion of me was starting to carry weight, to be of some consequence in my mind. The six-week window of her parents being gone felt like one of those sand-filled hourglass thingies, the perfect opportunity to accomplish something with her. Every day another grain slipped through, and I’d wasted two of them, not texting her or calling her, or even attempting a polite conversation with her in the car. Because I was a giant asshole, apparently. “Fuck,” I whispered under my breath, kicking the toe of my shoe at the bright green grass under my feet. I had to do something to show her. I pulled my phone out, doing a quick Google Maps search. My afternoon and evening were open, like

most of them were in the summer after workouts and class. Now all I had to do was wait until she picked me up and pray that she didn’t feel like killing me. Five hours later, she was waiting for me, which probably didn’t help my cause. But when I rapped a knuckle on the driver’s side window, she didn’t immediately give me the death look, where she narrowed her eyes and twisted her mouth up, so that was good. Very, very slowly, her window rolled down. “What?” “Get out.” Her brows caved in a little bit toward her eyes. “Huh?” “I’m driving.” Then I pointed from myself to her car, in case we needed a game of charades to help her along. “Why would I let you drive?” “Because you don’t know where we’re going next.” “I,” she stopped, looking down at the steering wheel like it may clear up her confusion, “wait, what?” “I’d like to drive,” I said slowly. “Because I’m taking you somewhere.” Her mouth popped into an ‘o’ shape, surprise making her face flush a pretty shade of pink. When she reached up to tuck a nonexistent strand of fiery hair behind one ear, I almost crowed in triumph, because I’d all but won. Then she pulled in a deep breath and reached down to unbuckle her seat belt. Like the fucking gentleman I was, I opened her car door so she could get out. There was a brief moment of deja vu from Friday night, when I’d opened the door for her in her driveway. “You’re not going to tell me?” she asked quietly, eyes darting past me, like she was checking to see if anyone was around. Since this morning, she’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail that sat high up on her head. Not a single strand of hair fell around her face, so all I could see was her clean, pale skin and big, brown eyes. Yeah, I think I could admit she mattered now, standing where I was. I just shook my head, not really able to speak in the wake of that revelation. Scarlet skirted past me and practically skipped to the other side of the car. Before she opened up the passenger door to get in, I caught a glimpse of her face. Her lips were curved in this tiny little smile that made my heart pinch. Scarlet looked excited. And happy. And I’d done that for her. We got settled, and since I was driving, she let me pick the music. “So,” I asked her after I’d flipped it to WFNX, “how was class?” It almost made me laugh, the expression on her face. “It was fine,” she answered cautiously. “Umm, how was practice?” “Not practice,” I corrected after merging onto I-90. “Summer workouts. We have to take classes all year round, so we work out in the mornings for two to three hours, then have class. Practice doesn’t start until August.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” I glanced over at her, checking to see if she was making fun, but she wasn’t. Her eyes were trained on my face, expression open and friendly. With a nod, I looked back at the road. “So, on your list,” I said after a few minutes of quiet. “How long of a car ride constitutes a road trip?” Scarlet let out a soft laugh, which made me smile. “Well, I guess I haven’t really thought about it.” “Shocking.” When she didn’t answer right away, I expected some tossed-out insult about how my brain probably didn’t function past when my next meal and my next lay would come from, but when I looked over at her I could tell she was thinking. “I guess a road trip would count as somewhere I haven’t been before,” then she glanced down at the console and her water bottle. “And where we have to make at least one stop on the way, either for food or to use a restroom.” “A fair definition.” This little jaunt may or may not work, but I wasn’t going to force the issue. We drove for another twenty or so minutes, making intermittent conversation, when she looked over at me. “Hey, Leo?” “Hmm?” “Would you mind taking this next exit? I didn’t really grab any lunch, and you haven’t exactly told me how much longer we’ll be driving.” I smiled over at her, feeling a warmth settle in my chest at the idea that she wanted this to be another list item just as much as I did. “We’ve got a solid hour to go. You sure you want to stop already?” The wheels were turning in her head, I could tell. She pulled up her phone, and did some typing on the screen. Then she squealed, doing a little jumping dance in her seat that made me laugh. “Are you serious?” “Well, how can I answer if I have no idea what you’re looking at?” “Six Flags? Are you taking me to ride a roller coaster?” Her voice was breathless and a little choppy from excitement and nerves, and without thinking, I reached over to grab the top of her thigh. I felt her stiffen slightly under my hand, but she didn’t say anything. So instead of pressing my luck, I squeezed, not letting my fingers brush against her soft skin like I wanted to. “You’re not going to chicken out, are you? Because we’re not going to ride the kiddy ones.” When she swallowed noisily and sank into her seat, I laughed again. Scarlet was quiet for a few minutes before shifting to face me. “If I die on a roller coaster, you should know now that this is really nice, Leo. Thank you.” The praise fell from her mouth easily, probably because she had no clue what it meant to me. It sharpened everything in the car; the way she smelled and the

happy brightness in her face, the way the curve of the steering wheel was slightly cracked underneath my palm. My first instinct was to brush it off or crack a joke, like I was only doing it because I didn’t want her to post my dick pic to Facebook or something, but I swallowed that and smiled over at her instead. “You’re welcome, Scarlet.” In response, she let out a contented sigh, and stared out the windshield, practically vibrating with happiness. “I can’t do this.” “Yes you can. This is the easiest part.” But she wasn’t budging. Very carefully, I grabbed her shoulders from where I stood behind her and tried to urge her forward. “No freaking way,” she stated and planted her feet on the asphalt. When I laughed, she whipped around and punched me in the stomach. “Seriously, with the hitting?” I rubbed at my stomach where I’d probably have bruises in the shape of Scarlet’s knuckles. Then I sighed and attempted a different approach. “Scarlet, it’s not like I’m making you do this alone. I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Her eyes were wary and huge in her face, and I tried very, very hard not to laugh again. People milled past us, the parking lot packed with cars, given the perfect blue, cloudless sky above us. “Look,” I said when she still hadn’t moved. She glanced over at me, finally relaxing her stance when she saw that I was taking her seriously. “If you can’t go through the entrance, how do you expect to ride a coaster?” The main entrance to Six Flags New England, with the large white columns holding up a traditional peaked roof and brick faced building, looked like something out of history— more in place with Boston— where someone might find it on a walking tour of the city to see where important pieces of American history had played out. Weaving lines of people made the slow journey into the park, some waiting patiently, some not. I was starting to fall in line with the latter crowd. “But what if I can’t? What if you pay all this money to get us in, and I can’t ride it?” “Who says I’m paying?” She laughed, albeit nervously, but at least she laughed. Not thinking too deeply about it, I reached my hand over and wound my fingers through hers. When she looked down in surprise, I squeezed. The answering smile she gave me was a tad on the confused side, but mine probably looked about the same. Suddenly, this moment felt very date-ish. I hadn’t planned on that, which maybe meant that I was an idiot after all my protests to the contrary. So I started walking, pulling Scarlet along so that she had no choice but to follow me into the

park. We were waiting behind a couple that looked a few years younger than us, maybe still in high school. The girl had tucked her hands into the back pockets of her boyfriend’s jeans, and his arm was propped up around her thin shoulders. He was dragging his nose over her cheek, whispering things into her ear that made her giggle and stand closer. When they started kissing, Scarlet dropped my hand, which made me glance over at her, assuming that she was either avoiding them or looking at them with disgust. But the sheer longing on her face almost dropped my jaw. Like she couldn’t stand holding my hand when the real thing was directly in front of us. I couldn’t really blame her, because as much as I wanted to prove something to her today, that couple was not us. The rest of the time we waited in line felt stiffer, a touch uncomfortable every time my shoulder brushed up against her or the press of people forced her to move next to me or in front of me. At one point, I guided her over by laying my hand on her hip, and as soon as the people were clear, she all but jumped away. By the time I paid the bored employee, I didn’t even know what to say to Scarlet. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry too much about that. We moved through the entrance, the bright line of sun on the asphalt appearing just in front of us. For a second, I was afraid she’d start treating that as the thing she couldn’t move past, but she kept walking, heading toward the large, looming coasters toward the edges of the park. “You know why I don’t like coming to these places?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me. “Because you’re afraid of plummeting to your death from the sky?” The look she gave me made my poor balls shrivel up for a second. I grimaced. “Sorry, that sounded better in my head.” Then she started waving her hands around in the air, like a freaking crazy person. I glanced around, but no one was paying her a lick of attention. “This!” she hissed, still waving around. I stepped back before she whacked me on the side of the face. “All the screaming.” “Uhhh…” “No one would ever know if someone was screaming for real.” Her face was deadly serious, and I finally noticed that it was devoid of any color. “What if I broke my arm? Or got stabbed? Or someone tried to kidnap me? Everyone would keep walking around in a selfish haze of adrenaline and think that I’m just another roller-coaster-riding, screaming person!” Truly, it wasn’t hard to smother my smile, because she was about one paranoid delusion away from hyperventilating. So kinda like when I grabbed her hand, I just did what felt normal. I stepped into her and wrapped my arms around her shaking frame. At first she braced her hands against my chest to push me away, but a shuddering breath later, she was clutching at my back like I was the only thing that would save her from all those things. I knew why men did stupid shit to impress women. I did. The way Scarlet had her

forehead pressed into my sternum, the way she’d fisted her hands into my shirt made me feel invincible. And humbled. Then she ruined it by opening her mouth. “Oh my word, are you doing this whole trip for stuff like this?” She shoved me back and looked at me with slits for eyes. “So I get all freaked out and you get to feel me up?” I worked my jaw and gave her slitty eyes right back. “Don’t be an idiot.” “I’m sorry,” she said, holding a shaking hand over her mouth and staring up at me. “I feel insane right now. Like my stomach is going to explode through my feet and my skin is going to shrink over my bones and my brain is jumping in my skull, and I’m not even on the stupid ride yet!” The relief that I felt over the fact that she didn’t actually think I was doing all of this to get laid was short-lived. Because wasn’t I showing her that she could trust me with all the other stuff on her list? I shoved that thought aside and dropped a heavy arm around her shoulder, guiding her through the crowds toward Batman: The Dark Knight. The ride that would most likely make her piss her pants. But no way was I bringing her here and letting her get on one of the pussy rides. “Don’t worry about it, Scarlet. I know that when it comes to me, you’re much less likely to hold onto the filter that you’d typically use in polite society. Lucky me.” She laughed, briefly leaning into me while we walked. We made it back to Batman, the line shorter than I thought for such a big-ass ride on a gorgeous summer afternoon. Scarlet stayed quiet while we weaved through to the platform and waited our turn to get on the massive swooping structure of blue and gray steel. She was right about the screaming. You got used to it after a while, random peaks and swells of high pitched voices coming from all directions in the park. The only thing breaking it up was the rumble and shudder of machinery, but that too became almost unnoticeable after a bit. Once we shuffled up onto the covered platform and into a row of the floorless seats, I could hear Scarlet whispering to herself. Even my stomach started rolling with nerves, the sharp, jerky movements of my heart strongly mimicking the motion of the coaster. “What are you saying?” I asked while we sat down, pulling the yellow frame down over my shoulders before she did hers. “Basically I’m making a deal with God that if I don’t die, I’ll never do another bad thing in my life. Give all my money to the poor, that kind of thing.” “Sure, sounds good.” A park employee checked our bindings. Scarlet was gripping the silver handles so tightly that I was surprised that her skin didn’t split over the knuckles. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” she chanted next to me, her eyes pinched shut.

“You still feeling thankful?” “No, I fucking hate you.” A shocked laugh burst out of my mouth, which was quickly swallowed by Scarlet’s whimpers when we started moving forward and up. We were nearing the top, and I could finally see the dark water of the Connecticut River. Even though the ride didn’t take the sharp dip that Scarlet probably expected it to, she started screaming. Her screams got lost with everyone else’s while we flew through the dips and the curves. My stomach was weightless, the air flying past my face while I whooped and yelled. Sharp jerks pulled my body around, and I started laughing when I took a quick look over at Scarlet. “Open your eyes, Scarlet!” I yelled. She just screamed louder. By the time we pulled to a stop and the yellow frame lifted up from over our shoulders, my entire body felt like it had been turned inside out. It felt fucking awesome. I stood and stretched with a groan, then turned to hold out hand to Scarlet. She still sat on the maroon and black chair, wisps of hair flying around her white face, her whole body frozen. But her eyes were on me. “Are you okay?” “I’m not dead,” she whispered, taking my hand while I laughed. I pulled her up and kept a tight grip on her hand while we walked away from the ride. “You’re not dead.” She was quiet. Then she stopped in her tracks. I looked at her and grinned at the flush in her cheeks and the wild look to her hair. I tucked one piece behind her ear and leaned in. “And you look exactly like you did the night you came on your bed.” Her eyes snapped up to me and held. Yeah. Instant boner. Then she shoved past me and stormed off, taking a sharp right past All American Hot Dog. Okay then. Was I supposed to follow? Give her space because she might feel like she just cheated death? A pre-teen sauntered past and smirked at the front of my gym shorts. I rolled my eyes and jogged in the direction that Scarlet went. I was just about to turn the corner she’d taken when a hand jerked on my elbow, then slammed my back into the wall behind me. Scarlet looked crazy. But like, crazy hot. “Is this a kidnapping attempt? Should I scream for help?” “Shut up, Leo,” she snapped, staring straight at my mouth. Then she fucking kissed me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Truthfully, I hadn’t completely decided to kiss him until a split second before I wrapped my hand around his neck and pulled him to me. Our lips collided so hard that our teeth clashed and he grabbed my face and held on, flipping our positions as if we were riding another rollercoaster and I could easily slip from his grasp. I’d screamed during the entire ride, my hair flying and shielding my eyes. I didn’t know if it was better or worse to have my eyesight obscured as we’d hurtled through the sky at what felt like a million miles an hour, but was probably slower than my car traveled on the interstate. In the background I’d heard his laughter and something about it had soothed me a little, like I wasn’t alone. He wanted me to conquer an item on my list that didn’t involve either of us removing clothing, and I’d made it out the other side—not dead. It was an incredible feeling. And then he’d gone and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear like it was so freaking natural for him before delivering the line that had made my thighs tremble. “Scarlet,” he whispered into my mouth and—I swear to God—I felt the earth rumble beneath our feet. It was the only way to explain the shudder that started in my feet and rippled up my body as we clutched each other. His lips were gentle but his hold on me was bruising and I didn’t want him to let go, not yet. The hand I’d wrapped around his neck pulled him impossibly closer and his teeth sank onto my bottom lip. It was a direct hit between my legs. My other hand grabbed his chest and I dug my nails in. Before Leo, there was no rational way I could have explained that pain could bring pleasure too, but I was so very, very wrong. The brick wall Leo pushed me up against bit into my back and made me pull him closer, needing the pressure of his body against mine. When he broke our lips to kiss down the side of my neck, I thought I was going to fall apart in his arms. Each kiss left a tingle in its place so that I was completely overcome with emotions, from my head to my toes, a bedlam of heightened senses and feelings, breaking me into a million pieces with their urgency. “God,” I sighed as his lips touched the place where my neck met my shoulder. He paid special attention to that spot, brushing the delicate skin just under it with

his five o’clock shadow. Impatient for his mouth on mine, I brought my hands to his face and yanked it up, crushing his lips again to mine. My hips moved wildly, pressing against his. I could feel his attraction against my stomach and if anything, that only made me more demanding of him, of what he could give me. I sucked on his lower lip as hard as I could, anything to give him a taste of the sensations that were battling within me. When I let go, his tongue lashed into my mouth. It was almost punishing in its swipes as his hand slid up under the hem of my shirt and he used his thumbs to keep applying pressure against bare skin. When his hand covered the cup of my bra, I wanted him to rip off my clothes and cross yet another item off the list with some very public sex. And because I wanted that so wantonly, I pulled back and then pushed against his chest when he took my pulling away as a way to change the angle of our kiss. We both breathed heavily as he stared at me and I stared away from him. Suddenly, the noises of the amusement park around us filtered in, like a roar of sound from coming up for air. I heard children laughing, people screaming on the ride, and embarrassment flooded my cheeks for having pushed myself on Leo so enthusiastically. I would have come undone in his arms if we’d gone any further and he wasn’t even my boyfriend. I placed a hand against my swollen lips, dared a glance at Leo. He was still watching me, waiting for me to speak first, but what could I say? Taking me to the amusement park was the nicest thing anyone had done for me in years—and it’d felt almost like a date. Which was a stupid thing to think. He was Leo Madsen, star quarterback and son of a wealthy man. I wasn’t so insecure to think that he was better than me—he was different. He’d grown up privileged and carefree. My future had been carefully planned, down to my middle school electives, so that I would secure a future that would make my family proud. Leo and I were practically different planets, we were so far apart in terms of what made our worlds revolve. “Scarlet?” I tucked my hands into the front pockets of my jeans and tried to act as casual as possible. “Thanks for taking me to Six Flags.” I took a deep breath. “I had a lot of fun.” “Well, there’s still a lot to see.” I didn’t look at him, I only raised my watch to look at the time as if it would change what I was about to say. “It’s time to go home.” “What? It’s only four. The park’s open a few more hours still.” My insides were still in turmoil from the ride and the kiss but I collected myself, smoothed my features, when I said, “Yes, well I have studying to do.” “I thought your summer classes were easy ones.” It rankled that he assumed I was taking a bunch of easy classes while I waited for vet school to begin. “I’m studying to become a veterinarian, Leo. It’s not some bullshit elective.”

He held his hands up in surrender at my tone and I was now even more annoyed. “Calm down, jeez. It was just a question.” He pointed his head toward the entrance to the park. “Let’s get some ice cream before we leave. They have the best stuff.” “I’m fine,” I said, which I knew was ridiculous coming from my mouth. Everyone knew that a woman saying she was fine meant she was not fine, not at all. And yet we still said it, all the time. “Go ahead, I’ll meet you at the car.” He waited a second. “I don’t actually need ice cream. I’m just trying to cool you off.” I clenched my jaw. “Just because I’m serious about my future doesn’t mean I’m uptight,” I said, because I knew that’s what he was implying. “No, the two aren’t inclusive of each other, but you happen to be both.” He was trying to rile me up, I knew. “Just give me my keys.” I held my palm up for them. “I’ll walk you to the car.” “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” “I didn’t say you weren’t. But I’m not in favor of you walking all that way alone.” “I’m not your girlfriend, you know. You don’t have to protect me.” My words were biting, an effect of my mood, but I hadn’t meant to say that—say what I was thinking. “You’re right. You’re not my girlfriend, but you are somewhat of a friend,” he said, and I felt instantly chastised. “And you’re also really pissy right now and I don’t wanna chance waiting in line for ice cream while you’re in the car alone in case you decide to ditch me here.” “Maybe I should.” I wrapped my arms around myself as I followed him, my skin cooling rapidly from having been so worked up when I was kissing Leo, to the block of ice I’d put between us. “I wouldn’t put it past you.” We walked in silence to the car and I felt badly for having been so rude to him that I said, “I meant it. Thanks for taking me. It was fun.” “There’s a lot more fun to be had in there, but since you insist upon going home early…” I gritted my teeth, feeling torn between being apologetic for wanting to leave and being annoyed that he was pressing me on this issue. So I said the one thing I knew would piss him right off into silence. “It was fun, but we can’t abandon all our responsibilities, not when we both have class tomorrow.” It was a dig toward Leo, we both knew, and so I should have been relieved when we spent the entire hour-long ride home in tense silence, but instead I felt like a total fucking bitch.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next several days, things with Leo had cooled so dramatically that we weren’t even speaking apart from “See you at three,” and “I’ll be a little late today.” By the time Friday rolled around, I was feeling like a giant piece of shit for ruining our Tuesday evening at the amusement park. I was so out of my league that Liza—being the best friend she was—must have sensed it, because she showed up on my doorstep Friday night with a large tote bag over one shoulder and a bottle of wine in each hand. “Don’t you have to work?” She pushed past me into the house as if she lived there, because during our years in middle and high school, she practically had. I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she picked up the bag and set it on the counter, sighing in relief. “I switched shifts with Jenny tonight.” “Jenny?” I asked, because Liza had made the name sound familiar. “Yeah, Blowjob Jenny?” I cringed. Liza and her nicknames for people took getting used to. “That’s not a very nice nickname.” “That was her Snapchat username, remember? She likes being Blowjob Jenny— tell me that when I say Blowjob Jenny you don’t know who I’m talking about.” It was hard to forget Jenny, with her trademark fuchsia lipstick and penchant for bragging about her talents in the supreme art of fellatio. We’d seen her at a few off-campus parties over the years and her lipstick had never changed. Once, when we’d been locked in the bathroom at a party Liza had dragged me to, I’d asked her about the lipstick and she had illustrated why she used it by putting a finger in her mouth, wrapping her lips around the base and pulling the finger out and holding it up for examination. “Dudes love that purple ring,” she said, smiling her bright white, perfectly shaped teeth as she twisted her finger in a circle. Blowjob Jenny intimidated me just about as much as every female who was comfortable in their skin did. Leo’s best friend, Adele, was like that. Oozing confidence and sexual power—it was completely out of my comfort zone and part of the reason I’d pulled away from Leo. I wasn’t Blowjob Jenny or Adele or even Liza. I was Scarlet, preacher’s daughter, who was just scratching the surface of her sexual

appetite. “Anyway, Jenny caught her boyfriend defiling the dishwasher and now she’s stuck paying rent by herself.” “Wait. Jenny’s boyfriend was having sexual relations with a dishwasher?” Liza nodded and started unloading the giant tote bag she’d brought with her. “Yeah. Right after the anniversary party we threw a couple weeks ago. In his car. Can you believe it? What a scumbag.” “Wait.” I held up a hand. “You’re talking the dishwasher person? I thought you meant,” I grasped the handle of my kitchen dishwasher and opened it, “dishwasher, that you load dishes into.” Liza raised an eyebrow. “Well, he certainly loaded that dishwasher, if you catch my drift.” She gave me an exaggerated wink. “But no, I was talking about the person. Not the appliance. Susie, I think? But anyway, Jenny has a date next Friday so we swapped shifts.” “She already has a date?” This was exactly why I was intimidated by women my age. I kept waiting for someone to ask me out, but considering the fact that my head was always buried in some book, the chances of that happening for me were not even measurable. “Yeah, I mean, she’s Blowjob Jenny. Dudes like her. Pretty sure she hooked up with Leo once.” The sting of jealousy from that was so strong that it felt like a slap to the face. Imagining Jenny, all that gorgeous brown hair draped over Leo was, well, distressing. When I looked up and saw Liza staring at me, waiting for my reaction, I narrowed my eyes and said, “So what. He’s hooked up with a lot of people. I’m just another notch in his belt.” “Whoa.” She set down the DVD she was holding. “What’s with the Negative Nelly talk?” I held my arms out. “It’s not negative; it’s reality. Leo is experienced and I’m not.” “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you, or that he didn’t have fun with you. Maybe he bounced on a lot of mattresses waiting for the right girl to bounce with him. Or something.” I laughed at Liza’s analogy. “We’ve only done it once. And I was so drunk…” I thought of that night, hated that I only remembered it in bits and pieces. “Well, it doesn’t matter because I’m pretty sure I pissed him off enough that he won’t want me in that way ever again.” “I think we need alcohol before we start talking about your issues—” “I don’t have issues,” I retorted. “Come on, Scarlet. Humor me a little. How many times have we been in the reverse positions here? I’m pretty sure you’re due for a girls’ night with whine, wine, dip and chips and Brad Pitt.” “Brad Pitt?” I asked, because even though he was more than twice my age, he was a total fucking babe. And Liza knew he was my weakness.

Liza held a DVD in each hand. “Fight Club or Moneyball?” “Just those two?” She nodded solemnly. “Yes. And the choice you make matters and will determine how our conversation will go tonight.” I looked at her like she was off her rocker. “Are you kidding me right now?” “Nope.” She pushed the movies to me. “Pick.” I debated between the two. I’d seen them both once, often choosing movies like the Oceans Eleven or A River Runs Through It over either of those two. But I pointed to Moneyball and grabbed two wine glasses from the cupboard. “Excellent choice,” Liza purred. “This means good things.” After handing her the wine opener I asked, “How do you figure?” “Well.” She paused dramatically, as was her way. “If you chose Fight Club, that would mean you were still angry with Leo and if you chose Moneyball, that would tell me you’re willing to watch a movie about sports because you want to understand him a little more.” “Or…” I said, ready to refute Liza’s psychoanalysis, “I’m still scarred from what happened when my mom caught us watching Fight Club back in middle school.” “Oh, yeah, I still have nightmares about that. Who knew your mom would make us watch all eighteen hours of The Ten Commandments? I can still hear her voice, ‘If you want to watch violent movies, watch this one.’” Liza shuddered, her lip curled. “Eighteen hours,” I laughed. “Not so much, but it sure felt that long.” I held my wine glass across the island and she filled it. “But I chose Moneyball because,” I lifted the glass to my lips, pointed a finger at her, “men in tight pants.” “Ahhhh,” she sighed. “There’s my Scarlet.” Bringing the wine and dip and Brad Pitt with us, we decided to watch the movie in the family room that my father had built over the garage. As Liza set up the DVD, I chanced a glance out the window that looked across the street and saw the light in Leo’s room. His blinds were up, so I had a clear view into his room, but he wasn’t there. “Are you pining?” Liza asked, coming up and wrapping an arm around the tops of my shoulders. “No.” I didn’t even know what pining was. “You know, I used to spend most of my weekends over at his house, watching movies and riding bikes.” “Yeah, I know. And then he became a giant asshole in high school.” Back then, it’d been easy to think of him as an asshole. But he wasn’t, really. When his voice had deepened and he’d joined the football team, his status had changed overnight. But I’d always been the bookworm, and when Leo became the popular guy, I didn’t fit in. Our weekends suddenly stopped because he was always gone, at parties I wasn’t invited to or hanging with people who didn’t want to hang with me. And in our distance apart, a sort of antagonism had grown. Once we’d gone away to college, he’d never once looked me up or texted me or made a single effort to spend any time with me. In the six years since we’d been close, there’d

been a lot of resentment on my side for him abandoning me for everyone else. “He wasn’t an asshole, Liza. He just had more friends than I did.” “Hey, I’m not complaining. He made room for me to sneak in and corrupt you to the point of no return.” It was something my mother had once said, and we’d often joked about it together. In the last couple years, when my mom would ask Liza and I what we were up to I’d quipped, “Corrupting me to the point of no return.” We’d always dissolved into a fit of giggles at the look of my mother’s exasperation written plainly on her face. As we settled into the couch, both of us reclining the seats, I told myself not to look out the window at Leo’s light. “So tell me what happened.” Liza clicked the play button on the menu screen and then shifted so she was facing me. “Well, he found the bucket list—thanks for all the purple glittery hearts around his name, by the way. Not embarrassing at all to explain that.” “Here to serve,” she said, doing a lazy bow on the couch. “And what did he say?” “He wants to help me tackle the list this summer. And I wasn’t ready to be like, ‘Sure, should you drop your pants right here so I can blow you?’” I sipped my wine, relaxed back into the cushions. “And so later that night he texted me—well, actually, he sexted me.” “Oh my God.” Liza reached over and clamped a hand on my forearm. “Was it hot?” My cheeks warmed as I nodded. “And he sent me pictures.” I chewed on my lip. “You little hold-out. Are you going to share the love?” She batted her eyelashes at me, but I shook my head. “No, definitely not.” I didn’t feel comfortable explaining why not, because it felt very private and personal to me. And I’d feel betrayed if he did it to me. “So then nothing after that for a couple days until Tuesday.” “When he took you to Six Flags,” Liza filled in, having known that much. “Yeah. He wanted to cross off another item on the list, something that wasn’t sexual and then, right after the rollercoaster I practically ate his face.” “Whoa.” “Yeah. I initiated it. And then I felt stupid. Like, he took me on a rollercoaster. It clearly wasn’t a date because we are not dating, but then I kissed him like it was more than just him doing something nice for me.” I set my wine glass on the coffee table and buried my face in my hands. “And then I told him we should go home and said something really bitchy about me being responsible—insinuating that he’s not.” “Oh, geez Scarlet. You are beating yourself up over something so little.” I shook my head. “No way. It’s kind of a big deal to him, the fact that I made him sound irresponsible. He hasn’t spoken anything other than the necessary to me all week.” I turned to the screen as the first baseball player came onto the field. I pointed and Liza and I admired it for a moment before she turned back to me. “When you kissed him, did he act … repulsed?”

“I was eating his face; didn’t really have time to see how he was reacting.” “Dudes are into The Walking Dead, he probably thought that was super hot.” Liza picked up my glass and pushed it back into my hands. “But did he touch you back?” I thought of the hand that had crept up my shirt and covered my breast. “Well, yeah. But he’s a guy—it’s not exactly astonishing that he’d react.” “Come on, now you’re making him sound like a guy who only thinks with his dick.” She drained her wine glass. “And while they probably do seventy-five percent of their thinking with that particular head, it’s not all the thinking they do. Leo Madsen is not going to kiss you back if he doesn’t want to.” I gently shook my wine glass, letting the wine swirl around. “I guess. I just don’t want him to feel obligated to, I don’t know, make all my sexual dreams come true.” I said it with a lot of sarcasm and earned an eye roll from Liza for it. “Stop it. You’re coming back to the same issue. Whose idea was it to tackle your bucket list?” “His.” “And who sexted you later that night, so that you could cross it off your list?” “He did.” “And who took you to an amusement park so that you could cross off your neardeath moment?” “He did. Look, I know what you’re saying. It’s all his idea.” “Exactly. So stop calling yourself an obligation. I’m pretty sure Leo has never felt obligated to do a single thing in his life, so stop worrying about it. So what, you kissed him. He kissed you back. And then you acted super weird about it. Oh well.” She lifted her glass to her mouth, but realized it was empty. Grabbing mine, she finished it off. “I’m sleeping here tonight, by the way.” “Okay,” I said, nodding. “You need to be the one to initiate now. Since he’s been doing it all this time and the one thing you initiated, you fucked up.” “Thanks,” I replied morosely. “Ease into it. Don’t jump into something sexy right away, but initiate another bucket list item.” “Like what?” “Where’s the list?” “Downstairs, in the kitchen. Probably somewhere on the island still.” “’Kay,” she said, standing up and holding our wine glasses. “I’ll get us a refill and grab the list. Eat some chips.” I opened the bag and scooped out a generous amount of dip before shoving it into my face. It was so freaking good. I forgot how good it felt just to relax with wine and junk food. For such a long time, I’d been so completely focused on studying that I hardly ate—a banana here, a spoonful from the peanut butter jar there. I had all this time to myself, that I didn’t know how to fill. And yet, right across the street was a guy who wanted to make my summer fun, give me

something to remember. Liza was right—and it was something I grudgingly admitted—I needed to loosen up and not screw it up this time. “Here,” Liza said, her voice muffled as she came into the room, wine glasses in each hand and the list hanging out of her mouth. I pulled it out and made a face at the clear bite impression on the sheet. “You should take a picture of the list, because it’s hanging on its last legs.” She had a point. It had been folded over and over so many times that all the creases were soft, worn, the words that crossed over the creases getting harder and harder to read. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the list. “Which one should I do next?” “Hmm.” Liza ran a finger before stopping. “This. It’s not sexy, but kind of sexy.” Liza logic never failed to perplex me. I looked at her choice and picked up my phone before I could talk myself out of it. Scarlet: Can we talk, tomorrow? “Ooh, the suspense!” Liza exclaimed. I stared at my phone as if I could will his reply to come faster. When a couple minutes went by, my confidence started to deflate. “Look out the window, see if he’s home?” I found myself standing up and stretching before casually walking to the window and looking out. All of the lights in Leo’s house were on, so it took me a second to focus on the light I wanted, and as soon as I found it, I froze. His light was still on, his blinds were still up, and he was sitting on his bed, looking at his hands. I couldn’t see what he was holding, but I didn’t have a lot of time to look because his head lifted and, stunned, I dropped to the floor. “Oh my God.” “Did he see you?” Liza screeched. “I don’t know!” Shit. “He’s going to think I’m a total creeper, staring into his window.” “You are a total creeper. You’re like that guy in that Jennifer Lopez movie, The Boy Next Door.” “Stop it, I am not.” “You are. All sexually worked up over him. You’re so creepy, Scarlet.” “Stop it.” I started laughing because she was being very convincing even though we both knew she was lying. “Oh wait, even better—Swimfan. You even have her crazy eyes down pat.” “Stop!” I held my stomach as I laughed. “You should poke your head up and see if he can still see you.” “Right, because my giant head creeping up a window to look at him is not

creepy.” “I didn’t say it wasn’t creepy, I just said you should do it. For laughs.” “You’re such a great friend.” “I know.” She scooted down the sofa so she was closer to the window and had a better angle, being further away than I was. “Okay, he’s not there.” “Thank God.” I lifted my head and—to my chagrin—met his eyes right away, since he was now standing at his window, looking directly at us. I rolled away from the window and couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out. “You liar!” I laughedyelled pointing at Liza. “You’re going to make me paranoid to ever look out my window again. Liza flopped onto her back onto the sofa. “You should have seen how you reacted. Perfect tuck and roll, Scarlet. Ten points.” “I hate you sometimes.” “No you don’t,” she grinned at me, as I sat on the floor, my back to the wall. A chime alerted me to my phone on the coffee table and I crawled to it, too afraid to stand up and have Leo see me yet again. “He replied,” I said, swiping my phone open and began reading it aloud. Leo: Come over in the afternoon sometime. “Maybe he didn’t see me spying on him.” Liza snorted. “Fat chance.” My phone chirped again and I read his next text aloud, sending Liza into a fit of laughter so infectious that I couldn’t help but join her. Leo: Do you need to borrow some binoculars?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“So what you’re saying is you haven’t finished proving your point.” My dad sighed, pouring water over ice into the large mug he always drank out of when he worked from home. “It’s not about proving a point, Leo.” When I snorted, he gave me a sharp look. “Hasn’t it been good for you?” “Given that I have no clue what your barometer is for what’s good for me or not, I wouldn’t dare make a guess.” He laughed, which surprised me. Everyone told me that I looked exactly like him, other than having my mom’s light colored eyes. When he smiled like that, it shifted his entire demeanor, like he suddenly wasn’t some stern business guy that still managed to intimidate me, even though I was well into adulthood. “When you have kids, you’ll get it. It’s different for you than it is for your brother. Grant never totaled his car because he was checking Facebook.” “Because Facebook wasn’t around when Grant was my age.” “Cute.” He took a long drink of his water and started walking toward his office, which was at the front of the house. “When I think you’ve learned a lesson—” The chime of the doorbell interrupted him, and I refrained from cursing. I’d barely seen him in the last couple weeks, and as much as I hated begging for scraps of his time like a little kid, I wanted to have a fucking car again. But playing college football didn’t pay the bills, so I was at his mercy until I was drafted. If I was drafted. I was turning to head up the stairs to my room when my dad boomed happily. “Scarlet, good to see you, my dear!” “Thank you, Mr. Madsen. Is, uhh, is Leo around?” I clapped my dad on the shoulder and nodded in greeting to her. “Thanks, Dad. I got it.” The pleased-as-fucking-punch look on his face made me want to roll my eyes. Then he winked at me and I all but shoved him away. When he was behind the door, he held up his hand in an ‘okay’ gesture, then pointed to where Scarlet was still standing. I really should have stayed on campus over the summer.

Facing Scarlet, where she stood under the shade of our front porch was smiling nervously at me, and I couldn’t stop the twinge of pissiness aimed at her too. “What’s up?” “Can we talk for a minute?” Settling my shoulder against the door frame, I held my hand up like, go right ahead. “Maybe somewhere private?” she whispered. “Why, Scarlet?” Somewhere deep, deep inside, I knew I shouldn’t be a dick to her. But damn it, I wanted to not be the one doing all the work between us. For once. But I was too annoyed to attempt to play games, so she’d have to fucking deal with it if my honesty bothered her. “I did something nice for you, and you went out of your way to make me feel irresponsible because of it.” She was wringing her hands in front of her, staring up at me with giant, pleading brown eyes. “That wasn’t fair, I know.” I lifted an eyebrow and kept waiting, but she didn’t continue. “Is that your way of apologizing?” “No,” she said, completely flustered. “Please, Leo, can we just talk somewhere a little less … public?” You know when you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other? They were fucking each other up while I watched her fidget in front of me. Take pity on her, the angel whispered, she’s nervous. Don’t let that uptight bitch take advantage of you again, the devil raged on the other side. Naturally, the angel won out. You like her, Leo. And if you like someone, you give them the benefit of the doubt. “Fine. Come in, we can talk downstairs,” I said, sounding weary to my own ears. The answering smile that she gave me was so swamped with relief that I laughed a little. “Geez, Scarlet. Didn’t know you needed me so badly.” She didn’t respond to my teasing, too busy gaping at the house while we walked toward the basement. I opened the door and gestured for her to go first. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen it before.” “Well,” she said, looking back over her shoulder while she walked down the carpeted steps, “I haven’t been here in like six or seven years. It looks really different.” Once we cleared the stairs, Scarlet made some respectably effusive statements about the room. I couldn’t blame her. My mom had gone full-out man cave when she’d renovated. The wet bar lining the back wall had mahogany cabinets with glass inserts, black granite countertops and four high back leather-topped stools that sat in front of the island. In the past, I’d thrown parties for the Super Bowl and the final games of the World Series and the Stanley Cup that had capped somewhere around twenty-five people. And they’d fit comfortably on the two L-Shaped leather couches that were aimed at the sixty-inch LED screen that we’d had mounted on the wall. Everything was richly toned and masculine, all leather and dark wood and plush carpet. And for

a few long minutes, she just turned and stared at everything. I swear, I tried to not stare at her ass. But there was no way I was winning that battle. She had on these little white cotton shorts that would probably look boring on anyone else. But as with her and her wily, seductress ways that she wasn’t even aware she possessed, the shorts with the black tank top looked downright pornographic to me. Which was evidenced by the fact that she was speaking to me, and I was staring at her tits, and how they pressed up against the black fabric that made me want to— “Leo?” “Right. Yes. What?” “Did you hear what I said?” Shit. “You said that uhh—” “I can’t believe you didn’t hear me. It was hard enough for me to say it once, Leo.” “Well, then this time should be a piece of cake.” I walked past her and took my normal spot on the couch. Scarlet followed and sat carefully on the cushion next to me, angling herself so that our knees almost touched. She pulled in a deep breath, her eyes closed. I wanted to smile, because I’d never met anyone who spent so much time in her own head as Scarlet. My brain was too entrenched in that thought process that I almost missed it when she repeated herself. “I need to shoplift something and I don’t know how to do it,” she said in a rush, pinching her eyes shut even tighter than before. Interesting. Settling in, I weaved my fingers together and braced my hands behind my head. After a few moments, her eyes popped open and settled on me. Then she looked around the room like there might be someone else to respond to what she’d just said. “And?” I said after another couple seconds. Scarlet scoffed. “What do you mean and? I just told you.” “You didn’t tell me jack shit,” I pointed out. “What am I supposed to take from that statement, Scarlet? Do you want to rip off my parents in some way?” “Obviously not.” “How am I supposed to know that? You said you didn’t know how to do it, so for all I know, you want to tuck one of our DVDs in your bra and walk out the door so you can cross something else off your list.” I glanced down at her chest again, lingering around some of my favorite parts while she crossed her arms in a belated attempt to cover herself. “On second thought, you’d never fit one in there.” “You are the most misogynistic prick I’ve ever met in my life, Leo.” She pushed up and started storming off, but I laughed and snatched her wrist so I could yank her back down on the couch. “I’m kidding, Scarlet. I’m kidding.” “Well it’s not funny.” To my absolute horror, her dark eyes became shiny and wet. “Do you know how hard it was for me to come over here and ask for your

help?” “Hey, hey, please don’t cry,” I said as soothingly as I could manage. With no sisters, and a best friend who cried as infrequently as Stalin, I always felt completely inept when confronted with female tears. And seeing Scarlet cry? It was like someone was shanking me with a rusty ax. And it made me want to do things like wipe at her face and stroke her hair and hold her hand, all of which would probably end in my bodily dismemberment. “I’m not crying,” she insisted, shifting away from me on the couch. She took a deep, steadying breath and then met my eyes again. “So is that a yes? You’ll help me with this?” Of course I was going to do it. Miss the opportunity to watch her steal something? No fucking way. But because the feeling of her sitting in front of me and asking for my help, albeit for this one thing, was about as good as most women flashing me, I needed to relish the moment a bit. I dragged my thumb along my lower lip, completely fucking satisfied when her eyes flicked down to watch the movement. “I’ll help you,” I said, and then smiled at the triumphant gleam in her eyes. “But we’re doing it now.” “Now?” she squeaked. I leaned forward and planted a hard, fast kiss on her mouth, pulling back before she could protest. “Now, Jennings. Let’s get a move on.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Ouch, would you yank your claws out of my skin?” “Do you think they have security cameras? Should I wear a wig?” “Scarlet,” I sighed, gently taking her hand and unfurling the tightly clenched fingers that were currently attempting to remove the skin from my forearm. “It’s the Corner Store. The cashier won’t even notice that you took anything.” “Of course he’ll notice,” she whisper-yelled at me, even though we were still in her car in the empty parking lot. “He can’t hear you.” The look in her eyes was a little wild when she glanced over at me, the color high in her cheeks. She’d changed to jeans, at my suggestion, and surprisingly didn’t question me when I told her to do it. My reasons were sound, I promise. The guy was less likely to watch every move that she made if she wasn’t showing all of the bare, smooth length of her legs. Considering how short Scarlet was, you’d think her legs would mirror that. But they seemed so long whenever she moved, the small sway of her hips adding to their length when she walked. On the drive over, we’d discussed—ad nauseum—what the plan was. I’d go in first, ask if they carried something in particular. The guy working behind the counter would probably take a couple minutes chatting with me, Scarlet would come in, wander up one aisle, then down the next. She’d pick up a small pack of gum or candy bar, then casually walk back out the door, pretending like she didn’t find what she was looking for. I’d pay for my purchase, thank the man and be on my way. But in all the times that we discussed it, I hadn’t counted on Scarlet’s complete lack of acting skills. Or tact. I did my part. Now, I’m sure it’s not surprising that I walked calmly into the small store, which wasn’t actually named The Corner Store, it’s just what all the people in our neighborhood had always called it. In fact, Scarlet and I had frequented the Corner Store more than once as we were growing up, when our moms would give us fifty cents to spend on candy. The memory of her at that age, maybe seven or eight, hit me the moment I heard

the ding of the bell above my head. She always had her hair in stick straight braids coming down on either side of her pale, serious face. Actually, seeing the black and white linoleum beneath my flip flops reminded me in a blinding, stark moment that Scarlet was probably the person who’d been in my life the longest. Adele and I hadn’t become friends until high school, and the same with Hunter, who I met through football. “Hey man, how’s it goin’?” The clerk called out from where he sat on a stool behind the gleaming white counter. “Not too bad. Hot as hell out there. Be glad you’re in the AC in here, bro.” He was young, and the second I actually started talking back, called him bro like a giant douche, he sat up straighter. His skinny arms shuffled things around on the immaculate counter, like he was trying to look busy. “Hey, you don’t happen to carry any of that Mighty Squirrel, do you?” When he gulped, looking around, I wanted to pat myself on the back. I’d purposely thrown out something random that he probably didn’t get asked about much. His thin hand came up and scratched the side of his face while he hummed in thought. “Mighty Squirrel?” “Yeah, it’s a beer that’s got a decent amount of protein in it,” I gave him a look when I said it, like, because we both know how important that is, right? He nodded like he’d heard it straight from my mouth. The bell dinged behind me, signaling that Scarlet had entered. About fucking time. The guy only spared her a small glance. Good girl. “So I figured I’d check here. I really don’t want to have to drive into Boston to grab a six-pack, you know?” The crash came first, packages of Hershey’s bars scattering across the length of the floor. “Oh crap,” Scarlet gushed, kneeling on the floor to pick up what she’d knocked over. “I’m so sorry, I’ll pick this up.” “I’ll get it, miss, don’t worry about it.” He’d already started around the counter, staring at Scarlet with a look of annoyance-tinged lust. Because, obviously. She was kneeling on the ground, which gave him a money shot right down Scarlet’s tank top. He and I could both see the edge of her red lace bra cupping her luscious tits. I snaked a hand out to stop him, motioning for him to go back behind the counter. He wanted to argue, I could see it, but I quickly slipped him ten bucks. His bony ass hit the stool with a thud. “Let me help you with that,” I said while I knelt next to Scarlet on the floor. “We should abort,” she whispered in my ear, gripping onto my knee. “I’ll pick this up, just go grab a pack of Juicy Fruit or something and get it over with.” “But he’s seen me,” Scarlet hissed back, flicking her eyes back up to what’shis-name, who was scrolling through his phone and paying absolutely no attention to us. With quick movements, I picked up the last chocolate bar and set it on the

display. “Just go.” Scarlet hopped up and made a horribly conspicuous beeline toward the gum. As I stood, I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Because it got worse. I don’t even know how, but it got worse. While I fucked around by the cash register, asking the guy about what kind of iPhone he had, which thrilled him to no end, Scarlet decided to pace up and down the three aisles, giving us shifty looks every time she came around an end-cap. “You think she’s okay?” the guy whispered at me when she disappeared past the Pringles for a third time. “I highly doubt it,” I replied honestly. Finally, thank you dear Lord, hallelujah, Scarlet exited the chip aisle and winked at me before walking out the door into the parking lot. She fucking winked at me. Honestly, there were no words. “So,” the guy said, watching Scarlet as she bolted to where her car was parked around the corner, “how hard are you trying to get laid tonight?” With a sigh, I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and passed it to him. “So hard that you can’t even imagine.” I gave him a two-fingered salute and pushed from the door, groaning a little at the wall of heat that I walked into. But as soon as I turned the corner around the building, I was hit with a wall of a whole other kind. The human kind. Scarlet had launched herself at me, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. She was laughing hysterically, and for a brief moment, I wondered whether she was having a mental breakdown. “Leo, holy shit, that was amazing!” she said as she leaned backwards in my arms. “I just walked in, calm as can be—” “—you knocked over half of the store. Literally. Half of it.” “—and then I grabbed something that I didn’t pay for and I walked out! Of the store! And he had no idea!” She was smiling so big that I couldn’t help but smile back. “My little felon. I’m so proud.” Scarlet tipped her head back and laughed. My arms were braced firmly under her ass, but she wiggled for me to set her down on the sidewalk. As soon as I did, she did this adorable little dance thing. “I can’t believe I just did that.” The Corner Store had just made roughly four thousand percent profit on whatever she’d stuck in her pocket, but I was absolutely not going to tell her that. Not if it put a smile like that on her face. “We’re a good team, huh?” I asked, not even shy about the fact that I was searching for a compliment. “It was all right, I suppose.” Ahh, there she was, coy Scarlet. The Scarlet that did weird things to my heart. Instead of playing like she was, I leaned down so she had no choice but to meet my eyes. Then I grabbed the hem of her shirt, right where it skirted her flat

stomach, and used it to pull her toward me. “You’ve got to see how fun this could be. You and me. Making our way through that list.” When I all but growled the last part, her mouth parted and her pupils dilated. “I know.” “Come on, Scarlet.” Then I straightened. “Wait … you know?” She bit her bottom lip and nodded up at me. “I knew before I texted you yesterday.” “You little tease.” I shook my head and laughed. “So now what? Do I get to pick what’s next?” Scarlet turned and practically skipped to her car. “Nope. My list, my choice.” “And when are we starting this?” Hopefully in her post-fake-shoplifting high, she wouldn’t hear the tinge of desperation in my voice. “Tomorrow, Leo,” she answered, before she got in the car. “We start tomorrow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

I brushed away the condensation that had collected on the mirror from my totally luxurious twenty-minute shower and scrutinized my reflection. I held my hair up from my neck, trying to decide how to wear it. I thought I had a pretty neck, speckled with freckles. Just as I pulled the elastic from around my wrist to tie my hair up, I heard Blowjob Jenny’s voice in my head, threw the elastic off my wrist and across the bathroom in a very excessive reaction. “Shit,” I whispered. In truth, I wasn’t sure if inviting Liza over had been a good idea or not, especially because she’d volunteered Blowjob Jenny to instruct me on how to give great fellatio. When I’d opened my door and saw both of them on my doorstep, my stomach sank all the way to the mat under their feet. “Hey, babe!” Jenny exclaimed, smacking the gum in her mouth as she gave me a fuchsia-lipsticked grin. “Ready to talk about sucking dick?” “Um…” I looked at Liza with a you’re-trying-to-embarrass-me-aren’t-you look. “Yeah, let’s do this.” “Great.” Jenny breezed past me and into my house, making herself right at home. “Jenny?” I whispered to Liza as I closed the door behind her. “Really?” “If you’re going to make his blowjob dreams come true, you might as learn from the master, right?” “I was thinking you could kind of ease me into what to do, but no. Bring the Academy Award Winner of Oral Sex to my house and expect me not to be freaking intimidated?” “Get over it.” Liza grabbed my arm and dragged me into the living room, where Jenny was currently looking over my dad’s collection of vinyl records. “Dude, your dad is old school,” she said, pulling out a record. “Well, he is old,” I acknowledged as she flipped the record over. “This vinyl is legit.” She held it up for me to check it out. It was The Coasters Greatest Hits record. “There’s a sexy song on this record, perfect for a strip tease.” “Ah,” I said, looking at Liza, wondering what exactly she had told Jenny I needed help with. “I’ve never listened to that record in particular.”

“Have you ever seen Death Proof? There’s this sexy scene with ‘Down in Mexico’ in the background. It’s a kick ass song. You should listen to it.” “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, sitting carefully onto the couch across from the record player. “Right, let’s talk cock.” Jenny rose from the floor and brought her bag with her to the couch. “You’re really pretty,” she said, cocking her head to the side so her brown hair slid over her shoulder. “Thanks.” “I can’t believe you’ve never given a blow job before.” “Uh…” “That’s okay, I’m good at this.” She brushed her hair from her shoulders as if she was prepping herself for something serious. “Let’s talk the don’ts first. I think the don’ts are easier to remember.” “Oh, I have a good don’t,” Liza said, shifting in her seat like a kid eager to be called upon in class. “Don’t use teeth.” “Right,” Jenny said with a nod. “Unless you know he likes that. Some dudes are ultra-sensitive,” her eyes went wide, “and a nibble on his clam digger will spell disaster.” “Clam digger?” Liza laughed. “His penis, Scarlet.” What was I thinking, entertaining this lesson on how to suck a penis? I looked at Liza with embarrassment all over my face but she shrugged. “Look, Scarlet, if you’re going to be embarrassed by a sweet little penis nickname, you’re in for a very long night of red cheeks and nervous ticks like gnawing on your lip.” “She’s right.” Jenny nodded but seemed sympathetic about it. “I have all sorts of nicknames for that little fuck puppet.” I wanted to cover my face, questioning myself for wanting to go through with this. But Liza was right. If just talking about … penis … was making me want to clam—a word I’d never not be able to associate with penis again—up, I was going to be in for a very difficult night. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry. This is just so weird for me.” “It’s a dick in your mouth, it’s supposed to be weird.” Jenny’s laugh made me laugh too. “Okay, another don’t. If you’re going to be brave and try to deep throat it, stop if you gag. No guy wants vomit all over his business.” “No deep-throating, check.” “Don’t ignore the balls, either.” Jenny held her palm up, fingers cupped. “You gotta give them attention. God didn’t make them just to hang in the wind.” She mimicked squeezing with her fingers, nodding to make sure I was paying attention. “When he’s close, tug on them gently,” Liza added. “How will I know when he’s getting close?” “Oh,” Jenny said with a throaty laugh. “You’ll know.” I wasn’t too sure about that, but I figured they knew what they were talking

about. “Okay. Play with the balls.” “Here,” Jenny said reaching her hand in her bag and coming out with a tin of peppermints. “Suck on one of these before you go down. It’ll give a really great cool and tingly sensation.” I stared at the tin once she placed it in my hand. “But don’t go crazy and chew up a dozen of them or something, or else his vagina miner is gonna be on fire.” Vagina miner? “Hey, great rhyme,” Liza said holding her hand up for Jenny. “Thanks!” Jenny beamed and gave her a high-five. “I’ve got a whole bag of tricks and nicknames in my arsenal.” She turned back to me. “Okay, dudes like it when you breathe on them, and then blow on them.” “There’s a difference?” “Sure there is.” Jenny grabbed my wrist and held it up to her mouth. Making her mouth into the shape of an ‘O’ she breathed onto my skin. “See? It’s warm. But if you narrow your lips and do this,” she puckered her lips so that there was just a small opening and blew over that spot again, “it’s cooler.” She was right, I could feel the difference and was surprised by it. “Huh. Interesting.” “What are you going to wear?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. A dress or something?” “Make sure the top is easily accessible, that your hair is down,” Jenny said, “and don’t wear underwear,” she added, like she was listing directions for baking a cake. “Why?” “He’s going to want to play with you while you’re going down on him. Men are tactile creatures, he’s going to want to touch just as much as you’ll want him to. And not wearing underwear is an instant confidence booster—and makes you look like you’ve got a secret that he wants in on.” “Okay, so why do I have to wear my hair down? Won’t it get in the way?” “Oh, definitely. But if you keep your hair down, you can whip it around his belly and then peek up at him from in between the strands,” she’d said. “It’ll overwhelm his senses, sight and touch.” That all seemed doable, so I nodded, trying not to imagine Leo’s face as I visualized doing all of these things to him. “There’s all sorts of things you can do to change the intensity, like sucking on popsicles before sucking on his popsicle, drinking hot tea, drizzling honey—if you’re into the sticky. Even those candies that pop in your mouth can work as long as you’re not going to let him plow you after, because gross.” “I didn’t know there were so many ways to do this.” “That’s what keeps it exciting!” Liza said, finally adding her thoughts. “But remember, you’re trying to suck his dick, not have a meal on it.” “Right. Honestly, all the tools you need are your mouth and hands. Just relax. He’ll tell you what he likes as you go along.” She held up a finger. “But if you wanna look like a porn star? Spit on it.”

“Spit?” “Yeah. Not like you’re coughing up a loogie, but you’re letting all the saliva pool in your mouth and then aim and spit right on it. Guaranteed he’ll think you’re a rock star.” She winked at me. “I promise.” Suddenly, the nerves kicked in and I started considering talking myself out of doing this. As if she could sense my turmoil, Liza wrapped an arm around me. “It’s just a dick, Liza. It’s not going to bite you. It’s got a treasure trove of nerve endings. As long as you don’t eat it, you can’t really fuck it up.”

And there I was, hours later, staring at my reflection in the mirror as I contemplated what the hell I was doing. Leo was coming over in a couple minutes, but he didn’t know what for just yet. When I’d looked over my list, it was between public sex and oral sex and I decided on the latter because the former seemed like something that should be spontaneous, not orchestrated. After drying my hair straight and really going to town on my eye makeup as Jenny had suggested, I found solace for my nerves in my mom’s cabinet downstairs. Pulling down the vodka was like making a decision to truly do this. It wasn’t until the moment I’d decided on the bottle of clear liquid that I had really committed to telling Leo I wanted to go down on him. With shaking hands, I poured the first shot and picked it up before I could tell myself no. A knock on the sliding glass door made me jump, causing me to spill vodka on the island. “Hey,” Leo said when he entered. He was wearing jeans and a button-up shirt, its sleeves rolled up and showing off his deliciously muscular forearms. Despite spilling some of the vodka on the island, I held onto the shot and tossed it back before letting myself say hi back to him. “Just knocking on your back door again,” he joked and I coughed, a flame of alcohol licking up my throat. “Hey,” he said, coming over and patting my back. “I know anal isn’t on your bucket list, so relax. It was a joke.” I nodded. “I know.” I picked up the vodka and poured a second shot, not ready yet to meet his blue eyes. “Want some?” I said, and without waiting for his answer, I grabbed another shot glass and poured him a shot right along with me. “Straight vodka?” he asked, picking up the shot. “You’re pretty serious aren’t you.” I nodded, braced my hands on the island as my hair shook around me. “I need a little bit of liquid courage.” “All right then. To the bucket list.” I raised my head, met his stare head-on. His blue eyes were warm and friendly and I was sure he saw nerves in mine. He was holding the glass up near his mouth and suddenly, it was all I could look at—those lips and his smile. “Okay,” I agreed and held my glass up. We took our shots together and as soon

as I set my now-empty glass on the counter, I picked up the bottle of vodka again. “Hold it,” he said, covering my hand with his on the bottle. He was warm and the liquor was warming me from the inside out. “Tell me what’s going on—pretty sure we already tackled the ‘get drunk’ part on your bucket list.” I wished the liquor would soothe my nerves more quickly, but since it hadn’t and since Leo was staring at me expectantly, I let go of the vodka bottle but grabbed his upper arm, needing to have some kind of tether to him to keep myself from dissolving into a vodka-sauced bundle of nerves. “I want to give you a blowjob,” I said quickly before I could tell him something different. I quickly looked at the floor beneath us, taking in his dark shoes and my bare feet. “Hey,” he said, hand on my chin. “Look at me.” Reluctantly, I let him pull my face up so we were looking each other right in the eyes. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, which only made my cheeks flush even more. “And don’t be anxious. We can do this, but we don’t have to.” I stared at him as his words sunk in. Even though I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do, knowing that Leo was patient and kind made me feel like I could trust him to help me with this, without sacrificing my dignity. “No, I want to do it,” I said, because I did. I’d only gotten a peek at his goods the weekend before, but I knew that if anyone could teach me, it would be Leo. “Are you sure?” “Don’t say that,” I said, my voice a little higher pitched than usual. “Or you’ll make me even more nervous than I already am.” “Okay,” he said, holding his palms up. “But let me do something first.” His mouth came closer, his head dipped, and he captured my lips with his a second later. I sank into the kiss, letting him soothe me with his lips on mine and his arms coming around my waist. His arms squeezed, and I marveled at how he knew just how to make me feel at ease with him. How to make me feel safe. Then he pulled back, thumbs coming to caress my jaw line. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said, his mouth against mine but not kissing. “Okay,” I whispered back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Before I could inhale, Leo lifted me up so I was sitting on the kitchen counter. “Here, grab on,” he said, turning around so that he was backed up the counter. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he carried me, piggyback style, all the way up the stairs. I laughed, feeling like the young adults we were, not so overwhelmed by the gravity of what I’d chosen to do tonight. The moment he hit the landing, he eased me down and then turned around, grabbing my face with a hand and slamming our mouths together. He tasted like mint and citrus, and the combination made me grab onto him tighter. I tried pulling him in closer, but we were already as close as we could be, lips and teeth and tongues clashing. My fingers found the front of his shirt and with a calm I didn’t know I possessed, I began unbuttoning the shirt, running my nails over the skin I was revealing with each new button undone. I swallowed the groan that escaped his mouth and pressed my nails a little deeper. He pulled away from my mouth to put his lips at my ear as his hand clutched my hair and tugged. “It’s going to be really hard to go slow,” he whispered, his voice low and thick. I wrapped a hand around his neck, nibbled on his jaw and said, “Then don’t.” He dragged his face along mine, that five o’clock shadow scraping my jaw line, before he captured my mouth in his again, teeth biting into my bottom lip. Somehow, after knocking down a picture frame or two, we made it along the wall into my bedroom. He picked me up again, so that I was facing him and walked us to the bed, gently bringing me down to the mattress so that he was over me, one arm braced beside my head. His lips moved to my neck, leaving wet, open mouth kisses along the column of my throat as he moved down to my breasts. “Fuck, you smell incredible,” he said, his face pressed right into my breasts as his hands moved up my thighs. I squirmed beneath him, thinking that while his hands and lips felt amazing, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I pushed up, hooked a hand into the front of his jeans and pulled myself up so that he was standing at the foot of my bed and my eye line was with his stomach as he stood.

I looked up at him and cocked my head to the side. “We had a deal,” I said, summoning my courage now that the liquor had loosened my anxiety. His eyes looked impossibly dark from this angle, since the lights weren’t on and my room was completely shadowed by the evening sky. His hand came over my hair, brushing it down and over my scalp. “This is your reminder,” he said before swallowing hard, “that we don’t have to do this.” Using my thumb, I flicked open the button on his jeans and replied, “We’re doing this.” He closed his eyes briefly and what startled me was just how beautiful he looked, with his perfectly sculpted face, full lips and dark lashes. I shook my head, turned my face back to his stomach where a few buttons still remained fastened. With fingers much more steady than before, I undid the last three and pressed my face to his abs, needing a second to gather myself before going any further. I pressed a kiss to the skin there, just under his belly button, and ran a finger down what I could see of his happy trail before it disappeared into his pants. I felt Leo tremble in my hands and took confidence from that, from the small sign that I was affecting him. Knowing I needed a second before my face was full of Leo, I slowly undid his zipper. The noise was so loud I thought it had an echo in the room. The only other sounds were the light buzz of the air conditioning and our breathing. I pulled off his jeans completely so that he was only wearing his boxer briefs. He was straining against the fabric and I was simultaneously turned on and nervous. Not realizing I was doing anything to cause him to react, Leo’s hand in my hair gripped. “All you’re doing is breathing and I can feel it like you’re wrapped around me.” His voice, so soft in the dark room, made me want to cross my legs. A steady pressure was building there and my chest was tingling. Leo was the first man to make me feel like this, all turned on and squirmy. And he wasn’t even touching me intimately. I put my hands on his waist and pushed him back a little so that I could stand. I placed my hands on his shoulders and slid my fingers under the shirt, pushing it so it fell down his arms and off his body. “Trade places,” I said, pushing him onto the bed. His jeans were gathered around his ankles, but I didn’t bother removing them. Instead, I placed a hand on his chest. As I was about to push him back, his hand covered mine and I met his eyes. There was something so intimate about having him staring at me, hand covering mine, in the dark room, while we were both wearing clothes still, even if he was more undressed than I was. I crawled onto the bed, straddling his lap strategically so that I was right over his cock. With my hands on his shoulders for support, I lowered myself a little, pressing him against me.

He hissed through his teeth and his hands came up, gripping my upper arms. “You’re a fucking tease,” he said. I smiled, not because I was a tease but because I hadn’t realized I was. In truth, I was trying to relieve a little bit of the ache that was pulsing within me, not realizing what it was doing to him. I pressed my mouth to his, softly, then pulled back just enough to whisper, “Lie back.” To his credit, Leo was quick to listen, falling back so quickly that I fell with him, right on top. “Perfect,” he murmured against my hair as my face fell onto his chest. I pressed a kiss against his smooth chest and then moved my mouth to one nipple and then the other. “That’s the one you twisted really fucking hard last week,” he said as I closed my lips over the tip. I tugged on the nipple just a little before moving down his body, my stomach grazing over the bulge in his underwear. Just feeling it against me made me squirmy and nervous again, but I didn’t want to stop now. I kept kissing down his stomach, over each one of those delectable ab muscles as my fingers curled into the waistband of his underwear. Slowly, I pulled down the underwear as my mouth reached the skin just under his belly button. I pulled the skin there in my teeth, lashing my tongue over it, and then finally raised up so I could get a good view of his cock as I unveiled it, one inch at a time. My eyes widened as I began to understand just why I’d been sore the morning after we’d had sex. Leo’s impressive physique didn’t end at his football pants. Oh, no. But because it was so impressive, the nerves took over and I stared at it, blanking on all the advice Jenny and Liza had given me. “You okay down there?” I lifted my head as my hair hung right over his hips. “Yeah. Just thinking.” His lips widened, white teeth flashing in the dark. “Well stop doing that.” I looked back at his cock. “I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do,” I admitted, thankful the dark room was hiding the blush that I knew colored my cheeks. Leo’s hands gripped my shoulders and he sat up, pulling me with him. He took one of my hands and brought it to the base of his penis, wrapping his fingers around mine and squeezing. “You’re so warm,” I murmured, my hand sandwiched between his rough, calloused fingers and his warm, smooth cock. “You can’t really do it wrong,” he said, tucking the hair behind my ear. “Just do what feels natural.” I nodded and the hair came undone from behind my ear again. “Okay. Please lay back.” “I have to say, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten head from someone so polite.” I narrowed my eyes as he laid down. “I haven’t blown you yet.”

“Please do.” He pulled an arm up behind his head so he was angled a little better to see me. Lowering my head, I started breathing warm air right over the tip. I was finally remembering some of what Jenny had said. I teased him a little at first, not on purpose, but just because I was still working up the courage to wrap my lips around him. The hand that was around his base squeezed and then I moved it up a little before bringing it back down. Leo shifted a little underneath me, so I knew what I was doing felt good to him. I used my other hand to wrap higher up, just under the plump head. While squeezing, I brushed my thumb over the tip and felt a shudder of accomplishment when Leo breathed audibly. After rubbing my hands over him, I finally brought my mouth to the tip, wrapping my lips over the head until they met my fingers. Once it was actually in my mouth, I felt a little lost on what to do, but I remembered Jenny had said no teeth. I pressed my tongue flat to the head, running the tip around my mouth as I moved my hands down his shaft to make more room in my mouth, taking him in inch by inch. Once I’d fit as much as I comfortably could, I sucked. He tasted salty, warm, but not unpleasant. My cheeks hollowed and Leo hissed again. “God.” I felt his eyes on me, but I was too timid to lift and meet his eyes just yet. “Use your tongue a little,” he panted. So I did as he asked, whirling my tongue around him as my hands cupped his balls and squeezed gently. Leo’s hand found my hair again and I was grateful to have him touching me, almost like he was leading me through this. I opened my mouth, let his cock fall out onto his belly and did the cool blow that Jenny had showed me. “Scarlet,” Leo said and I finally looked up at him as I blew the air across his length. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark with lust. “That feels amazing.” I didn’t think it was possible to feel as proud as I felt, for making him happy with what little I knew. I no longer cared about just crossing an item off my bucket list, but instead I just wanted to please him—as archaic and anti-feminist as it sounded—I didn’t care. There was power in giving a man pleasure, in watching him come apart in your hands—or mouth. I put his dick in my mouth again and swallowed what I assumed to be a tiny bit of pre-cum as I sucked harder this time. Over and over, I sucked and let go to blow, alternating hot breaths and cool, narrow lines of air over him. After several minutes, I could tell he was being tortured by this hard sucking and air teasing, so a final time, I sucked him as far as I could go before I gagged a little and pulled back. With one hand on his balls, squeezing and gently tugging, and one hand at the base squeezing and jerking, I flattened my tongue over the tip over and over and sucked hard. “Yes,” he said softly, his voice crawling along my skin. “Scarlet, look at me.” I lifted my eyes, looked across the expanse of skin up to his face, my hair

curtained around me. It was insanely sexy, seeing his face staring at me like that, as if I held all his pleasure in my hands—because I kind of did, but in my mouth. “I’m going to move you with my hand,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. I couldn’t say anything because my mouth was full, so I did a slight nod and the hand in my hair gripped and pulled me up before pushing me down again. After a few times, I got the rhythm and proceeded without his help. He was hissing and sucking in air, making these sexy little moaning sounds. His stomach started flexing and his moans became louder. I tugged harder on his balls and sucked hard on him as my jaw began to grow sore and then, all of a sudden, I felt the first warm spurt down my throat. Without thinking, I just kept swallowing as he hissed one long, loud sound and jerked once off the bed. I swallowed all of it and then laid my head beside him so I could close my jaw and relax a second. After a few seconds and a long exhale, he said, “Not done yet, Jennings.” “Huh?” I lifted my head but he was already pulling me up with his hands before grabbing me around the waist and gently tossing me beside him the bed. He climbed over me and I gulped at the intense heat in his eyes. “Your turn,” he said, his hand snaking between my legs. “Oh.” A wicked smile spread across his face. “Well, this is convenient.” I couldn’t answer because his fingers were already inside of me, pressing in all the right places. His thumb pressed hard against my clit and I just about bounced up off the bed, so turned on from giving him pleasure that the lightest touch was out of this world. “You did…” he laughed, shook his head. “That was fucking unreal, Scarlet. Now I’m going to show you just how happy I am.” His mouth lowered as he flipped up the skirt of my dress and then his mouth was hot—right on me. Involuntarily, my hips bucked and his hand pressed down on my lower stomach to keep me in place. Now that I was completely sober, I realized that having Leo Madsen’s face between my legs was a pleasure I had missed most of before. His hands gripped my inner thighs and spread me and I had never felt more open, more vulnerable. I pushed down my dress so I could see his face. I wasn’t prepared for how erotic he looked, his lips and chin completely obstructed from view. His eyes met mine and glittered with triumph. The heat began in my legs first, traveling up my body like I was dipping into a hot bath. My legs went immobile, as if my limbs were surrendering to the magic he was doing to my body. I felt his thumbs come up to my lips and spread me apart before running inside. “Oh my goddddd,” I groaned as the hot flush of my orgasm rumbled up and shook me from my core. “Come on, Scarlet. Let it go.” My whole body was overcome with trembles and tingles and a thousand sensations at once. A groan tore from my throat as the heat came full circle in my

chest and spread everywhere. I wanted to buck off the bed when his mouth came away and his fingers pressed up inside me. Waves of intense, hot pleasure whipped over me, crashing over and over until I finally gave in and let go. It was my first sober orgasm and it blew anything I expected out of the water, and I knew that it wasn’t just because I was inexperienced. I knew it was because of Leo. And his drive, his need to make me feel as I’d made him feel. So I’d be lying if I said that after Leo flopped over beside me and we both lay there, catching our breaths, a part of myself didn’t unwittingly develop feelings that were more than just gratitude for an excellent orgasm.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I liked to think that the blowjob bonded us. And what a fucking spectacular bonding session it had been. Over the next few days, Scarlet and I settled into a comfortable truce. I teased her about her driving, she gave me narrow-eyed looks of annoyance when I was late getting to her car. But instead of them being real, I could see the sparks of heat behind her eyes. Like she was imagining the way I’d clamped my hand down on her thigh when I ate her out. Or the way she’d kissed across my stomach before she’d sucked me dry like a fucking porn star. Great. Now I was hard. And workouts were not the place for that. I recited Tom Brady’s stats from the 2001 season in my head until I’d willed that shit back down. Okay, and 2002. Unfortunately, what I couldn’t get out of my head was the lingering question that I’d had since I did the walk of absolutely no shame across our street that night. What was next on the list? Maybe she was waiting for me to initiate something, or maybe she was plotting. But I leaned toward the former. Now, as fun as it would be to take her to get a piercing, or plan some elaborate public sexscapade, I knew she was most likely to loosen up in the privacy of her own home. I pulled my phone out, grinning while I typed out my first text. Leo: I forgot to tell you this morning, but that skirt you’re wearing? Makes your ass look fucking phenomenal. Scarlet: I’m in class, Leo. I’m not going to sext with you. Leo: Not sexting. Just trying to tell you that look hot today. I can’t stop thinking about what you’re hiding underneath that skirt. Scarlet: Oh. Well, thank you.

After Coach yelled at me to put my phone away or he’d shove it up my ass, I went back to work, channeling all the energy that pushed through my veins. After I finished workouts and had showered, I sent Scarlet a couple more texts as I walked to my statistics class that was a few buildings away from the field. Leo: Do you want to hang out later? Scarlet: Is this that “Netflix and chill” thing that I’ve heard about? Are you speaking to me in code? Leo: Scarlet, I’ll never speak in code when it comes to something like that. I’ll say to you, hey, I want to put my tongue somewhere on your body, does that sound good? Leo: Got it? Scarlet: Got it. Leo: You didn’t answer me. Scarlet: I know. You’re awfully quick. Leo: Stop, you know what it does to me when you get feisty. Scarlet: I do? And aren’t you in class? Quit texting me and pay attention. Leo: I’m so hard right now, you little firecracker. Truthfully, I wasn’t, but it served a purpose. I wanted her on edge by the time I saw her. By the time I walked up to her car a couple hours later, she was giving me a contemplative look from the driver’s side window. I felt her eyes follow me while I passed the hood of the car and opened up the side door to toss my backpack on the floor behind my seat. “How was your day, dear?” She rolled her eyes, but her lips twisted in a reluctant smile. “Filled with far more communication than I’d expected.” “Yeah?” Knowing she was still watching me, I kept my eyes forward while she pulled the car out of the parking lot and onto the road. “You’re not going to explain?” I didn’t answer her until she’d pulled onto the highway heading back toward Worcester, and before I did, I leaned over the console and spread my hand over the ivory skin of her thigh where it met the hem of her skirt. She jumped when I curled

my fingers around, but didn’t say anything. “See how much darker my skin is than yours?” “Mmmhmm.” Her hummed answer was tinged with nerves. “That’s the kind of stuff I was thinking about this morning. Weird, huh?” I left my hand there for a few more seconds while she drove, then pulled it away, letting the tips of my fingers drag against her skin intentionally. Goosebumps popped on her skin before I’d fully moved my hand back in my lap, and I smothered a smile. When she shifted in her seat, using the movement to press her thighs together, I did not smother the smile. I just made sure to do it in the direction of my window so she couldn’t see it. By the time we pulled into her driveway, I was semi-hard thinking about exactly how I was going to get Scarlet to touch herself. She probably assumed, quite mistakenly, that she’d manage that list item on her own. “Do you have Netflix?” I asked right after I popped my door open. “Yeah,” she answered, brows lowered. “Perfect.” We stood from our sides of the car at the same time, and I knew she was expecting to me to go back home. But I followed her instead. “Leo,” she said on a sigh, then stopped and turned to face me. I pretended to stop too late, bracing my hand on her hip so as not to run into her. She swallowed and looked up into my face. “You didn’t say no. That’s as good as an invitation.” “Is it now?” she said with a smile. I nodded, keeping my eyes straight into hers. Maybe she expected me to look down at her mouth, at her tits, but I kept locked onto her face. Then I curled my fingers where they still laid on her hip, let them dig into the flesh where the curve of her ass started. “Can I come inside, Scarlet?” I whispered, shifting closer by a couple inches. If I’d taken a deep breath, the front of my chest would’ve brushed hers. It was her turn to nod, giving me a silent response so laden with sexual tension that I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The moment snapped when she backed up and my hand fell away from her body. She blinked a few times, then turned around to walk to her front door. We walked in silence, both of us leaving our bags on the floor by the staircase. By this point, I felt comfortable enough to grab my own drink from the stainless steel fridge. Snagging a water bottle from the second shelf, I saw a carton of strawberries and contemplated grabbing those too, but eh. Too cliché. “Want one?” I asked, holding up the water I’d taken for myself. She nodded from where she was turning on the large screen tv they had on a wide mahogany cabinet. While she was pulling up Netflix, I settled on the floor in front of the generic tan micro suede couch. “So, what are we watching?” She went to sit on the couch behind me, but I

grabbed her wrist and directed her to floor in front of me, between my legs. I expected at least a token argument, but she just shook her head and did it, leaning her back up against my chest. Her hair, which was down and slightly curled, smelled clean and sweet when I pressed my nose against it and inhaled. I took one hand and swept her hair so that it laid over her right shoulder. “Leo, what are you doing?” “Making sure all your hair doesn’t obstruct my view.” I took the remote from her hand and aimed it up to scroll through the options. Truthfully, I didn’t care what we watched, but I wanted something sexy in the background. Scarlet dropped her head back on my shoulder, but kept her hands folded in her lap. My legs were stretched out on either side of hers, and the width of my shoulders dwarfed her frame. After I’d settled on a movie called Adore, one that Adele had told me that she and the Professor had watched, Scarlet shifted her head so that she was looking at me. Given how close together our faces were, if I made the same movement, we’d be kissing. Not yet. “Just watch, Scarlet.” I wasn’t paying attention to it as it started, because Scarlet held all my interest. Whenever I’d move my face, or took a deep breath next to her ear, she’d shift in front of me. The movement was torture, taking the semi that I’d had all day and teasing it into a full-blown erection. There was no way she couldn’t feel it, especially not after she did the little move of arching her back, which pressed her ass right up against it. I pulled my arms up in a stretch, forcing my chest harder against her back. When I dropped them back down, I slid my hands from the tops of her shoulders down the length of her slim, soft arms until my hands covered hers where they still lay sedately in her lap. Scarlet shifted, but didn’t protest. For a while, I left my hands like that, just resting on top of hers, because that meant the inside of my biceps rested against the outside of each breast. I started small, dragging my fingers along the length of hers, stopping at the top knuckle and then going back to the tips. Her chest heaved with breaths that became increasingly deeper. From over her shoulder, all I had to do was look down and I could see the edge of her bra where it cupped her tits underneath the simple white V-neck shirt. She always wore solid colors, I noticed, but it didn’t diminish from how beautiful she was. All it did was put her bright hair on display, not distract my eyes from any part of her body. The dark denim skirt she had worn today had slightly frayed edges along the hem, and I wanted to play with them, but this wasn’t my show. I needed her to want to touch herself, take herself over the edge to ease the pain. When her hips kept shifting and there was a slight red flush climbing her chest, I ran my nose around the shell of her ear. “What is it, Scarlet? What do you need?” Almost immediately, she stopped moving and sank back against me. “No, no, no. Don’t do that. Just let me help.” Her legs fell open, leaning more heavily against mine, and I let out a pained

laugh. “I mean, let me help you.” Scarlet groaned. “That’s what all this has been about, hasn’t it? The texts? The touches?” She started to move and I clamped my arms around her in a vise, shushing quietly in her ear. “No, don’t. Just stay here.” Both of her hands came up, and I braced for her to pull my arms down, but they didn’t. She smoothed them along my forearms, making light scratches with her nails. “I’m not going to touch you, Scarlet. You’re going to do it.” Of course, she made a sound of protest and I bit down on her earlobe, a soft nip to quiet her, and it worked. “Maybe you can touch me a little?” she asked, the bright hopeful tone in her voice making me laugh. “Nothing below the … hmm, below—” “Below where my bra stops?” She cocked her head to the side so our eyes met. I dropped a light kiss on her lips and nodded. “Fine.” “Did I kill the mood?” I trailed the tips of my fingers along her collarbone, the thin, hard line of bone under her practically translucent skin. Like I was pulling a string, Scarlet’s hips lifted up with the movement. “No, not for me.” “Well I can feel that. Unless you shoved a baseball bat down the front of your pants.” My laughter was low, and it made my forehead drop down to her neck. “Do you know that since that first night together, I feel like I’ve been walking around like this every damn day. Every time I saw your hair or your legs or your mouth.” “Really?” “What does that do to you? Knowing that?” She hesitated, and I pulled my hands off of her. “No,” she groaned. “Wait, okay. I can’t do this if you’re not touching me too.” “Then tell me,” I relented, dropping kisses along the side of her neck. “Leo, I don’t know if I can talk dirty.” “Then I’ll talk. And if you like what I’m doing, then you keep touching yourself, but you do it harder or faster.” Scarlet breathed out a moan, and she flexed her fingers out, like she was warming up. Good thing she couldn’t see me, because I grinned. But the smile dropped when she slid her hands up and down along the insides of her thighs, not going past the hem of her skirt. “There you go. Good girl. Feel how soft your skin is. Pay attention to what your body likes.” I nudged her forward, and when she complied, I grabbed the hem at the back of her shirt and pulled it up over her head. After I tossed it aside, she sank back against me again.

The tips of her fingers disappeared, and I rewarded her by tracing along the lace edge of her bra. “You don’t even have to have anything to fantasize about, if you don’t want to. I think that might be what’s tripping you up. All you need is to think about how good your hands feel. How wet you are, how hard your nipples are when you drag a thumb against them.” I did that when I said the words, catching the hard edge through the material of her bra. One of her hands went in further, and her hips lifted in response. “How does it feel?” “Leo,” she begged, voice full and tight with frustration. “It’s probably wet and soft around your fingers. That’s how it felt for me. And your clit is so hard when you’re close. Rub little circles around it, use the flat of your fingers. You can’t do it too hard, trust me.” Her forearm flexed and she let out a raw groan that made my own hips push up against her back. “There you go. Fuck, Scarlet, you look perfect. Bring your other hand up, put it under your bra.” She did, dragging her hand against her stomach on the way up. Instead of dipping in the front of the bra, she pushed it up the bottom, shoving the material out to the way. Without me saying a damn word, she cupped her breast, pushing her thumb in circles around her nipple. “That’s it, honey. Your tits are incredible. Feel how full they are in your hand.” “Leo,” she said again, this time her pitch rising. “You know what I want to do to them?” I leaned in, licking along the outer edge of her ear. “I want to fuck them, see my cock pressed in between them.” She exploded, arching her back and clamping her hand between her thighs. The long, soft sigh that came from her mouth made me smile, as did the way she sagged back down on my chest, one breast still cupped with her hand. “Wow,” she said after a few seconds. “I should have been doing that for years. I would have been so much less stressed out.” I laughed, pulling her hand out from underneath her bra. When I brought it up to my mouth to kiss the palm, she looked over at me, the flush from her orgasm still bright on her cheeks. “That was a fun one, huh?” She nodded with a shy smile, then leaned forward to grab her shirt from where I’d tossed it. The moment had passed as soon as she moved away from me, but I wanted to follow the line of her spine with my fingers before she covered it up with the white cotton. Then she stood, smoothing her shirt down after she covered herself again. “Do you want me to like, order a pizza or something?” “My payment for a job well done?” “No,” she shot back. “I did all the work, right?” I laughed. “I suppose you did.”

She smiled at me. “So? Pizza and we can finish the movie?” There was no ulterior motive hidden in her eyes, nothing else we needed to accomplish, with the exception of me needing to go into the bathroom and alleviate the blue ball situation currently prohibiting me from standing up. And she was the one asking me to stay. Maybe it was pathetic, that this little scrap from her felt like a feast to me. Then I guess I was pathetic. “Sure. Sounds good.” The answering smile she gave me told me she just might feel the same way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I was legitimately starting to think that I was losing my mind. Actually, Scarlet was making me lose my mind. There had been a couple girls before, where I’d convinced myself that I was feeling something serious for them, but in retrospect those relationships could barely even be classified as lust. Convenient was one word. And when they either turned out to be crazy or attached, then convenient didn’t even work. But not once, with any of the girls that I’d dated or hung out with or even spent an evening flirting with, had I felt such an overwhelming and exhausting sense of infatuation. Not like this. On the days where Scarlet and I slipped back into our routine of driver and passenger, like we were starting to do for a few days after we crossed some physical line again, I dissected her eye contact, whether she watched my mouth or if she played with her hair while I looked at her. When she started telling me about things that happened in class or the rescue she volunteered at, I couldn’t stop staring at her lips when she talked, or the way she flipped her hands around to prove a point, or the way her eyes brightened up when she told me about an animal at the rescue. And she was smart. Scarlet was so fucking smart that it probably should have intimidated me. But it didn’t. Not like it used to. Probably because she didn’t lord it over me, or dumb down the things she talked about. Occasionally, I pulled up my dictionary app, like if I wasn’t sure what supercilious meant, especially not when she was talking about one of her profs. Suffice it to say, I now know that Scarlet used to give me supercilious looks all the time. That’s probably what scared me more than anything, that most of the things I couldn’t stop noticing? They weren’t physical. In fact, the non-physical stuff was starting to affect me just as much as when she leaned over and I could see down her shirt, or if she licked her bottom lip. Her laugh was enough to make me want to bury my head under her skirt now. It was so fucked up. Wasn’t it? Or was this what was supposed to happen when you met someone who was available and smart and pretty and kind and mentally stable?

“Earth to Leo,” Scarlet called, waving a hand in front of my face. “Yeah, sorry.” I gave her an apologetic smile, my eyes sliding over her face and neck. She was wearing a little bit more makeup today, even more than she’d had on this morning on our drive in. Like she’d freshened up before she picked me up. “It’s okay. It’s not like you have to talk to me. You just blanked out right in the middle of a sentence. You were telling me about the new center that’s going to be on your team in the fall.” Oh yeah. Holy shit, see? I was losing it. And Scarlet just sat there, looking at me with those big eyes and sweet smile, with no fucking clue that I was over here obsessing about the fact that her lips looked pinker and softer than they had this morning, and her lashes were darker and longer. Or that she’d curled the ends of her hair. I opened my mouth, to … I don’t even know what I was going to say, but I had to tell her something of what was going on in my head. Then her phone rang. Her eyes lit up when she saw the screen. “Hey, Mom,” she said into the phone after she picked it up. “Oh, I’m just driving home.” She glanced over at me with a wry smile. It was fucking adorable and it made me want to stab my eyes out because I was thinking about how adorable her smile was. “Yeah, Leo is here.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom says hi.” “Hi, Mrs. Jennings,” I said back. Scarlet hummed in answer to something her mom said, then gave me another quick look. “Yeah, I could do that. What do you need me to do with it once I get it?” She glanced in the rearview mirror and then flipped on her blinker to take the next exit, which was about ten minutes before we would normally get off the highway. “Sure, no problem. I’ll do that as soon as I get home. Yeah. Mmmhmm. Oh, probably another fifteen minutes? Is that okay? All right, bye.” Scarlet tucked her phone underneath her leg and took a right, toward her dad’s church, the white steeple of which I could see down another block or two. “I have to grab some paper that my dad left on his desk really quick. I hope that’s okay.” “That’s fine. Doesn’t he have a secretary that can send it to him?” She rolled her eyes at me, but it was tempered by her smile. “Administrative assistant, you mean? And yes, he does have one, but she’s off this week and if someone’s going to go through his stuff, I guess he’d rather have it be me.” There were only a couple other cars in the church parking lot when Scarlet pulled in. Instead of pulling the car underneath the large white overhang that covered the main entrance to the church, she drove off to the side of the building and parked in an empty spot. “Is the main entrance locked or something?” She nodded while she sifted through her purse. “Yeah, during the week, people can only come through this entrance near all the offices. Do you mind waiting in the car?” “You afraid to bring me into a holy place, Scarlet?” I teased. While she laughed, she opened her car door. “It’s not about being afraid, Leo. I just don’t think you could physically walk through those doors without being struck

by lightning.” I grinned when she slammed her door shut and walked toward the entrance. The wind obviously picked up, because her hair swept off to the side of her head, like a bright, copper colored flag against the white backdrop of the church building. Right before she disappeared through the door, she turned and looked toward the car, pointing a finger in my direction, as if to remind me that I was supposed to wait. Clearly, Scarlet didn’t understand the power of reverse psychology to a man like me. After I shut the car door, I jogged to the back entrance of the church, praying that it hadn’t locked behind Scarlet. It opened silently, and the dark hallway of the church was just as quiet. No one sat at the reception desk, and muted voices came from the direction of the sanctuary. I hadn’t been in this church in years, my parents long past the point where they made me go with them on the weekends or school breaks when I was home, but I did remember where the pastor’s office was. The heavy oak door to Pastor Jennings’ office was halfway open, and when I peeked in, Scarlet was bent over the large, imposing desk, rifling through a stack of papers. She hadn’t turned on any lights, and since the blinds over the massive window were shut, the room was surprisingly dark, considering the bright sunshine outside. I pushed the door open just enough that I could walk through, and her head shot up. “Leo, you’re supposed to wait in the car.” When I shut the door with a soft click behind me, she immediately started shaking her head. “No way. You stay right there, mister.” “No way, what? I just came in to see if I could prove you wrong. No lightning to be found.” She laughed, then looked back down at the papers. When she found the one she was looking for, she placed the rest of the papers back in the top drawer. I stayed right in front of the door, just like she asked, except when she approached me, I didn’t move. “Leo, quit screwing around.” The words would have made me get out of the way, but her voice wasn’t annoyed in the slightest. Her eyes were bright, and the way she said them, all breathy and low, kept me exactly where I was. “Who, me? I’m not.” When she got close enough, I smoothed my hands around her hips, the soft material of her black leggings thin enough that I could feel the heat from her skin. “You’re always playing, Leo.” I turned, so her back was up against the door now, and I pressed against her with my hips, letting her feel how very serious I was. She dropped her head back against the wood with a soft moan, and I kissed the spot of skin underneath her ear. “No playing, Scarlet. I promise.” Not anymore. I haven’t been playing with you, not even the first night, I wanted

to say. But I kissed her instead, sweeping my tongue into her mouth. Because I wasn’t sure she’d believe me. And if she couldn’t trust that my feelings were getting bigger and bigger every single day I spent time with her, then I didn’t dare let them out. Scarlet wrapped her arms around my neck and threw herself into my kiss. I threw myself right back at her, gripping her harder and tighter until I knew she’d have light bruises in the shapes of my fingers along the curve of her ass. I felt sloppy, kissing her with tongue and teeth, but the breathy whimpers that she fed me meant that she didn’t care. “Does this constitute a public place?” I whispered in between kisses, at the same time that I slid a hand inside the front of her leggings. “Not here, Leo,” she moaned, rocking her hips into my hand while I rubbed at her clit through her soaked underwear. “We cannot do this here.” “Damn it, Scarlet, feel how wet you are.” I hooked a finger on her underwear and pulled it to the side, immediately sinking two fingers inside of her. Her knees buckled and I wrapped my other arm around her waist, anchoring her to me. “I can’t stop thinking about this, thinking about you.” It was the closest I could get to the truth, without saying it as baldly as I was feeling it. I was obsessed with her. I’d never had a woman take up this much of my headspace. Never. She answered me with frenzied kisses, sucking at my lips and my tongue, gripping the back of my head with curved fingers. Then we heard voices pass the door. We both froze, eyes wide open and locked on each other. Some women may have been able to continue, if I’d pushed. But I wouldn’t do that to her, not Scarlet. If I embarrassed her in this place, she’d never forgive me. And that was the thing when you realized that you didn’t just like someone, that you respect them. I couldn’t fathom doing something to lose that respect. Very carefully, I pulled my fingers out of her, making sure to put her underwear back in place. Then I leaned forward to rest my forehead against hers. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It’s okay,” she mouthed back, and from the look in her eye, she meant it. The voices had stopped closely enough that neither of us dared to move. Then they faded, and the sound of an office door closing made us both sag in relief. On the drive home, we laughed again, Scarlet admitting that she got the same feeling once we’d made it safely back to her car that she did the day she stole from The Corner Store. I just smiled, admiring the bright excitement on her face when she said it. Scarlet got out of the car first, still talking about something from her class earlier, and she never looked behind her to check whether I was following, she just assumed. I fucking loved that. It made something swell and expand inside of me, something warm and soothing and fucking terrifying. Like if I didn’t do something, say something to her,

to let her know that this was more to me, more than I’d ever anticipated, I would explode. As soon as she shrugged her messenger bag onto the floor of the kitchen, I gripped her hips, turning her around to face me. I dove my hands into her hair, gripping the strands before I kissed her. Her hands immediately went up under my shirt, smoothing along the muscles in my back. In the back of my mind, I knew I should probably have said something, taken the moment to admit how terrified I was of this, of her, and what she could do to me. But she was right there with me, gripping and clutching at me in the exact same way that I was, with greedy hands and selfish tongues, loud moans that echoed in the room around us. I pulled back long enough to boost her up on the island. Scarlet cocked her head in a question, but didn’t protest when I laid a hand on her chest and pushed her until she laid back on the granite. “Lift,” I said in one gruff syllable after tugging at the waistband of her leggings with rough hands. She did, meeting my gaze with eyes so liquid and dark that I wasn’t positive she wouldn’t drown me eventually. I peeled her leggings and her underwear off in one long slide, then hooked my hands behind her knees and pulled her to the edge of the counter. She shivered, probably from the cold stone underneath her, so I lifted her legs, propping one and then the other over my shoulders, framing my face between her thighs. Inches before my tongue made contact, her phone started ringing in her purse. “Damn it,” she groaned. Or maybe that was me. No, I was licking the inside of her thigh, so it was Scarlet. “That’s probably my … ahhhh, oh holy shit that feels good, that’s probably my mom wondering if I got the paper.” I blew on the seam of her pussy and she clamped her thighs around my head. “Can you call them later?” “I…” she stammered, the sound sliding out into a long moan when I swiped my tongue up her outer lips. “Yeah, yes, I can call them back.” “Good girl.” I sucked her clit into my mouth, flicking at it with my tongue, her taste flooding my mouth. “What part of the list is this?” she panted, tensing when I clutched at her thigh with hard fingers. I pulled back so I could see her face. “Maybe I’m working on my own list now. Is that okay?” The only thing she said for the next ten minutes was yes. Over and over and over.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Liza: Have you climbed off his woody womb pecker long enough to maybe spend some time with me? I looked at Liza’s text with a mix of humor and repugnance. Scarlet: Woody womb pecker? Really, Liza? Liza: Is Girth Vader better? Scarlet: No. Stop. What are you, twelve? Liza: Humor me a little! My little love cave has been neglected far too long. At least one of us is getting a regular pounding. Scarlet: I’m afraid to ask what other nicknames you have for ‘vagina.’ And I’m not getting a regular ‘pounding.’ I’m just getting some really great orgasms. Liza: Hussy. Tell me everything. Don’t skimp on any details. And in answer to the question you nearly asked: va-genie. Liza: Leo rubbed you a little bit and you gave him three wishes. And by wishes, I mean orgasms. Scarlet: Are you peeking through *my* windows now, creeper? Liza: OMG. He gave you THREE orgasms????? Stop holding out on me! Scarlet: Heading into the shelter now, sorry, talk later. I laughed a little as I tucked my phone in my pocket before leaving my car. The last

week with Leo had been exciting, full of fun—and not only the kind sans clothing. Nearly every day after getting home from the city, Leo came inside and hung out with me. Sometimes it was innocent—Leo eating everything in my fridge as an example. Other times … well, other times it wasn’t innocent, but it was definitely fun. Part of me regretted waiting so long to find this with someone, this easy kind of friends-with-benefits arrangement Leo and I had. Not that we’d defined ourselves as “friends-with-benefits,” but it was how I saw us. We certainly weren’t dating and we hadn’t made any kind of verbal commitments. But the part of me that regretted waiting so long realized that I hadn’t found this with anyone because Leo was the reason it worked. Our history, coupled with all the time we were forced to spend time together made for time to get to know him, to see in surprising clarity everything we’d missed out on in all the years we’d spent hating each other. It’d been easy to brush him off as another dumb jock, but it was obviously unfair to label him so simply. One of my favorite professors told us that thinking shallowly was for ignorant pussies. And he was right. I’d been unkind to Leo at the beginning of our arrangement, belittling him for being a football player, as if that one part was the sum of him. I was ashamed when I thought of how I’d essentially called him stupid when he wasn’t. He was thoughtful, giving, and so funny that he made my stomach hurt. And I’d be lying if I said that spending all that time with him wasn’t quickly becoming a very significant part of my everyday life. And, more than that, I was developing some very real feelings for him, feelings that were confusing as well as thrilling. I waved to the receptionist, Heidi, at the counter of the animal shelter and signed in on the clipboard. “Who am I working with today?” I asked her. “Jax,” she said with a slight smile. “Perfect.” Jax was my favorite dog in the shelter, a fact that I didn’t try to hide. On my first day volunteering, Belinda, the organizer of volunteer activities, had cautioned me against developing any lasting attachment for the animals, but in the same breath had said, “Good luck with that, by the way.” I hadn’t grown up with pets because my mother had been bitten by a dog when she was younger and had sworn off ever owning one. In high school, when Leo and I had drifted apart, it’d been easy for me to find myself at the local shelter, taking dogs on walks and cleaning out their kennels. As I made my way back to where the dogs were kept, twenty-seven of them began barking in greeting. I stuck my hand in a few of the enclosures and scratched the heads of the ones who knew me before I found my favorite all the way at the end. Jax was a Great Dane with the most beautiful brindle coat. He’d come to the shelter months before after a family that adopted him hadn’t been satisfied with his protection skills. He was happy, if a little small for his breed, which made me

think he might have been the runt of the litter and therefore not as likely to be confident enough to be protective. I hooked a leash to his collar and led him out the back door to the yard where two other volunteers were already playing with other dogs. “There you are,” Belinda said, making her way over to me with the most recent addition to the shelter, a two-year old lab-pit mix. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” “Sorry. It’s been a busy summer. Trying to hold down the house and get ready for school in the fall—it’s taken up a lot of time.” Jax and the other dog sniffed one another before Jax slid down, his hind legs up and front legs bent down—a clear “play” position. When the other dog didn’t reciprocate, Jax made a sighing noise and laid down completely flat. “How’s your mom doing?” Belinda asked, reaching down to unhook the dog from its collar. “Go, burn off some energy,” she said as the smaller dog took off. “She’s good,” I said, but I wasn’t totally sure. It struck me that I hadn’t spoken to her a whole lot in the last few weeks. I knew she wanted me to come down to D.C. to spend the last week of dad’s sabbatical with them, but I was now leaning toward staying here instead. A decision that was—possibly foolishly—made because I wanted to spend more time with Leo. “Good, good.” Belinda nodded beside me. “Let Jax run for a minute—he hasn’t gotten the chance to stretch those long legs of his since breakfast and I know he’s restless.” I unhooked Jax and watched him bound up and run—FREEDOM written all over his face. He was a good dog, if maybe a little wild. As much as I enjoyed seeing him every week, I was sad that he hadn’t been adopted yet. “Looks like you’ve got something on your mind, girl.” I blinked rapidly, everything coming back into focus. “I might.” “Well, shoot.” We lowered to the grass, watched the dogs play—mostly Jax bounding from one side of the fencing to the other before stopping abruptly and standing still; back straight and tail stick-straight toward the ground. “I feel bad that Jax hasn’t found a family yet.” I picked a blade of grass from under my maxi skirt and held it up, looking at the vein running up it, before I tossed it aside. “Oh, he will. Rest your worries there. He’s a good dog, likes kids and other dogs. The right family will come around for him.” “I just know I’ll be sad when this summer is over and I’m leaving.” It wasn’t until that moment that I spoke the words that I realized this arrangement I had with Leo would be ending too. Friends with benefits was only convenient when both parties were in close proximity to fulfill the ‘benefits’ part of the label. After I moved away, we’d be just friends … unless we lapsed into being enemies again. “Well that’s what Facebook is good for—you can keep an eye out for when Jax is adopted, because he will be adopted eventually.” I dug my hands into the grass at my sides. “But what if he forgets me?” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about Jax or Leo.

Belinda was silent for a minute and I wasn’t sure if she knew that my thoughts had moved from Jax to someone else, but she still answered. “He couldn’t forget you, honey. No way, no how.” “I’m surprised how…” I swallowed, adjusted the wording in my head, “… important he’s become to me.” There was no doubt when I said that, that I was thinking of Leo. “Maybe you should show him,” Belinda said. “If you’re worried about him forgetting about you, maybe you need to make sure he can’t.” I was conflicted. Did I want Leo to remember me after this summer? It did sting a bit thinking that he might be able to forget me so easily, but was it ridiculous for me to hope that maybe he was thinking about me like I was thinking about him? Finally, I spoke. “I’m not sure how to do that.” “Sure you do. You just need to allow yourself to get hurt.” I ducked my head so that my hair shielded my face from her view, because there was no doubt now that she knew I was talking about a guy and not about Jax, who was currently sniffing the ass of every dog in the yard. “I’m too afraid. I’ve never been hurt before. Not like that.” “Ah,” Belinda said, patting my knee. “There’s not a lot more luxurious than having your heart broken.” “I never said I was in love with him,” I quickly said, before feeling the blush creep up my face. “I didn’t say you did,” Belinda said calmly, as if this was just a regular fake conversation about a dog and not the biggest fear of my whole life: the chance that someone could break my heart. “But if he’s important, it would be a disservice to treat him like he wasn’t.” I thought of Belinda’s words long after I’d climbed in the car. I hadn’t started the engine, but merely sat there in my too-warm car, thinking about Leo and how quickly he was affecting me. It was so unsettling to know, with absolute certainty, that I was having a hard time keeping him in the “friends with benefits” column. He kept bleeding over into territory that was foreign to me. My phone rang, startling me. “Hey, mom,” I said as I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could drive toward campus to pick up Leo. “Hey, honey.” Her voice was warm and soothing, something I hadn’t known I needed until that moment. “Whatcha up to?” “I just left the shelter and now I need to pick up Leo.” “Oh, that’s nice. Your father and I just did a tour of the White House.” “Wow, Dad’s taking a day off?” I asked as I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road. “Just the one. He’s been very busy—busier than usual. It’s made me miss you a lot.”

“Because if he wasn’t busy, you wouldn’t miss me?” I teased. I knew what she’d meant, of course. “I just keep thinking I should come up for the weekend while your father is busy. Spend some time with my girl.” “No,” I said too quickly. I heard the sharp intake of breath from my mother. While I was never afraid of not fitting into the mold of the traditional preacher’s daughter—a woman of high morals and devoted to her church—I still never, ever showed my parents any kind of disrespect. I may not have been leader of the church choir or number one volunteer for the church’s youth group, but I was definitely someone who deferred to her parents. Telling my mother no was so out of character for me that we were both silent for that moment. “I just mean, there’s no reason for you to drive all that way for just a weekend.” “Well, it’s only six hours away and I can stay longer than the weekend if you’d like.” While stopped at the light, I placed my phone in the car mount so I could be hands-free. “No, it’s okay, Mom. I’ve been so busy anyway, we wouldn’t have a ton of time to spend together.” “Hmm,” she murmured into the phone. I imagined her sitting perfectly straight at her table, rolling a pen in her hands thoughtfully. “Well, there’s always the last week when you come here. I suppose I can wait until then to see you.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, not looking forward to this at all. “Actually…” I heard her pull in a breath and I winced. “I was thinking I’d just stay here. Finish packing and spending time with my friends before you come home and then I leave.” “You wouldn’t come here to see us?” She sounded hurt and a little disappointed, and it was a battle just to keep myself from saying never mind, I’ll come. “I mean, I want to, Mom. But I have so much going on here that it’s probably better that I stay home that week and then we immerse ourselves into family time once you two get back.” She was quiet for a minute. “Are you sure? I don’t like thinking of you all alone.” I laughed a little into the phone as I turned the car into the parking lot of the football field. “You’re going to have to get used to feeling that way, because pretty soon I’ll be out of the house, far away.” “Don’t say that,” she said, her voice wavering a little. “I’m not ready for that kind of reality.” “It’ll be here sooner than later.” “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. I gotta run, honey. Call you later?” “Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t think she actually would. “Love you.” “Love you too.” I hung up and put the car in park right by the door to the locker rooms. After a couple minutes, the door opened and Leo exited, in mid-laugh, followed closely by his friend Cameron Hunter. Cameron looked my way for a second, narrowed his eyes against the sun and then turned to Leo, saying something I couldn’t hear from

inside the car—something that caused them both to laugh hard. Instantly, my knuckles gripped the steering wheel and my teeth clamped tight. Whatever it was they were saying, I couldn’t help but feel it had something to do with me. Was Leo bragging about bedding the preacher’s daughter to his friends? My blood was boiling as I watched them talk, Leo giving Cameron a gentle punch to his chest. After another look in my direction, I knew Cameron was saying something about me. And it made me want to punch him, but a whole lot harder than Leo had. When Leo finally began walking toward the car, I was sure that my temper was at its boiling point.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Leo climbed into the car and gave me little more than a “hey” before his phone was in his hands and his fingers slid quickly across the screen. I waited a second for him to say something—anything—else, but when he remained silent, I put the car in gear and pushed hard on the gas pedal, causing Leo to jerk and drop his phone. “Whoa, Fast and Furious,” he mumbled as I sped out of the parking lot and onto the road. He bent over and picked up his precious phone and resumed typing something out. Normally, Leo wasn’t this … quiet. Of the two of us, he was definitely the conversationalist. So having him be that quiet while he typed something out on his phone immediately after he and Cameron were sharing a joke that I couldn’t hear but could see … well, I was annoyed. A wholly inadequate word, but the only one my pissed-off brain could conjure up. “You should buckle up,” I said, my voice a bit snappier than normal. “And you should follow traffic laws,” Leo returned, leaning over to view my speedometer. I elbowed him back to his side, but slowed down nonetheless. The texting continued and I tried not to wonder what the hell was so interesting that he had to give his whole focus to his phone, but because we were close enough to recycle each other’s air, it was all I could think about. It hurt, and it pissed me off that it hurt, imagining Leo talking about me going down on him the first time, or how he’d given me my first orgasm. These were things that were deeply private to me and imagining him tossing them around for others to digest and laugh about … well, it really hurt. Finally, because all my annoyance was stifling, I blurted out, “What have you told other people about us?” It came out higher pitched and whinier than I’d intended, but I couldn’t very well say the words again. I let my fingers relax around the steering wheel so that my body language didn’t scream how I felt. “Huh?” “You know what I mean,” I said, calmer this time. “I know guys brag about who they’ve got under them at the moment. I feel like I deserve to know what’s being said about me.”

“What the hell, Scarlet? Where is this coming from?” I regretted bringing it up while driving because I couldn’t very well stare at him as he answered, even though I felt his eyes on me. “You know,” I said, calmer still. “I saw you and Cameron outside the locker rooms. Laughing. And he kept looking at me—guys don’t just look at girls like that.” “Because Hunter thinks you’re hot. Chill the fuck out.” I thanked God for the red light as I turned to Leo and narrowed my eyes into slits. “Do not tell me to chill out.” Leo reached a hand for the air conditioning and I slapped it away. I was able to watch the tick in his jaw at that before he turned to face me, his own eyes hard. The light turned green and I whirled my head back forward to drive, turning toward the tollway and through the E-ZPASS lane. “Like I said. Hunter thinks you’re hot. But that doesn’t mean I’m talking about you to him. Or to anyone. It’s not like that for me.” The rational part of me told me to listen to what he was saying, but the irrational part—which likely accounted for ninety-seven percent—asked me why I was believing him. Dudes bragged all the time; it was as if it was built into their DNA to compare whose sex life was more phenomenal. When he reached for the air conditioning, the irrational Scarlet came out and slapped his hand away again. “My family doesn’t need to hear from the whole town that we’re doing…” I paused a moment, but the anger remained at the edge of my voice, “whatever it is we’re doing.” “What is that supposed to mean?” Now his voice was louder, and I took a little bit of comfort in that, now that I was not the only one getting riled up. “You’re not the one whose parents expect so freaking much from.” I regretted, bitterly, that Leo and I hadn’t established exactly how we would handle the situation we’d fallen into. “It’d be nice to know what’s being said about me so I know how to handle it when it reaches my parents.” Leo laughed humorlessly. “You’re one to fucking talk.” “Excuse me?” “Don’t dog me for talking to my friends when you’ve probably told Liza every single fucking thing we’ve done.” “I have not,” I said, nearly shouting. “She’s my friend and knows we’re … hooking up, but she doesn’t know the more…” I trailed off, my brain not able to formulate the words I was searching for. It was even more infuriating that I knew what I was thinking but couldn’t articulate it. Leo had reduced me to a stupid, blubbering, inarticulate girl. “How am I supposed to believe you? Girls talk about every inane thing.” “Because I wouldn’t lie about that,” I practically growled. “Are you saying I’m lying to you?” “I don’t know!” I threw my hands up before grabbing the wheel. “I have no freaking idea if you’re telling me the truth or if you’re lying just to appease me! All of this, this—whatever it is we’re doing—is new to me and I don’t—”

“Pull in here,” Leo said, pointing a hand at the service station notification sign. “No.” With my bottom lip all pouty, I felt like a petulant child. My frustration with Leo had turned into frustration with myself, for being unable to keep my emotions in check. “Pull the fuck in,” Leo repeated, his voice even and slow. “I’m driving my car and I will not turn into the service station.” “If you don’t pull the car over, I’ll yank your bony ass out of that seat and pull the e-brake.” I didn’t doubt he could, especially with the size of his biceps and the waves of anger rolling off him. The moment I’d pulled my car into a spot, I turned it off and ripped the keys from the ignition, stalking away and toward the woods just behind the building. I needed to get the hell away from him, so I could collect myself and return to the car a much calmer person. Just a few yards from the car, I heard his door slam closed and I picked up the pace, my ballet flats eating up the grass with quick, long steps. It wasn’t long before I could hear him breathing—he was so close to me, and my heart skittered in a stupid kind of excitement. My blood was still boiling and it was on the tip of my tongue to scream at him, but his hand clamped on my upper arm and kept me moving forward, quickly into the woods. I tried in vain to wrestle my arm from his grasp, but he was impossibly strong and we strode, side by side into the woods, over broken branches and fallen leaves. When he let go of my arm, I opened my mouth to call him a number of vile things, but every single word died in my mouth as his lips caught mine. I cursed my body for giving into the spell that his mouth cast upon mine. My traitorous lips opened, my unfaithful tongue slid against his and my body became his accomplice in the way it melted into his touch. He backed me up to a tree so that I felt the bite of bark against the exposed skin along my arms. He let go of my mouth to grip my thighs, lifting me so that I wrapped around his waist. The slit in my maxi dress from ankle to knee gave me a little freedom, but the rest of the dress bunched up on my thighs as I stretched it to accommodate Leo’s lower half. One of his hands slid down my thigh and he mumbled, “Why the fuck is there so much fabric on this?” before finding the opening at my knees and sliding his hand under the skirt so that his palm was against bare skin. “Reach in my front right pocket,” he said, his mouth returning to mine. Holy shit. We were going to do it. Outside. In the weeks since our first night together and the jumbled, alcohol-clouded memories that I had of us together, I never imagined that our next time would be like this. As my body strained, needing relief from the pressure that had built up from our verbal sparring, I reached a hand forward and dove it into the pocket of his shorts, finding nothing until my hand grazed the hardest part of him. “Wrong pocket,” he said, jerking when I touched him through the layers of

shorts. “Should I look in the other pocket?” I asked coyly as my finger slid down his length. “Ah,” he hissed as I did it again, and again and again. “Stop it, or I’m going to come in my shorts.” But I didn’t stop; my fingers moved from the pocket to his front, finding the tip nestled near the waistband of his shorts. I brushed my thumb over it and took extreme pleasure in watching his eyes close halfway. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Reach in that pocket right now, or I’ll have to put you down to do it myself.” Reluctantly, I moved my hand to the other pocket and found the foil square. I held it up between us, just as Leo’s hands slipped over the front of my panties, causing me to buck against his touch. “Put it on,” he said, his thumbs brushing the sides of my lips teasingly. I pushed the front of his shorts down, releasing his cock. As I placed the condom over the tip, his fingers gently pinched my lips—an immediate shock to my core. “Ah,” I moaned. “Don’t do that or I can’t concentrate.” “Then don’t concentrate.” He pinched them again, sending sparks of sharp pleasure right to my center. “And hurry the fuck up.” It was hard to unravel the condom because of our close proximity, but I managed to get it most of the way, leaving Leo to push me up against the tree so that he could use a hand to pull it on completely. “I’m not going to undress you,” he told me, and wrenched my panties to the side. His fingers brushed that sensitive skin inside my lips as he opened me wide and put the head of his cock where his fingers had only teased. “O-okay,” I breathed, arching my hips as far forward as I could go, to get him to actually slide inside of me. Leo quickly looked around before thrusting forward. The feeling of being full hit me hard and I dropped my head from the immense pleasure it brought immediately. The pleasure of him being inside of again, this time in stark, sober daylight. He pulled out all way before thrusting again. Over and over, he repeated that—bruisingly predictive in his rhythm. More than once, my hands gripped his sides, urging him to go faster, to get me to fall over that edge sooner. The climb to my orgasm was painfully slow, my body screaming to hasten the pace. When he continued that same rhythm, I arched my back drastically to get him to listen to what my body was saying—what it needed. “You want fast?” he asked, his breath at my mouth. My breasts heaved as I nodded and my chin brushed his mouth as my head moved. He caught the tip of my chin and bit it gently. “Yes,” I said on an exhale, my hands squeezing his mid-section. Without another word, he picked up the pace and I sagged into the sensation. I ignored everything—the pinch of the bark, the sounds of traffic in the parking lot, the birds I knew were in the vicinity. All I heard were Leo’s breaths and my own

along with the slap of skin each time he drove himself all the way up inside of me. I felt it then, that distinctive numbing of limbs as my body approached the crest. Leo must have sensed it because his fingers delivered one hard press to my clit and his mouth swallowed the scream that tore from my throat. Several seconds later, Leo grunted against my hair as he came and his fingers dug harder into my thighs. There was something delectable about feeling the waves of my orgasm and Leo’s touch soothing my skin as my body crumbled to nothing. After a few long breaths between us, Leo eased out of me, instantly making me aware of the void that was left in his wake. He pulled me from the tree trunk, wrapped one arm around my back as he lowered my legs to the ground gently. He was so careful with me, something that deflated whatever unnecessary annoyance I may have still harbored. It wasn’t until then that I realized we’d just had sex in a pretty public place. Despite Leo pulling me into the woods, we could still see the parking lot and the interstate in the background. We were far enough away to give us a small sense of privacy, but not so far that someone looking this direction wouldn’t have noticed us. “Whoa,” I said on a breath. My legs still shook a little from the orgasm, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to walk yet. “Yeah, I know.” Leo looked at my face as if he was waiting to see if any of our earlier argument lingered on my face. This time, I didn’t have to school my features because whatever had existed between us before he pushed me up against the tree was now gone. “So, we can cross sex in public off the list,” I said with a laugh. Leo closed his eyes for a second and then opened them and gave me one of his wide grins. “You’re right. We can.” But something about the way he said that made me think he hadn’t brought me here to cross off a bucket list item—he’d done it simply because he wanted to. And damn if that didn’t add more confusion for my heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

With every day that passed, I knew I needed to just sit Scarlet down, tell her how I was feeling— that I wanted to know how she thought of us. But the fact was, I was too chicken-shit to upset the perfect balance we had going. The sex at the service station had shifted something in her, I could tell. I’d catch her looking at me for longer periods of time, like she was trying to define something that she saw on my face. Obviously, she hadn’t been able to. There was no way. Given that Scarlet had had a minor (major) freak-out about her parents finding out about us, I didn’t think she’d like it if she could correctly interpret my thoughts just by looking at me. And the reason for that? Because I was about one smile away from blurting out that I was most likely, probably, almost falling in love with her. Fucked up, right? The girl who was a neighborhood friend when we were little, a stranger through high school, then the one person who made me feel like I’d never prove them wrong about me, was the only person in the world that I wanted to be thinking about, spending time with, making decisions about. Like, life decisions. And I didn’t fucking know how to tell her that. It should have been easier, considering how much time we were spending together. Every single day after she pulled her car into her driveway, I followed her in. Sometimes she’d help me with my homework; I was never able to help her with hers. She even started asking me about football without me bringing it up first. One of my favorite conversations had been the day before, when she’d told me that a wide receiver was her favorite position on the team, with a cocky little smile on her face. I’d tackled her, tickling her into submission until she finally admitted, between peals of laughter, that the QB was the best. Oddly enough, it hadn’t turned into anything beyond that. I’d just settled behind her on the couch, one arm snug around her waist, and we watched reruns of Seinfeld for the next three hours. After we got home from the city, we hadn’t talked much. I was studying for a quiz, sprawled out on her couch, and she was typing out a paper at the kitchen table. “Hey, Scarlet?”

She hummed in response, flicking her eyes to me and then back to the blue glow of her laptop. “When is your dad’s sabbatical over again?” Her fingers stopped clicking, but she didn’t look over at me again just yet. “Because you’re joining them for a week, right?” Basically, I’d just admitted two things: 1. I was paying very close attention to what she’d said early on. 2. I was concerned about how much time we had left to play house. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, picking up a pen to doodle on a piece of paper next to her. “I usually do, yeah.” My heart skipped a couple beats at her careful tone, hammering in quick succession. “Usually?” The pace of the pen picked up where she still gripped it in her hand. “Yeah, umm, I don’t think I’m going this year.” “Why not?” Finally, she looked up, locked eyes with mine. “I just don’t want to.” It wasn’t precisely the answer I was hoping for. But I still didn’t look away, in case she wanted to amend it at all. To something like, I don’t want to go because that means I lose a week of time with you, doing just this. She didn’t. And I broke eye contact, looking back down to my statistics notebook in my lap. What was weirder than anything was that I didn’t feel even the tiniest shred of disappointment in her response. How could I when the most likely reason she wasn’t going to vacation with her parents for a week was because of this little game of house we’d been playing for the past four and a half weeks? My phone screen lit up with a text, and I smiled when I read it. Adele: Want to meet for drinks somewhere? I’m bored out of my skull, and if I don’t get out of this house, I’m going to flip the fuck out. Leo: Sure. Want me to head into Boston? Or meet somewhere in the middle? Adele: Actually, I’ll come out to Worcester. The longer this takes, the better. Not that my absence will be missed. *insert stabby face* “Uh-oh,” I said under my breath. “What?” I flipped my notebook closed and stood, stretching my arms above my head with a groan. “Drama with Adele. She wants to know if we want to meet for drinks so she can get out of the house.” “She invited me?” Scarlet raised one brow skeptically. And with good reason. Adele would probably nut-punch me for bringing Scarlet, especially if she had shit

going on with Nathan that she wanted to talk about. But then again, it would probably be a good distraction for her. And then I could see how the two interacted. Not like I was making sure they could be friends or anything. Or that Adele could play nice with a woman who was actually important to me. Nope. Not at all. “I’m inviting you. Which is all that matters. Come on, it’ll be fun. You haven’t seen Adele in, what? Three years?” “Something like that.” She rolled her lips in and rubbed them together, then sat up in her chair. “Okay, fine. Do I have to change?” “Nope. You look perfect.” Scarlet rolled her eyes, but gave me a little smile. I wasn’t feeding her bullshit either. We probably wouldn’t be going anywhere fancy, and she was wearing dark jeans and a pale yellow flowy shirt that made her hair look like it was on fire. “We’ve got time though. She’s driving in from Boston, where she lives with Nathan.” “A boyfriend, huh?” I shrugged. “Yeah, for like six months now.” “That’s nice,” she said kindly. “I’m sure she’ll tell me all about it.” “So Leo was telling me you live with your boyfriend?” Scarlet asked from across the dimly lit table. Adele just narrowed her eyes, taking a long sip from her margarita. “Adele,” I sighed. “What?” She shrugged lightly, flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder and leveling a death look in my direction. “It’s not my fault you didn’t warn me that Sister Christian would be here. I thought I was getting BFF time.” Scarlet shifted uncomfortably in her chair and I leaned forward, resting my arms on the dark wood. I didn’t move until Adele deemed me worthy of eye contact. “Don’t be a bitch,” I said firmly. The moment Adele cracked, lost her armor, I could see it. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and I could see her apology when she opened them again. “Sorry, Jennings,” she said to Scarlet, not looking away from me. “I’m not always the most welcoming person when I have to share my best friend.” “It’s okay, I’m not intimidated by exclusionary-based insecurity.” Adele and I looked over at Scarlet, who was staring right back at Adele. Her face wasn’t mean, but the words rang with quiet self-assurance. I risked a glance back at Adele, whose face had split into a smile. A genuine one too. “Touché,” Adele replied with a lifted chin. She took another sip of her drink, and Scarlet and I did the same. The block of tension had effectively snapped, and I relaxed into my chair, patting Scarlet’s thigh a couple times. She gave me a quick smile. Adele, of course, didn’t miss it. “So, Scarlet. You’re going to have to explain something to me.” “Oh boy,” Scarlet said and took another long sip of her drink. “You’re not like most preachers’ daughters I know. You’re sitting here on a weeknight, with your boy toy, drinking with the class whore from high school. Are

you going to need to visit the confessional booth after this?” “If I was Catholic, sure. Methodists don’t confess.” “Ahh, of course. So that’s why you’ve got the rebel streak? The Methodist thing?” Adele was still smiling, and so was Scarlet. I, however, was pretty stoked to hear Scarlet’s answer to this. I had already figured most preachers’ daughters didn’t make sexual to-do lists and get eaten out on the kitchen island in broad daylight, but maybe this whole thing was part of a college rebellion, and she’d go back into her normal role as soon as school started up for her again in the fall. “No,” Scarlet said, playing with the straw in her glass. Then she shrugged. “My parents, for as much as they expect of me, have never needed me to beat people over the head with a Bible, screaming my beliefs in their face. I’m not perfect, and I never will be. Nor do I think that the God I believe in expects me to be perfect. And I think there’s more to your personal faith than never saying a swear word, or making sure you’re in a church pew every week, or being able to memorize scripture at the drop of a hat. I think it’s more important to treat people in a way that backs up your faith with actions, not just hyperbole that impresses people.” “Wow.” Adele sat back in her chair, watching Scarlet with assessing eyes. “That’s pretty fuckin’ deep, Jennings. I’d listen to you preach any day, if you ever want to take over for your dad.” We all laughed, and the subject switched to lighter things, like school and football, some of the people we went to high school with. Adele was maybe a bit more reserved than she would be if it was just me, and the subject of Nathan never came up, but maybe it was good for her that way, to just have fun and relax. Scarlet stood after a while, excusing herself to get a glass of water from the bar, since our waitress had long since deserted us. “Holy shit, Leo,” Adele said after she’d left, slugging me in the arm. “You might as well have heart eyes bulging from your head right now, you little skank.” “How does that make me a skank, exactly?” “Oh shut up, I wasn’t being literal. Obviously.” She leaned in toward me, poking a finger in my chest. “You like her. Like, like her like her.” “Adele,” I swatted her hand away, “we’re not in middle school.” Denard’s advice from a couple of weeks ago flashed through my head. If I couldn’t admit to people who matter that Scarlet matters? I probably didn’t deserve her. Didn't deserve anything from her. So I groaned and met Adele’s eyes. “Okay, fine. Yes. I like her like her.” Adele squealed, a sound that I was quite sure I’d never heard from her before. “Leo! And she’s normal! This is so huge for you!” “Honestly, I’m never taking you anywhere ever again if you don’t chill the hell out. And Scarlet doesn’t know, so could you please pipe down?” “Oh, this is too good. I’m sorry.” She laughed and wiped at her eyes. Then she sat up, leaning around me to stare at the bar. “I tell you what, Madsen. If she doesn’t know? You might want to go tell her now.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why?” “Because someone else is about to piss on your fire hydrant.” “What?” I turned in my chair, and then stood without thinking. Some dude, tall and thin, was grinning at Scarlet, where she was still waiting for her water. He leaned closer to her, whispered something in her ear. For a second, I waited for her to shove him back, or look at me for help, but she didn’t. She laughed. Not even her fake laugh. A real one. That made her toss her hair back and look fucking gorgeous. “Oh, hell no,” I said and marched over, the sound of Adele’s delighted laughter behind me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

In the fourteen steps that it took me to get from our small, round table to the bar, I probably should have formulated a plan. I didn’t. The only thing I knew was that I could not get into a fight. Coach would have my ass, and would more than likely bench me for a couple games if law enforcement had to get involved. And at this moment? I was feeling murderous, so someone would have to call the cops if I let myself go that far. There was no fucking way Gumby Boy would be able to stop me. “Hey you,” I said when I reached her side. Her face lifted in surprise, not anger, which was good. I didn’t give Gumby Boy a second of my attention. I’d only do that if he was an idiot and didn’t walk away. Scarlet turned, a smile spreading over her finely carved features. “Hey yourself. Did you need a water too?” I shook my head, stepping into her so that she had no choice but to back completely up to the bar. “I’m uhh, I’ll just go,” Gumby Boy stammered before he turned and walked away. What a punk-ass. How could he not see that Scarlet was worth getting his ass beat? “Why were you talking to him?” I asked, bracing my hands on the bar top on either side of her waist. The material of her shirt brushed up against my arms, I was so close to her. “Are you jealous?” she asked with a smile. “Yes.” Scarlet swallowed, the smile dropping off of her face. “Why?” While our eyes stayed locked, our faces so close that I could see the tiny specks of gold around her irises, I didn’t want to play it off, make a joke so she didn’t see what was bubbling up inside of me. “Because I don’t want you to smile at any man like that, if he’s not me.” Obviously she thought I was kidding, attempting to play some dick boyfriend role for fun, because she shoved at my shoulder with a laugh. I didn’t budge. Actually I did, just not in the direction that she was attempting. I stepped closer until I was flush up against her. The orange juice from her drink smelled sweet on

her breath, but I didn’t kiss her. All I did was let her look at me, look in me, so she could see how fucking serious I was. “Leo,” she said, shaking her head in obvious confusion. “What do you expect me to say to that?” Her question, which she had every right to ask, made me wish that I’d told her what I felt when I looked at her, when she smiled, when she kissed or touched me. I wished that she knew even a fraction of what had been building up inside of me for weeks. Because there was no way that she could know. But this wasn’t the place or the time. I shook my head, taking my hands away from the bar so that I could cup her face. “I don’t expect you to say anything, Scarlet.” Before she could respond, I shifted so that I could fit my lips to hers. Her top lip curved perfectly between both of mine, and I ran my tongue across it before moving to her bottom lip. When her hands came to rest on my biceps, I felt the tremble in her fingers. She kissed me back, angling her head when I swept my tongue against hers. Everything around me dimmed, except her. She stayed in vivid, blinding color that I could see behind my closed eyelids. After a few moments, the sound of catcalls and applause filtered through my brain and I pulled away. Scarlet’s mouth was red, her lips puffy, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, judging by the look in her eyes. “Will you come home with me?” I whispered, dragging my thumb along her cheekbone, under her jaw, over her bottom lip. “The house is empty, I promise.” It only took her a second before she nodded, never taking her eyes away from mine. I clasped her hand while we went to say a brief goodbye to Adele, who grinned at us like the cat who’d stolen the cream. Scarlet let me drive, and the entire ride back to my place felt sacred, like neither one of us dared to open our mouth and break the spell. The whole way, I gripped her fingers between my own, sliding my thumb over the sharp, curved bones of her knuckles underneath her silk-soft skin. My house was dark when I pulled the car into the driveway, and in silence, she followed me through the entryway and up the stairs. When I closed the door to my bedroom, I turned to her, pinning her in place with my eyes. “No lists tonight. Just us.” There was a desperate gleam in her eye, like she wanted to ask me what the hell was going on, but she didn’t. She just nodded, stepping into my arms when I opened them. Our mouths met frantically, kissing in the way we were used to. But for the first time, with any woman, I wanted to feel. Wanted to memorize the texture of her lips and the way her body moved under my own without the frenzied chase for orgasm clouding my head. I slowed the kiss, teasing her with my tongue. I touched her slowly, pushed my hand up under her shirt and onto the warm, soft skin of her back. We staggered for a moment when she tripped over a pair of shoes I’d left out, and then laughed into

each other’s mouths. “Leo,” Scarlet whispered when I dragged my nose down the line of her neck, gathering her body as close to mine as humanly possible. I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, without my heart tumbling out of my mouth. Her hands weren’t trembling anymore when she tugged my shirt up, felt down my stomach and dragged a finger through my happy trail. Red-hot lust surged through my veins, racing with my blood, but I breathed through it, pulling her shirt up and over her head. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and I gathered it in one hand to pull it to one side. Before I could turn her around, Scarlet reached a hand behind her back to unhook her white cotton bra. It stayed hooked up over her shoulders while I kissed her again, pulling the air from her lungs and into my own. I was so hard, painfully hard, but this was something I refused to rush. We fell back onto my bed together, our mouths still fused. Scarlet’s hands on my body demanded that I move faster and grip harder, break the seams on our clothes, pound and sweat and bruise. Unbidden, my breath picked up and my hips pushed into hers when her nails dug into my scalp. “Yes,” she hissed into my mouth, tugging on my bottom lip with her teeth. “God, you feel so good.” I pushed my hand underneath her loosened bra, gloried in the way her flesh filled my palm. Then her phone rang in her purse. We both froze, panting onto each other’s lips. “They’ll leave a message if it’s important,” I whispered, panic at losing this moment making my blood run cold for one sharp moment. Indecision blanketed her face until I sank against her mouth again, groaning at the feel of her tongue against my own. She kissed me back as soon as the phone stopped ringing, the silence freeing her of uncertainty. I ripped the bra off her arms, the slow pace from before suddenly gone. She felt it too, and her hands clawed at my belt in an attempt to undo it. I sucked one nipple into my mouth and she arched up beneath me. Her phone rang again. The sharp trilling sound making her pull away from me. “What the hell?” I groaned, flopping onto my back on the mattress. Scarlet heaved a sigh that made me smile, and went to answer the phone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Leo squeezed my waist as I leaned over to grab my phone and I laid my hand on his. “Give me just a second,” I said to him as I slid my thumb across the screen. “Hey mom,” I said on an answer, pushing Leo’s hands away with an easy smile as I sat up straighter. “Honey. I hate to say this over the phone…” Her voice was thick, and though I’d only actually seen my mother cry a few times, I knew precisely how it affected her voice. Knowing that, my heart flopped into my stomach and everything came to a standstill around me. “What is it?” I said, but I couldn’t tell you how I formed the words because already, in the anticipation of something I knew would devastate me, my limbs had gone completely numb. “It’s your dad—” she began, before stopping to muffle a sob. I pressed a hand to my mouth. In the back of my mind, I registered that Leo was saying something but I couldn’t concentrate on it. All I heard was my mom, crying as she told me news that I was sure would rock my world. A cold rush filled my veins as I waited for her to continue. “He had a stroke.” She paused and I felt a small relief that it wasn’t something worse. “And in the process of having a stroke, he had a heart attack.” She cleared her throat. “He’s in ICU. We don’t know how bad it is just yet.” “I need to come,” I said instantly. “I’m about to book your plane ticket. But head to the airport anyway, see if you can fly standby in case I can’t book you until much later.” “Okay,” I nodded. “I’ll leave right now.” “I’ll text you the flight information,” she said before adding, “I’m sorry, Scarlet.” And then her breath hitched and I practically felt her tremble through the phone. I closed my eyes, felt moisture build up behind my eyelids. “I’ll see you soon. I love you.” I opened my eyes as I pulled the phone from my face and slowly remembered where I was. Leo was laying on the bed next to me, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “What’s going on?”

I stared at him a moment, wanting nothing more than to fall completely apart. But I wasn’t that girl, the one who gave into emotions. Immediately, I snapped into action. “Shit,” I murmured, looking down at my bare chest. I put an arm around me as I searched for my bra first with my eyes before I trusted my legs enough to climb off the bed. “I need to go.” “I got that much. What is it? Let me drive you.” “No.” I held up a hand, halting him from getting up to join me. My eyes caught on my bra and I grabbed it, quickly putting my arms through the straps and trying to snap it behind me. My fingers fumbled on the clasp and Leo moved again like he wanted to help, but I couldn’t think about him helping me at that moment as my mind raced with everything going on. I backed up and avoided looking at him. If he touched me, I knew I’d fall apart. And I couldn’t. There wasn’t time to allow my grief to manifest—I needed to get out, needed to be with my family. “My dad had a heart attack. He needs me right now.” My voice sounded hollow, robotic in its detachment. But I wasn’t detached; I was trying to keep control of myself before I dissolved into tears and the grief that I heard in my mom’s voice. “Is he okay?” “Do I look like I know?” I yelled, the anger that was slowly burning through my grief finally coming to the surface. “I just need to go. Right now.” “Are you flying? Let me drive you to Logan.” Once again I held up a hand, halting him. “No.” I searched for my shirt, but I felt like I couldn’t even think past getting myself to the airport. “Let me help you,” he said. I snapped. “Help me?” I asked, my voice several octaves higher than normal. “You’ve done nothing but distract me all summer, Leo.” I spied my shirt crumpled in a corner across the room and snagged it, yanking it over my head. “I know you’re upset right now—” he started. “Just shut up!” I yelled, throwing up my hands. “I considered not visiting my parents for you. I’m so stupid!” I grabbed my purse from the floor and swung the strap on my shoulder as I left the room, running down the stairs and out the door before Leo could catch up with me. I was in my car and backing out of the driveway when Leo stepped out his front door, so I accelerated, needing distance from him as soon as possible. My phone on the passenger seat buzzed and I picked it up, seeing a text from my mom with a flight time and airline. It was a few hours from now, so I knew I’d try to get standby on another flight to D.C. as soon as possible. I dropped my phone back on the passenger seat and then spied Leo’s cleats on the floor, caked in dirt. Then, finally, I started crying.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

After my flight landed at Ronald Reagan in D.C., I called my mom from baggage claim to let her know I was ready. I tried to do my best not to look at the name on my most recent call list: Leo. The two-hour flight had done nothing but make me think, replay my last conversation with him over and over. I’d been mean to him, which seemed to be my knee-jerk reaction whenever I was upset. He’d called me around the time I got to the airport, but Logan was so packed that I hadn’t bothered answering, not when I was in a hurry to get on the soonest flight to D.C. It wasn’t until I was standing at the curb waiting to see my mom’s car that I realized I didn’t have anything with me besides the contents of my purse. No cell phone charger or even change of clothes. Spying the black SUV my mom drove, I moved down the arrivals line to where she was pulling in. The moment her arms circled me, I sagged in relief. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. She wasn’t crying, but from the look on her face as she’d approached me, I was sure that was because she’d spent so many hours crying that she didn’t have any tears left. Her floral perfume was comforting and I gripped her tighter, thankful to be reunited. When she pulled back, she brushed my hair from my face. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said, a sad smile on her face. “Just a few weeks,” I quipped. “Come on,” she said, gripping my wrist and leading me toward her car. “Let’s go to the hospital and see your father.” I waited until she was buckled before asking, “How’s Dad?” “Well,” she sighed, signaling and then pulling out into the traffic. “He’s stable. That’s about all we know at this point. He had some scans and tests and we’ll find out soon how…” her voice drifted and I could tell she was doing her best to stay strong for me. “Okay,” I said, deciding not to make her finish her answer. I still had a dozen other questions, but I didn’t think it was fair to ask them right then, since she had just recently seemed to stop crying. “Tell me something good, Scarlet. What have you been doing all summer? We have fifteen minutes before we’re at the hospital, and I want to just be a mom

talking to her daughter about normal things right now.” What could I tell her, really? “Classes have been remarkably easy,” I began, nervously playing with my cell phone in my lap. “I’ve been working at the shelter, of course. Hanging out with Liza a bit.” “Oh, that’s good.” My mother may have thought Liza was a little wild, but she had liked how Liza always managed to pull me from my shell. “How’s Liza?” “Good.” Even though I hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks. “She’s busy at the bar.” “How’s Leo?” I nearly choked on my own saliva at that before remembering that my mom knew about our rides into the city several times a week. She didn’t know about … the other stuff. “Leo’s fine. Busy.” “Mrs. Madsen mentioned you two have been hanging out together a bit more. That’s nice.” She turned her head to me and smiled a genuine smile—nothing curious or questioning about it. I often forgot that Mrs. Madsen and my mom were friends, so it wasn’t surprising that they talked while my mom had been away. “Yes. We’ve spent some time together.” “That’s great, Scarlet. I’m really glad.” I wasn’t sure how to take my mom’s answers. Was she lightly questioning me? Was she giving me her approval? Surely, she wasn’t. As much as my mother liked Leo, I couldn’t see her approving of our arrangement as it were. “Well, it’s my first summer where I’m not studying a lot, so it’s been nice being able to see people a little before vet school starts.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. My father had just suffered a stroke and heart attack and I was talking about leaving my parents to go to a school across the country in less than two months. “I know, honey. You’ve worked so hard for this. It’s good to see you fighting for what you want.” Again, I wasn’t sure if my mom’s responses were veiled advice or not—because they seemed to be speaking right to my heart. “Well, I just want to make you both proud.” My mother made a sound that sounded like a tsk, but when she looked at me, her eyes were watery. “Oh honey,” she said, reaching a hand over to touch my cheek. “Going to vet school doesn’t make me proud; I’ve always been proud of you.” She dropped her hand and turned back to the road as the street light changed color. “I just don’t want to see you work yourself so hard all the time.” I was confused. I’d worked so hard, my whole life, to live up to the expectations my parents had—I was a preacher’s daughter who didn’t fit into the typical mold, so I’d made up for my shortcomings by throwing myself into my studies with an almost punishing work ethic. I’d gone into the veterinary field because I loved animals, yes, but also because I wanted my parents to be proud of the woman they raised. I didn’t mess around in college, never dropped a class or even skipped one,

all to make them proud. “Listen, Scarlet,” my mom said, interrupting my thoughts, “I can practically see the wheels in your brain cranking and turning over and over. I’ve often wondered if we were a little too hard on you with our hopes for your education and future success. You’re your father’s daughter, and so I assumed that your hard work and tenacity was a good thing. And now,” she glanced at me, “with your father in the hospital—I’m afraid.” Her voice was a whisper. “He’s had high blood pressure for years and hasn’t slowed down once—for anything. I don’t want that to happen to you too.” My chest ached from the breath I held as I stared at her. I’d never really thought of myself as being like my father, but now that my mom was saying this, I couldn’t stop comparing us. He worked every single day—if he wasn’t ministering to the congregation at large, he was advising couples on upcoming marriages or marriages in turmoil. He worked both youth group nights and helped out at the churchsponsored soup kitchen. He had a hand in every single thing in his church, because that was who he was. And while I wasn’t an active member of the congregation, I had thrown myself into my studies for three years straight—not once taking the easy way. If there were extra credit opportunities, I took them. Not because I needed to, but because I could. I could count on two hands the number of parties I’d attended in three full years of school, which worked out to less than one per month. I’d been an atypical student, pushing myself to be the best, the hardest worker. And now my mom was essentially telling me to slow down. “I’ve worked so hard,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. “You have, Scarlet. And I worry. I worry you’ve worked yourself so hard that you went from being a child to being an adult immediately without enough fun in between.” “I can still have fun in vet school,” I protested, but we both knew that wasn’t true. Vet school would be a different atmosphere, in a different state, and as introverted as I was, I wouldn’t spend the next several years attending social gatherings. “I’m just saying that I don’t want you to feel pressure from us. If you want those things for yourself, then great—I’ll be proud of you. But if you don’t want those things and you change your mind, I’ll still, forever and always, be proud of you.” The unshed tears finally spilled over and down her cheeks and I blinked to keep my own at bay. A couple minutes later, we were walking down the hallways of the hospital to room one-fourteen. I was shocked by how quiet the hospital was, and felt like I was disturbing the peace as my mother opened the door and I followed her. After we washed our hands in the small sink, she led me past the curtain to his bed. My father was pale, eyes closed and hands placed one over the other on his stomach. It was a pose I’d seen thousands of times—my father napping on the couch, usually. The main difference here, besides the location, was the fact that a half dozen machines surrounded him, with wires coming from places all around his

body. The steady beeping of the machines around him reminded me of exactly where we were and I joined my mom in a chair she pulled up for me beside hers, right next to his bed. “The doctors think he’ll wake soon,” she whispered and grabbed my hand. Her fingers were cold against mine and she squeezed them tight. “We should talk to him, so he knows we’re both here.” I nodded, swallowed past the thick lump in my throat. Seeing my dad so frail and motionless was alarming. He’d always been a loud, jovial man. It was part of what made him an excellent pastor—his voice reached every single person in his congregation and he made sure to shake the hands of everyone as they left, giving them a smile of encouragement for whatever it was they were going through. “Switch me spots,” my mom said, standing up and leaving the chair closest to my dad. “Talk to him.” “Hey, Dad,” I said, my voice creaky. “It’s Scarlet. I’m here.” “Mrs. Jennings,” a voice called from the doorway. We both looked up and I saw a doctor in a white lab coat, motioning for my mom to follow him into the hallway. “The good news is we believe that your husband suffered a mini-stroke.” I picked up my dad’s hand in mine, immediately missing the reciprocating squeeze he gave me every time I grabbed his hand. I strained my ear toward the door. “The chance of having a cardiac disturbance is elevated after having a stroke. Typically, any cardiac complication happens within three months following a stroke, but in your husband’s case it was minutes.” I heard my mother say something, but I couldn’t make out exactly what. I squeezed my dad’s hand and rubbed a thumb over his knuckles. “It may take us several days to get a better picture on how big the heart attack was, but his brain scans are encouraging—we didn’t see any abnormalities. We’ll know better when he wakes up, the extent of damage caused by the stroke and heart attack. But this is reassuring right now.” At the same time that my mom sagged against the door, I sagged in my seat. I felt as if I’d been awake for a hundred hours at that moment and all I wanted was a nap. I heard my mom thank the doctor and then she returned to the room. I stood to give her a hug as she approached the bed and did my best to keep my own emotions in check. I wanted to be strong for my mom and, as she silently cried in my arms, I kept it together, patting her back and hair. “I’m going to go find the hospital cafeteria,” I told her. “Want a coffee?” She nodded, and I left the room as quickly as I could, letting out a breath and feeling the stress of the last few hours tighten its hold on me. I asked a receptionist to point me in the direction of the cafeteria and then, on my way, I pulled my phone out of my purse. I had two missed calls, one from Liza and one from Leo. I wasn’t ready to call Liza back and tell her everything that was going on. And after how unkindly I’d treated Leo, I wasn’t ready to call him either. I moved to my texts, seeing two from Leo and one from Liza. I opened Liza’s first, figuring that would be easier to read.

Liza: Hey! Let’s get together tonight? Tomorrow? You can fill me in on all of your naked acrobatics and I can drink my jealousy away. I debated texting her, telling her I was in D.C. and my dad was in the hospital. But that didn’t feel like something I should do over text, so I put the thought aside and moved onto Leo’s, taking in a deep breath. Leo: I hope you’re okay. That your dad is okay. I hate that you were upset when you left, especially with how things ended tonight. That one was sent first, with another following it ten minutes later. Leo: I want to be there for you. If you’ll let me. I care about you. Just … please. Call me. When you can. I rolled my thumb over his words and felt my face grow warm. For the second time that day, Leo had been the one to cause me to cry.

CHAPTER THIRTY

When the light in my bedroom turned from black to gray to the soft yellow of the sunrise, I rolled out my bed. At most, I’d gotten three hours of fitful sleep. Every time I’d shifted on my bed, punching the pillow underneath my head, I thought about Scarlet, wondered about her dad, then rolled through the things she’d said to me before taking off. Fleeing was a better word, actually. Not that I could blame her. I couldn’t really be mad at her for what she’d said, though the words seared into my brain almost twelve hours later. You’ve done nothing but distract me all summer … I’m so stupid. It actually would’ve been easier if I could be mad at her, if I could’ve fought back against what she said. But I couldn’t. No, the thing that tied my tongue down and shackled my ability to get defensive against the daggers she’d slung at me was a bone-deep shame. I hadn’t given her one reason to believe that I actually cared for her. Not one. And among the thousands of new, terrifying thoughts that I had for her, I’d only given her vague statements and indistinct declarations. So I couldn’t really blame her for viewing me as a distraction. Nor could I blame her for her silence. Of course, I was hoping that it meant her phone had died, or her dad was doing so well that she wasn’t even thinking about anything that was going on outside of the hospital. But it still left me feeling uncomfortable, how we’d left things. I dressed quickly, grabbing the first clothes I set my hands on and made my way downstairs. My mom had always been an early riser, and when I turned the corner into the kitchen, she looked up with surprise from her seat at the kitchen table. “You’re up early.” “Yeah,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee. I added a pinch of sugar and blew on it before sitting across from her. “I’m guessing you heard about Pastor Jennings.” She hummed, nodding her head. “It’s so sad. I was actually texting with Margaret a little bit ago.” “How is he doing?”

The smile she gave me was sad, and it made my mouth dry out. “He’s still in ICU. He was stable last night, but I guess they had a rough morning. They’re still trying to figure out the extent of the damage from the stroke.” My head jerked up. “A stroke? I thought it was a heart attack.” She lifted her eyebrows at my tone, but nodded. “It was both. He had a ministroke, a TIA, and that triggered the heart attack. How did you know already?” “Scarlet told me. We uhh, we met up with Adele last night and she got the call while we were still together.” I took a sip of coffee, my mind racing. They weren’t in town, so it wasn’t like Scarlet and her mom would have visits from church members, or other family members, which I knew they didn’t have many of anyway. Obviously I didn’t know a lot about strokes, or heart attacks, but I knew they were serious. Serious enough that he was in Intensive Care. “Mom, do you know what hospital he’s at?” “Sure, why?” I pushed my chair back a bit and scratched at the back of my neck. “Can I borrow your car?” Ugh, I fucking hated asking that. It made me feel like a child, more than staying in their house all summer did. “Leo—” “For a couple days?” Comprehension dawned in her eyes, then her face softened into a smile. “Honey, why do you want to drive down there?” I tilted my head to the side, raising my eyebrows like really, Mom? You can’t figure this out? “You two are,” she swallowed, and the way her eyes brightened, the way her tone rose with excitement made me sad. Just a little, because who knew if Scarlet even wanted to see me. “Are you dating?” “Don’t get too excited, Mom,” I said carefully, turning my coffee mug counter clockwise. “But … but I like her. A lot, actually. And she’s probably feeling like she has to be really strong for her mom. That’s got to make it hard to process anything for herself.” “I would imagine so.” My mom propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand, pinning me with a serious look. “But if you go, Leo, you better make sure you’re only doing this for her. Now isn’t the time to make some grand declaration, if you haven’t already.” I laughed, the sound empty of any humor. “Trust me, no declarations have been made. She probably wouldn’t even believe me right now if I did.” I shook my head, then rolled it around on my shoulders. “I just want to be there for her. Make sure she’s okay.” “Is it too soon for me to pretend she’s my daughter-in-law?” “Yes,” I said, standing up from the table. I took another sip of my coffee before dumping the rest into the sink. “Now can I borrow your car?” “No, I need it.” “Mom, the train will take forever.”

“I know,” she said lightly, regarding me over the rim of her mug. “What if I give you your Christmas present early?” “It’s July.” “Very early, then.” I leaned up against the counter, trying to stifle the frustration at still standing there when I wanted to be leaving, getting there as quickly as possible. “Okay, what’s my Christmas present?” “Your father and I will buy you a plane ticket. I’ll book it while you go throw some things in a bag, but you better promise me you won’t bitch on Christmas Eve when you have nothing to open.” I grinned, yanking her up from the table so I could wrap her in a hug. “You got it. I don’t even care that this entire conversation makes me feel like I’m fifteen and you just gave me permission to go have a sleepover.” She laughed and cupped the side of my face. Her skin was still warm from holding her coffee mug. And then she blinked rapidly, her blue eyes looking shiny and wet. “No matter what she feels about you showing up there today, I’m proud of you. You may be a gigantic pain in my ass sometimes, especially when you’re off crashing cars, but this is a moment where I will gladly claim you in public.” Then she pecked me on the cheek and pushed me away. “Now go pack. And don’t forget to take some clean underwear!” “I am absolutely going to pretend like you didn’t just say that to me,” I called over my shoulder while I fucking ran from the kitchen. I took the stairs three at a time, feeling a sense of relief for the first time since Scarlet ran from my room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The drive to Logan was a blur, the flight felt even faster, and by the time the plane jolted to the runway at Reagan National Airport, I felt like I’d been awake for about three days straight. I should have tried to sleep on the relatively short flight in, but my brain never stopped. And of course, one of the things that it kept looping around my head was that Coach was probably ready to string me up. By the time I landed, workouts had already started, so he knew I was a no-show. Since I hadn’t checked a bag, I left the plane and jogged to the airport entrance to flag a taxi. “MedStar Washington, please,” I said to the cab driver, who didn’t give me a response, just accelerated from the curb so fucking fast that I lurched to the side of the car. “Yeah, no problem, I’ll just buckle up a second before I die.” I was just pulling my phone out to call Coach when his name magically appeared on the screen. “Shit,” I whispered before bringing the phone up to my ear. “Hey, Coach, I was just about to call you.” “You better hope you were about to call me. Because I’m staring across this field and don’t see the one person I should see out of the whole damn team. Where the hell are you, Madsen?” “Well,” I said, grabbing onto the handle in the ceiling of the car while the cab took a hard right, “it’s kind of an emergency situation, and I just landed in DC.” “What the hell?” Then he moved his mouth away from the phone to bark at someone on the field. “Move your ass, Johnson!” “I know.” I dropped my head back onto the cheap material of the head rest. “It’s a … a friend of mine, and her dad had a stroke yesterday. And I just need to be here for her.” He was quiet on the other end of the phone, which probably should have made me nervous. But it just erased any doubts I might have had about whether I was doing the right thing. “Coach, I know this isn’t okay, but I had to make a choice this morning, and I’m choosing to be there for someone who I care a great deal about. And if you need to bench me for a game or two at the beginning of the season, then do it. I’ll own up to

whatever consequences you might have for me.” I could hear him breathing through the receiver, and I blew out a breath. “Look, you always tell us to act like men, that if we want to be respected, then we have to act in a way that demands it first. And I’m trying to do something that will let her know that I respect her more than anything else right now, and I’ll be there for her no matter what. Isn’t that what a man would do?” “Oh for crying out loud, Madsen, save the sermon. I’m not gonna bench you.” Then he cleared his throat. “But yes, that’s what a man would do. You made a good choice, kid. But you better believe I’m gonna work your ass into the ground when you get back.” I laughed. “Yes, Coach. That’s fine with me. And thank you. I appreciate it.” When I hung up, the taxi screeched to a halt underneath a huge metal, concrete and glass overhang. Tent-like peaks of glass made the sun filter through to the pavement in odd shimmers when I stepped out. I handed the driver his cash and slipped my backpack over my shoulders. I wandered through the large doors and into the sprawling lobby until I found the information desk. While I waited behind an elderly woman looking for information on her granddaughter, I had a moment of pause. My mom had told me he was in the ICU, but wouldn’t they restrict that to immediate family? While the women ahead of me continued to talk, I leaned around and was very relieved to see a woman that was probably in her late seventies manning the desk. Old ladies? They fucking loved me. A flash of the dimples and a genuinely spoken compliment, and they’d give me just about anything I wanted. When it was my turn, I gave her a small smile. “I love that pin you’re wearing; it looks exactly like something my mother has.” She looked at me over the edge of her purple rimmed glasses. “No need for flattery, Dimples. Just tell me what you need.” “Ah, right.” I rocked back on my heels. “The room number for Robert Jennings please, he’s in the ICU, I’m just not positive which room.” “And your relation to the patient?” She clicked away on her keyboard, no longer looking at me. “Son-in-law,” I said easily, very fucking glad I’d tucked both hands into the front pockets of my jeans in case she decided to look for a ring. “So that would make…” she trailed off, raising an eyebrow at me. Okay, she wasn’t dicking around. “Scarlet Jennings. His daughter, that would make her my wife.” I smiled. “She kept her last name, obviously. She’s very independent.” “Obviously,” she said, but gave me a genuine smile, and then handed me a slip of paper with the information I needed. Careful to use my right hand to take it out of her outstretched hand, I thanked her and headed in the direction of the ICU. The hospital was busy, and I had to slow my pace around families with strollers and crying young kids yanking on their parents’ hands. People carrying handfuls of balloons and bouquets of flowers gave me apologetic smiles when they walked in

front of me. Oh shit, was I supposed to bring flowers? Or balloons? No. I shook my head and followed the signs toward his room. If Scarlet saw me clutching a handful of balloons, she’d probably question my sanity. As would I. “Leo?” I turned at the sound of Mrs. Jennings voice to my right. “Ahh, Mrs. Jennings. Hi.” Lame. I sounded so lame. “Leo.” She shook her head. “What are you doing here?” I closed my eyes. Honesty. She deserved honesty. “I wanted to be here for your daughter. And you, if you need it.” Her mouth dropped open, but she recovered quickly. I’d never seen her looking so disheveled, so tired. Her face was free of make-up, the wrinkles around her eyes more pronounced under the harsh lighting of the hospital. “Good. That’ll be good for her.” “How’s your husband?” “Stable, thank God. We thought he might need a stent put in after his heart attack, but there wasn’t enough blockage in his arteries. He’s still got some weakness on the left side of his body, and his speech is slurred, but the doctors are optimistic about that fading.” “Good.” We stared at each for a second before she smiled. “How did you get the room number?” “Ummm, well, apparently I’m your son-in-law today. But don’t tell Scarlet, because she might strangle me to death with a hospital robe.” She laughed, then reached out to give me a brief hug. I patted her back a little awkwardly. “Oh, that feels wonderful. I haven’t laughed in two days. Thank you, Leo.” “Sure, no problem.” Glancing down at her full coffee cup, she looked up and gave me another smile. “You know what? I’ll just drink this down here for a while. Give you a few minutes before I intrude.” “You don’t have to do that; I don’t want to keep you from your husband.” But she shook her head, already turning to go back into the cafeteria. “The change of scenery will do me good, don’t you worry.” I thanked her and turned to keep walking. The whole thing felt like a Twilight Zone moment. In a hospital I wasn’t familiar with, heading toward a woman that I wasn’t even sure wanted to see me, and I was perfectly content with it. All of it. Scarlet may still be mad at me, then I’d wait around the corner, out of sight, until she wasn’t. That’s what felt weirdest of all—that I wasn’t the slightest bit uncertain about whether I should be there anymore. When I turned the next corner, I saw her. The seating area was fairly empty, and she was curled into an overstuffed chair, her knees tucked into her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs. She looked so small, so pale, that my chest felt tight and achy. All I wanted to do was wrap myself around her until I knew she was warm

and happy. She didn’t see me approach, probably used to the bustle of the hospital around her. Her eyes were staring blankly ahead until I crouched down next to the chair. “Scarlet?” Her face snapped over to me, eyes wide and confused. “Leo?” She unfolded her legs, and I set a hand on her knee once her feet hit the ground. “How are you doing, church girl?” Then she crumpled, dropping her head into her hands, quiet sobs shaking her slim shoulders. “Oh shit, I already screwed it up, didn’t I?” I muttered to myself, rubbing a hand down her back. Then she lifted her head and wiped under her nose. She looked so sad and beautiful, smears of mascara under her tired-looking eyes. “You really came?” She sniffled. I nodded, smoothing her hair down with my palm. “Is that okay?” In answer, she pushed from the chair and sank down on o the floor next to me, immediately curling into my arms. I held her tightly as she cried her quiet, contained tears, and it still didn’t feel tight enough. If it had been possible, I would have pressed her under my skin if it would have made her feel better. “Shhh, it’s okay,” I whispered against her hair. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, Scarlet. I promise.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When I finally lifted my head and met his eyes, I searched them for a trace of the anger he should have felt for me. At the very least, he should be—and had every right to be—annoyed. I’d blamed him in the heat of the moment, when I’d been in such a hurry to leave, for distracting me all summer. As if he’d been an inconvenient presence. But his eyes were clear, holding only concern. And the relief that moved through me was so thick that it coated the grief I’d worn like a second skin the last twentyfour hours. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” He nodded, pushed the hair from my face, grazing the tips of his fingers across my cheeks. “I tried to get my mom to give up the car, but no dice.” “She’s pretty smart.” “I know. It’s annoying.” I laughed then and the hand holding the hair from my face squeezed gently. God, it felt good to laugh. “Why’d you come?” “Because I couldn’t sleep. And if I’m not going to be able to sleep because I’m worrying about you, I’d rather be with you than away from you. That’s the selfish reason.” My heart squeezed and I found it suddenly difficult to swallow. “There’s more than one reason?” “The other is that I wanted to be someone you could count on. If you need me.” He seemed to struggle with what he was saying. “If you need me, I want to be here for you.” I didn’t say anything then, just placed my hand over his where he held my head. I squeezed his hand. I knew we had a lot to talk about but I didn’t want to do those things here. “Scarlet, would you mind grabbing us some dinner?” I looked up and found my mom standing a few feet away. Initially, I wanted to move from the way Leo and I held each other, because there was no way my mother could misinterpret our comfort with one another as two completely platonic friends. But I stopped myself from pulling away from Leo. I wanted her to see him and me, together. Get used to the idea maybe, as I was just getting used to it myself.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you want?” She pulled her keys out of her pocket and handed them to Leo, as if she understood that where I went, Leo would follow. “Just whatever.” She looked to Leo, smiled gently, and then looked at me. Leo stood first and reached a hand toward me. I couldn’t think about my mom and the way she looked at me as I placed my hand in Leo’s and let him pull me to standing. My mom stepped forward, her face smoother than it had been all day. She wrapped her arms around me and I used the one hand that wasn’t clasped with Leo’s to wrap around her back as I patted her. “I’m happy for you,” she whispered in my ear before pulling away. I drew my eyebrows together as I searched her face, but then Leo was tugging me down the hall, toward the elevators. “Are you upset?” he asked once he’d pressed the button for the elevator. “Upset?” “That I’m here?” “No.” It slipped quickly and easily from my lips. “Are you kidding?” “It was a bit presumptuous of me to assume you’d even want me here.” “Presumptuous,” I said with a raise of my eyebrow. “I’ve been reading the dictionary again.” He smiled and, God, his very presence was so comforting that I asked myself why I’d danced around him so much, why I’d fought with him over insignificant things. “I’m surprised by how happy I am that you’re here,” I told him once we were on the elevator, alone. “You’re surprised?” He was still holding my hand and I used it to pull him a little closer to me. “I didn’t know that just having you here would settle me the way it has.” It took a lot for me to admit that, but it shouldn’t have. He’d traveled all this way to be here for me—a grand gesture that spoke louder than even his words could. “You’re just what I needed.” He smiled at that, shifted our hands so that our fingers weaved together. “I just have one question.” “What’s that?” “Where are we supposed to be going?” He pointed to the panel, and it was then that I saw he’d pressed buttons for every floor. “You just had to touch them all didn’t you?” “You shouldn’t sound so surprised.” I shook my head and when the elevator stopped on the correct floor, I pulled him out of it, giving an apologetic look to the people who boarded after us. As we crossed the bridge into the parking garage, my entire heart was so much lighter. I knew we’d have a lot to talk about, but the fact that he was here spoke volumes to me. “Let me drive,” Leo insisted when we’d located my mom’s SUV.

“No freaking way,” I said, reaching for the keys. “I won’t crash it.” I raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “How can I believe that?” “Because I’m driving you. I don’t have a need to be reckless.” He said it so earnestly that I forgot for a second why we were in D.C. together. We were just Scarlet and Leo, arguing about who got to drive the car. “Okay,” I relented. “But please be careful. My mother has creative punishments if you crash her car.” Leo opened my door, nodded solemnly. “I remember.” “You remember?” He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side door. “Our moms have always been in cahoots. Once, in high school, I cut class to…” he looked at me sheepishly and I didn’t need him to explain why, not when I imagined it was the fault of another girl. I merely rolled my eyes and encouraged him to continue. “Well, my mom brought me to your dad’s church during spring break and told your mom, ‘Here’s your helper. He doesn’t want to be in school, so he gets to work instead.’” Leo shuddered. “Worst spring break ever.” I laughed. “I can imagine.” I directed Leo out of the parking lot and settled back in the seat as the air conditioning turned on. “Your dad’s awake now?” I nodded. “He woke up late last night. He seems to understand everything, but is still working on communicating with us.” There had been an audible sigh when he’d opened his eyes and squeezed my mom’s hands. It was the first noise I’d heard from her all night and when she’d whispered to him, I’d pretended to be asleep on the hospital sofa, to give them privacy. “I’m guessing we’ll go home in a few days.” “I’m glad. For selfish reasons.” He smiled over at me, and I’d be a big fat liar if I said that his dimpled cheeks didn’t do something for me. “After we get dinner, do you want to go somewhere and talk?” Leo nodded as he pulled into the drive-thru of the closest restaurant. “I’d like that a lot.” After bringing my mom dinner, I told her I’d be staying in the hotel room she’d reserved the day before, because it was close to the hospital and had an actual bed. So far, we’d both only slept there for a couple hours, in rotations while the other one stayed at the hospital. “I’ll pull out the sofa here tonight,” my mom said, gesturing to the couch behind her. It made my cheeks color a little, thinking of what my mom must have assumed about Leo and me, and why she’d chosen to stay at the hospital that night instead of coming along to the room later. But I didn’t dwell on it too much as I let Leo and myself into the room. We both fell onto the bed closest to the window, side by side, staring at the ceiling. “I’m exhausted,” I said with a yawn.

“I’m sure you are. I am too. I was up all night worrying over this pain in my ass redhead.” I reached an arm over and hit his chest lightly. “Poor baby,” I teased him. “Come on,” he said, standing up and pulling the covers back. I stared at the bed for a second as I stood before looking at him again. Was he in the mood for sex? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t think I had the energy for anything more than falling against the pillow and into a deep sleep. “I just want to spoon you, Scarlet.” He seemed to have a read on my thoughts. “But I can’t be blamed if one part of me gets excited.” I blushed and slipped off my shoes, not even bothering to change from my clothes into pajamas. Leo lay on the bed first, stretching his left arm across the pillow. Without him saying another word, I climbed in beside him, laying my head on his bicep so that I was facing him on our sides. His arm curled up so he was supporting my head and he placed his fingers on my forearm, so that it was like a horizontal hug. It was absurd, to feel as comforted as I did just by his presence. His other hand came up and pushed away the hair that had fallen across my face and then stayed, holding my jaw. I searched his face, saw the light bruising beneath his eyes. “You look wiped out.” His hand moved up and his thumb gently brushed where I knew I had my own dark circles. “You too.” “We’re quite a pair,” I whispered. I needed to do something with the hand that lay between us, so I tentatively put it on his right arm that held my face. “Thank you for coming Leo. I was so very unkind to you.” “You were in a hurry. And struggling with how to feel.” “You don’t need to make excuses for me,” I said, grateful that he understood but sad that he said it before I did. “I’ve had a lot of time to think—about you. And me.” “And what did you come up with?” “My mom told me that she was proud of me already—not just because I got into vet school.” I moved my hand along his arm, wanting to give him some of the comfort he was giving me. “It was freeing, to be honest, knowing that no matter what I did going forward, she was proud. She doesn’t want me to work myself to death.” “What a shame that would be.” He pushed the hair behind my ear, gently traced its curve. “Think you’ll slow down a little?” “I don’t know yet,” I told him, even though I did have an idea of what I should do. My father wouldn’t be back to normal overnight—and it’d probably be several months before he’d even be up and around like before. Once I got back home to Massachusetts, I knew I’d need to call the admissions office at UC Davis and weigh my options. “I’m sorry I said those things to you. It wasn’t fair.”

“Well, I did distract you.” “And I liked it. A lot.” “Me too.” We were silent for a moment and he began running a hand over my hair. “I like that you call me out on my shit though. Even if you were upset and working through your feelings, you didn’t compromise your emotions to please me. You’re real to me, Scarlet. And that’s…” he smiled softly, his eyes closing halfway in fatigue. “That’s unbelievably refreshing.” He was sweet like this, when there was nothing but us. No bucket list, no animosity. We were both fully clothed, under the covers together, and Leo was comforting me not because he felt he should but because he genuinely wanted to. He flew several states away just to be with me, taking a gamble on whether or not I’d even want him here. His exhaustion was written across his face, but he was still being gracious with me even when I didn’t deserve it. My heart squeezed as my eyes traced his face, his eyes closing more and more as we stared at one another. His body was giving way to exhaustion, but he didn’t move away to get more comfortable. He just stayed there, giving me everything I needed in his touch. “I’m happy I’m here,” he whispered, his voice so soft that all the words slid together. I wanted to kiss him then, out of gratitude and … something else that had just found its way into my heart—a something else I was surprised and afraid to acknowledge. When his eyes closed completely and his breath was even and deep, I leaned closer and gave him a soft kiss against his forehead. The arm under my head tightened, pulling me closer to him and I didn’t resist, wanting to be as close as possible to him. In sleep I heard him whisper, “Scarlet,” like he was sighing it. And I realized that I’d been guarding myself against the inevitable. What had started with hate and turned into lust had just bloomed into something else, inflating my chest so much that I ached. I still wasn’t sure where we stood together, but I was absolutely positive that my heart had just slid from my chest and into his hands.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

TWO WEEKS LATER I went bungee jumping once, in high school. Normally I wasn’t a daredevil, because one stupid injury was all it would take to screw up a season, possibly even my career. But that one day I’d done it, and I still remembered the best part like it had happened yesterday. The best part of the entire experience was the moment before I jumped. The second my feet had left the platform, during the freefall, I had a fleeting thought that I was an idiot for doing it. But right before I’d jumped, there was a suspended moment of anticipation that I never wanted to end. That’s exactly how the last two weeks had felt between me and Scarlet. One long, suspended moment of anticipation. We hadn’t even had a whole lot of time alone once she and her parents had returned back home. What time we had spent together, there were eyes on us, like all the time. Mainly the mothers, but that was to be expected. Every time my mom smiled at us, no matter what we were doing, I was fairly certain she was dreaming up names of future grandchildren. And even though nothing had progressed past some lingering touches and extended eye contact between me and Scarlet, I couldn’t blame her. Hell, I was dreaming up names for redheaded little kids. Kidding. Kind of. I didn’t want kids, not for a long time, and I wasn’t even really thinking about marriage, but what I couldn’t stop thinking about was Scarlet. And what it would take to make this thing with her turn into forever. Ever since we laid in that hotel bed, twined around each other, I could see in her eyes that she was thinking the exact same thoughts as me. That wasn’t anything that I’d seen in her before that night, I’d have recognized it if I had. Which is why I’d been content to just let it rest for a couple weeks. Let her get settled back at home and help her parents around the house. Because I knew she was right there with me. Her dad ended up having more weakness on the left side of his body than they’d anticipated, andshe told me that he’d struggle with some short-term memory loss every once in a while. But every day, he got better. Which meant that every day, the

weight pressing on her shoulders got lighter, her smiles got bigger and appeared more quickly. But she still watched me like she was waiting, like she was anticipating that same thing that I was. And that probably meant that my girl was waiting for me to make a move. If that was what she wanted? She’d get the greatest fucking move on the planet. Her day had already started about three hours ago. She didn’t have class today, and that kind of free time was now spent helping her mom around the house, cooking or cleaning, running errands or getting her dad up and moving. I’d watched out the front window when Denard’s girlfriend, Tasha had picked Scarlet up, shepherding her into the car and off to the spa, where they were getting massages and whatever the hell else she wanted to do. My instructions to Tasha had been to keep her away for at least three hours. Scarlet saw me in the window, so I waved, laughing when she rolled her eyes in return. As soon as the car disappeared down our street, Denard, Cameron, and one of our red shirt freshman linebackers who was still too intimidated by us to say no, had gone across the street to deep clean the Jennings’ house. Mrs. Jennings oohed and ahhed the whole time that we dusted and vacuumed and mopped. I made the freshman do the toilets, though. But the coup de grace of the entire day would come when Tasha dropped Scarlet off at my house, just in time for dinner. I sent Cameron to the grocery store with a list so that I could get my house all ready. My parents were gone overnight for some board retreat, and had I mentioned I was beyond ready to be back on campus? Granted, Scarlet would be across the country at vet school, but at least when she was home I’d have an apartment. No parents anywhere. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. While I was draping a white tablecloth over the table in the kitchen, Cameron walked through the front door with two brown grocery bags in his arms. “Yo, lover boy. I got everything you need to guarantee you’ll lose your virginity tonight.” “Gee, thanks, Hunter. I’ll let you know how it goes, so by the time you finally pay a girl to sleep with you, you’ll know which hole to put it in.” He cracked up and set the paper bags on the kitchen counter. “Looks fucking romantic in here.” I looked around. I had two candles sitting on the table, but one of them had fallen over. “Dude, I’m not done yet. I’ve got an hour until she gets here, and the recipe I found said it only takes twenty minutes, so I still need to set the table.” “Yeah, umm, I couldn’t find the kind of cherries you listed, so I grabbed something else.” “What kind did you get?” I asked, instantly suspicious of anything that Cameron thought was an acceptable substitute. I’d googled easy first date recipes, and literally picked the first thing I saw, Chicken with Cherry-Wine Pan Sauce. One pan, twenty minutes, probably something I could throw together in my sleep. But the recipe specifically said pitted sweet cherries, fresh or frozen. So when I peered

in the bag and saw a jar of bright-ass red maraschino cherries, I shrugged. “I guess these will work.” “Are you sure you don’t want any help in here? Have you even ever cooked before?” “I can manage to follow a recipe.” I pointed at the door. “Go. Thanks for your help cleaning. I’ll owe you if you ever decide to pull your head out of your ass and get a girlfriend.” He rolled his eyes and walked out, wishing me luck before he slammed the door behind him. When I looked at the clock, I had fifty-seven minutes until Tasha dropped Scarlet off. I looked at the recipe on my phone, grimacing when I remembered that I hadn’t found balsamic vinegar in the pantry, only apple cider vinegar. Oh well, couldn’t be that different. I unpacked the bags, rolled up my sleeves and went to work. Fifty minutes later, I knew exactly how royally fucked I was. The kitchen smelled like ass, and I meant that literally. The concoction in the pan was blood red from the maraschino cherries, and when I tried a small spoonful of the sauce, I’d barely made it to the sink before I spit it out. “Damn it,” I said, wiping my mouth. My phone dinged, and I swiped across the screen.

Tasha: ETA 5 minutes!

I shook my head and looked around the room. At least I’d managed to get the table set, and it looked pretty damn spectacular if I said so myself. Adele had helped with this one, sending me stuff from Pinterest that wasn’t “cheesy or like a pussy came up with it.” Exact quote, I swear. In the end, I went with a bunch of squatty white candles and short, clear vases filled with white flowers. No roses, because they were too obvious. Nothing red because I didn’t want to be a cliché. The plates were china, the stuff my parents only used on Christmas and Thanksgiving, but now, I had no fucking idea what I was going to serve for dinner. I had just opened up the freezer, groaning at the fact that my only option in the house was frozen pizza, when I heard the creak of the front door. “Hello?” Scarlet called from the entryway. Maybe the dinner disaster was a good thing, because I wasn’t nervous in the slightest. If she didn’t want to hear what I had to say? Then her hunger would distract her. It was perfect. “Back here,” I called, shoving the offending pan of chicken into the cold oven. When Scarlet turned the corner, I grinned at the pleasant surprise covering her face. Her eyes found mine, a smile making her cheeks lift.

“What is all this?” I shrugged, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans and walking over to her. “Just thought you needed a day that was just about you. You’ve done so much for everyone else lately, and soon…” I swallowed, holding her eyes, “soon you’ll be busy with school.” The room was dim, since I’d drawn all the shades in the kitchen, and the grouping of candles made light dance on her face. She blinked rapidly, then sniffed. “What’s that smell?” “Ahh, nothing.” Then she laughed. “Did you cook too? Oh, Leo, this is so sweet. What did you make?” “Trust me when I say you do not want to know.” Scarlet ducked past me and looked over at the empty stovetop. “Come on, I want to see! No one has ever cooked for me before.” “And it will be a long time before I do it again.” She stopped, gave me a small, questioning smile. “But you’re planning a repeat? For me?” I scratched the back of my neck. None of this was going how I planned. But then again, neither had anything with Scarlet. So I grabbed her hand and led her to the table, pulling out her chair and waiting until she sat to help her push it in. When I sat down in the chair opposite of her, I took a second to just look. “You look beautiful,” I said, my eyes hitting every part of her that I could see. She blushed and fidgeted in her chair. “I didn’t know I was coming straight here. I would have dressed up or something.” Scarlet looked around again, shaking her head. “Leo, this is so nice, but…” she trailed off. “But what the hell is going on?” I supplied. She smiled. “Pretty much.” The nerves hit me with the force of a well-timed sack, knocking the breath from my lungs. Suddenly, I was too far away from her, so I stood and dragged my chair until it was next to her. Then I sat, grabbed the legs of Scarlet’s chair and turned her to she was facing me. “So, the thing is,” I grabbed her hands and shifted so that my legs were open around hers, “I know that this may not make a difference right now. You’re leaving soon and I’ll be back at school next week.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “Fuck, I don’t know why this is so hard.” “Hey,” she said gently. “You can tell me anything.” “I know,” I exhaled, smiling at her. “And it’s only hard because I know that it just means that I’ll miss you so fucking much when you leave. I mean, I would anyway, but I’ll do everything in my power to end up wherever you are.” I squeezed her hands so hard, wishing I could just transfer everything that was sprinting through my head into hers. That somehow she’d feel it flow through her without me having to open my mouth, that she was it for me. I was saying this all wrong,

and judging by the faintly amused look on her face, she could tell. “You know, I didn’t even practice this beforehand, because I’m not that guy who will ever do this in a perfect, romantic way. As evidenced by the fact that I have a really horrible plate of chicken sitting in the oven right now that I will never let you try.” She laughed at me and I couldn’t wait. I leaned forward and gave her one soft kiss before pulling back. Sixteen days since I’d last felt her lips on mine. Three hundred and eighty-four hours. I’d done the math earlier. Scarlet opened her mouth to say something, but I shook my head and set my shoulders. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Scarlet,” I said in a rush. “And I don’t know where I’ll end up after next year is over, but I know where I want to be. I want to be with you. If you’ll have me.” My heart thudded to a halt while she watched me. Then she smiled,and it started back up again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I watched him in silence, his eyes at first desperate as they searched mine and then as my lips spread, the lines of worry in his forehead eased. “Are you going to cross that one last item off your bucket list? The ‘break someone’s heart’ one? Don’t think I haven’t forgotten it.” I smiled wider. He was cute. And sweet. And had a romantic side I hadn’t glimpsed until now. He’d done something very special for me, and he just told me he loved me. Leo Madsen loved me. The very thought made my heart shudder, quaking through my veins. Because I loved him too. And I was glad to love him—which felt significant. My love for Leo hadn’t gripped me unwittingly; I wanted to love him. To be loved by him was another gift. I was realizing just how precious the people in my life were the last couple weeks and I was thankful to have Leo by my side through it all. “I…” I swallowed, and Leo seemed to interpret my pause for something negative, based on the way his eyes narrowed. “I love you, Leo,” I said, not wanting to make him wait to hear it. “In spite of our differences, and most likely because of our differences. I think I realized it when you came to D.C. for me, but I was already slipping down that path long before then.” I smiled with my whole heart and looked around the room, at the candlelight, and took in the odd cherry-scented smell that lingered. Because my hands were still cradled by his, I brought them to my mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “And I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now, but until then I’ll be just across the street.” His eyes cleared and he tilted his head. “What do you mean? What about vet school?” “I’m not going—at least not this year.” His hands went slack in mine and he frowned. “I am not letting you take off a year of school to be by me, Scarlet. No fucking way.” “Oh, puh-lease.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Conceited much? Not everything is about you.” He raised an eyebrow as I laughed at him. I grabbed his hands since he’d let go of mine. “My mom is going to need help between running the church

and caring for my dad and, well, frankly? I could use a break from being so freaking stressed out about getting perfect grades.” He smiled then. “Does this mean I can keep knocking on your back door?” “That would be a ‘no.’” “I’ll still try it.” He pursed his lips and his eyes glittered in the candlelight. “You’ll be back on campus soon anyway.” “And you’ll be in the city a lot, right?” I shrugged, relaxed as his thumbs ran over my fingers. “I’ll need to come to your games, right?” He smiled widely at that. “We still have a bunch of bucket list items to cross off.” “And maybe some we can repeat?” He yanked me off my chair and brought me on to his lap. “Absolutely.” He framed my face in his hands. “You know, I’d have gladly figured out how to visit you if you’d gone far away for school. But this,” he leaned in and his lips met my neck, “is much more convenient.” He sighed against my throat and the warmth went straight to my veins. I arched my neck, allowing him more space to kiss my skin there. “I’ll still live with my parents for the year.” “Yeah, well luckily I won’t be. So you can spend weekends with me in Boston.” He hummed against my skin and I shifted in his lap, feeling his growing arousal between us. His hands came up my back, under my tank. Before I could stop him, he’d unsnapped the back of my bra. The straps slid down on my shoulders, wanting to give in to gravity. “Leo,” I whispered. “I don’t want to get naked in your kitchen.” He stood, hands cradling my ass as he pulled me to him. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he squeezed. “Then let’s get you naked upstairs,” he said, carrying me toward the stairs. “You’re just trying to show off now, carrying me around like this.” “Is it working?” he asked at my ear, his laughter soft. In response, I pushed my body into his a little more, so that his erection was perfectly aligned with my center. “If you keep that up, you’re going to get naked on my stairs.” Testing him, I pushed against him again, felt my own arousal spread across my skin at the feel of him so close to me. He groaned and quickened his pace up the stairs. “You’re going to kill me.” “That’ll be a shame, since I won’t be a doctor now for a few more years.” “A puppy doctor.” I knew he was just trying to rile me up. “Energetic, pushy, pisses to mark its territory, always trying to bury its bone somewhere … did I just describe you, or a dog? The similarities are uncanny.” Leo pulled his head back and raised an eyebrow. “Really, Scarlet?” I tucked my face into his neck to hide my smile. With his breath at my ear and

his hands on my ass, I felt that familiar quiver roll through me. As he lowered me to the bed, I kept my grip on him tight, pulling him right along with me. He buried his face into my chest and exhaled—the heat going right through the cotton and warming my breasts. "Why do you smell so fucking incredible?" he asked, voice muffled. I squirmed beneath him, "Don't make me wait." He lifted his head, pushed his chin on my chest as he stared at me. "Maybe I will. You made me wait long enough to tell me you loved me." His hands came to my waist and squeezed. "I waited just as long as you did, except you were a minute sooner." "Let's not get technical here, Jennings." His fingers climbed up my side. "I was first. I win." I rolled my eyes but then a light caress across my ribs made me burst out in a laugh, the tickle surprising me. "Stop!" I yelled, pushing against his hands and using my legs to scoot myself backward on the bed, away from his hands. "Nuh-uh," he said, clamping his hands on my shins and yanking me back toward him. "You're not getting away that easily." His fingers resumed their ascent, up over my ribs until he was grazing his thumb across the sensitive flesh under my breast, where the bra had loosened. My breath caught in my throat as I stared up at him. His thumb rubbed back and forth as his eyes held mine. Having him above me, staring down at me with that enduring intensity did more for me than if he had ripped my clothes off and slammed into me. The quiver rolled into a low tremble as his thumb skimmed up the curve of my breast and just lightly flicked over my nipple. His other hand held me just above my waist and I marveled over the sheer size of his hand, wrapped around my rib cage. The hand under my bra reached up between my breasts and grabbed the center of the bra, yanking me up to a sitting position on the bed. Wordlessly, he lifted the tank and I raised my arms, enabling him to pull the shirt off over my head. When my arms came back down, the bra straps slid off my shoulders and the cups fell off my breasts. He grabbed my hands and pulled me slowly to standing in front of him. When his hands touched the waistband of my shorts, I lifted his own shirt off his head. We were standing so close that my nipples brushed against his chest, making me shiver. Leo unsnapped the button on my shorts and pushed them down before he lowered himself in front of me. He pressed his mouth against the skin just below my belly button and then rubbed his chin against the top of my panties as he coaxed one leg up at a time to fully remove my shorts. "Mmm," he murmured against the thin cotton of my panties. I felt the vibration strike right through me and tried to reign myself in. My hands found his shoulders and held on, gripping as his mouth moved lower, pressing warm kisses right through the cotton. When his mouth landed right over my center, I felt a light drag of his teeth over the cotton so that when he touched me, it felt like one deliciously

rough graze. He pushed me so that I fell backward onto the bed and peeled my panties down, taking care to remove them from each foot before he placed a hand on each knee and spread me wide. It was so intensely intimate, knowing his eyes were right on me, right there. I knew it was blasphemous, but I had a quick, fleeting thought to pray he'd give me a release as I burned from the inside out. But no, he was content to let me writhe on the bed. He brushed two fingers down my center and then smiled up at me, wickedly. "You're so turned on right now." "Shut up," I groaned, arching my neck as he brushed my lips again. "Torture isn't funny." "No, it's not," he agreed. I felt a pinch and my eyes bulged. "Holy shit," I squeaked as the pleasure from the pain made my lower body clench in reaction. " Did you just pinch me … there?" He nodded. “I remembered how much you'd enjoyed it up against that tree.” I blushed, thinking of how I'd come completely undone then. He stood, removing his jeans. He grabbed a condom out of his pocket and ripped it open. "It was in your pocket the whole time?" I asked. "Optimistic much?" After sliding the condom over his cock, he climbed on the bed, over me. He pushed lightly against my entrance but didn't go further. "I figured," he said, bringing his mouth to my breasts and nipping along my skin, "that it could go one of two ways." He pushed again, but still didn't slide forward. "The first way had you laughing in my face as I poured my heart out to you." He bit down on my nipple, almost punishingly so and looked up at me with a smile in his eyes. "And then we would have had some unbelievable goodbye sex on that table I'd set for us." I arched under him as he slid inside of me just a bit. "With all those candles? Sounds dangerous." He sucked my breast into his mouth and I arched again, finally hooking a leg around his waist to encourage him deeper. He let go with a pop and smiled at me. "The second way had you melting in a puddle of love at my declaration and throwing me down onto the table for celebratory sex." I frowned for a second until he moved his attention to my other breast. "Well, neither of those things happened." "I know," he said before capturing my nipple in between his teeth and rubbing it gently. He was still inside of me, but not moving forward or backward. "Because instead of melting, you told me you loved me too." He lay his head on my chest for a second and a warmth moved through me. "And that was even better than I'd expected." He lifted his head so he was looking into my eyes again. "You're such a sap," I teased, because he was teasing me with his tongue and teeth. I hooked my other leg around his waist and tilted my hips, but he grabbed them with his hands and held me in place. "Keep it up, Jennings, and I'll continue to slowly torture you."

I narrowed my eyes. "Keep torturing me and I'll kick you in the balls." He laughed. "I love you, Scarlet. I do." Damn him, I laughed too as my love for him spread in my chest. "I love you too." And then he slid completely inside of me.

EPILOGUE

TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER “So, before we get out of the car, you should probably know something.” I drummed my fingers on the top of the steering wheel and stared up at the traditional brick house in the West Mount Airy part of Philly that Scarlet and I had lived in for the last six months. “She’s not expecting you. She’ll love you, though. Don’t worry.” He snuffed out air, pawing at the console. I turned toward him, grinning at his tongue lolling out of his big, blockish head. Scarlet might kill me. But then she’d look at the dog, at his adorable floppy ears and big black body with white patches and remember how fucking much I loved her, and forgive me instantly. I scratched underneath his jaw before I unhooked my seatbelt. She was home, I knew that much. She didn’t have class on Tuesday afternoons. It was one of the days we always made sure to spend together. Tuesday was my day off during the season. Even though I was the backup QB for the Eagles, I still had to work my ass off in the weight room and on the field, helping prepare our team for the games on Sundays, and keeping myself sharp in case I was needed. And other than missing some time with Scarlet when we had away games, it was the coolest fucking thing to be part of an NFL team. Scarlet had started at the University of Pennsylvania the same time I started training camp, but now that we were settled, I knew she needed something to care for. Besides babies, which we were not even remotely prepared for. “You ready?” I asked Charger. He wiggled his butt against the passenger side door and leaned forward to lick up the length of my face. I hooked the leash to his collar with a smile on my face and got out of the car, motioning for him to hop over my seat. He did, sniffing the driveway furiously as soon as his paws hit the ground. His whip-like tail thumped against my leg, and I patted his muscular haunches. “All right, big guy, let’s go meet your momma.” Charger was lunging forward, tugging on the leash in his excitement to make his way around. He was strong as shit too, around seventy pounds of tightly packed muscle. I unlocked the latch on the fence leading into our backyard and then let

him go. As soon as I removed the leash and told him to explore, he ran, first making his way around the perimeter of the fence, then he stopped, wiggled at my feet and took off again. While he was exploring, I jogged up the stairs on the deck and then quietly opened the door going into the kitchen. Scarlet had her back to me where she was looking in the fridge. I took a second to watch her. She’d just cut her hair, but it still fell past her shoulders, and when she had it up in a high ponytail like that, I could see the long, pale line of her neck. When I slid my hands around her waist, she jumped. “Holy shit, Leo.” She turned and smacked my shoulder. “You scared the crap out of me!” I dropped a quick kiss on her smiling mouth. “Sorry, babe. I came in the back.” “Are you done with your errands?” Scarlet didn’t even let me answer before she kissed me again, sighing into my mouth when I slanted my head and licked my tongue across hers. I made a noise of assent into her mouth, then dropped both hands to grip her ass, pulling her flush against me. She wiggled and wrapped her arms tightly around my shoulders. “Do I dare ask what you were out doing?” she asked breathlessly when I finally let her pull away. “This is how you usually act when you come home after a winning game when you’ve been able to play a few snaps.” I laughed, smoothing my hands up and down her back. She was right. Last year, my rookie season, our starting QB had taken a massive hit, so they sat him for a few series to make sure they were following concussion protocol. The three snaps I’d taken, two run plays and one pass, had been enough to make me feel drunk after the game. The third play, a play action and then a pass to one of our rookie receivers who ran a fade route that got us a gain of about thirty yards, had been so damn beautiful that I almost cried. That night, when I got home to a waiting Scarlet, I screwed her blind on the stairs just past the doorway, with her legs up over my shoulders. “Maybe I’m just happy to see you.” She quirked an eyebrow. “I suppose.” I was just about to say something when Charger started whining at the back door. Scarlet’s mouth popped open. “Is there a dog in the backyard?” “Scarlet, come meet your present.” I herded her to the door, laughing at the shocked look on her face. But when she walked out behind me and caught a glimpse of Charger, she melted. She absolutely fucking melted. “Oh, look at you,” she breathed, holding a hand out for him to sniff. Then he flopped against her legs, almost knocking her onto the grass and Scarlet laughed with delight. “You’re a strong boy.” “His name is Charger. He’s eight months old, totally housebroken and knows his basic commands. He’s good with other dogs, hates cats, and apparently loves the kids at the foster home he was staying at for the last couple months.”

Scarlet kneeled down onto the grass and scratched Charger’s sleek black coat, then grinned up at me when he licked at her hand with a furious, slobbery tongue. “He looks like maybe Lab and Pit? Is that right?” “Yeah, that’s their best guess.” “Leo,” she said on a breath, not taking her eyes off of Charger. “He’s so handsome.” I rocked on my heels, almost knocked back at how happy this made me. Seeing her so delighted at the fact that he could shake and sit and roll over. “You know, I was going to go the whole nine yards, tie a ring box to his collar.” Her hand movements stilled, but she didn’t look up at me yet. “Were you now?” Even though I didn’t have her eyes on me, I shrugged. “Somebody’s got to make an honest woman out of you. Eventually I’ll knock you up, and you better believe you’re gonna be my wife when that happens.” Finally, she turned her face to me and gave me a blinding smile. “My dad already had a heart attack, and that was before he even knew about you. If he’s survived us living together for the last year, I think he’ll be okay. You don’t have to propose on his account.” It wasn’t the first time I’d dropped a hint about how I was going to propose to her, and she always did that, brushed me off, maybe because she thought I was just playing. But I wasn’t. And the two carat solitaire in the Tiffany’s box that was hidden in my part of the closet wasn’t fuckin’ playing either. She’d find that out soon enough though, my little church girl. Scarlet clapped when she realized Charger could play dead. Then she shook her head at me. “I cannot believe you got me a dog.” “Can’t believe it like, I’m so thoughtful and sweet? Or you can’t believe I didn’t get your input?” She rolled her eyes, but then cracked up when Charger practically bowled her over running circles around her. “Definitely some of the former. Maybe a smidge of the latter.” When I joined them on the grass, Charger stretched out between us and his tail wagged with furious movements. I thumped a hand along his warm belly, peering at Scarlet out of the corner of my eye. “I have a good reason, I swear.” “Of that I have no doubt.” “Charger, sit.” He whipped over onto his feet and plopped his butt down on the grass instantly. “Good boy,” I crooned, scratching his broad chest. “See, I figured that we’ve got this big fenced-in yard, so we can handle a larger dog. And you always tell me stories of black dogs that don’t get adopted because people think they look scary.” “That’s very true.” “So it made sense to me to get you a sweet dog that looks scary to protect you while your sweet boyfriend who’s actually very scary is out of town for away

games.” I looked over at her. “It’ll make me feel better knowing he’s here with you when I can’t be.” She leaned into me, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You think there are people who think you’re scary, Leo?” I kissed the top of her head. “Oh sure. If not now, they will eventually. Someday we’re going to fill this nice house with mini Scarlets, and between me and Charger? They’ll be the least fucked-with kids to walk the planet.” Scarlet lifted her head, and in the bright, dappled sunlight filtering through the oak trees, her brown eyes looked almost hazel. Then she smiled at me, tilting her chin up for a kiss. I gave her one. I’d always give her one.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again, I thank my parents. Of the many blessings you’ve both given me, the ability to articulate is my favorite. May you never learn the existence of this book. To those who know, thank you for keeping your mouths shut. I’ll ply you with beer again and again to keep our indiscretions from ever escaping your lips. Thank you to my beta readers: Christina, as always, I appreciate your encouragement and for telling me it was funny—when I’d hoped it was; Leigh, for giving me your unfiltered thoughts and many helpful suggestions; Anna, for being the last one to look at my books, and the first one to believe in me. Jena, thank you for being an enthusiastic and thorough promoter. I appreciate your guidance and unending flow of patience, even when my questions are just as prolific this time as they were the last. To Jade, with The Write Assistants. You make books look beautiful, and you put authors at ease. Thanks to you, I haven’t felt the need to drink as much as I usually do. Heh. To the number of people who have gone out of their way to help me through this process via Facebook: Tammy, Jacquie, and Kimie—once again, you’ve humbled me with your support. Thank you for ‘pimping’ me out to the masses. Paula, Candi, and Ang of The Dirty Laundry Review. You three were the ones to help me rise from the rubble. I’ll never be able to say thank you enough. Thank you Paula and Candi, for putting Tempting on your top 2015 lists. I’m honored. Angie with Angie and Jessica’s Dreamy Reads. If only I could properly thank you for everything you did for Tempting. Your enthusiasm for promoting books is astounding and infectious—any author would feel immensely blessed to have you promoting their work and I am no exception. Just, thank you. For all of it. The ladies of The Literary Gossip—thank you for taking a chance on a nobody, and thank you Nina for putting Tempting on your top 2015 list and thank you Jen, for that excellent review. It means a great deal, to have your kindness. To Lex Martin, Laurelin Paige, Lauren Blakely, and Roxy Sloane for reading Tempting and for sharing it on your pages. I’ve heard many terrifying things about publishing and the competition that comes with it, but you’ve all proved those

wrong with your support. I sincerely appreciate you. Flossie B, I’ve enjoyed our movies and gifs over the last several months. I can’t wait for you to be a fetus. Also, anyone else reading that will probably be alarmed. ☈ ☈☈ To Jamie. Because it’s you. All of it. And finally, to the reader. Thank you for purchasing this novel, for the support you gave me with Tempting, which astounded me beyond all belief, for leaving an honest review (if you do), and for sharing with your friends. This book, or any book I write, would serve no purpose if it weren’t for you.

PROVOCATIVE

Provocative (book three in the Tempting series) by Alex Lucian © 2016 by Alex Lucian All rights reserved. Cover Photography: Lindee Robinson Photography Cover Model: Denise Emilia Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs Interior Designer: The Write Assistants Editing: M. Wiemer, Jon Perry No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

To Jamie, a third time, for my many regrets.

CHAPTER ONE

“Mother fuck.” The connotation was not lost on me. But as I stared at the stick, I chewed on my thumb nail and studiously avoided looking at the three other tests I’d taken and had thrown away for ‘inconclusiveness’. Because there were two pink lines, but one of them was more faint than the other—which meant no, right? The first one, I’d dropped into the bowl midstream. Because, you know, the idea that I was peeing on a stick—a ten-dollar stick that was meant to tell my future—was more than a little fucking terrifying. So, I’d thrown that one away. Didn’t even wait to see the result. But then my bladder was empty, which meant I couldn’t take a second test until I’d built up another supply. DO NOT DILUTE THE URINE! one girl cautioned on some baby mama website. Others had chimed in that it wouldn’t matter. Two different posters who claimed to be doctors—and probably received their degrees from Google, let’s be honest—had two different opinions. But I wasn’t playing around with these ten-dollar pee sticks, because I was still a poor college kid, even though I was shacked up with my professor boyfriend. Oh, God. Nathan would probably lose his shit if he knew about the first pee stick I’d stuffed under his old sock in the garbage can. I’d eagle-eyed him each time he walked into the bathroom, dancing around the trash can and trying to distract him the best way I knew how without blurting out, “So, I haven’t had a period in, um … two months. Holyfuckingshitballs.” Because if there was one thing my boyfriend of ten months—or eleven months, depending on who you asked—didn’t need right now, it was a pregnant girlfriend. I looked at my phone, which was currently counting down the minutes until the test was supposed to give me a result. Two minutes left. Shit. It was just after five, which meant Nathan would be coming home soon. I hadn’t meant to wait this long, but after consulting the other tests I’d taken and determining that plus signs and lines were probably subjective to the viewer, I splurged on the test that was more clear cut—pregnant or not pregnant—and kept my bladder nice and full as long as I could.

There was a timer that blinked on this test, but fuck that. I could stare at the blinking timer, as the chunky pee stick determined my fate, or I could set a timer on my phone and turn my back to the offending thing. I watched plenty of documentaries on women who didn’t know they were pregnant until oops, a baby plopped out of their business, and I always rolled my eyes. How did they not keep track of their cycles? Amateurs. Except there I was, two months after I was supposed to have a period, waiting to find out if my body was about to spend the next seven months slowly exploding. After the stress of finals and bullshit from my sister, Celeste, about pretty much anything, I didn’t think about things like periods. I’d spent the summer trying to play house in my boyfriend’s house—a house he’d once shared with his deceased wife, and trying not to overstep my boundaries. And, of course, I’d spent much of that time having hot sex with said boyfriend—which landed me here, on his pretty white marble bathroom floor, two sticks pointing up out of the trash can beside the toilet. And when school had started up—around the time of my first missed period—I was too busy trying to deal with the full load of classes I’d taken on, and the fact that Nathan and I were now spending much less time playing house to even worry about my period. But after spending the last three days feeling very much unlike myself, with a stomach that was in a perpetual state of near-eruption, I knew something was up. “You must be getting your period,” Nathan casually said one night in bed, as he wore his too-sexy-to-be-legal reading glasses and poured over the newspaper. “Why do you say that?” I asked him as I ran his back massager over my neck and shoulders, trying to relieve some of the tension that my French class had brought on. “Because you’re moody, and,” he looked at me over the glasses and shifted his gaze to the pile of three empty Ben and Jerry’s containers on the nightstand, “those.” Nathan was kind of neat freak, and it was true that I liked to try his patience every once in a while by leaving things like empty containers of yogurt around the house, but as I cocked my head at the Ben and Jerry’s pints, I knew that wasn’t like me. I mean, I knew I’d eaten them—definitely. But I didn’t typically inhale entire pints of ice cream every night. The first time had been to soothe my throat after what I suspected to be a bout of food poisoning that had left me hugging the toilet for a solid hour. The second time had been my comfort as I sobbed through that Pixar movie, Up. The movie wasn’t even that sad! But after the first five minutes, my heart was a tornado of ache, and what better consolation was there than some ice cream? The third time had been the night before, when I’d laid alone in bed for the second night in a row, wishing Nathan was home to keep me company. But after school started back up again, he was always working late. One of our many recent

arguments had been after I’d spent four nights in a row eating whatever frostbitten frozen meal I’d found in the bottom of his freezer. “Did you cook?” he’d asked, shrugging out of his tie and giving me an absentminded kiss on the forehead. “Uh, no.” He’d raised an eyebrow and I had raised one back. I wasn’t a domesticated goddess. I gave good head. He knew these things, but lately he’d seemed to expect a little more from me. I’d followed him into the kitchen as he had taken in the frozen meal I’d forgotten to put in the garbage. “Honestly, Adele. Don’t you get sick of this garbage?” He’d dropped it into the trash and then opened the refrigerator. “Nope, sure don’t.” I’d leaned back against the island as he’d surveyed the mostly-empty fridge. “I don’t stop studying to eat until I’m desperate, and even then I’d eat out of a trough if it was provided for me.” He had shaken his head and grabbed a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. “You should be eating better. Making something a little healthier.” “I don’t feel like cooking a large meal when it’s just me most of the time.” He’d sighed, undoing the top button of his shirt. “You know I have a lot more responsibilities now. I’m sorry.” Even now, as the cold bathroom tile started to numb my ass, his apology felt like an echo. I’d heard it a hundred times the last few months, so often that I was becoming conditioned to it. The timer on my phone buzzed, pulling my attention away. Holy shit. I couldn’t do this. I’d flipped the test over so that I didn’t have to look at it—but now I’d have to. The timer was still buzzing, and my phone slowly moved across the tile toward me, like it was dancing—taunting me. Are you pregnant or not, Adele? “Fuck me,” I whispered, scooting across the tile floor as pinpricks of sensation stabbed my ass. After turning off the alarm, I gave the stick the evil eye. It was unfair that something so little meant so much. I reached a hand out tentatively, but then pulled it back quickly. Nope. Not fucking ready to know if the nausea was from some itty bitty cluster of cells in my belly. The sudden buzz from my phone caused me to jump and then press a hand to my chest. Nathan’s handsome face filled my screen. I slid my finger across to answer. “Hey!” I said, far too enthusiastically. I turned my back to the test, because I could not have a conversation with my boyfriend while staring at that. “Hey, I’m on my way home. Did you eat dinner yet?” I thought of the frozen meal I’d pulled out before my bladder had alerted me to impending doom. “Nope.” “Okay. I’m going to stop at that Thai place you go to with Leo, want anything

from there?” My cheeks puffed out—the mere thought of it made nausea slither, unwelcome, up my esophagus. “That doesn’t sound appealing,” I said. I pinched my eyes shut. “What about a smoothie?” “You can’t eat just a smoothie, Adele,” Nathan gently chastised. “Okay, Dad. What would you like me to eat?” Immediately after I snapped it, I wanted to take it back. Daddy issues were among several things Nathan and I had in common, and I’d never used it against him like that. “Sorry. Long day.” “I’m telling you—it’s PMS.” I wanted to laugh. “I’m sure it is,” I said, as a bubble of nervous laughter escaped my lips. “How about some salads from that Italian place? Chicken Caesar sound okay?” My stomach didn’t revolt at that. “Sounds delish.” “I’ll call ahead and be home in about ten.” “See you then,” I said, needing to get the fuck off of the phone before I spilled the beans about what I was currently doing, which was facing away from a stick I’d peed on. “Love you,” he said before hanging up. It was still new with us, the I love you business. I’d been in love with him for a good long while before telling him, mostly because Nathan was my first serious adult relationship and, like I said earlier, daddy issues. But each time he said it now, it felt damn good. Nathaniel Easton loved me. Holy shit, did that feel good. I set my phone down and gave myself a mental slap across my face, to stop being a little bitch and pick up the stupid stick already. I turned around slowly, waiting a few heartbeats before I reached out and closed my hand around one end of the stick. I dragged it across the tile to me, hearing it scrape the floor as it made its journey. And before I could talk myself out of it, I flipped it over. Instantly, cold swept over me. It must have been sheer shock, because I couldn’t move as I stared at the digital letters.

PREGNANT

“Hooooooooly shit,” I breathed, when I could finally suck in some air. It was bewildering to me how I could go from not knowing jack shit to now knowing that there was a tiny human growing inside of me. I blinked away the tears that coated my eyes and fanned my face, frantic. Feeling was slowing pouring back into me, and I couldn’t fucking process the fact that I was now responsible for more than just myself. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, staring at the stick with my arms wrapped around my knees. But I knew it must have been around ten minutes, because the

slam of the front door downstairs alerted me to Nathan’s presence. With shaky legs, I slowly stood and clutched the sink counter. I stared at my reflection, taking in the redness around my nose and eyes and splashed cold water over my face. I had to tell him. I couldn’t hide all these sticks, or hide the truth from him. The thought of telling him I was carrying his spawn was probably more terrifying than the fact that I was carrying a child. After pushing the loose tendrils away from my face, I walked slowly down the stairs, in search of him. The rustling of plastic bags alerted me to his presence in the kitchen. “Oh, hey.” He gave me an easy smile—the kind that made my legs go all gooey. Which I definitely did not need when I was already having a hard time walking. “You okay?” I wanted to crawl inside of myself. I took a deep breath, but before I could say the words he interrupted me. “I assume you’re not going to eat this?” He held up the neglected frozen meal. I shook my head and opened my mouth, but no words came out. “I got you garlic bread. You always like to carboload when you’re PMSing.” The urge to laugh-cry was so strong that I nearly gave in. The fact that he indulged my cravings and was attuned to my body was endearing, but he was so, so wrong about the cause of my mood swings. I opened my mouth to say something again, but he spoke before I could. “What do you think, a chardonnay?” He stooped to the built-in wine refrigerator under the island. “No,” I shook my head frantically. “Why, do you have to be up studying late?” He rose, empty-handed, from his crouch. Once again, I tried to speak. But once again, he interrupted me. “I hope not, because I came home early to spend time with you and—” “Stop!” I blurted out, coming around the island. He opened his mouth to say something but I shook my head quickly and placed my hand over his lips. “Stop, just…” I couldn’t work up the courage. But I had to, because it was eating me up. “Shit. Fuck. Fuck me.” I was rambling. “Not literally. That’s what got me into this mess.” His eyes were squinted, no doubt wondering what the hell had gotten into me. I sighed, long and loud. And then, all my words ran in a nonsensical stream. “Okay, shit-balls-cock-sucker-mother-fucking-hell, Nathan, I’m pregnant.”

CHAPTER TWO

Adele’s hand was still covering my mouth when my jumbled brain finally processed what she’d said. The cursing hid it at first, acting like a solid barrier to my own mental processing abilities. I slid a hand up her forearm so I could pull on her wrist. Even though the movement was slow, my heart was absolutely fucking racing. I dropped her hand and took a breath. A child. A baby. The answering smile that covered my face was so big and so immediate that I couldn’t do anything but laugh. “Are you sure?” I whispered, cupping the sides of her face with my hands, trying not to grip too tightly from the excitement rattling my bones. Adele blinked a few times, gauging my face and then finally gave me a tiny nod in answer. “I took a test right before you got home. So if I sounded like a psycho on the phone, that’s why. I was waiting to find out what it said.” “And it said that you’re pregnant?” The fact that I’d already asked once barely registered. The slow spread of shocked happiness hit my hands first, then moved up my arms and settled in my chest. Adele nodded again, just a tiny tip of her chin, and I whooped. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I lifted her up against my chest, crushing her to me as tightly as I could manage. Taking in a deep, calming breath against her silky fine blonde hair, I pressed a kiss there. “Oh, baby, I can’t believe it.” My voice came out sounding rough and full of emotion, still nothing compared to the riot happening inside of my heart and my head. In the midst of how mind-numbingly busy it was to teach at Harvard, I hadn’t had much beyond Adele keeping me sane. Her smiles and snark and sexiness grounding me in the middle of one of the biggest changes of my life. And now … oh God … now we’d get to add a baby into it. Our baby. I laughed again, and that’s when I noticed her shaking. Her entire body was shaking in my arms. Very slowly, I lowered her down, pulling my head back so that I could see her face. Her incredibly pale face.

“Adele?” Her eyes flicked up to me. They’d been focused on the base of my throat, and when she finally met my eyes, I swallowed. Her pupils were small, like she’d just stared into the sun, and underneath the skin covering the column of her throat, I could see the rapid fluttering of her pulse. The initial swell of happiness receded, one wave at a time. Adele was terrified. Not once had we talked about kids. But it never occurred to me that she might not want any. I clenched my teeth together while I smoothed a hand down her hair. My brain hurdled over so many thoughts that I could barely keep up. While I let them settle, I pulled her into my arms again and pressed my cheek against the crown of her head. Adele buried her nose into my throat and pulled in a shuddering breath. “I’m only twenty-two, Nathan,” she said quietly. “I spend more time pondering the negative effects of Diet Coke than I do about wanting to be a mother someday.” I smiled, but it felt sad. Not wanting her to sense it, I hugged her closer to me, even though my heart was squeezing painfully behind my ribs. Tethering your own excitement so that it didn’t cause pain to the person you loved was new to me. But I did love her. I loved her so much that sometimes it felt like it would swallow me whole. It was enormous and so deep into my bones, that the thought of her being that scared and that unsure about something like our baby almost cracked me in half. So I swallowed everything down. “Listen to me,” I said into her hair, pushing my hand up her spine until I cupped the back of her neck with my fingers, “I know you’re young, and this isn’t how we planned on doing things. But I will be with you every single step of the way.” Adele pulled back, and the watery brightness of her green eyes almost made me feel physically ill. Despite what I’d said, and how deeply I meant it, she still looked completely unsure. And it wasn’t exactly like I could blame her. I’d been so busy since starting at Harvard, busier and more intellectually challenged than I’d ever been in my life. Time at home—time with Adele—was the thing that had suffered the most. And I’d seen it in her eyes every single time I came home late: disappointment and anger. “Adele,” I crouched down so that my eyes were at the same level as hers. “I love you. And I promise that I will take care of you, take care of everything you need. We can do this.” She swallowed, watching me so intently that I almost fidgeted under her scrutiny. Then her eyes cleared, just a touch, and I exhaled in relief. Her hands moved from around my back to hold either side of my face. I closed my eyes at the feel of her skin against mine. This. This was what centered us. Always. “You promise?” I opened my eyes and nodded. “I do.” “Okay.” She puffed out a breath. “I love you too.” When I grinned at her, she finally cracked the tiniest of smiles. “Can I kiss you now, or are you going to throw up in my mouth?”

Adele punched me in the stomach. “Too soon. Entirely too soon, Nathan.” What I wanted to do in response was run my hand underneath her shirt and lay it over her stomach. Wanted to see if I could feel it. Feel that little, tiny, perfect thing that was entirely me and entirely Adele. Instead, I leaned down to kiss her and she wound her arms around my neck in the same breath. It was a dance that we knew without fail. Even though every time I slipped inside of her, every time I felt her pussy clench and pull at me so deeply inside of her body, it always felt brand new. She moaned into my mouth when I dipped my hand into the back of her pants to grab her perfectly round, firm ass. The sharp tips of her nails pricked against my scalp when she moved her hands into my hair and I rocked my hips against her in response. “How do you always do this to me?” she groaned, reaching down to palm my cock through my pants. “Fuck, you feel so good,” I ground out, fisting a hand into her hair. “Always do what?” Adele went up on tiptoe and kissed me again, snaking her tongue against mine in a shameless undulation. “Make me hot so fucking fast.” We staggered backwards and I propped her up on the counter, only pulling my mouth away from hers to rip at the button of her jeans. But I didn’t go any further, simply opening her legs wider by stepping in between them. “Please,” she whispered when I pulled away to bite down onto the side of her neck. “Please, what?” I whispered back and smiled when she glared at me. “Pretty please will you put your cock inside of me?” Then she blinked at me, biting the side of her lip. It was one of her favorite roles in our bedroom, the innocent sexual ingénue. But only the innocent part was incongruent with her personality. My fearless, dirty girl. “Not yet.” “Dick.” But the word held no heat, especially since she was quickly unhooking my belt and lowering the zipper of my pants as fast as she could. “Can I least touch it?” But I stepped back and shook my head. “Not yet. This, this right here is all about you.” She gave me a soft smile, reaching out to trace her thumb along my bottom lip. “I love you so much, Nathan.” “Yeah?” I tapped the side of her thigh, motioning for her lift up so I could work her pants off. “You’re just saying that because I’m about to touch you in your very favorite spot.” Adele didn’t roll her eyes like I expected her to, just watched me while I pulled her jeans off of her and then tossed them onto the floor. The underwear she was wearing was comprised of tiny scraps of lace held together by thin lines of satin around her hips. When I pressed two fingers along the damp fabric in front of her

slit, she dropped her head back briefly, letting out a small moan. But she lifted it almost immediately, grabbing my wrist in between her legs. “No,” she said, sounding a little out of breath. Especially when I started making tiny, hard circles against her clit through the fabric. “I’m saying it because I do. So fucking much, Nathan. I love you.” Holding her eyes, I hooked my fingers past her underwear and sank them both into her hot, slick pussy, right as our mouths met for a slow, wet kiss. She whimpered into my mouth, against my tongue, and the sound ripped right down into my heart. “I love you too,” I said in between kisses. “Now would you pretty please come all over my hand?” I twisted my fingers, adding a third and grinding my palm against her clit. She seized on a loud cry, her cunt clenching around my fingers in a long, pulsing rhythm. I withdrew my hand and then lifted it up to my nose so I could take a deep breath. She shook her head, her face beautifully flushed. “Perv.” “Only with you.” I kissed her again, pouring into it all the relief that I felt at seeing her look at me without terror in her eyes. At seeing her smile. She tried to wiggle off of the counter, her hands gripping at my still very hard cock again, but I shook my head. “Just … just let me hold you for a few minutes. Then you can have your way with me.” Her head tilted and her eyes narrowed slightly. But she nodded, letting me wrap her in my arms. I tightened them around her, taking deep breaths and asking the universe, or whoever might be listening, to keep our baby healthy, and to let Adele eventually feel exactly the way that I did.

CHAPTER THREE

It wasn’t the first time I’d been late to class. No, many Leo keggers had kept me out into the wee hours of the morning, leaving me running to class with whiskey stains on my shirt and dirt from some God-forsaken Kenmore Square party place under my nails. But being late to class because I was bent over, practically kissing the top of someone’s Styrofoam breakfast at the bottom of a trash can … well, that was something else. I’d wiped the vomit from my lips with the back of my hand and slowly stood, breathing in through my mouth and out my nostrils to avoid smelling the lox I’d made the mistake of eating that morning. Who the fuck eats salmon on bagels for breakfast? Oh, yeah. Nathan. Nathan did. I remembered how he’d looked at me as I’d swiped a bite of his breakfast. “Are you allowed to have fish?” he asked, one delicious eyebrow raised. I shrugged as I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, talking around the bite of cream cheese and salmon. “I dunno. This tastes weird.” He thumbed across his phone screen, squinting his eyes as he surveyed the information before him. “Raw or partially-cooked fish is a big no-no, Adele,” he said, peering at me over the tops of his glasses. He sounded so hot and scholarly when he said it, and I would’ve mounted him right at the breakfast bar were it not for the fact that my stomach was turning in reaction to the taste of salmon at seven o-fucking-clock in the morning. “Guess sushi is out,” I pouted, pushing his bagel from me and grabbing his coffee instead. Again, he looked at me peculiarly as I sipped his coffee and I knew the words that would fall from his lips immediately. “Okay, sir,” I said, my voice hard. “No caffeine, right? Is this a baby or a jail sentence?” He laughed, coming around the counter to pull me in a hug. He had been doing that a lot more since I dropped the baby bombshell on him, and after the last couple months mostly apart with our schedules, I was still getting used to the feel of

Nathan enveloping me in one of his hugs. I savored that warm feeling two hours later when I found myself eyeing the Chinese writing on the Styrofoam container currently covered in my vomit. And then, the mere thought of Chinese food turned my stomach into enemy number one—and I spewed once again. Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth for a second time, I ignored the strange look from the girl applying an inch of lip gloss to her bottom lip. Until she spoke. “What’s wrong with you?” I ran my hands under the running water and then shook them, not caring too badly that I splashed her with some of the droplets. “Fucking salmon,” I said, running my hands under the dryer. “You look terrible,” she said, as if she needed to announce the obvious. “Yeah, well, your lips look like they’re melting off your face,” I shot back before leaving the bathroom. I pulled out my phone, noted that I was already ten minutes late for class thanks to the fucking salmon and typed out a text to Nathan. I just puked up your salmon and possibly an organ. His reply came seconds later. Don’t eat salmon, then. Shouldn’t you be in class? It took great restraint to keep from rolling my eyes. Yeah, this Nathan was new. Shiny—paying attention to my class schedule and what I should put in my mouth. Idly, I wondered what he’d say if I told him my OB/GYN said no more deep-throating. I didn’t imagine he’d take that with a smile on his face like he did when it came to depriving me of caffeine. I shoved into class with more aplomb than I should have any right to— considering I was, after all, late as fuck. Thankfully, the professor was bumbling around like he lost his glasses, shuffling across the floor and sniffing loudly as the students around the room chattered like this was social hour and not Introduction to Literary Theory. I dropped my books onto my desk and slid in my chair, feeling an instant turn of my stomach. Jesus. It was one fucking bite of salmon! Why was my stomach waging a war on me? The guy who usually sat next to me scooted his chair closer. “Hey,” he said, leaning toward me with one elbow propped up. “Did you do your essay?” The one upside to Nathan being missing in action was that I was always on top of my class work. I did that shit in his bed late at night, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tiny ink stains on his duvet before I had a chance to wash it. “Yep.” I knew this guy wanted my essay—to compare against whatever mediocre bullshit he’d pulled out of his ass. “I was up all night doing mine. It probably sucks.” I wasn’t biting. “Yeah, it probably does,” I agreed, not bothering to make eye contact. Most of the guys in my classes wanted one of two things: sex or homework

help. Unfortunately for me, this dude wanted both. “Hey, what are you doing tonight?” I tapped my pen on the top of my notebook. “Studying.” “Wanna study together?” The sleeve of his windbreaker brushed against my arm and for some reason, the sound made me grit my teeth, as if the sound was just as offensive to my stomach as the fucking salmon was. “Oh, I’d like to, but I’m pretty solitary.” “Wanna hang out after then?” I opened my mouth to say no, but his mouth turned downward. “Let me guess— you’re going to say no, again. What? Have to paint your nails or some shit?” “No, I have to fuck my very sexy boyfriend, as a matter of fact.” It popped out of my mouth before I could reign it in—not that I would’ve, necessarily. But I might have said it with a little more grace. Like, “have sex with” instead of “fuck.” “Oh, I didn’t realize…” he stammered. I started to reply when the vomit catapulted up my throat. Panicking, I didn’t know what to do and grabbed my notebook, curving it into a half cylinder so that I could vomit in it. “Fucking gross,” the guy said as he leaned away from me. Still holding the notebook that had become a trough for my vomit, I made my way out of class. After dumping the notebook and washing my hands and face again in the bathroom, I sent Nathan another text. What the actual fuck? I puked again! While I waited for his reply, I stared at my reflection. I had gone months since my last touch up, clearly evidenced by my darkening roots. But the hair itself hung from my face like it’d given up. Not that I blamed it—I don’t think I’d used a single hot hair tool on it in months. Under my eyes were identical brown splotches—lack of sleep, probably. My eyes themselves were bloodshot, and my face was paler than the sterile walls of the bathroom. I looked like absolute shit. Nathan’s reply came just as I was about to leave the bathroom. Maybe it’s not the salmon—could it be morning sickness? To say I was inexperienced with the trials of pregnancy was a gross understatement, but I figured morning sickness was likely the culprit. But, even though I didn’t know just how many weeks I was, I always assumed morning sickness happened later on—like when you actually had a bump that was more baby-baby instead of pizza-baby. Like when the pregnancy was more real. How the hell was I going to survive the rest of the school year if this morning sickness didn’t let up? My phone buzzed. Why don’t you go home? Take a breather. It’s been a busy few days. Ah, Nathan. My supportive Nathan, encouraging me to skip class and head home for the day, already. Who was I to say no? I practically fucking skipped home. As I walked down the pristine concrete sidewalk, my eyes met his car in the driveway, the paint job glittering under the early morning sun.

Early morning, I thought. Nathan was never home that early in the day. I pushed open the front door, surprised to see him at the counter where I’d last seen him hours earlier. “Hey,” he said, coming to me and pulling me into his arms. “How’s your stomach?” “Well, I think it’s still inside of me—for the moment. You’re home early?” It came out as a question, but I wasn’t really sure what I was asking. He led me to a seat at the bar and rubbed a hand down my back. “When you said you didn’t feel well, I wanted to be here for you when you got home.” “Aww,” I said, leaning into his touch. “You want to hold my hair back when my stomach attempts its escape again?” “I told you, I’m here. I’m going to take care of you.” He brushed a hand over my hair as warmth seeped into my skin and warmed my bones. He was shiny Nathan, but he was mine nonetheless. And as he pulled me in for a hug, all I could think was how everything just might be okay.

CHAPTER FOUR

“What the fuck,” I whispered as I launched out of bed at an ungodly hour, making a beeline for the toilet just before my stomach upended itself. “It was fucking toast,” I whisper-yelled as my hands clutched the cold porcelain. “Dry fucking toast. And water.” Still, vomit poured out of me faster than I could fathom. I tried sucking in air through my nostrils in between spews of barf, but it was coming so fast that I couldn’t keep up. My whole face grew warm, and moisture collected behind my eyes. Why couldn’t I keep toast down? Was this normal? Who knew something smaller than my pinky finger could hold all the power over your body? I’d flipped through a baby book and came across something that looked more alien than human, but it was the fetus, the itty bitty cluster of cells that was overruling me in all the aspects of my life that were most important— such as food. I sat back on my heels and took a breather. “Get your shit together,” I said, poking the slight protrusion that rounded my stomach. “I need sleep.” It was weird, right? Talking to your stomach, to something that couldn’t process language. The vomit came again, more violently than before. My face was fully in the toilet at that point, and I couldn’t stop the tears that spilled over my cheeks. My throat was on fire, and my stomach was constricting and expanding, making noises that didn’t sound human. My knees hurt from where they dug into the tile as my fingers clenched on the toilet. I was exhausted, after spending hours catching up on notes from the classes I’d skipped that day. Nathan had moved to touch me in bed and for the first time in the last year or so, I waved him off with a shake of my head. He’d kissed my hair instead before rolling over, which made me feel inexplicably sad. But I could barely think about that now, as vomit curdled in my stomach again, and I held on for dear life as it came out of my mouth. A hundred f-bombs were on my tongue, but the only things that came from my mouth were vomit and the occasional whimper, when I had a second to catch my breath. I’d never puked so much, not even when I’d had thirteen whiskey sours and

then four shots of Baileys in quick succession. I sighed into the toilet and half-heartedly reached for the handle so I could flush away the acidic smell that filled the bowl. “Hey,” Nathan’s voice came from behind me. The tears were still pouring from my eyes and because I was embarrassed, I didn’t turn to look him in the eye. “This blows.” It was all I could manage. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. I felt him squat beside me. “What can I get you?” “I’d settle for a stomach transplant right about now.” I rolled my forehead across the lip of the seat. “I’ll get in touch with my contacts on the black market.” His hand came to my back and just laid there, over the thin satin of my chemise. “What can I do?” More vomit came before I could answer and my entire body bucked as I grabbed the toilet again. When I seemed to have a reprieve, Nathan was closer to me and rubbed the corner of a cool, wet washcloth along my forehead. “How’s that?” I could only nod as I sighed, turning my head to give him more access to rub the cool cloth over my face. After several minutes of silence and relief from not vomiting, I said, “I thought morning sickness was supposed to be in the morning only.” “I think that’s just the saying, but I’m pretty sure it can happen anytime.” “Sweet,” I said dispassionately. My body convulsed like I would vomit again, but it held it in. “If it wasn’t for the little … thing … inside of me, I would expect a six pack abs after all the times I’ve worshipped the porcelain throne.” For some reason, calling it a baby—especially my baby—was still foreign; surreal. Admittedly, Nathan responded to the news a hell of a lot better than I did. I was still trying to adjust to the idea that pretty soon I’d be enormously bloated and probably pissed off at my sheer wideness. Thinking this would be caused by an itty bitty baby made up of Nathan and me was incomprehensible. Nathan stood up and I heard him turn on the faucet and drench the washcloth again. When he returned, I turned more fully into his touch. “This is so gross,” I said, but my voice was scratchy. “It’s not that bad,” he assured me, brushing my hair from my face and tucking it behind my ears. “It could be worse.” The thought played like a dream in my head—like Choose Your Own Adventure, with me alone in my dark and dank apartment, drunk out of my mind and relying on some college nitwit to support the life we created together. I turned to Nathan, who was sitting on the floor beside me, running the washcloth over my face. “Thank you,” I sighed as he ran the washcloth down my neck. “Anything you need—you just tell me,” he whispered. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting the hormonal overflow to continue leaking from my eyes. Nathan stayed with me on the bathroom floor until my legs cramped from the position I was in. As I clutched the corner of the wall to stand, Nathan

swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bed as if he lived to do it for me. And as he tucked me in—actually fucking tucking the sheet around me—all I could think was that I wanted to be as fucking chill as Nathan was about all of this. As if he’d seen the future laid out in front of him and embraced it. The puke, the chills, the hormones—it was so easy for him to be what I needed. He climbed into bed behind me and snuggled up against my back and I hoped I didn’t completely fucking reek. But if I did, he didn’t acknowledge it, burying his head into my neck and breathing one long breath against me—like I hadn’t just woken him up on a work night and had him take care of me when I couldn’t move from the toilet. His arm snaked around my waist, pulling me flush against his front. I wasn’t sure what kind of good karma I had put out into the world to deserve this fine piece of ass—which was just one thing in a line of many wonderful and delicious things about him—but I wanted, more than anything in that moment, to be as strong and as solid as he was for me.

CHAPTER FIVE

I was deep into reading a paper comparing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with one of her essays from the late twenties for my Literary Theory in Comparison course when there was a sharp rap on my office door. “Come in,” I called out, not looking up from my desk. Even though I had regular office hours like all professors, the students at Harvard had access to their teachers at any given time. “Nathan, my boy.” I smiled easily at Max Collingsworth, my mentor at Harvard and one of the most prestigious professors in the Arts and Sciences department. “Max, what can I help you with?” He tipped his chin at what I was reading. “Any good?” Edging the papers in his direction when he sat in a chair opposite my simple wooden desk, I shrugged my shoulders. “Not bad. Maybe a little too self-important for my tastes. Though my feedback should knock him down a peg.” Max lifted a bushy white eyebrow at the opening line. “Huh.” “I know.” We laughed, and the ease in which I could interact with Max still completely mystified me. Coming from Northern University where I was never quite out of my dad’s shadow, it was such a massive relief to find people who not only respected me, but challenged me because they believed I was worthy of it. Not just my colleagues, but my students as well. Most of my classes only had ten to fifteen students in them, and every single day, the students made my mind race with how intelligent and thought-provoking they were. Without a doubt, it was the greatest job I’d ever had in my life. Max handed the paper back to me and started asking about something when my cell phone vibrated on my desk. Normally I would have ignored it, but given how sick Adele had been lately, I gave Max an apologetic look.

Adele: If I die today from lack of fluids, just remember I love you and I’m sorry if I

couldn’t clean up after myself before I succumbed to my affliction.

I wiped a hand across my mouth, shaking my head. If I thought it was difficult seeing Adele unsure about this pregnancy, that was nothing compared to seeing her unsure and completely miserable at the same time. In my entire life, I’d never felt so helpless as I did the other night when she was hanging over the toilet. And it dawned on me, as soon as that thought swept over my brain, that seeing her puke was only a pinprick compared to what I’d probably feel like when she was actually giving birth. “Everything okay?” I dropped my hand and nodded at Max. “My girlfriend is pretty sick. I think I’m going to head home and check on her.” As much as I was practically vibrating with the desire to tell him it was because she was pregnant, I knew Adele wasn’t ready for people to know. I didn’t talk much about my relationship with her as it was, given the difference in our ages and that she was still a student at Northern. There was always a lingering fear that someone would put together how we met. But Max smiled at me, the kind of fatherly smile that I’d never seen on my own parent’s face. “What’s her name?” “Adele.” As I was standing to tidy up my stacks of paper, I glanced down at the picture I had of her on my desk. The frame was a sturdy mahogany, with clean edges and no frills. She’d given it to me the day before I started at Harvard. I’d taken the picture while she was studying one day, not long after she’d moved in with me. Her hair was flipped into a messy bun held together by a pencil, and her white shirt was hanging off of one shoulder. What she’d been reading had made her smile, just a tiny lift of her lips. It was my favorite picture of her, even more than the sexy ones she occasionally took for me, because it was the unguarded, sweet side of Adele. She didn’t show her softness often, and to able to capture it with a simple click of my phone, I’d stared at it more times than I cared to admit. He tilted his head to the side so he could see the picture that I was staring at. With a nudge, I changed the angle of the frame so he could see it more easily. “She’s beautiful.” I smiled. Max was nearing seventy, so what he said didn’t rouse any possessive urges. Besides, Adele was beautiful. And she was mine, so it probably wouldn’t have bothered me even if he was fifty years younger. “That she is.” He was quiet for a moment, and I prayed that he didn’t ask where I’d met her. I never knew how to answer that question, so I tried to stick to the truth. We met in the hallway of a Boston bar, when she ran into me coming out of the bathroom. No mention of classrooms or students or professors were necessary, and so far I’d been lucky that my answer appeased the few people who’d asked. “How long have you two been dating?”

Dating. It felt like such a thin, unfulfilling word for what we had. For what we were. She and I weren’t even like a match and a dry piece of wood. We were both fire-starters. No matter whether it felt like a terribly underwhelming way to describe our relationship, to describe her—my love, my lover and the person who held every piece of me in her slender hands—that’s what she was. I lifted my eyebrows when I realized he was still waiting for me to answer. “Ah, about a year now.” Max knew about Diana, which is probably why he didn’t pry any more than he already had. People tended to use grief as a self-made restraint. They couldn’t dig the way that they wanted to, because your tragedy held them back. In this situation, it worked damn well. “Well, I hope she feels better soon.” He lifted his hand in a wave and shut the door quietly behind him. “Thanks, Max,” I replied, but he was already gone. I stared at my desk for a second, debating whether I should take the time to clean it up, but the urge to get home to Adele was far more pressing. By the time I walked into our kitchen, a solid forty-five minutes had passed since I got Adele’s text. I didn’t see any lights on or hear the TV, and I frowned thinking that it meant she was upstairs on the bathroom floor again. “Nathan?” Adele’s groggy-sounding voice came from the family room. When I turned the corner, she was curled into a ball with a bowl next to the couch on the floor and a blanket covering her legs and feet. I could tell by the way she was blinking that she’d been asleep. I set the grocery bags onto the coffee table and sank down next to her, running a hand over her side. “Sorry I woke you.” In response, she stretched a little bit and groaned. “It’s okay. I ate some saltines and that helped my stomach settle down. Figured I should sleep while this thing decided it didn’t hate me momentarily.” This thing. I swallowed down my immediate desire to correct her and say, it’s not a thing, it’s our baby. But considering that I didn’t have a death wish, I rubbed the edge of my tongue along my teeth instead. “It doesn’t hate you. Morning sickness is usually a good sign.” She harrumphed, rolling her eyes. “Says the man who doesn’t have to yack up everything that touches his stomach lining.” Adele tangled her fingers with mine where they rested on her hip. “I feel cursed. Like I’m never going to be able to eat a full meal ever again.” “You’re not cursed,” I said, sliding my hand under her shoulders so I could help her to a sitting position. “Come on, I got you some stuff.” Adele gave me a small smile, smoothing her hair after she was sitting upright. “What kind of stuff?” Grabbing the first bag, I started unloading the contents one by one. Saltines, ginger candies, lemon candies, lemonade, Vitamin B6. Adele looked at me like I was insane when I went for the second bag. Acupressure bands for her wrists,

peppermint essential oil, ginger tea and all natural, organic lemon ice thingies that the woman at the health store absolutely swore by. “The fuck…” Her voice trailed off. “Were you Googling again, Professor Easton?” “A little. I figured if some of this stuff worked for other women, maybe you can try them all. And if none of it works, we can talk to your doctor about a prescription that may help. I guess they have that too.” Adele leaned forward and picked up the box of ginger candies, shaking her head a little when she read the label. She set it back down and shifted to face me. “You’re feeling particularly thorough today, huh?” The spark in her eye, that fiery, indefinable thing that made Adele Adele was there again. I licked along my bottom lip and she immediately zeroed in on it with her emerald eyes. Blood heated and pumped through my veins, the familiar rush of sheer, unadulterated need and lust that never abated with her. Always with her, about her, and because of her. “Thorough.” I hummed, shifting to accommodate my growing erection. “Yeah, I guess I’m feeling very thorough.” She smiled, pulling the blanket off of her lap. “That’s convenient.” “Is it?” Adele stood and held her hand out to me. “It is. Because I’m feeling very turned on, Professor. And I’m going to need you to do something about it.” I stood and slapped her ass, which made her squeak. “Lead the way.” As she walked backwards to the stairs, she curled two fingers in a come here gesture. “I want you in a bed. In our bed.” “Yes, ma’am.” And then I chased her up the stairs, delighting in the sound of her laughter.

CHAPTER SIX

Adele stopped laughing pretty quickly, as soon as I cleared the doorway of the master bedroom. She was slightly out of breath from running up the stairs, and it brought a flush to her cheeks that made her look exactly like she did after an orgasm. I ripped at the buttons of my dress shirt, jerking my chin at her to do the same. With frantic movements, she yanked her black t-shirt off to reveal the simple white bra underneath. Her breasts, already bigger in the few short weeks of pregnancy, pushed at the edges of the cotton, making my mouth fucking water. “I should have faked being sick months ago,” she whispered when I pulled off the plain white t-shirt I wore under my oxford. “I like middle of the day sex. Almost as much as I like morning sex.” I lifted an eyebrow, knowing she was only slightly joking. My long hours and heightened responsibilities had more than taken a toll on the amount of time we spent together. But she laughed at my expression, tucking her thumbs into the top of her yoga pants and shucking them down her toned legs. They were long and lean, and I loved them so much more when they were up over my shoulders. Her bra came off with two quick movements, and only her simple red underwear that was cut high on her legs was left. “Glad to see you’re feeling well enough to give me shit again.” “Oh,” she shook her head and took slow steps toward me, “I’m going to give you more than that.” God. This woman. Adele lifted up on her tiptoes and dug her fingers into my hair, licking along my jawline. The sharp points of her teeth grabbed at the skin of my neck and I slid my hands underneath her underwear, grabbing as much of her ass as I could manage. “You know what happens when you tease me,” I whispered into her ear, ready to fucking explode at the feel of her tits against my chest. “I’ll make you wait. You’ll be ready to weep before I let you come.” The tight points of her nipples felt like they were cutting my skin, and I pulled a hand off her ass to rub light circles over the hardened bud with my palm. Adele dropped her head back on a relieved exhale.

“Do you know how much I hated saying no to you the other night? Sometimes I think I’ll die if I go too long without your hands on my body, Nathan.” “You would die,” I said simply, rocking my hips forward to gain some sort of friction of my cock against her stomach. “Just like I would. Some people need air and food to survive. Not us, Adele. We need this. We need each other, just like this.” She met me halfway, slanting her mouth against mine in a hard, raw kiss. Her hands clutched at me like she was trying to claw under the top layer of my skin. I’d let her live there if I could. I’d embed her into my veins and muscles and bones, letting her flow through every breath I took, for the rest of my life. We stumbled to the bed, our hands fumbling together on my belt. While I whipped my pants off, Adele lay back on our bed, kicking off her underwear as she did. She stretched her arms above her head and arched her tits up like an offering. The languid, feline movements of her fucking perfect body slayed me, stabbed me through my thumping heart. She was mine. This flawless, ferocious woman was mine. When I stood naked in front of her, my cock jutting straight up, I stopped and laid a hand across her stomach, stretching my fingers wide so that I spanned the entire width. Hot sweeps of love and awe filled me. There was a momentary softening in her eyes while I laid my hand there, and she covered it with her own. “I love you,” I said with a fierceness that clearly took her by surprise, because she smiled up at me. Then she wrapped hand around my wrist and dragged it up to cover one breast. The firm flesh filled my palm. “I love you too. Now show me, Nathan. Please. This feels amazing.” Spurred by the raw desperation in her voice, I went about doing just that. Bracing a knee in between her legs on the mattress, I leaned over Adele and placed a kiss on the soft skin above her heart. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down fully on top of her. We kissed again, long licks of my tongue against hers while she dragged her hands along my back. The edges of her fingernails bit into my skin and I started rolling my hips against her. The length of my cock dragged along the lips of her pussy. Her slick heat, so wet and perfect, made me want to shove and thrust and take, take, take. But I didn’t. I kept my movements slow and steady, only adding pressure when the base of my cock would hit her clit. “Fuck,” she groaned into my neck. “It’s so good, Nathan.” “Do you want to come like this the first time? Just me on you?” Adele whimpered and I used one hand under her ass to tilt her up at a different angle. Her breathing changed and she arched her back, her tits pressed up against me while we just rocked against each other at a maddeningly slow pace. I let out a hiss when she dug her nails onto my back, so hard that she might have drawn blood. “In me, Nathan. I want you in me.” But she didn’t move back, simply swiveled her hips when I made another slow roll against her. “Holy shit.”

Everything in me screamed raw at the need to push in her, but this felt so perfect that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I kissed her again, upping my speed only slightly and denting my fingers against her flesh while I did it. “So good,” I whispered in between kisses, only slowing again when I could tell by her face that she was close. “Oh, you dick,” she groaned in response. I chuckled against her lips. But apparently, she’d had enough, because with a fierce push, Adele shoved at my shoulder and rolled me to my back. My hands slid up her thighs when she straddled me in a smooth movement. One of her hands braced the headboard behind us and the other fisted my cock, notching the head into her slit. Our eyes met in the heartbeat before she slammed herself down on me. I clenched my teeth at the immediate, relentless wave of hot pleasure. “Oh, fuck yes, God, that’s it,” she moaned as she swiveled her hips above me, smooth undulations that made her breasts sway above my head. I leaned my head up and caught one tit in my mouth, tugging lightly with my teeth in a way that made her body start to shake. She was so close; I could feel it in the slow squeeze of her pussy around my cock. While my tongue flicked against her nipple, I slid my thumb around to press down on her clit when she made her next slow roll against me. Her whole body seized, and she cried out. The walls of her pussy fisted me so tightly that I lost my breath. I kept the pressure of my thumb in tight circles and she kept going, a long, drawn out wave of pleasure. Adele’s breath stuttered and she slumped down. I wrapped my arms around her and let her come down, even though my whole body vibrated from the need to keep going, keep moving, keep chasing until I had the same explosion. She pulled her head back and I smiled at the drowsy, satisfied look on her face. “Feel better?” “A little.” She kissed me, tugging on my bottom lip with her teeth. My cock twitched inside of her and she grinned. “Now you.” Fuck. Yes. I went to flip her onto her back, but she shook her head. Her other hand moved up the headboard so that she was holding it with both and she lifted up slightly. Firmly with the program, I pulled my knees up so that my feet were braced on the mattress. My hands gripped her hips, my fingers digging into the flesh of her ass. I pulled the cheeks apart and she moaned. “Fuck me, Nathan. Use me. Take what you need.” I hammered up, my hips slapping against hers in a sharp snap. Her tits bounced from the force of my thrust, and I cursed. So good. So hot. So wet. Mine. Mine. Mine. My pace was punishing, slamming into her again and again and again until my whole body was a flame of pleasure that covered every inch of my skin. She

whimpered while I fucked her from underneath. “Yes, fuck, Adele. Come on me again.” One hand left the headboard so that she could cup one of her breasts. The sight of her fingers pinching her nipples pushed me up and up. I cracked a hand against her ass and she screamed, fisting me again in a vicious orgasm. I roared her name when the ball of fire exploded at the base of my spine, and I poured into her. Her sweat-covered body fell against me while I slowly milked my orgasm with a few lazy thrusts. I panted against her shoulder, dropping kisses along the slope of skin. “I…” she started and then dropped off with a soft laugh. “Yeah. I concur.” My hands tangled in her hair and I sighed with so much contentedness that it felt cliché. “That was pretty damn spectacular, Professor.” I growled. “You call me that again, and we’ll have to start all over.” Adele lifted her head and smiled at me. “Is that a threat or a promise?” I kissed her and rolled us to the side, perversely enjoying the slick pull of my cock out of her and the feel of my cum spilling out of her when I did. “Both, my little sex fiend. It’s always both.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nathan was anxious. I wasn’t sure if he was preoccupied with his job or worries about me and the baby, but watching the way his knee bounced beside mine and the way he held his fist to his mouth as he stared at the baby on the floor in the waiting room made me feel a little twitchy. Leaning over, I whispered, “Are you having a seizure?” Abruptly, he stopped moving like there was a jackhammer in his femur. “What?” “You can’t sit still.” He shook his head. “I’m fine.” “Well, stop looking at that kid like you’re about to reenact Raising Arizona.” He looked at me and then at the roly-poly baby turning the pages of a board book with his fat little hands. “They couldn’t get pregnant in that movie, right? That’s why they stole the baby.” “Right. But you’re giving off some creepy vibes with bouncing your knee and staring at the baby like you’re plotting how to sneak it out of here with it under your shirt.” He bristled a little beside me. “It looks to be a boy. And I don’t need to steal any babies, I have ours.” He reached a hand over and held mine, squeezing. A shiver went through me, at the way he said ours. I was still getting used to the idea of having this … human … growing inside of me. I’d noticed how Nathan had subtly changed his expression whenever I acted as if I was detached from the pregnancy. Trust me, I was very much attached. It was sucking the life from me, and it was quite literally attached to my uterine wall. A few years before, I would’ve lost my fucking shit knowing I was pregnant. And while I wasn’t losing my shit now, I was still very, seriously afraid. As we’d checked in for my first OB/GYN appointment, the receptionist had inquired about health insurance. I had a basic plan, but nothing that would cover the majority of a pregnancy—it was designed for college students who, by all accounts, should be out getting drunk and making bad decisions—just not ones that necessarily ended up with a fetus. But Nathan had stepped forward, handing over his credit card. I’d stilled a moment then, feeling like a child being cared for by

an actual adult, someone who had his shit together and could realistically provide for a newborn. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the baby, but I was even less sure of how I felt about Nathan and me raising a child together. Sure, things were good now. But he held all the cards—I lived in his house and he purchased the groceries. I paid for the things that I’d insisted upon, like my schooling expenses and my car insurance and health insurance. But this baby would come late spring and where would I be then? “Adele?” My head snapped up and my gaze fell upon the nurse standing in the doorway to the back of the building. I stood and Nathan held my hand tighter as he joined me on the walk to the exam room. The nurse stopped at a scale and indicated that I should stand on it. I gave a look to Nathan who shook his head, indicating to me that he wouldn’t be turning around. I narrowed my eyes, but stepped on the scale anyway. As the nurse slide the black balances across the bar, I began cringing. When she announced my weight—up seven pounds from my usual—I winced. “How the hell can I gain weight when I can’t even keep food down?” The nurse looked taken aback and I glanced at Nathan, whose eyes dipped down to my chest before they slid back up to meet mine. The corners of his lips lifted and I was suddenly aware of how awkward the silence was between Nathan, the nurse, and me. “You’ll need to give us a urine sample in this cup next,” she said, her cheeks pink as she avoided eye contact with me and with Nathan. “Make sure you wipe first.” She placed two sealed wet wipes in my hand and turned to the bathroom. “Just leave it on the counter when you’re done and we’ll meet you in room ten.” Nathan let go of my hand and gave me a reassuring smile as he stepped into room ten and I stepped into the bathroom. After I finished, I joined him in the exam room where he was already talking animatedly with the doctor. “Oh, you must be Adele. I’m Dr. Parker,” the doctor said, his blue eyes warm and his mouth in a friendly smile. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the exam table and slid glasses up his nose as he read his chart. “It says here you don’t know for sure when your last menstrual cycle was?” “Well, when you put it that way…” I said, a little uncomfortable. “I’m not judging you, Adele,” the doctor said gently. “But we measure pregnancy based on the first day of your last menstrual period. If you don’t know the date, we’ll do a transvaginal ultrasound.” The vaginal part of that sentence made me twitchy. I’d casually read a few things online, about how often my lady business would be looked at throughout the course of my pregnancy. What was even more alarming was how often I should expect it to be … touched. “Is that safe?” Nathan asked when I said nothing.

“Oh, yes. It’s quite common too—especially because a lot of women have irregular periods.” I gestured a hand around my belly. “But don’t you normally do ultrasounds over the stomach?” Dr. Parker nodded. “I don’t have transvaginal ultrasounds performed in my office after twenty weeks. We could do a pelvic ultrasound, but we’ll get a clearer picture with the transvaginal one. And the pelvic ultrasound is best if you have a full bladder.” I thought of the cup of urine next door. “Is there radiation?” Nathan asked. I glanced at him, surprised he was asking more questions than I was. “Not at all—it uses sound waves to obtain images of the pelvic organs. Completely safe. You won’t see much, but the technician should be able to determine the estimated due date based on what they see.” Nathan looked relieved and smiled reassuringly at me. “Before we get to that, let’s go through your health history a little bit.” I nodded and answered everything as well as I could. The entire time, Nathan sat calmly and didn’t seem to be the least bit bored, which was a shock because I was already ready to get the fuck out of there. “Let’s listen to the heartbeat, shall we?” The doctor asked, his eyes glittery as if he was excited. “We can hear the heartbeat?” I asked, feeling a rock of dread in my belly. The heartbeat would make it more real. While my stomach was still mostly flat and my breasts were a bit larger, I didn’t have any other indication besides the constant puking that there was someone alien inside of me. A heartbeat—as innocuous as it seemed—was fucking terrifying. “We can try. Why don’t you lie back?” I shot a look to Nathan who quickly stood and walked next to me. He was the picture of calm, which was the exact opposite of how he’d appeared in the waiting room. “It’s okay,” he soothed me as the doctor tucked a paper towel over the waist band of my yoga pants and pulled them down an inch. “I’m going to put a little bit of gel on your stomach. It might be cold.” It was. I flinched but Nathan squeezed my hand and smiled. He was totally calm, excited even—judging by the shine in his eyes. Before I even knew it, a fast whoosh-whoosh-whoosh poured from the speaker attached to the wand. I felt breathless, anxious, and my heart was racing a mile a minute in my chest. “Is that it?” I asked, but my voice came out like a squeak. “That’s your baby.” The rock in my stomach floated up and I stared at Nathan, whose face was a portrait of awe. His mouth was curved and his eyes were shiny. “Holy shit,” I mouthed to Nathan, not wanting to offend another medical professional.

“Holy shit,” he echoed, mouthing it back to me. His thumb ran over the back of my hand as we stayed completely still. “Heartbeat sounds great—one-hundred and seventy beats per minute.” “That’s fast,” Nathan remarked, his other hand coming up and gently touching the exposed skin of my belly. “It’s normal, depending on how far along in the pregnancy you are. I’m guessing you’re close to ten weeks along.” “Ten weeks,” Nathan whispered, his voice a little different. He grinned at me and again mouthed, “Holy shit.” The ultrasound technician’s name was Emily and she didn’t look any older than me when she handed me a paper sheet and told me—in her bubbly, melodic voice—to take off my pants. After she left the room for me to undress, I told Nathan, “I usually get dinner and a movie before people ask me to take off my pants.” “Well, how about I buy you dinner and a movie to celebrate after?” He looked so unbelievably calm, like nothing about this was even the littlest bit scary. If anything, the hearing the heartbeat had only made him that much more excited. As for me, I felt even more troubled. It wasn’t just the idea of a baby—it was the fact that this baby would change our relationship. It felt selfish to think that way, but considering the last few months with Nathan hadn’t been smooth sailing, I worried how a baby would change him, me, us. When the technician returned, I watched her put a giant plastic wrapper—like a condom—over the wand. “You could use some of those,” I said to Nathan. “I don’t need them now,” he returned, smiling. The technician stilled for a moment and then poured a ton of lube over the condom. She seemed a little flustered, but I had to make light of the fact that this giant probe was about to be thrust up my business. When it was pushed up inside of me, I winced—even though she was pretty gentle about it. “I know this is uncomfortable,” she said. “I expect I better get used to being uncomfortable,” I said with another wince. “Yes!” she replied, her bubbly demeanor returning. “You’ll have several months to get used to it.” She winked like we were best buddies, except one of us had their hand precariously close to the other’s vagina. She flipped on the monitor and angled it so we could see as she maneuvered the wand around inside of me. “Ah!” she said. “Want to see your baby?” All I could see was a black mass that looked like a kidney bean, with a blob in the center of it. She pointed to the rounder part as she gently rotated the wand. The image on the screen changed and the blob’s shape changed with it. “Can you see that blinking spot?”

I squinted as Nathan leaned over me to get closer to the screen. Indeed, there was a blinking spot near the center of the blob. “That’s your baby’s heart beating.” “Wow,” Nathan said on a rush. “That’s the baby?” It looked like a round blob with a small body attached. “Yep.” She pushed gently on my belly. “Let’s wake him or her up a little, see if we can get them to move.” Sure enough, after a couple times wiggling my belly around, the blob started squirming, twisting and turning and my breath came out in a gasp. For the first time since I realized I was pregnant, it all felt real. The fact that there was a human growing inside of me—someone I was responsible for. The fact that I was going to be a mom—to Nathan’s child. The roar of knowing this compressed my chest, and I felt tears prick the back of my eyes. “Holy shit,” I said aloud.

CHAPTER EIGHT

True to his word, Nathan took me to see the movie of my choice—an action flick with lots of sweaty dudes because I knew Nathan would enjoy it too—and then to dinner at our favorite pizza place. When the waitress took our drink orders, I tilted my head to the side. “You didn’t get a beer?” Every time we came to this restaurant, Nathan ordered the same beer—a beer from a local brewery up north. “I’m driving,” he said simply, reaching across the table to grab my hand. Nathan was always affectionate, but after the ultrasound earlier that day, he touched me more often than usual—as if the connection between us was magnetic, and he felt compelled to have his hands on me as much as possible. I wasn’t complaining, but even as I was finally accepting the pregnancy, I was still very much scared of who we were going to become over the course of the next thirty-one weeks. The doctor had been close when he’d guessed I was ten weeks along, but the ultrasound measured me just over nine weeks so that was what we went with. “I could drive,” I said, pressing the pad of my thumb against his. “It’s fine. I don’t need to drink to enjoy myself.” “You look like the cat that ate the canary,” I remarked, sipping on the ice water the waitress had dropped off first. “I’m happy,” he said simply. His entire face looked so at rest—like he’d just walked away from a massage. And it struck me how little we did this—going out to eat, like an actual date. “I can’t remember the last time we had a date.” He rubbed the edge of his nail over my palm. “It’s been a while, definitely.” He looked apologetic then, as if he was realizing just how busy he’d been the last few months. “We should do it more often.” “We won’t be able to when the baby comes along.” I sipped my water in an effort to hide the way that made me feel. “No grandma to babysit.” Nathan paused his fingers’ small movements over my knuckles. “I suppose we should discuss how and when to tell our families.” Our families. Our fucked up, still-in-the-dark families. My sister Celeste didn’t

even know where I lived since I moved out of my tiny apartment. My mother didn’t call me as often, electing to devote her time to Celeste and all of her many accomplishments. They’d all expected me to go home for the summer and when I hadn’t, they didn’t appreciate my deviation from their plans. As far as Nathan’s parents went, they didn't even know Nathan had a girlfriend. Neither one of us had been particularly eager to reveal our relationship to our parents. And now we would not only introduce one another to our families but also include the fact that we were making our own family. It was enough to give me hives. “What’s going on?” Nathan asked as I stared at my water like it held all the secrets in the world. “Do you really want all of it?” He nodded. “Tell me. I’m with you in this, we’re going through all of this together.” I exhaled and then nodded curtly. “First, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, to be pregnant while in school. The baby is due in May, right when finals are.” He nodded. “I know it’s not the best option, but if you’re worried about going into labor while finals are happening, would you be open to taking the next semester off and picking back up in the summer or the fall?” It was something I’d thought about, of course. But what the hell was I going to do for four or five months—sit around and wait? “I’ll be bored out of my mind just sitting around, waiting for the baby to do a tumble roll out of me. You’ll hate me,” I pointed a finger at him, “which brings me to my second concern.” I looked down at my stomach. “How is this going to change us?” He leaned across the table, and the scent of his cologne gently surrounded me. “I’m not a fortune teller, Adele. But I don’t think any new parent knows how the baby will change their relationship with their partner. Having mutual love and respect, and open lines of communication between us is important—and the one thing we can nurture over the next seven months. I can tell you this,” he said, his voice firm and his eyes serious, “I love you. I’m happy that we’re doing this together. I wouldn’t choose anyone else over you to have a baby with. We may not have planned this, but we didn’t plan to fall in love either.” His hand squeezed mine, as if he wanted to remind me he was here—as if I could even forget, with his eyes so searching, his mouth saying the words I didn’t know I needed to hear. “And what we have between us is more than enough for a baby.” “I’m scared,” I whispered. “I don’t think I’ll be a good mom.” “You will. Because we’ll be together. You’re not your mom, nor are you your sister. We might have to curb some of the foul language,” he said with a warm smile, “but we’ll figure it out, together, as it comes.” “I need to get another insurance plan—my school plan doesn’t cover pregnancy.” “We’ll call someone this week, and I’ll pay for it.” “No.” I shook my head. “When you paid for my appointment at the doctor’s

office, I felt like a child. I need to be able to pay for my own health insurance, because…” I didn’t finish my sentence, too afraid to say it. “Because what?” I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Nathan’s eyebrows drew together and his lips flattened. “Adele, talk to me.” I ripped the bandage off. “Because if I rely on you, and things don’t work out…” His face softened. “Adele, I’m not going to abandon you. Ever. You’re mine, as much as I’m yours. And, if something unexpected happens and you decide,” he swallowed and paused, “to leave me, I will still take care of you. Because I love you, and because you’re carrying a part of me. I want you safe, protected.” “I’m not going to leave you,” I said on a rush, feeling a strange flood of feeling behind my eyes. “But if you get sick of my bullshit—” I sucked in a breath. “Listen. My father left my mother after she had me. It’s cliché, but it’s real—I have abandonment issues. I won’t let you abandon the baby, but I can’t stop you from leaving me.” Saying it aloud, laying it out on the table for Nathan to pick apart, left me more than a little raw. I rarely talked about these things, but thoughts had been stewing in my head for a while. “Adele, look at me.” Lifting my eyes, my stomach churned. His eyes—the color of the Caribbean ocean—were resolute. “I am not going to leave you. I’m going to take care of you— both of you. We’re going to do this, together.” His confidence was staggering. The waitress interrupted us to take our orders and the moment she walked away, Nathan leaned back across the table and clutched my hands in his again. “I can tell you until we’re both blue in the face, but we’re in this together. You have nothing to worry about.” Surprisingly, I believed him. And as we ate, and Nathan fed me from his plate, encouraging me to eat to my heart’s content now that I wasn’t vomiting every twenty minutes, I believed in us.

CHAPTER NINE

My new obsession started innocently enough. I was walking through the aisles of the campus store when I saw it. A tiny white onesie with the Harvard crest in maroon, and the school’s name in block letters above it. It was so small, the snaps along the bottom and the tiny short sleeves that seemed like nothing could be small enough to fit through them. So I bought it. The 0-3 months’ size. And I tucked it into the bottom right drawer of my desk. That one thing on its own would have been fine, but the next day, I was at Target because Adele was craving a certain kind of cookie that only Target had. And I wasn’t going to say no, given that she was feeling so much better and wanted to eat again. The baby section wasn’t anywhere near the cookies, but I wandered over there anyway. Rows of diapers and bottles and toys. Bath accessories and brushes. Pacifiers and baby gates. And just to my right, an entire row of blankets. I had a moment, a brief searing moment of disappointment that I felt like Adele wouldn’t have even wanted to be here looking with me. The one time I’d attempted to talk to her about which room would become the nursery, she brushed me off with a panicked look in her eye that I couldn’t forget. My hand reached up to feel along the edge of a light gray blanket. It was so soft. Large enough that you could wrap it around a newborn to make sure it was warm and comfortable when you’d hold it. I took it off the display rack and spread my hand across it, feeling a hot rush of love for a dinky little kidney bean that I’d only seen on the screen once. I was about to put it back when an elderly woman grabbed a blanket off of a display hanger just next to me. She smiled when she saw what I was holding. “First baby? Or is it a gift?” I cleared my throat, suddenly embarrassed that she’d all but caught me fondling a blanket. “It’s our first.” The answering sigh that she let out was full of nostalgia, enough that it made me smile in return. “Well, congratulations. How far along is she?” “About eleven weeks now.” “Plenty of time to prepare then.” She nodded at the blanket I was still holding.

“Those are nice, but your baby will get older and probably still drag that around. My grandkids all like the blankets that have animals or some such on them. Just a tip.” “Oh, sure. Of course.” She wished me luck and walked off, leaving me staring at the wall in front of me again. We wouldn’t know the gender for a while yet, and Adele and I hadn’t even discussed whether we’d be finding out. With that in my head, I wandered a few feet until I found a gray, white and yellow blanket with simple drawings of monkeys and giraffes on it. So I bought it, tucking it in next to the onesie in my desk drawer. And every new thing that I put in there, I told myself that I’d bring it home and show it to Adele. That maybe she’d see the tiny items and get the same rush of happiness that I did when I imagined our tiny, perfect child with them. With the small stuffed bear, with the blanket or the onesie. With the hooded towel that looked like a yellow duck. After a week of adding new things, the drawer was full. And I still hadn’t shown her any of it. It was hard enough for Adele that her stomach now held the smallest curve to it. I’d never seen her caress her stomach. Not like I did when I curled around her in bed. Like maybe the baby could feel the heat of my hand keeping it warm, or hear my voice when I spoke to Adele. The other night, she’d fallen asleep on the couch, and before I carried her upstairs, I’d knelt in front of her so I could spread my hand over her stomach. “I know we won’t meet for a long time, little bean,” I’d whispered, not wanting to wake Adele. “But I love you already. And thanks for not making your mom puke anymore.” What I’d wanted to say was that Adele would love the baby too, if she didn’t already. That she’d come around, that she’d be excited the closer we got to her due date. But there was something in me that felt like it would solidify if I spoke that out loud. Like the universe would hear my doubts, hear my suspicions about how she was feeling about this pregnancy, and manifest them into something worse. Because no matter how apprehensive she might be, and I couldn’t even really blame her, Adele would be a fucking awesome mom. She’d be fiercely protective, and she’d never make our child question whether it was loved. That was just about the only good thing about the failures of our own parents. We’d never repeat their mistakes. My phone buzzed on the surface of my desk, and I blinked a few times, firmly caught up in my train of thought. Then I shook my head when I saw who it was from. Elias: I’m going to be in town two weeks from today. My parents want Diana’s camera and portfolio from college. Have it boxed up and ready so I don’t have to be around you for very long. “Dick,” I muttered to my phone before I tossed it aside. Elias was Diana’s

younger brother, and I hadn’t seen him in months. Not since the last time he showed up unexpectedly, probably just for the sole purpose of making my life hell. I knew exactly where Diana’s camera was, so it wouldn’t take me long to grab it. In truth, I probably could have put my foot down and told them no. She had been my wife, and they had more than enough of Diana’s things that they could build a sixfoot-tall shrine if they so desired. But she’d been theirs first. Their first born child and only daughter, and she was gone. They’d had to stand next to me in a beautiful cemetery about forty minutes from where I was sitting and watch her shining mahogany casket get lowered into the ground. I pinched my eyes shut, thinking about the tiny items in my desk drawer. It made my skin crawl, even attempting to imagine if something that awful would ever happen to my child. I’d never been able to imagine it from that vantage point before, as a parent losing a child. The last time I saw Elias, he’d thrown every verbal punch he could manage in a short span of time. If it had been a boxing match, he would have knocked me the fuck out in the first round. “I’ll remind you for as long as it takes me not to miss my sister so much that I feel like someone’s ripping my goddamned heart out of my chest.” And he’d said it like I hadn’t felt the exact same way for years. Until Adele. Adele gave me a life to live, instead of just surviving my days like I’d been doing for almost four years. Elias had stopped by that day to make sure I still suffered. To make sure that her memory still bled through the walls of my house. That I still missed Diana like an ax to my skull. And the sober truth was that it didn’t feel like that anymore. It was more like a low, steady hum underneath everything in my life. It didn’t gouge at me anymore, not like it used to. It used to be so bad that a single good memory of Diana would spiral me into a panic attack. If they wanted her camera, they could have it. It was the least I could do for them, to give them something to hold in their hands when their grief overwhelmed them. So I blew out a breath and picked up my phone, typing out a simple okay in response. Now that I was thinking about Diana, a heavy brick of guilt settled into my stomach. I’d never even thought about her in all my excitement about the baby. I glanced at my watch and tapped my fingers against my desk for a second, considering whether I should let Adele know what I was doing. But I didn’t want to upset her, given that we never really talked about Diana. I grabbed my keys and my phone and locked my office door behind me, praying that no student had a pressing need while I was gone. By the time I pulled my car into the entrance of New Calvary Cemetery an hour later, with a bouquet of white roses on the passenger seat next to me, I knew I was doing the right thing.

CHAPTER TEN

After I eased my car to a stop on the closest drive to Diana’s grave, I took a second to collect myself. I hadn’t been out here in over a year, mainly because it was just too fucking hard to stand over a patch of cold dirt and reconcile the fact that the smiling, beautiful woman who had been my wife was now a rotting skeleton six feet beneath me. But it felt different today. More like I was respecting Diana and her role in my life enough to come tell her about this. Not like I believed she could hear me. At least, I didn’t think I did. But if there was a heaven, Diana was the kind of person who’d be there. And if she was there, I’d just choose to believe that she could hear me when I spoke to her, with the space above her grave acting like my own confessional booth. Walking over the still-green grass and passing headstones in all shapes and sizes, I squinted up into the unmarred, crystal blue sky before I came to a stop at the one I was looking for. After seeing far too many choices in the days after Diana was killed, I’d decided on a simple black marble stone that laid flush with the ground. I crouched onto the balls of my feet after laying the flowers down, and swept away some dead grass that covered the letters of her name. Diana Grace Easton Beloved daughter, sister, wife February 18, 1981 – October 28, 2011 “I know I haven’t been here in a long time,” I said quietly, sitting back in the warm grass. “I’m sorry for that. Even before Adele, I didn’t come here much. That’s who I wanted to tell you about. Adele.” I shook my head and stared at the line of maple trees that lined the main drive. The colors had fully changed by now, the vibrant reds and purples of the leaves almost feeling too celebratory for such a quiet, hallowed place. “It’s not like you and I ever had a conversation about what we’d want for each

other. If you’d been sick, I have no doubt you would have demanded that I not stay alone for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I would have been selfless enough to do the same.” With my arms resting on the tops of my knees, I looked up at the sky again. There was one errant, wispy cloud overhead. Just that one blemish in the sky. “So I hope that you know, somehow, that I’m happy. I never thought I would be again, Diana. That’s not me trying to be a martyr, I swear. I just loved you so much that it was unfathomable that anyone could touch that place inside of me.” My throat tightened into an iron ball and I took a few minutes to let it loosen. “But Adele did. It’s not the same with her, because she’s so different than you. God, Diana, she’s so different.” I laughed, imagining them meeting. “I think you’d like her. She’s so fearless. Almost savage sometimes, but I think you’d admire that about her. But I don’t know if she’d have liked you. You probably would have intimidated her with your niceness and your overwhelming kindness toward every person that you met.” Pulling in a deep breath, I blinked through a memory of Diana giving our leftovers to a homeless man we’d passed on the street. A car traveled down the main drive of the cemetery and kept going. It was just me and the ghost of my wife, I guess. “Adele came out of nowhere. And maybe that’s why she’s so deep inside me, because I wasn’t expecting it. She pushes me in a way that you never did. She challenges everything I thought I knew or wanted, and sometimes it feels like walking a tightrope because it’s so fucking exhilarating. She just … she was this roaring explosion in my life. And it was a dark life before she came into it.” My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to make sure it wasn’t Adele, but it was Elias. I rolled my eyes and put my phone away before even reading his reply. “Your brother is still a jackass. It shouldn’t surprise me that he’s interrupting me right now. I haven’t seen him much, but it’s like he senses when I’m happy and goes out of his way to try to kill it.” I lifted my chin so I could feel the afternoon sun on my face before it fell behind the tree line. Stretching my legs out in front of me, I shook my head. “I guess I shouldn’t complain about him to you, huh? Sorry. Plus, it’s not why I came. None of this is about him.” It was surreal how nervous I felt saying this out loud. To a dead body who couldn’t hear a damn word I was saying. But if I suspended my usual theological constructs for just long enough, it felt like I was absolving myself to Diana. Confessing my happiness, almost like it was a sin that demanded penance. “Adele’s pregnant.” The words fell from my lips and I felt a burning pressure at the bridge of my nose. Blinking rapidly, I clenched my teeth to stem the emotion. The first time I admit it out loud is to Diana’s grave stone. Fucking perfect. “And God, Diana, I’m so fucking happy. I am so happy that she’s carrying my child that I wish I could scream it to every single person I pass on the street. It almost feels wrong that I can experience this again in my life. This hope, this excitement about

what’s coming next.” My phone buzzed again with a text and I let out a rough exhale. Fucking Elias. I ignored it and plucked a blade of grass from the ground next to my legs. “The thing I can’t reconcile is that my happiness right now is only because you died. If you were here, I don’t know whether we’d have kids yet. We probably would. But I never would have known Adele outside of being a student in one of my classes. And this baby, my baby, wouldn’t exist. And I don’t know how to not be one hundred percent happy with that. Even though it only exists because you’re gone.” The buzzing started from my phone again and I yanked my phone out to silence it when I saw two texts from Adele, after the first one from Elias. I was about to swipe my thumb across the screen to read them when a call starting coming in from Adele. “Hey, what’s—” “Nathan?” Her voice was quiet and quaky. My heart thudded to a stop, my blood freezing in my veins and halting its movement through my body. “I’m bleeding. A lot.” “Oh God, no,” I exhaled as I stood from the ground. My feet pounded on the grass as I ran to the car and I vaguely registered a sniff from Adele. My brain was fuzz and my heart was thin glass while I yanked my car door open. “Okay, honey, where are you?” “I’m at home. Are you still at the office?” Mother fucking shit. “No. I’m about forty-five minutes away. Maybe less. Shit!” “What do I do?” God, she sounded so fucking scared. The glass splintered and I struggled to breathe. My arms started shaking while I pulled out of the cemetery. Adrenaline or fear, I couldn’t tell. Breathe, Nathan, breathe. “Do you think you can drive?” “Umm, yeah. I’m not really cramping or anything, just … just bleeding.” She let out a noise that sounded like she was swallowing a sob and I wanted to die. I wanted to run myself through for not being fifteen minutes away like I would have been if I’d been at the office. “Fuck. Okay, is Leo on campus today? Could he come get you?” “No, umm, he’s got an away game this weekend.” I slammed to a stop at a red light and pounded a fist on my steering wheel. “Okay, baby, I will get to Mass General as soon as I can, I promise. But I don’t think you should wait for me. Go to the emergency room, and they’ll be able to help you. You and the baby will be fine.” Adele sniffed again and I blinked at the boulder behind my eyes. “Okay.” “Drive safe, and if you feel light-headed or anything, pull over and call 9-1-1. Okay?” “Okay. I love you.” Her voice cracked at the end and I shut my eyes for a second since I was still stopped. “I love you too. I will be there as soon as I can.” I tucked the phone into the console right as the light turned green. My tires

squealed when I took off and I did something for the rest of my thirty-six-minute drive that I’d never done before. Not when Diana died and not in the aftermath. I prayed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Snow had begun to fall. It was just a couple flakes, their descent so rapid that they obliterated the second they touched the windshield. I turned up the heat as I turned down the radio that had started playing the moment the engine came to life. It was light, especially by New England standards, but as I drove through it to an unfamiliar place, across town from Nathan’s house, I focused on each flake that touched my windshield. Because anything was better than thinking about the puddle of blood I felt between my legs. Just as I turned into the emergency parking area, my head felt fuzzy. The breath shuddered out of my lips and my eyelids closed nearly all the way. “Nathan,” I whispered, putting the car in park and just resting my forehead on the steering wheel. I was so tired—and it hit me in that moment. My fingers curled around the warm leather of the steering wheel and I squeezed, trying to will myself to leave the car and walk into the hospital. But fuck. I was scared, down to my marrow. The blood that pooled in my underwear was warm, and each movement I made caused it to pool in other places. A rush of ice cold panic hit me. I pressed a hand between my legs, touched the wet that had leaked through my yoga pants. As I pulled my hand away, my jaw trembled the word “Fuck,” but sound itself escaped me. Nathan had purchased a handful of books. The one thing I’d read earlier that week had said that once you hear a strong heartbeat, your chances of miscarriage dropped, drastically. I couldn’t be losing a baby, I thought. There’s a reason for this. There has to be. It’s normal. Everything will be okay. Somehow, I pushed myself out of the car, averting my eyes from the blood stain on the driver’s seat. The snow was still falling and I registered that it was bringing with it a certain kind of cold, a cold that didn’t seem to touch me in any deep way.

My fingers were wet with blood as I stepped into the emergency room and stared, my mind suddenly going blank. “Miss?” someone asked. Gray scrubs approached me, the lines of the uniform sharpening as they closed in. “Can I help you?” All I did was hold up my fingers and wrap my other hand over my belly. It was as if I was in a trance, my sensory input narrowed to the width of a needle. I tried to say something—but my tongue was a hundred pounds and dry. Somehow, I found myself being gently pushed into a wheelchair. As I was pushed down the hallway, I took in the lights that flashed and dimmed above my head. I pressed a hand more firmly to my stomach, wanting to reach inside of me and hold onto the tiniest human I’d ever known. More lights flickered and my head tipped down and blood kept leaking from my center. I wanted Nathan. The doctor treating me was unknown. She held my hand and said a few words before a nurse came in and took a vial of my blood. “Is there someone we can call for you?” the doctor gently asked. She still hadn’t told me what was going on. I was finding my voice. “My boyfriend. He should be here soon.” But I had lost track of time itself since walking through the emergency room doors. How far away had he said he was? Where was he? I thought of my phone, but didn’t pull it from my bag. “We’re going to test your HCG levels, check your cervix, and perform an ultrasound. Is that alright with you?” I nodded, because what else did she really expect me to say? The nurse assisting the doctor pulled out a paper blanket. “Undress from the waist down,” the doctor said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be back in just a moment.” I waited until the door clicked shut before I moved. My legs were like twin rubber bands as I stood and slowly lowered my pants. I was able to somewhat ignore the dark spot until I pulled down my white panties. The red was blooming, far worse than any period I’d had in recent memory. I had a quick, irrational thought to press a hand to myself, if only to hold in whatever was sliding out of my body. Could I staunch the bleeding? Could I prevent the loss? When I first learned I was pregnant, I had trouble accepting it. In fact, I had walked into my first obstetrician appointment having an emotional disconnect from the pregnancy. It wasn’t until I’d heard the heartbeat—and then watched the little blob squirm around the monitor—that it felt real. And more than real, it felt

… right. I was having a baby with Nathan, a man I loved above all others. Was this my penance for not accepting it right away? I couldn’t accept I was losing the baby, my baby—not yet. Bleeding wasn’t uncommon in pregnancy. I’d read that in more than a few books. But as I stared at the blood soaking my panties, I wondered what I was to do with them. Fold them up, tuck them somewhere? Throw them away? No. The thought made my stomach clench and vomit press against the back of my teeth. I couldn’t throw them away. In the end, I folded them and wrapped them in tissues before I lay back on the examination table. I opened the paper blanket and covered myself with it as I placed my feet in the stirrups. Where was Nathan? The doctor knocked on the door a second later as if she had x-ray vision and sat down between my legs. Her eyes met me over the tops of my knees and she gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll try to make this quick, okay?” The nurse from before joined her and after they both washed their hands and put on gloves. I felt the blood dripping from my center and soaking the sheet underneath me. “I’m sorry,” I said absently. “The blood.” The doctor touched my knee and squeezed. “Don’t apologize. Do you want to hold Trudy’s hand?” She gestured to the nurse. I shook my head. “No, let’s get this over with.” “Okay. Relax. Inhale and on your exhale, let it last a long time.” I did as she instructed, staring at the butterfly photo on the ceiling above my head. Something cold pushed into me and I heard mumbles from the doctor to the nurse and the clank of tools on the metal table. Less than a minute later, the doctor sat back. “We’ll be right back,” she said as she snapped off her gloves and left the room with Trudy the nurse. My feet were still in the stirrups, the lower half of my body completely open and exposed. I wanted Nathan. Desperately. I was holding it together, but with a very short rope. Suddenly, as if I’d conjured him, the door pushed open and Nathan came in. “Adele,” he said, his face ashen and his eyes flat. He immediately leaned over, pulling me up to sitting so that he could wrap his arms more fully around me. “I’m so sorry,” he said against my hair. “What did the doctor say?” “I’m waiting for the results,” I mumbled. I let him hold me, but moving my own arms felt like too much effort. So I stayed still as his warmth surrounded me. The door opened again and the doctor returned. After a brief introduction, she sat in her doctor’s chair and rolled close to me. “Adele,” she sighed, and I knew. Nathan held my hand and I squeezed painfully —wishing for an answer she couldn’t give me. “I’m so sorry. Your cervix is open. This early in a pregnancy, that means miscarriage is inevitable.”

“No.” I shook my head. The word repeated, on a loop. I wasn’t sure if I was speaking it or if I was hearing it so loudly in my head that it just sounded like I was speaking it too. Nathan’s hand in mine went limp and instantly cold, as if he’d lost the blood that was pumping through it. “We’ll need to perform an ultrasound to see if it has happened yet, or if the fetus is still viable.” I wanted to close my ears to the noise. Nathan was saying something, but nothing came out of my throat—nothing English, at least. “I’m very sorry,” the doctor repeated, and she had the decency to actually look sorry. She left the room and Nathan followed her to talk in the hallway and then I was alone as the cold seeped in. By the time I was being wheeled to the ultrasound room, Nathan had joined me but said nothing. It was as if there was a language barrier between us. His grief was an illustration on his face and swept through his body. His hands shook and his lips didn’t move. His eyes were shuttered closed and his pallor looked unhealthy. Inside, my body was building up towers of denial, to keep me safe behind them. I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone. And when the ultrasound technician placed the wand over my low belly, I waited to see the bouncing blob again. I waited for the blink of the heartbeat. I waited and waited and nothing happened. The technician was different this time and I wished for the one we had before, the bubbly one. Maybe she’d be able to find the baby and announce that this was all a mistake. But after fifteen minutes, she found nothing. It had just been there. Not long ago. Living inside of me. Nothing. The entire time, Nathan stared intently at the screen as if he could will the technician to find the magical baby that we’d seen so recently. The next hour moved slowly, with words like “empty sac” and “d & c” and sorrys laden with hurt eyes. Nathan brought his hands to his face, shielding his eyes and mouth from me as he dragged his fingers down his cheeks. Nathan was inches and lightyears away from me during all of it. Did he blame me? I did. Snow fell outside the window, heavier now. It collected along the bottom of the window pane, causing a fog to form around the corners of the glass. I wished to reach it, to rub my finger along the cold. To see if I’d feel anything from it, because right then all I felt was a profound loss of everything.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Shortly after we’d come home, Nathan had hugged me but it didn’t reach the places of me that hurt the most. He tucked me into the bed and then left. I wasn’t sure when he returned, but when I woke at two in the morning, he was fully dressed beside me, fast asleep. I wandered the house that night, staring at myself in the mirror. Dark circles ringed my red eyes. My hair looked greasy, and my skin was nearly its same pale color. I examined my nails as I washed my hands, finally seeing the blood that caked under my nails. The sight of it made my stomach clench down and I began rubbing at it until my skin was raw. Downstairs, the ultrasound photo was on prominent display on the fridge. Yet another painful reminder. But I didn’t have as visceral of a reaction to it. Instead, I calmly removed the Nantucket magnet that held it to the fridge and then tucked it into a drawer. At the back of the drawer. I couldn’t be surrounded by the baby, not when I had lost it. I grabbed a box of cereal from the pantry and dug a handful into it, pressing the tiny O’s into my mouth. I wanted to be filled up. Because I felt so empty. When I pushed the last O that would fit into my mouth, I nearly choked. A fresh wave of tears stung the back of my eyes and a strangled sob wrenched its way from my throat, muffled by the O’s. I turned to the counter and gripped it as the tears slid down my face and cereal sputtered from my mouth. My stomach ached, my chest heaved, and my cheeks were coated in fresh tears. The emptiness was unbearable. And now, two weeks later, my cheeks were dry. I spent most of my days staring at the television, waiting for something to distract me. I think I pressed the channel up button on my remote a hundred times, but I lost track of how many times I passed one of the sports channels so it was likely more than a hundred times. I was wearing yoga pants—not the ones from the hospital. No, those were folded and tucked into a box at the bottom of my closet. Out of sight. But the internal bleeding hadn’t yet abated. Two weeks after the D & C and I was

still grieving, and now, I was alone. Completely alone. Nathan had resumed his schedule from before, being gone all the time, but now it seemed as if he was gone more than before. I didn’t even bother even leaving a mess in the kitchen for him to find and scold me. I’d done that for the first week, leaving splatters of milk on the counter, a cupboard door open. I left reminders of my presence all over the house, because it seemed as if me standing in front of him wasn’t enough in and of itself. He hardly existed, moving around like a ghost. So, after the first week of me leaving messes—begging for him to notice me—I cleaned them up as soon as I made them. They annoyed me, because I saw how childish my attempt was. The house was pristine. Back to how Nathan had it before I moved in. I wondered who the ghost was: me or him. A sharp knock on the door caused me to jump up from my place on the couch. The remote fell onto the floor with enough force to pop the batteries out. I looked out the window and saw a small black car parked in front of the house. It wasn’t familiar. The knock repeated itself and I sighed, flipping the throw blanket off of me and putting my bare feet onto the cool wood of the floors. When the knock continued, I shouted, “I’m coming! Jesus.” After opening the door, I just stared. Dark, thick hair met a full beard. The eyes seemed familiar somehow, but I knew as I stared at him that I’d never met him before. His crisp black dress shirt was rolled to his elbows and tucked into dark jeans. My eyes skipped over his muscular arms, taking in his overall aura of being a total bad ass, an aura that threatened an almost exciting kind of violence. I didn’t let him in, just held onto the side of the door. “Yeah?” I asked. The man seemed to take me in, eyes sliding over my yoga pants and tank top. I pulled my sleep sweater across my chest. “Is Nathan here?” “Nope, sure isn’t.” I began to close the door but his flat palm on the wood stopped me. “Nathan has a box of stuff for me. I’m here to collect it.” “And who the fuck are you?” I was annoyed that he was taking up my time and hadn’t even had the courtesy to introduce himself. He stepped closer to the door and my pulse skipped. This man screamed danger. “Who the fuck are you?” he echoed. “I live here.” I clenched my teeth together. He laughed, but his eyes weren’t smiling. “Of course you do.” His palm on the door pushed and I scrambled to retain control of the situation by pushing against the door. “Hey, back the fuck off!” His eyes changed, from light interest to annoyance. “Look, little girl, I talked to Nathan two Tuesdays ago.”

Two Tuesdays ago. When I lost the baby. Where had Nathan been, when I called him? I remembered he was gone, far away. He’d never told me where. The guy kept talking, oblivious to me being lost in thought. “He knew I was coming into town to get some shit. Move aside.” Was this guy for fucking real? “Hell no,” I spat, some of the fire that had been gone coming into my voice. “Back up.” “Nathan!” he hollered over my shoulder. “What the fuck?” I asked, not intending to say it aloud. “He’s not home. You can come back when he is.” I pushed against the door, but it didn’t budge against his hand. I suddenly felt so fucking stupid for telling him that I was here all alone. His one palm on the door was stronger than my full body weight against it. “Why don’t you call him? I don’t want to let you in the house while he’s gone.” I wanted to see him prove he knew Nathan—because if he did, he should have his phone number. “Fine.” He pulled out a shiny black phone and typed a series of numbers in. Whoever this guy was, he didn’t even need to pull up Nathan’s name in his contacts —he knew the phone number by heart. Who was he? And why hadn’t Nathan told me about him? He held the phone up to his ear, but after waiting a few seconds, he hung up. “He didn’t answer.” He stared at me, as if he expected me to still let him in. Suddenly, he let go of the door, causing the door to give under my weight. I stumbled and he stepped forward so that he was in the house, reaching a hand to steady me. The heat of his hand on my arm was like a brand and I shook off his touch. He was inside of the house. Shit. Fuck. “Who are you?” I asked again, pissed to be kept in the dark. I backed up a step, hit the bannister. I tried to remain as if I was in control of the situation as the man looked around. “When will he be home?” His eyes were narrowed and he turned to look at the driveway. “I won’t be in town much longer.” I had zero intention of telling him when Nathan would be home, but it wasn’t like I even knew the answer to that. Nathan came and went, and he was often home while I slept and gone when I woke. “It’s just a box of stuff. Surely you know where it is.” “I don’t. Sorry.” I tried remaining calm. Before I could stop him, the guy walked into the dining room and then through the study, looking. I felt so fucking stupid for allowing him to come in. Following him around the house seemed to be the only thing I was capable of doing. I watched as he opened the closet doors in the study before frowning. Nathan’s study was off-limits to me. Not that Nathan had specifically said not to go into it, but I could tell—his study was his. I made tiny messes elsewhere in the house, but the study was his zone—his place to Zen or work or watch porn or

whatever the fuck he did in there. So to see this guy wandering the room, pulling open drawers and cabinets and looking under the desk, was more than a little disconcerting. I imagined the look of horror on Nathan’s face, knowing that his pens had been shifted out of order on the top of the desk as Elias crouched and bumped into it. “What the fuck? Do you make a habit of waltzing into the homes of people you don’t know?” The guy only gave me a glance, an arch of one dark eyebrow before he resumed his search. “Pretty sure breaking and entering carries a minimum two-year sentence in Mass, jackass.” He paused, large hands braced on Nathan’s desk top. “Only if I’m armed.” I swallowed. He looked at me like he didn’t need a weapon. The sheer size of him —from his arms to his hands—looked like he could break me in half without even trying. “Are you armed?” He lifted a shoulder and some of the frustration momentarily left his face. “Are you going to frisk me and find out?” Shiiiit. What in the world could I say to that? Instead of answering, I shifted my gaze to the closet whose doors he’d left open. To his credit, he did seem like he was looking for something, and seemed to know the place pretty well. I was still pissed that he acted like he had every right to walk around the house, but I was even more pissed at Nathan. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” I said when he turned the corner and walked passed me, back to the entry way, hoping the delay would give me time to bring it up to Nathan so that he could get in touch with this guy himself. He seemed annoyed by the idea. “Can you tell him I stopped by?” “Yeah, I’ll tell him some asshole barged his way into the house.” His eyes burned when he pinned me with a stare. He didn’t say anything for several seconds, just glared at me with eyes so dark they looked black. And then his eyes flicked to the wall. “This is my sister’s house.” The answer shocked me. I began to say something, but no words came. “She spent hours picking and applying that wallpaper herself,” he said, pointing a finger inches from my eyes, to the design on the walls, the design I had always admired, the gently curving lines that intersected before arching away. “You’re in my sister’s house,” he said before turning and leaving. After I closed the door behind him, I sank to the first step on the staircase. I couldn’t look at the wallpaper without seeing her. Looking around the house, I saw very little evidence of me. But Diana, Nathan’s first love, was everywhere. I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I did in that moment.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Every single day for the last two weeks, people kept interacting with me. They waved when they passed, some even spoke to me. Judging from their reactions, I must have been speaking back, nodding appropriately and giving the kind of reactions that they expected. But I’m not sure how. Everything was gray and fog. And I didn’t know how to get out of it, how to clear my eyes and my head. I definitely didn’t know how to clear my heart. This loss, this visceral, jagged thing that had been punched through my chest, was different than when I’d lost Diana. I’d never seen it kick through Adele’s stomach, seen the movement of her stretched-out skin. I didn’t know what color hair it had. If it was a boy or a girl. I didn’t know anything about the baby except it was mine, and I loved it. But knowing that I loved it didn’t change anything. There was no physical loss on my end. It was all mental. Every single second of the day, I had to remind myself that it had happened, like the ticking arms of a clock. It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone. Every time the big hand swept past another hour, I felt it through my bones, through every centimeter of my skeleton. It’s gone. With mechanical moves, I unlocked my office and closed the door shut behind me. I kept the lights off, because I didn’t really even want anyone to know I was here. The sun was hidden behind angry, gray clouds, the kind that only winter in the northeast can provide. It felt appropriate, like my office had become a dank cave for me to hide in. And that’s precisely what I’d been doing. I was hiding. Hiding from my home, and from Adele. It was irrational, but I was incapable of looking at her without seeing her fear and anxiety about the baby. How the fuck could she have not loved it instantly? How the fuck could she not have been counting down the days until we got to swaddle it and cradle it in our arms?

I sank into my desk chair, the brown leather creaking under my weight. My eyes fell shut while I listened to the sounds of my colleagues out in the hallways, just outside my closed door. We’d had a faculty meeting, and I snuck out a couple minutes early, just so that I could lock myself in here unnoticed. Even in the darkened room, the picture of Adele screamed out to me when I opened my eyes again. Letting out a deep breath, I leaned forward to snag the edge of the frame. I knew every inch of her face, like she’d been seared into my brain. The way her chin fell to a sharp point and the tiny freckle underneath her right ear, I knew every piece of her. But staring at her picture, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d shed a single tear about this. By the time I got home the last week or so, she was always in bed. And if she was faking sleep to avoid me, she was the best goddamned actress I’d ever met. No, her breathing was deep and even, her face untroubled. Every single night. Did it carve out her insides knowing that the thing inside her was just … gone? That the tiny little heart that we’d heard in the doctor’s office just stopped? Because it did mine. Every day I felt the edges of the knife scrape along my skin. It was dull and painful, scooping away bits and pieces of me with every pass. “Fuck,” I whispered under my breath, fully aware that no one would hear me anyway. You’d think because I’d lived with grief once before and had managed to shoulder that burden that I’d be far more prepared for this. I wasn’t. Loss wasn’t something cumulative. It wasn’t something that got easier with familiarity. And I was so fucking familiar with it. But for some reason, this particular loss was stripping me of my ability to talk to Adele. To open the fucking bottom right drawer of my desk. And I was starting to hate myself because of it. I loved Adele. I loved her so much. That hadn’t changed, hadn’t lessened in the slightest, but I knew that my hesitancy was firmly rooted in the fact that I was afraid of her reaction if I reached out to her. If I asked Adele to grieve with me in this, what would she do? I’d never know if I didn’t just man the hell up and do it. The casters of my desk chair squeaked when I spun in place. When I started pulling open the bottom drawer, I only stopped for a heartbeat before opening it all the way. The blanket was the first thing I saw, and I lifted it out with a shaking hand. My nose burned when I set it on my lap to pick up the Harvard onesie and the bath towel. With bricks settling in my stomach, I had to face the realization that I had done nothing to lower the wall between me and Adele when it came to the pregnancy. Not once had she asked me to hide my excitement from her. Not one time. I could have brought these things home, could have talked with her about the things I couldn’t wait to do.

Buy books for the nursery, and the good shit too, not just crappy little simple stories. Our baby would have had the best fucking children’s library in the country. Go for walks through our little neighborhood as a family. Go to the park on weekends. Take him or her onto the perfectly manicured grounds at Harvard and be able to see them grow up in such a spectacular place. The first tear hit my cheek before I even realized I was crying. Jamming the heel of my hand under my eye, I clenched my teeth together as tightly as I could manage. An entire fucking future. Gone. And I was sick of mourning it alone. I wanted to do it with Adele. Carefully laying the items back in the drawer before I left, I briefly wondered whether I should let her know I was going to be home earlier than she probably expected me. The fact that I even had to question it pissed me off all over again. While I walked out of the building, I tapped out a quick text, On my way home. I’ll make some dinner tonight if you haven’t already eaten. Perfect. I tried to imagine her reaction to seeing it. No doubt, she’d wonder if I’d lost my mind. We’d barely spoken in two weeks, let alone shared a meal. But I was just as culpable in where we were now as she was, so if one stupid text and one meal together were steps that I could take to cross the distance between us, then I’d do it. Traffic was a fucking nightmare, so it was a solid thirty minutes later before I finally pulled into the driveway. Everything was dark in the house save one lamp in the family room, so I knew she was awake, despite the fact that she hadn’t responded to my text. An unfamiliar flurry of nerves swirled through my stomach when I walked through the garage door. Everything was quiet, and for a moment I wondered if maybe Leo was had picked her up or something. Normally, she’d let me know, but I couldn’t say for certain that she would have after the last two weeks. I dropped my leather briefcase next to the kitchen island and stared at the immaculate counters. Adele had been so messy and absent-minded right after the miscarriage, but I hadn’t said a damn word because I’d been too afraid that she’d think I was criticizing her. But in the last week, every time I came home, the house was as clean as I’d ever seen it. I hung my head, bracing my hands on the counter. What a selfish fucking idiot I was. Of course this was affecting her. It was right in front of me, and I was just the dick who hadn’t seen it. Probably because I hadn’t wanted to see it. “Adele?” I called out. “In here.” I turned the corner and had a massive déjà vu moment. The last time I’d done this, turned the corner to find her on the couch, I’d had grocery bags full of stuff and she’d ended up banging the hell out of me. And just like that day, she was

curled into the corner with a blanket over her legs. Only this time, she was staring up at the staircase with a look on her face that was so blank, it made my stomach drop. Her face was pale, like the blood flow had never fully returned to normal. Her hair was limp around her shoulders, but she was still so damn beautiful that I ached. But for the first time since I’d met her, I had no fucking idea how to bridge this gap, how to get back under her skin. So like a fucking tool, I cleared my throat and asked the worst question in the world. “So, how was your day?” Adele didn’t even blink, just continued staring at the staircase. Okay then. Shaking my head, I moved to sit on the couch by her feet when she finally spoke. “Did you help put up that wallpaper?” It was my turn to blink. Repeatedly. Because what the hell? “I, uh,” I shook my head again, turning to look at the thing in question. No, I had not helped with that wallpaper, because I was completely convinced that it would look terrible. Not long after we’d moved in here, Diana had brought home a stack of books and kept showing me pattern after pattern in the hopes that it would change my mind. But then then she found the one she wanted and decided she didn’t care if I liked it or not. A week later, I’d come home from work to find the wall half done and the smuggest smile on my wife’s face when I grudgingly admitted that it looked nice. Naturally, that lead to me fucking her against the wall. I pinched the bridge of my nose before I looked at Adele again. Her face was still void of any expression, but there was color on her cheeks while she waited for me to answer. Why? Why would she even want to hear this? “No, I didn’t,” I finally answered and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say, because her eyes turned frigid. I dropped onto the couch with a weary sigh. “Why do you want to know?” She stared at me for a long moment, and then shoved the blanket off her lap and stood. Fucking hell. Instead of stomping away like I expected, she walked over to the banister and looked up at the wall again. Maybe she was drunk. It would explain a lot. “I’ve always liked this pattern,” she said so quietly that I barely heard her. “That’s … good,” I guessed. Possibly. Because what the hell? Pathetically, I didn’t want to disrupt whatever this was, because we were actually talking. And I missed her voice. I plain missed her. “My day was interesting.” Adele pivoted to face me and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. My eyebrows lifted in question when she didn’t elaborate. “Someone stopped here for you while you were at work. It was a very enlightening visit.” Never good. My options of who it could have been, given the closed-off body language that she was handing me, were definitely not good. “Who was it?” My voice sounded so tired to my ears, and I had nothing left in me

to try and do anything about it. “I met your brother-in-law today.” “Oh, fuck.” Adele smiled, but it wasn’t kind. It was tight and uncomfortable. “How ironic. That was pretty much my reaction too.” Fucking Elias. That dick.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I stood off the couch and walked toward Adele, who still had that fucking blank look on her face. “What happened?” “That’s the first thing you say?” She shook her head, brushing past me to go into the kitchen. “Not, ‘Oh, sorry for not telling you about his existence and that he likes to stop by on occasion.’” Any peacemaking feelings that had been floating through me earlier in the day were long gone. Just a single mention of Elias’ name was like pointing the sun on a tiny speck of water and expecting to stay wet. Not only was that tiny fucking speck gone, I was suddenly roasting. The sound of a slamming cupboard door snapped me out of it, and I followed her into the kitchen. Her back was to me while she filled a glass with water. “Adele,” I started and then paused. What was I even supposed to say right now? Elias was such a non-issue when it came to my life with her. It wasn’t a matter of me hiding him, I’d gone years without seeing him until the first time he stopped by. “It, I don’t know … it didn’t seem important. If I thought he would be here, I would have made sure to be too, or I would have told you.” She raised a thin, arched brow and watched me. But she wasn’t blank anymore, thank God. Her eyes were stewing and the color was high in her cheeks. “Really?” “Of course.” With one finger, she tapped the bottom of her chin, and it instantly put me on edge. “So when he said that he let you know a couple weeks ago that he would be stopping by for something, he was lying?” Fuck shit damn it all to hell. This was not what I’d envisioned when I came home. The oily slick of sarcasm was so present in her voice that I felt every atom of my body shore up against it. Like some internal armor was clicking into place. I sank against the island behind me, digging my fingertips into my eyes until I saw stars. “No.” “No what?” When I dropped my hands, it took a few seconds for my vision to clear. Blinking Adele into focus, I saw she’d crossed her arms over her chest and was leaning against the counter opposite of me. It was such a small length of space that

separated us. Only a few feet. But she felt as far out of reach as if she’d been at the end of an endless hallway. “No, he’s not lying. I forgot.” “That’s a pretty big thing to forget.” “It is,” I agreed easily. “Because I hate that man. And he very much hates me.” His text was also immediately preceding her miscarriage. If I thought we had issues talking about it before, having Elias as the lead-in conversation basically meant we were fucked. She and I were both suited up for battle right now, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she yanked out an ax or a sword from behind her back. “He’s a scary-lookin’ dude, too. I wouldn’t want him hating me.” My eyes snapped to hers, and immediately my veins flooded with rage. “What does that mean?” Adele gaped at me. “What is the matter with you? It means exactly what I said. He’s tall and big with a fuck-ton of hair. A fairly intimidating guy to have stomping around the house when you don’t know who he is.” “He came in the house?!” I roared, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “Why did you let him in?” “Why did I let him in?” she said fiercely and took a step toward me. “That guy is like four times my size. Do you seriously think I didn’t try to keep him out?” I dug my hands into my hair while I watched her, so much boiling anger and frustration was rolling through me that I almost felt like I might pass out from the force of it. Because it made me feel helpless. All of this made me feel helpless. “What did he do to you?” I asked when I dropped my hands down to brace on the counter behind me. I tried, I really, really tried to say it calmly. A solid attempt to take this conversation back down to a civil place. We were one spark away from a fucking inferno as it was. “Did he touch you?” I’d kill him. If he laid a hand on Adele, I’d slice his neck open. But if I expected gratitude at my protective questioning, I’d forgotten who I was speaking to. Don’t worry—she reminded me. “Do to me?” Adele breathed out an incredulous laugh. “He didn’t do anything to me. God, you’re so fucking presumptuous. Believe me, Nathan, I’m well aware I wouldn’t know what the hell to do if a man in this house treated me like anything other than a ghost or a porcelain doll.” The words fell from her lips and I stilled. “What?” Her eyes searched mine as she stepped closer, close enough that I could touch her if I’d wanted to. The fact that I immediately questioned whether I should was probably exactly what she was talking about. But a ghost? Impossible. The word ghost conjured visions of wispy specters and horrifying visions. We’d been distant, sure, but I’d never not be able to see Adele. Most of the time, it felt like she was the only thing I did see. “Do you really think that’s how I see you?” Adele swallowed but kept her chin tilted up in stubborn defiance. “How could I

not? You’ve barely been in the same room as me in the last two weeks, let alone talked to me or touched me.” My heart was pounding, and she stepped closer again. I gave her a warning look when she raised her hands over my chest. “Adele.” “No,” she said quietly, right before laying her palms over my shirt. Her fingers curled into the flesh of my pectorals and I hardened instantly. “What did you say to me the last time we were together? You said other people need air and food to survive. But us?” Adele shifted so that her hips pressed against me. Her body up against mine, her hands on me, it was the click of a lock, the turn of a key. A perfect fit. “We need something else. Nathan, when you keep your touch from me? It’s the worst punishment I could possibly be given.” “Adele,” I whispered. Every time she broke my heart with the words she said, it amazed me. Her vulnerability was even more impressively scary than her fierceness — a yawning canyon opening up before me with no warning. I cupped her face with both hands and she sighed in relief. “It doesn’t fix anything. You know that. And we have things that need fixing.” Her eyes snapped up to me, blazing a holy green fire at me. “I’m not an idiot.” “I never said you were,” I countered, tightening my hold on her face. “I need to feel you, Nathan.” Adele lifted her chin and stood on the balls of her feet, bringing her mouth within inches of mine. Dropping my mouth, I hovered over her, simply breathing her in. Our lips almost touched, when I whispered. “No sex.” “Come the fuck again?” “Not until you see your doctor and get the go ahead.” Her jaw dropped and she pulled her head back from mine, but her body was still pressed against mine. “It’s unbelievable.” “What?” “What a fucking know-it-all you can be.” Then she dropped to her knees in front of me. Her hands went to work on my belt and I hissed out a breath. “Adele,” I said in a warning tone. But she ignored me, probably because my dick was like a fucking baseball bat in my pants. “If I’m off limits,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone while she pulled my zipper down and shoved my pants down just enough to reach her hand through my black boxer briefs and pull my cock out, “then you’re not allowed to be.” “Shit,” I breathed out when she licked around the crown with a slow, measured sweep. Her eyes met mine while she simply breathed on me. I knew her well enough that she wasn’t waiting for my permission. Maybe my acceptance. “Don’t tell me you don’t need this just as badly as I do.” Every time her lips formed a word, they brushed against the head. The war going on inside of me was so bloody and fierce, each side of me raging against the other. But she was right. I did. I kept one hand on the edge of the counter and took the other to her hair,

weaving my fingers through the strands until I fisted it back from her face. The smile that she gave me when I tightened my grip was equal parts relief and triumph. And then she went about devouring me. Cupping my balls, she rolled her hand gently at the same time that she licked base to tip and back down again. My groan echoed through the kitchen, only slightly covering the wet sounds of Adele’s mouth on me. “Take it,” I pleaded when she still didn’t pull me into her mouth fully. Little minx that she was, she gave me teasing kisses up the bottom, only stopping to tongue the vein that ran underneath the head. So I gripped her hair even tighter, smiling when she inhaled sharply in response. “This was your idea, sweetheart. Quit teasing and fucking suck.” “Yes, Professor.” And she did. I cursed, a lot, when she opened her lips wide and lowered her mouth onto my dick. She didn’t stop until I felt the back of her throat. Unable to resist, I flexed my hips. Not thrusting, just moving far enough that she made a gagging sound. “That’s it, my good girl.” Adele hollowed her cheeks when she pulled back, the hot suction of her mouth so damn perfect that I moaned. It was probably dysfunctional, that we could transition so smoothly to this after days of basically not speaking. I didn’t care though. And I bet she didn’t either. This felt like the puzzle piece being clicked back into place, even if it was brief. Her head bobbed in front of me, and not once did her eyes leave mine. Stay with me, I could practically hear her say out loud. I used the hand that had been braced on the counter to cup her cheek, swiping my thumb against the satin of her cheekbones. Adele’s eyes fell shut, and she slowed her pace, but increased her suction. My hips flexed and I made small, stabbing thrusts into her mouth, wanting nothing more than to be able to yank her up next to me and fuck her. I’d come down her throat, but ultimately, it was unfulfilling. If Adele wasn’t there with me, gasping in my ear and clenching around me, it wasn’t the same. But if she wanted this, I wouldn’t argue with her. She gagged again when I thrust a little harder, her eyes tearing up. I eased back, letting her take the reins again with her slow sucks on my hard flesh. “Fuck, Adele,” I groaned when she fisted the base of my cock and twisted her wrist in perfect tandem with her mouth. “You feel so perfect like that.” She moaned around my dick and her other hand reached down between her legs to make small circles on top of her pants. Fuck. Fire swamped me and I pitched my hips, the pleasure rolling on top of itself in waves while I fucked her mouth. She sucked harder, fluttering her tongue on me, making a mewling noise that told me she got herself off. “God, baby, yes, fucking yes,” I growled as it overtook me and I poured into her throat. I held the back of her head and slowed my movements until I’d stopped

pulsing. She made one slow lick along the tip and then rubbed her lips together. They were red and puffy and it made me want to beat my chest. She winced when she tried to stand, and I hooked my hands under her arms to help her up. Once she was on her feet, she folded into me, wrapping her arms around my back so tightly that I think my ribs creaked. I cupped the back of her head, smoothing down her hair. We stood that way until the kitchen was dark. Eventually, she pulled back and took my hand. Wordlessly, we got ready for bed. When I slipped into the sheets, she was already on her side, facing the nightstand. I didn’t hesitate to tuck my knees in behind hers and wrap my arm around her stomach like I used to. Adele wove her fingers through mine and shifted our hands up to rest in between her breasts. We hadn’t even kissed, I realized later when I was almost asleep and Adele was breathing deeply in my arms. We hadn’t kissed and I hadn’t told her I loved her. Which made me feel even worse about myself than when I’d first walked in the door.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The waiting room at an obstetrician’s office was a certain kind of hell. No, it wasn’t the noise caused by the small children slipping from their mothers’ grasps, nor was it the woman holding a barf bag up to her mouth, her face the color of mashed peas. No, it was hell because all these mothers had something I didn’t. The heavilypregnant woman who huffed as she chased her wild toddler, stubbing her toe on a chair and cursing, was a mother. The woman holding the barf bag with one hand protectively around her belly as she breathed uneasily through her nostrils was a mother-to-be. What did that make me? Was there a title for a woman who lost a baby, especially so early in her pregnancy? The heavily-pregnant mom gave an exasperated smile to a woman rocking her newborn in the corner. “Enjoy it while you can,” she laughed, pushing the hair from her sweaty face with one hand as she held her toddler with her other hand. The words were said simply, without any deep thought. So I shouldn’t have felt like someone had just sliced me from hip to hip, disemboweling me on this putrid brown carpet. But I did—because there was no joke for me, no subtle warning of what was to come. There was no after with a miscarriage, there was just the before. “Adele?” a nurse called from the doorway. As I stood, I avoided the gazes of all the lucky bitches in the waiting room. What did they think when they watched me walk back? She doesn’t look pregnant. Is she trying to get pregnant? Where’s her baby? As I followed the nurse back, I was immediately struck by the scale that waited by the door the nurse led me through. No reason to stand on that wretched thing again. And yet, it made me sad all over again. Fuck miscarriage. The nurse pushed a cup in my hands and handed me two little toilette packets. It was like a repeat of before. I stared at the items in my hand before looking at her. Did she not know I wasn’t pregnant anymore? “I…” What the fuck was I supposed to say?

As if she sensed my discomfort, she placed a cool hand on my forearm. “We just need to test your urine.” I looked at her like she was out of her fucking mind. “Why?” She looked around before leaning in. “It’s common, after a miscarriage.” Her voice was soft and her tomato face bobbed up and down, trying to get me to understand. She said it like it was a secret we couldn’t say too loudly, lest we disturb the stillexpecting mothers. A rage flooded my hands and I shook as she walked away and closed the door to the bathroom. Humiliating as it was, I pissed into the cup and joined the nurse in the exam room just next door. She did the standard shit, taking my blood pressure and asking me if I’d been avoiding hot tubs and bathtubs, but she was so detached—like she was a shitty actress reciting lines she’d said so often that she was indifferent to how they were delivered. For the first time since I stepped into the office, I wanted Nathan with me. With the exception of the spectacular blow job I’d given him, we’d been like a betrothed Amish couple for as much as we’d touched recently. As fucking cheesy as it sounded—because I knew it was the cheesiest of shit—touching him that night had felt like we’d found our way back to one another, even if only momentarily. We’d fucked the night we met—I shouldn’t have been surprised that sex was what brought us together time and time again, and not just the kind of together that equaled his P in my V. “Dr. Parker will be in shortly to do a pelvic exam,” the nurse continued, pulling a paper sheet out from the cupboard behind her. “Undress your lower half and climb up onto the table.” And with that, she was gone. I stared at the sheet for a moment, trying really fucking hard not to grind my teeth. Having anyone’s hands—anyone who wasn’t Nathan, at least—on or in my vagina was the last thing I wanted. But I did as the nurse directed and was flat on my back when Dr. Parker entered. “Hello,” he said with a soft smile as he walked to the sink and washed his hands. It occurred to me how awkward this situation was and I held onto that thought. Some levity was needed right now, before he’d open me up and tell me again I was empty. Another nurse came in, this one looking significantly more in touch with how someone like me might feel. The first nurse, with her tomato red face, had made me feel like my miscarriage had scarlet-lettered me, like I’d better be mindful of how others might feel for my loss. Something about the new nurse’s face made me want to cry. Maybe it was the fact that she was near my mom’s age, or maybe it was the way her eyes stayed trained on me, as if she was looking for fissures in the armor I was wearing, to reveal how fucking awful I felt under all of it. Dr. Parker began the exam, explaining that he was ensuring no tissue had been

left behind. The nurse stood by me, smelling like lavender and I kept my eyes on the wall so I didn’t look at her and give in to the burning behind my eyes. After it was done, they left to allow me to redress. Suddenly, I wanted tomato-faced indifferent nurse back. However, when the doctor returned, the sympathetic nurse was with him. “Let’s talk about birth control,” the doctor said after expressing his seemingly very sincere apology for what happened. He’d asked if I had questions, but I sure as fuck did not, not with lavender nurse looking at me like she was waiting for me to crack in half. “The pill,” I said immediately. “Have you used it before?” I nodded and Dr. Parker went over some of the different options. “Whatever won’t make me a raging bitch around that time of the month—bonus points if it helps my occasional breakouts, too.” After writing down a prescription, the doctor said I was cleared for sex but that if I needed to wait, I surely could. The phrasing of that question threw me off—if I needed to wait for sex, I could anyway—I didn’t need Dr. Parker’s permission for that. But maybe other women felt pressure to fuck their significant others after a loss, regardless if they actually wanted to or not, but I only fucked when I wanted to. Which, granted, was all the time with Nathan. After Dr. Parker left the room, sympathetic nurse remained. It was then that I noticed the pamphlet in her hands. “How are you doing, Adele?” she asked like we were best friends about to catch up. “I’m fine,” I said, looking at the door to my left like it was my mother fucking salvation. “It’s okay if you aren’t, you know?” she asked softly. “You’ve suffered a loss, and it’s okay for you to grieve—openly, if you need to.” Maybe other women felt safety confiding to others, but I sure as fuck didn’t. She was picking at me, waiting for that fissure to split wide open. “I’m fine,” I said, through clenched teeth. She handed me the pamphlet. UNDERSTANDING MISCARRIAGE, it said in large, bold letters. What was there to understand? You were pregnant until you weren’t. I had an instant urge to twist the pamphlet in my fist, but instead I looked into the nurse’s gray eyes. “I don’t need this. I’m fine.” Honestly, how many times did I need to lie until the nurse believed me? “Is your partner supportive?” “I’m pretty sure he isn’t supportive of me losing our baby, so no.” My tone was sarcastic and biting, but it did nothing to push the lady back. “Well, a loss affects both parents, of course. But it sounds like you think you were responsible. It wasn’t your fault.” “How do you even know that?” I asked angrily. “I was responsible for the baby. Why shouldn’t I be responsible for … what happened?”

“Adele, I know this is hard to process.” “Again, how do you know?” I knew I shouldn’t sound as angry as I did, but fuck. I wanted to get the hell out of there, far away from her sympathy eyes. “I’ve had four miscarriages.” I knew in the rational part of my brain that she wasn’t saying it to make me feel worse, but I couldn’t help it—I suddenly wanted to shrivel up. Her losses were multiplied from mine. “Four? How did you even try again after the first time?” “I wanted a baby badly enough that I pushed on. But trust me, I was consumed with guilt—each and every time. I have three healthy children now, but that’s seven pregnancies in total.” It shocked me. That she would try after the first time, knowing what she knew. “Trust me—let go of the guilt. It’s the only time I’d tell a woman who has been through what we have that she shouldn’t feel a certain way. More than half of miscarriages are caused from mismatched chromosomes—which is completely out of your control.” I didn’t know what to say. Despite her telling me to let go of the guilt—it wasn’t that simple. I’d been wallowing in guilt for two weeks—there was no way I could turn it off that easily. “I know you must be hurting, and I’m here to listen.” At my shifty eyes, she smiled and reached over, flipping the pamphlet over. “But if you’re not ready now, there are a number of support groups in the greater Boston area, as well as forums all over the internet. You’re not alone—not by a long shot.” She touched my arm and squeezed. “When you’re ready, talk with someone who will support you. You don’t need to suffer in silence.” As I walked out of the appointment, I didn’t feel lighter—but I felt less alone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

November in Boston was fucking weird. One day we could have cold that punched to your bone. The next day? A fucking sunburn after laying outside for twenty minutes in a tank top. Despite the sunburn I was nursing, I was grateful for the warm weather as I did a short run through Nathan’s neighborhood. I wasn’t an inherently active individual, but weeks of living on Nathan’s couch after class had only encouraged gravity’s mission to make my ass, well, the opposite of perky. Nathan was working late again, a fact that made me sigh more than I should. He was always working late. My blowjob skills must have been lacking because he’d barely touched me all week. I was tempted to start wearing corsets to bed every night, if it would actually do anything. When I rounded the corner back to Nathan’s house, the mailman pulled away from the mailbox. I usually let Nathan get the mail, since most of it was for him anyway. But in the spirit of trying to exist a little more loudly in his house—despite his dead wife’s presence lingering in all its corners—I opened the mailbox to see if there were any small bills that I could cover that month—despite Nathan’s insistence on paying for all the bills concerning his house. I began opening the envelopes instinctively, not bothering to see the return addresses. Most of them were bills and I decided that I could afford approximately zero of them. The last letter in the pile gave me pause. I sat on one of the steps that led to Nathan’s house as I glanced over the wording. Dear Colleague, As the English department head, I am delighted to invite you to our annual holiday party happening on the evening of November 18, at 6 p.m. The party will be attended by all department staff at the home of Dr. Jonathan Ezekiel. Please RSVP at the below number to receive directions to his home in

Cambridge. In the spirit of giving, if you would like to participate in a monetary donation to be dispensed proportionately to the homeless centers closest to Harvard Square, please bring a personal check or cash. You are requested to dress formally and to limit your guests to your significant other only. Please be sure to RSVP to me, Dr. Rodney Daniel, before November 9. You may reach me by phone or email, both of which are listed at the bottom of this letter. We hope you will be able to join us. Best Regards, Dr. Rodney Daniel Distinguished Professor It was November third, which meant the deadline was the following week. And I knew Nathan hadn’t talked to me about the party because he hadn’t talked to me about anything. I wondered why he hadn’t said anything to me about it, and if he was planning to go without me. I folded the paper and stuck it in my sports bra so I wouldn’t forget to mention it to Nathan when he came home. As I stood and stretched, a familiar black sports car pulled up the curb. The stereo was blasting, its bass turned up far enough to rock the concrete under my feet. I looked behind me at the front door, deciding not to walk through it so I wouldn’t have to chase him around the house again. Elias exited the driver’s side door, checked his phone and then raised his gaze. “Oh, hi.” I wondered if Nathan had spoken to him since he’d last visited, but I just crossed my arms over my chest as I watched him make his approach. He was dressed head to toe in black, and with all that dark hair covering his head and around his mouth, he looked like some plain clothes assassin. Luckily for me, his eyes didn’t have the anger they’d held before. “Let me guess, Nathan isn’t home?” I looked pointedly at the empty driveway before meeting his gaze again. “Did he talk to you?” “He did.” Elias tucked his hands in his pockets, but it didn’t make him look any more approachable. The guy radiated intimidation—from the dark fucking aura he had and the bulge of his muscles under his tight t-shirt. “Well, he’s not here yet and I don’t feel comfortable letting you in, sorry.” It

sounded bitchier than I meant it. “Understandable. I’m Elias, by the way.” He put his hand out to shake and I realized we’d never had a formal introduction the first time we met. I looked at his hand for a beat before placing my hand in his. “Elias,” I acknowledged, meeting his eyes. “And you are?” “Adele.” I swallowed past the awkward lump in my throat. “Nathan’s girlfriend.” “Ah.” He let go of my hand and I wanted to rub my palm over my yoga pants. There was something dangerous about him. And though I was completely faithful to Nathan, I’d have to be in a coffin not to notice how sexy danger looked on Elias. “The girlfriend.” He said it like he knew things about me and it made me pull my shoulders back. “The one and only.” I realized too late that this was the brother of Nathan’s late wife and bit on the inside of my cheek out of guilt. Wanting to change the subject, I nodded at his car. “Mid-life crisis?” Elias laughed. “I hope thirty-three isn’t mid-life. Maybe I just like to go fast.” He stopped laughing and pinned me with a stare that made me squirm. “But I don’t usually come fast.” What the mother of all fucks was that? If I was someone who blushed, I probably would after a comment like that. Where was Nathan? With a pained smile to Elias, I said, “Congratulations. I’ll send Nathan a text letting him know you’re here.” I pulled my phone out, shot him a quick text, Elias is here and tucked my phone back away in my arm holster. Elias seemed amused by the way I’d distracted myself momentarily, pulling his sunglasses down to shield his eyes from the late afternoon sun. “I’m sure he’ll speed to get here then.” He was confident, that was for sure. But I noticed a slight tick in his jaw—at least what I assumed was a tick. It was hard to see much under all that facial hair. He looked like someone who lived off the grid, hauling around axes like they weighed nothing, chopping wood and then building fires with his bare hands. “He said he’d be here to meet you?” I asked, putting my hand up to my brow to shield the brightness. “Yeah, he said he’d be home for dinner and I could come back then.” I looked at my watch. “It’s four-thirty. That’s a little early for dinner.” Elias shrugged, looking not the least bit concerned. “Nathan’s always been a little geriatric.” I laughed easily. “Oh trust me, he’s the opposite of geriatric,” I said, and began to continue to defend Nathan when I noticed Nathan’s car pulling into the driveway. The laugh died as I saw the thunder on Nathan’s face when he shoved the door of his car open. And after he slammed it closed and stalked to me, I stopped breathing at the way he looked—like he was ready to light Elias on fire and then piss on his pile of ashes.

Oh, yeah, Nathan was fucking livid. And hot.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

He made her laugh. He made her laugh. Elias made Adele laugh. Something I hadn’t seen in weeks. Maybe even months. What didn’t help was that she looked fucking incredible in her running pants and sports bra, sweat making her tight stomach glisten in the sun. Naturally, it meant that I’d have to dismember him, since he saw her looking like this. Not only saw her, but talked to her long enough to say something that made her laugh. Fuck. The roaring caveman part of me want to shove him backwards, knee him in the balls, kick him off of my property just for looking at her like that. For talking to her. But then he’d win. I didn’t even look at him. Not for a single second. Adele shifted in my direction, the look in her eyes screaming at me that she knew precisely what I was feeling. Among the things that she and I shared in common, a healthy amount of jealousy and possessiveness of each other were definitely high on the list. The last time she saw me speaking to a colleague at Harvard that was roughly my age and moderately attractive, she’d practically screwed me blind in the driver’s seat of my car before we could even make it into the house. In fact, if I remembered correctly, she had hiked up her skirt and started climbing in my lap before I’d even put the car in park. “Welcome home, honey,” she said right before I reached her. I wrapped one arm around her sweat-slicked waist, anchoring her against me. With my other hand, I gripped her ponytail and pulled on it, which tipped her face back. I sealed my mouth to hers, not giving one flying fuck that Elias was watching. Maybe as little as a month ago, I wouldn’t have done this in front of Diana’s brother. But Adele was mine. And if he had enough of a death wish to come to my home and try to sweet-talk her, all bets were off. Adele whimpered when I angled my head and swept my tongue through her mouth, rubbing it against hers. My pulse pounded in my ears when she gripped a hand in my shirt, but after a second I realized it was because

she was trying to pull me back. Blinking out of the kiss, I was breathing heavily and fully hard. Adele kept her eyes downcast and wiped a hand under her reddened lips. Elias cleared his throat behind me and that was enough to finally make her meet my eyes. The look she gave me, with a lifted eyebrow, was seriously, Nathan? Holding her gaze for another second, not wanting to break the moment, I finally slipped my hand off her waist and followed the smooth line of her arm so I could weave my fingers through hers. That softened her annoyed look, but only slightly. And as much as I wanted to keep ignoring him, I turned to face Elias. He looked mildly amused, which did about as much for my mood as Adele’s embarrassment. “Welcome home, honey,” he repeated, with a shit-eating grin on his stupid fucking face. Honestly, I never cursed so much in my own head as I did when I was around Elias. He and I never got along when Diana was alive, but in the five years since her death, any cordiality had slowly burned away. All that was left was the barest thread of civility. Sometimes not even that, apparently. “I have the stuff ready,” I said while I brushed past him, keeping Adele’s hand gripped in mine so that she had no choice but to follow. I heard Elias push off his car, but I glanced at him over my shoulder. “You’re not coming in, shithead. I’ll bring it back out.” He grinned again and I resisted the urge to flip my middle finger up at him. In order to unlock the front door, I had to drop Adele’s hand. From behind me, I could practically feel the waves of her annoyance at me. But that could be dealt with after Elias was gone. Once we were inside the house, I marched back to my office and grabbed the paper box that I’d stored Diana’s camera and portfolio in. Adele was perched on the arm of the couch, her arms folded over her chest while she watched me walk back through the room. Yeah, the look she gave me told me we were definitely not done with what had happened outside. In other words, it did nothing to lessen my erection, because these types of possessive outbursts typically ended in spectacular orgasms for both of us. Usually multiples for her. When I cleared the front porch, Elias straightened from his car. No smile to be found this time. Probably because Adele wasn’t out here anymore. God, that made me want to punch him. I held the box out, just far enough away from him that he’d need to take a step in my direction. He held my glare longer than I expected him to, then finally took the step necessary to pluck the box from my hands. Elias jerked his chin at the house. Or his beard, since nobody had seen his chin since roughly 2005. “Adele seems like a nice kid.” I snorted. “Adele isn’t a kid.” “Yeah,” he drawled, giving me a slow, deliberate nod. “I guess I’d noticed that.” Deep breath in, slow breath out. It simply wouldn’t do for me to get into a fist fight in my driveway. “So we’re done here? I can stop anticipating more of your

little visits for a while?” With narrowed eyes, Elias seemed to ponder that. I sighed and looked up at the sky. “I can’t make any promises, Nathan. It’s just so fun to come here and piss you off. Pretty much the highlight of my week so far.” “Yeah?” I tsked my tongue and glanced back at the house. Adele had moved up to the front window. The thin white curtains were drawn across the length of the glass, so I couldn’t see her face, just the outline of her perfect body. “That’s a shame, man.” “You think so?” It was too easy. I smiled at Elias. He instantly looked suspicious. “If this is your highlight? Yeah. I do. Because I’m about to walk in the house and fuck Adele against the wall next to the front door. Maybe if you stick around out here you could pick up some tips. But then again, probably not, because all you’ll hear is her screaming my name.” And then I turned my back on him. I may have even whistled when I walked up the front steps. When I shut the door behind me, Adele was still looking out the window. “What did you just say to him?” Her tone wasn’t accusing, just curious. I made my way around the loveseat so I could stand behind her. But instead of looking out the window like she still was, I looked at her. I laid both hands on her shoulders, sliding them up and down her upper arms. “Why?” I whispered into her hair, then took a deep breath of her scent. Her voice was a little unsteady when she answered, but I took it as a good sign when she melted into my touch. “Because when you walked back into the house, he gave you a look that should’ve killed you on the spot.” My hands slid back up her shoulders to toy with the thick straps of her sports bra. Goosebumps popped up on her skin, and I used my thumbs to put pressure on the base of her skull so that she’d tilt her head to the side. When she did, I dipped my head to kiss along the back of her neck. “Nathan?” “Hmm?” “Did you,” she paused, sinking back against me when I traced a finger along the edge of her sports bra before dipping in the front to palm one breast, “oh, God, that feels good.” “Did I, what?” I said next to her ear before I licked the shell. “Did you know that Elias is still standing in the driveway?” My answering chuckle sounded devious to my own ears, so I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like for her. With two fingers, I plucked at her nipple within the tight confines of her bra. Her hips made tiny swivels, pressing her ass against my rock-hard cock. “Brace your hand on the window,” I said into the skin of her shoulder. It still

tasted like the salt from her sweat. I bit down on the bone, just enough that she jumped. But she still hesitated. “He’ll see.” So maybe my girl wasn’t into voyeurism, and I didn’t know that I was either. But if Elias thought I was screwing with him about what I was going to do, he’d learn pretty quickly. Pushing my other hand down the front of her yoga pants and beneath the cotton of her underwear, I ran my pointer finger along her slit. She was so wet for me, so slick and slippery. “Oh, fuck,” she moaned, dropping her head back onto my shoulder. “Nathan, he’ll see. He’ll know.” Just long enough to torture her, I pressed my finger down on her clit. Adele tilted her hips up to seek the friction she needed to get off. When she did, I pulled my finger away. One of her hands gripped my wrist and tried to move my hand back into place. The other reached behind her to palm my cock, rubbing against the front of my pants. “I know he’ll see,” I hissed. “He’ll see what’s mine. He’ll see exactly who you belong to. And who I belong to, too.” I said it right before I plunged two fingers into her pussy. She cried out and lurched forward, the rough movements of my fingers causing her momentum to shift. Her hand smacked against the window while she started fucking my hand. The roar of Elias’ car engine made me smile, even though he hadn’t squealed out of the driveway yet, so I pulled my hand out of her pants so that I could yank them down her hips. He thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. But he’d know that soon, if he didn’t take the hint and leave. And he’d never dare try anything with her after this. Adele’s hand moved to take the place of mine between her legs. She was so shameless in chasing her own pleasure, and I fucking loved it. With efficient hands, I opened my belt and shoved my pants and boxer briefs off my waist. Adele was bared in front of me, only the bright blue of her sports bra covering her flawless skin. Reverently, I smoothed a hand down her spine, which made her back arch up like a cat. Then I took both hands and palmed the firm flesh of her ass. She whispered something that I couldn’t hear. When I stepped closer and dipped my knees so I could feed my cock in between her legs, she dropped her head down. With slow rolls of my hips, I worked my dick along the lips of her pussy. “You got the all-clear from your doctor?” “Yes,” she groaned, trying to work her hips so that I’d slip in. “God, this is crazy. He’s right there, Nathan.” “Does it make you hot? That he might see us?” She started shaking her head, but I pulled my hips away and we lost contact. “Fine,” she all but yelled, and I fed her just the tip in reward. I had to close my eyes at how amazing she felt after abstaining for so long. She only had a couple

inches of me right now, but the tight, hot, wetness of her cunt felt like heaven. But I didn’t thrust in, not until my dirty girl admitted what I knew. So I made tiny rocking motions with my hips. In and out, in and out. She smacked the window with her palm. “Fuck, Nathan. Yes! I want him to see. I want him to see how good it is between us. How fucking hot we are together.” Good girl. I snapped my hips and gave her every fucking inch of me as hard as I could. She screamed, bracing her other hand on the window. The squeal of tires down the driveway barely registered in my ears, because all I could handle was Adele. She was all I could smell and see and taste and hear and fuck and love. Just her. Mine. I gripped her hips with both hands and hammered at her. There was no finesse, no sweet, steady motions designed to build slowly. This was raw fucking. A claiming. A branding. Mine. With each thrust, her tits bounced and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from where she took me. My hands tightened around her bones and her flesh, and I wanted to bruise her. I wanted to be able to see the marks of my fingers on her flesh for days. Her pussy tightened and I clamped my teeth down. “Don’t ever be embarrassed if I kiss you in public like that again.” “I won’t,” she moaned, and I felt her fingers move along her clit. Then she split them in a V shape, and when my cock slid in and out of her, I could feel her fingers on either side. “Oh fuck, I missed you, Nathan.” “I missed you, too.” In and out, in and out, sweat covered her back, covered my whole body. “Come on, baby, come with me.” Heat gathered and spread, flooding my legs and toes with prickling heat. She moaned, tightening around me again. I lifted a hand and cracked it on her ass, once, twice and three times when she screamed and fisted around me in waves. I pulsed into her, breathing her name as I curved around her back and thrust a few more times. With her hands still on the window, I placed my fingers in between hers on the cool material of the curtain. My forehead landed on her shoulder and I rolled it back and forth, like if I transferred her sweat onto my skin, she’d stay inside of me forever. “I love you,” I said quietly, feeling more in sync with her now than I had since before she got pregnant. Maybe it was a false, post-coital sense of security, but it felt so good that I didn’t care. “I love you, too,” she said back and motioned to stand up. I pulled out and heard her suck in a breath when wetness slipped down her leg. It almost made me hard again, knowing that she could feel me falling down the inside of her thighs. The look on her face told me she knew exactly what I was thinking. So I grinned, leaning down to place a kiss on her lips. She smiled into the kiss, weaving her arms around my neck. I heard a crinkle when she did and I leaned back.

“Ha. Oops,” she said with a sheepish smile. She pulled a folded up piece of paper out from the side of her bra that I hadn’t groped. “What’s this?” She waved a hand and went to pull her pants up, but the flush on her cheeks told me she was legitimately embarrassed that I found it there. I hummed when I read the letter. “Ahh, yes. I forgot that I’d be getting this.” “Sounds like it might be a fun party.” Adele said it easily enough, but I could hear something underlying in her voice. Not detached, but close enough. I closed my eyes in understanding. We’d never talked about this type of stuff. Public appearances as a couple now that she wasn’t my student. “I guess we’ll find out, huh?” Her eyes flicked up to mine, the hopeful light about slaying me. “You want me to come with?” “Who else would I bring to keep it interesting?” She smiled. “You could always bring Elias.” I barked out a laugh. “Cute. As long as you can behave in polite society, little girl, of course you’re coming with me.” The instant her eyes cooled, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. But that postcoital bliss was still too bright and too strong for me to say anything about it. So I kissed her again, and went into the kitchen to make us some dinner.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Adele,” I yelled up the stairs, staring at the ticking hands of my wristwatch. “We need to go.” “Calm your tits, I’m ready.” I laughed under my breath, imagining her saying something like that amongst my peers at Harvard, who would all finally get to meet Adele in about thirty minutes. I didn’t want to be nervous about it, but it was there all the same. Whether they’d ask her the wrong question, or one of us would give the wrong answer, either option scared the piss out of me. And Adele, fuck, if she’d act like the wonderful, smart, impressive woman that I knew was underneath her sometimes prickly demeanor, then we’d be perfectly fine. She’d be fine, I told myself again, just like I’d done all damn day. Then I changed my mind, because she came down the stairs looking like a walking wet dream. Which was okay under normal circumstances. But in a group of thirty colleagues and their significant others? They’d think she was jail bait. “Adele,” I said slowly, my eyes tracing every inch that I knew intimately. “You look…” She smiled at me, the bright red of her lipstick making her teeth look even whiter than normal. The black cocktail dress that she had on might have looked classic, even boring, on a lesser woman. But the thick straps that curved over her shoulders, and the neckline that veered down her chest in a sharp V only made her cleavage look a little bigger than normal, her waist a little smaller thanks to the wrapped lines of fabric. Her hips curved against the dress, which hit a couple inches above her knees. The nude heels that she had on her feet must have been four inches, so her legs—fuck me sideways—looked about six feet long. Her eyebrows were up, waiting for me to answer. Swallowing past the tar that coated my throat, I gave her a weak smile. “Beautiful. You look beautiful.” “Thank you,” she replied with an unearthly glow in her green eyes, and then turned to grab her purse from the hallway table. That’s when I saw her back. The straps that went over her shoulder twisted together, exposing a wide swath of her toned back.

And her ass in that dress. No, no, no. I couldn’t do it. “Do you have something else you can wear?” I said on a rush. Adele froze for a second, and then made a slow pivot to face me. “You just said I look beautiful.” “You do, God, you look so fucking amazing.” “So…” Damn it. I blew out a breath and ran a hand through my hair. “You look too amazing. Does that make sense?” Adele pursed her lips while she tucked her cell phone and a tube of lipstick in her tiny black purse thingie. “No.” “Adele,” my voice trailed off when she narrowed her eyes up at me. Her lashes looked eight times longer than normal, which made the green of her irises that much more vivid. “No, Nathan. I’m not changing. I spent two hundred dollars on this dress because the woman at Nordstrom’s told me that I looked stunning and that it was the perfect cocktail dress for any occasion. I am not changing. If those women judge me because they’re mad I have amazing tits and an ass that doesn’t sag yet, they can go fuck themselves.” She stepped into my face, the spikes of her heels bringing her much closer to my height than she’d ever been before. Then she poked a redtipped nail into my white dress shirt. “If they’re so close-minded that the fact that I’m not ugly automatically means I have cardboard for brains, then I don’t want to meet them anyway. Keep me locked up at home, because I can’t change how I look, Easton. And I won’t do it because you’re afraid they’ll write me off the moment I walk through the door. I’m not a bimbo and I’m not a pushover. I’m wearing this fucking dress because I feel beautiful in it.” My eyes traveled over her face, the feeling in my heart swelling somewhere between pride, wonder and cold, skin-numbing terror of bringing this otherworldly creature into their midst. “Okay.” Suspicion clouded her eyes. “That’s it?” I nodded and grabbed the dressy black coat that she’d draped over the back of the couch. When I held it open for her, she hesitated, and I could see the nerves in her face despite her little speech. So I smiled, even though they were still fizzing through my body too. Adele smiled back, and slid her arms through the coat. While she was buttoning it up, I placed a soft kiss on the crown of her head. Her silky blond hair tickled my lips, so I smoothed it with one hand to make sure it was still perfect. “That’s it,” I agreed. I held out the crook of my elbow for her, and she slipped her arm through so she could grip my bicep. “Now let’s go, my little warrior.” And she was smiling when we walked out the door, which was the best I could ask for. Our drive over was quiet. For different reasons, probably. Mine was still

undoubtedly my nerves, and maybe Adele was gearing up for the battle that she imagined was waiting for her. The streets were quiet and dark, small patches of snow left on lawns from the sprinkling flurries we’d gotten earlier in the day. Thankfully the roads were dry. Actually, on second thought, if it had been an icy, slushy mess, maybe Adele would have worn galoshes instead of stilettos. When we passed under a streetlamp, I glanced over at her in the passenger seat. Her legs were crossed primly, belying the sex-personified body that was under her wool coat. But the light tracked over her legs in uneven pulses, showing her toned, bare legs. I hated that she was right. That there was a possibility that they’d take one look at how painfully beautiful she was and write her off in the same breath. That they’d never care to know just how much sharp wit and razor-edged intelligence was packed into her skull. We turned the corner onto the Ezekiel’s street, all the old, brick houses forming a stately and intimidating line of wealth. Adele pulled a breath in through her nose and I laid a hand on her thigh. She closed her eyes before turning to look at me. It was so dark in the car that her face was in shadows and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Let’s get this bullshit over with.” I laughed to cover my apprehension, because we both knew this was the biggest test of our relationship so far. I jogged around the car to open her door for her, and I was relieved when she took my hand immediately. But her grip on my fingers was tight, so she was just as nervous as me. In her other hand, she held the wine bottle that we’d brought as a gift for the host. “Are you sure we got the right kind?” she whispered while we walked the gently curving path to the front door. Like she was afraid they could hear us, even though we were separated by massive amounts of brick. “A good cabernet is always a safe bet.” Adele snorted. “Like I’d know. I’d still be buying two-dollar wine if I didn’t live with you. Probably shouldn’t announce that as soon as I walk through the door, huh?” My left eye twitched. “Probably not.” I followed Adele up the short steps of the covered front porch when the massive black door swung open. “You must be Nathan and Adele,” a portly woman wearing black silk and pearls said with a kind smile on her face. She was easily in her sixties, and Adele and I both relaxed immediately. “I’m Bonnie Ezekiel, please, please, come in. Make yourselves comfortable.” A white-shirted waiter took both of our coats, and I couldn’t help but miss that Adele was still holding herself a little stiffly while she looked around the perfectly decorated room. “Your home is beautiful, Mrs. Ezekiel,” Adele said with a polite smile. Bonnie winked at her and laid a light hand on Adele’s elbow.

“Just Bonnie, sweetheart. Let’s go into the dining room, everyone else is here already.” Adele looked back at me and I quirked an eyebrow, to which she rolled her eyes. Any good feelings I’d had at Bonnie’s warm welcome fled instantly when every woman in the room zeroed in on Adele with avid curiosity. She was oblivious, thank God, since she’d latched onto Bonnie and was following her to a long buffet along the wall that held hors d’oeuvres. I saw Bonnie say something that made Adele laugh, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. Max greeted me with a firm handshake, as did Jonathan and Rodney. Max lifted his eyebrows at Adele, where she was still talking to Bonnie. “The picture doesn’t do her justice.” I laughed, shaking my head a little bit. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” He straightened his tie and gave me a comical look. “I think I’ll go over there and see if she’s ready to leave you for a more mature man.” Given that Max had been happily married for forty-five years, I gestured for him to go ahead and smiled when he made an exaggerated show of kissing Adele’s hand. Her delighted, albeit mildly embarrassed expression made his theatrics well worth it. Maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad after all. Rodney’s wife, whom I recognized from pictures in his office, sauntered over to us and laid a hand on my forearm like she knew me. I was instantly on edge, the tight botox-ed skin of her face registering nothing except blank interest. “Well, Nathan,” she drawled, sliding up next to me with her hand still gripping my sleeve. “You look handsome tonight.” As if I’d ever spoken to her before. I smiled and shifted so that her hand fell off of me. Glancing over at Rodney, he simply shook his head at his wife, but the affection in his eyes told me she was probably like this with every male colleague of his. “Thank you,” I lifted my eyebrows when I couldn’t recall her name. “I’m sorry to be rude, but could you remind me of your first name.” She giggled, and Adele glanced over at me. Her eyes narrowed and I gave her a subtle shake of my head. This was not the place for a jealous display. Especially not over a woman in her early fifties who was obviously trying to wind the clock back to her thirties. And not doing a very good job of it. “Mary.” She laid a hand on her chest with a beatific smile, like she was doing me a favor by telling me who she was. “I’m sorry, I feel like I know you with how much Rodney talks about you. But you’re still a bit of a mystery to those of us who aren’t on campus every day. We were just dying to get to know you tonight.” “We?” She waved a hand at another woman, who smiled and made her way over to us. Thankfully, she maintained a polite amount of distance and introduced herself as another professor’s wife. Adele slid a hand up my back when she joined us, and I didn’t miss the way Mary’s eyes snaked over Adele’s dress. I stiffened, but Adele

gave them both a warm smile. “Hi,” she said brightly, setting her glass of wine down on the dining table so she could shake their hands. “I’m Adele, Nathan’s girlfriend.” The other woman, Lisa, complimented Adele’s dress, which made me relax again. “Oh, this old thing?” Adele ran a hand along her flat stomach. Lisa laughed, Mary just answered with a tight smile. “Thank you. I don’t get to dress up like this very often, so it was fun to get ready.” I wrapped my arm around Adele’s waist. “You look just as beautiful in sweatpants.” Rodney introduced himself to Adele and clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t make us old married men look bad, Easton.” Mary glanced at her husband and then back at us. “Yes, Nathan, soon we’ll expect them to actually tell us we look nice once in a while.” Then she cocked her head at Adele. “So how long have you two been dating?” It was impressive that she managed to make dating sound like a dirty word. Adele glanced up at me before she answered. We counted that Thanksgiving night of the year before, when I waited for her in the snow, as the real date of when our relationship began. No more secrets then, no more lies between us. The first time I admitted I was falling for her, when I proved it to her, and when she finally believed me. “A little under a year.” “And where did you two meet?” Lisa asked with a bit more kindness than Mary had given us. “If I answer, is it someone else’s turn in the hot seat?” Adele answered with enough charm that everyone laughed. Except Mary. I smoothed a hand down Adele’s back, hoping she knew that this was just as hard for me too. The fact that we’d escaped Northern unscathed didn’t really mean anything. I may not have broken any conduct rules at Harvard, but if they knew I’d had a sexual relationship with Adele while she was in my class? That would be a tough one to explain to our department chair. Partially because he was a pompous ass, and partially because I never wanted to be looked at as a predator. I wasn’t one. Adele had been the first and only temptation in my entire teaching career. Thank God she’d been of legal age. “Adele ran me over in the hallway of a restaurant,” I answered for her, giving Lisa my focus. I could tell she was genuinely interested. Maybe because I was still the new guy, maybe because we were the youngest people in the room by a couple decades. It didn’t really matter. Rodney elbowed me in the side like I was joking, but I lifted a hand. “No, really. She was leaving the ladies’ room, and never looked up. I’m still surprised I didn’t end up with a broken rib and that she didn’t get a concussion.” “Which restaurant?” Mary asked, peering at Adele over the rim of her wine glass.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t know it,” I said smoothly, not at all prepared to admit what the name of the bar was. “It’s a small place closer to Boston.” “How old are you, Adele?” Mary ignored my answer and tilted her head to the side. The air crackled when Adele didn’t answer right away. My heart was galloping in my chest, and I kept a firm hand on Adele’s waist. Rodney chuckled and walked away to grab more food, leaving me and Adele with Lisa, Bonnie and Jonathan. Certainly not the whole group, but enough that it honestly made me want to vomit from nerves. “Isn’t that bad form?” Adele teased. But her smile was tight, I could tell. “I thought you were never supposed to ask a woman’s age.” “It is,” Lisa agreed, giving Mary a stern look. Mary tittered, waving a hand at her friend. “Forgive me. Too much wine on an empty stomach, I suppose. I’m just envious that I can’t fit into a dress like that anymore.” “I’ve got on a very good pair of Spanx,” Adele deadpanned. Not the right answer. Mary narrowed her eyes. “So what do you do, Adele? Or are you a stay-at-home girlfriend?” It might have been clearer if Mary had outright called her a gold digger. Adele clenched her teeth, and I could practically see all the things that she wanted to say stamped all over her face. Lots of F words. “I’m finishing up my degree. So no, I’m not working right now.” “Ah,” Lisa interjected, flashing an uncomfortable look at Mary. “Your Masters?” Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck fuck. Adele cleared her throat and then took a sip of her wine. I tossed back the whiskey that Bonnie had brought to me. “No, my Bachelors.” Silence. Everyone in the room seemed to stop talking at the same time. “Oh,” Lisa said slowly. “Well, that’s wonderful.” “I took some time off to work full time. It put me behind by a couple years.” It was a weak excuse, and Mary flicked her eyes between me and Adele. I smiled at her, trying my damndest to look unconcerned, but bombs were going off in my head. Massive explosions that were making my ears ring and my blood pound. If they asked where she attended, we were so screwed. “Adele, sweetie, you haven’t seen the house yet,” Bonnie said from behind us. “Would you like a tour?” I exhaled quietly when Adele walked off with her. We were idiots for not expecting that her schooling might come up. Stupid, fucking idiots. Mary and Lisa walked off to talk to their husbands. Jonathan started saying something about the Patriots. But I didn’t hear a word. And when Adele and Bonnie came back in the room about fifteen minutes later, I

gave her a quick look and then turned my back to get another drink.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Your home is beautiful,” I said to Bonnie as I tried not to dissect the way Nathan had looked away from me so quickly after we returned from the tour. “It’s been in my family for sixty years,” Bonnie replied with pink in her cheeks. “I grew up here, inherited it after my parents died.” I was nodding, but not really listening. Nathan had turned his back to where we stood just by the hallway’s threshold. He’d seen me come back, but he made no move to come to my side, to chat a little more with Bonnie. What the fuck? “Adele?” “Hmm?” I turned to Bonnie. “I asked about your parents,” she said, her gray eyebrows drawn together. “Do they live in Boston?” “Oh.” I turned my attention decidedly away from Nathan. “They live about forty minutes away.” It was all I could say about them, because it wasn’t like we got together for rousing Sunday dinners or some shit. I searched for some way to change the conversation and spied a family photo on the wall. “Your family?” I asked, with a nod of my head to the cherry frame. Bonnie’s face brightened with pride. “Yes. Four sons. Ten grandchildren, with two more on the way.” She was absolutely lit up, like a sunbeam behind her eyes. “I thought being a mom was the best thing to happen to me.” She turned to me, pushing me gently with her elbow. “Turns out, being a grandmother is even better.” My stomach twisted. Would I have felt the same way about our child? I snuck a glance at Nathan, whose broad back was all I saw. What did he think, surrounded by his married colleagues—with many of them, I was sure, raising kids and settling into their Leave it to Beaver existences? “Let’s rejoin your beau,” Bonnie said, seeming to take notice of how my attention was distracted. I gave her a grateful smile as she led me back to where Nathan stood, surrounded by a few of his colleagues and their wives. She slid her arm in the crook of her husband’s offered one and I felt another little twist, because Nathan acted as if I wasn’t even there. “How’s Pippa?” Lisa asked that twat-face, Mary.

Mary took a sip of her wine, as if she was enjoying holding us all in suspense over whoever the hell Pippa was. “She qualified at the county gymnastics,” she said. “So we’ll be traveling to D.C. for the next phase of qualifications.” “Oh, wow!” Lisa exclaimed, the most personality I’d seen from her all night. “We’re hoping Madison will take a liking to gymnastics in the next couple of years. I do love those outfits.” Realizing that I had nothing to offer to the conversation, I turned my attention to the table with canapes and had just shoved one into my face when Mary’s voice called to me. “What about you, Adele? Is a family on your horizon?” What the fuck kind of question was that? For one, what did that even mean—on my horizon? And for two, did she mean to imply that I couldn’t have a family without children? I swallowed the cracker and cheese and took the last sip of my wine. “Well, I’m only in my twenties. My decisions don’t much go beyond what I’m going to do for the day, much less five or ten years from now.” Beside me, Nathan shifted but I didn’t look at him because Mary’s gasp at my answer was loud enough to cause me to look directly at her. “Ten years?” Mary asked aghast, as if I’d just told her I took great delight in torturing puppies. “Well, that would put Nathan at, what, forty-five years old? Assuming that you two eventually marry.” “Assuming,” I said sweetly, wishing I had another glass of wine. “Nathan and I haven’t talked a lot about the diamond rings and white picket fence and golden retriever life.” I glanced at him, my smile tight. The fact that he wasn’t saying a damn thing right now was causing my face to heat. He made no move to touch me, to give me a reassuring smile. Not even a blink in my direction. “Oh. I guess I assumed that, since you’ve been together nearly a year—you said?” Mary asked, like she couldn’t quite remember—but I knew she fucking did. “I assumed you’d be talking marriage and children. But I guess, since you’re so young, that must be a little much for you.” My stomach was like a wrung-out rag. Twisting, aching. “Well, you know what assuming does, right?” I asked, my anger at the situation causing me to want to bite back at Mary and her condescension. “Adele.” It was the one word he’d said in the last fifteen minutes, but he said it with such admonishment that I clamped my lips shut instinctively. It was all I needed to hear from him, and I realized my presence was no longer welcome in such polite company. “Bonnie, can you tell me where the restroom is?” I asked, the sugar back in my voice. On the car ride home two hours later, I kept my gaze firmly forward, not sparing a glance at Nathan. The rest of the night, he’d pretty much ignored me. If that hadn’t

set the steel in my back, the way he hadn’t seemed the least bit sorry for it had. He hadn’t touched me once after Bonnie steered me away from the conversation to give me the tour. It was like he was depriving me of it for some reason—punishing for me for whatever had set him on edge. He had been embarrassed of me. I rewound the night and replayed it over and over, trying to imagine what it was that had made him suddenly pretend as if I didn’t exist. Not once in our relationship had Nathan acted like he was embarrassed of me— not a single time. He’d only kept our relationship from his father for the same reasons my family was in the dark—because no matter how we framed it, he’d always look like the professor who had seduced his student. Funnily enough, it really had been the other way around. When Nathan pulled into the drive, I was out of the car before he was, taking quick steps to the door and sliding my key into the lock before he could join me and either continuing ignoring me or say something to piss me off. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a pop from the fridge. As I brought it to my lips, Nathan passed in front of the door. He glanced at me—but it was as if he looked right through me. He turned, emotionless, and walked into his study. I set the can of pop down harder than I should have, causing a mess on the counter. My first instinct was to clean up the droplets of soda that peppered the counter but then I thought, fuck it. This house wasn’t mine, in any way. It was as if I was living in a hotel, built by Nathan and his dead wife. I didn’t have a single thing besides the clothes in his closet that proved I lived here. The mess was the only acknowledgement that Adele was here. He’d never been embarrassed of me—until he was in a room full of Susie Homemakers and their Accomplished Husbands. Sure—I didn’t fit the mold of a professor’s girlfriend, but that had never seemed to bother him before. I wiped a drop of soda off my dress, remembering how Nathan had asked me to change out of it before we went to the party. And after the comments from Mary about the dress and Nathan’s silence following, I just wanted to rip the damn thing off and wash away the embarrassment that lingered on my skin. Twenty minutes later, after cleaning off the makeup that suddenly made me feel cheap, I turned the shower water hot—hotter than I usually allowed— as I stripped out of my clothes. Again, I thought to carefully pick them up and place them in the hamper, but defiance caused me to drop them on the middle of the bathroom floor, so Nathan couldn’t ignore them as easily as he ignored me. Scrubbing at my skin with the loofah, I ground my teeth. In high school, people had assumed I was a slut just because the boys liked me. That stigma had followed me into college. I thought I could shake it off the older I got, but after a night like tonight, in a room full of mothers and wives, I realized I didn’t fit in, not with anyone—not anywhere—not even in my boyfriend’s life. I sighed as I massaged the shampoo into my scalp, feeling like I was washing out

a pound of hairspray and uneasiness. So consumed by the feel of the hot water sluicing over my body, I didn’t realize Nathan had stepped into the shower with me until his hands slid around my stomach. My instinct was to settle against his touch, so I did for just a moment. He hadn’t touched me all night and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed such a simple gesture until his chest met my back. My traitorous body relaxed and an ember lit low in my belly when his hand slid up my abdomen to cup one breast. I knew I shouldn’t give in to him so easily—but sex had always been how we found our way back to one another. As his thumb brushed against one of my nipples, a sigh escaped my lips. Another hand traveled south, to the apex of my legs and I opened them more fully. I shouldn’t want this—want him. But no matter the anger that coiled around me, Nathan was my undoing—always. Settling against him, my head dropped back to his shoulder. And that’s when I smelled the bourbon on his breath. Smelling it was an awakening, because Nathan hardly ever drank enough for me to smell it. Instantly, I pulled away from him and turned so we were facing. “Are you drunk?” “I drove us home,” he said flatly. “You didn’t answer my question.” Nathan’s eyes were so dark then, like someone else had taken possession of his body. I crossed my arms over my chest, as if it would protect me. “I had some bourbon in my study.” “Define ‘some.’” “Does it really matter, Adele?” he sighed, as if I exasperated him. Well, the feeling was fucking mutual. “It does when you’ve spent all night ignoring me. Did you come home and make yourself get drunk enough to work up the nerve to touch me?” He shook his head, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes. “I didn’t ignore you. Don’t act like a child.” I clenched my teeth together. “You treated me like I was one—a misbehaving child who you regretted bringing to meet your colleagues.” “Come on, let’s just shower and go to bed.” He reached a hand for me but I stepped back. “No,” I said firmly, putting a finger against his chest. “You don’t get to touch me in private after spending an evening in public, treating me like I was invisible— like you were so embarrassed by me that you couldn’t even acknowledge my presence until I was about to say something to that bitch.” I pulled my hand away from him and raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to shower alone.” Despite my anger at him, I was grateful that he didn’t push me, force me from his shower. He stepped out with a sigh loud enough to echo in the house. I stood under the shower head until I was sure he was asleep. We’d need to have a talk, but not when he was lit up on bourbon and my wounds were still so raw.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The following morning, I ate my cereal at the island, looking through my upcoming assignments in my planner. Nathan studiously ignored me all morning, and I was still deciding how I felt about that. Should I be relieved that he wasn’t being amiable with me, acting like nothing happened? Or should I be upset that he hadn’t apologized to me first? Instead, I distracted myself with assignments, mentally prioritizing which to do first and which could be set aside when my phone buzzed. I hadn’t talked to Leo in a week or two due to our busy schedules, so seeing his name made me feel the first bit of lightness I’d felt in a while. Leo: Wanna go out tonight to Paddy’s? My treat, since you’re always broke. I laughed lightly at that, because it was true—especially since I’d quit the campus coffee shop earlier in the summer to focus on school. “Who’s making you laugh?” I turned on my stool, eyes catching on Nathan in the corner of the kitchen. It speaks, I thought. “Leo.” I turned my attention back to bowl of cereal and frowned at the soggier pieces. I watched as Nathan moved through the kitchen and poured himself a large cup of coffee. The skin around his eyes was dark and a tad swollen, a product of the alcohol he’d had. He said nothing else before he took that first big sip. I’d left the box of cereal on the opposite side of the kitchen island, next to where he stood. I waited for him to say something, to acknowledge that it wasn’t tidily put away. But he simply ignored it—as I was becoming accustomed to. Where was my Nathan? I’d had barely a glimpse of his disarming smile, only a taste of his desperation for me. I ached, deep in my gut, for who we were when there wasn’t so much darkness between us. Come back to me, I screamed in my head. But we both stayed silent as he drank his coffee and read from the paper in his hands and I checked off items in my planner to pay attention to.

My phone buzzed again and I glanced at the notification that spread across my screen. Another text from Leo. Leo: I’ll leave the missus at home, if that’s what you’re worried about. The missus was Leo’s girlfriend, Scarlet. They were disgustingly perfect for one another, and while I was warming to Scarlet, I wasn’t keen to spend time with both of them at the same time. Witnessing their relationship only made mine feel darker, heavier. “What does he want?” Nathan asked, his voice hoarse and his eyes still trained on his paper. Setting my phone down, I said, “He wants to go out with me tonight, to catch up.” Nathan didn’t say anything, just made some kind of grunt in the back of his throat and still didn’t look at me. I was starting to feel like the bust of Alexander the Great he kept in the hallway—just there for decoration. “I don’t speak caveman,” I said. “Grunts don’t translate well.” “I was just thinking…” he began, and an uneasy feeling settled in my chest. This was going to be an argument. “Do you really need to do that?” I set my spoon down and pushed the bowl of soggy cereal away from me. “What is it you object to? Me going out, or me going out with Leo?” He glanced up at me from his paper. “Mostly the first part. Maybe a little bit of the latter.” “Why?” “You just had…” His eyes dipped to where my stomach was concealed by the island counter, and I sucked in a breath. He cleared his throat before saying, “And Leo likes to get you drunk.” “So do you,” I said with a lifted brow. “And as for the other thing, it shouldn’t affect me.” Almost as soon as I said it, I wanted to sarcastically laugh. It shouldn’t affect me. It was the only thing that did, these days. “Right.” His voice was curt and he lifted the paper higher, to conceal his face. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m twenty-two years old. Going out with friends is kind of what people my age do.” “Well, people my age…” he didn’t continue. He dropped the paper enough so that I saw his face for a brief second. “What? What do people your age do? Tell me, Nathan. Because I don’t think it was made painfully clear what people your age do last night.” “Don’t start this,” he said, a thread of anger in his voice. He was controlled, but I didn’t miss the subtle shake of the paper in his hands. “Don’t start what? Whatever ‘this’ is, it’s been brewing for some time now. Tell me—just be honest. You want me to be like those women, don’t you?” “You’re being ridiculous.” He brought the paper up to his face, concealing himself from me again, so I lunged across the counter to rip it from his hands. His

features were made of stone. “Ridiculous is you ignoring me last night at your colleague’s holiday party. Ridiculous is you coming home last night and waiting until you were deep into the liquor to touch me.” My voice trembled and I paused to gather my courage. He reached for the paper and I yanked it farther away. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” I spat. “The wife, the kids. Well, I almost gave you one of those things. But I’m not fucking them. I’m just not.” He winced and turned away. The surge of emotion in my face burned white hot and I trembled from my toes to my fingers with suppressed tears. I swallowed three or four times, just trying to clear the ball of sadness that had affixed itself to my esophagus. His silence was wrenching my heart from my chest. Silence. Silence was what my father had given me. Quiet disapproval. A turn of his back, to shield his eyes from me, his biggest mistake. Silence. I didn’t think I could take it from Nathan, too. If Nathan continued to treat me like a ghost, I’d become one. I curled my fingers into the newspaper, needing to feel something tactile, something to ground me. “What is wrong with you?” I asked, my voice raising louder and louder. “What’s wrong with me? Why won’t you fucking talk to me?” I sounded desperate—because that’s exactly what I was. I couldn’t reach through and pull from him what he wasn’t saying. And still, all he gave me was silence. “Are you mad? Do you blame me for losing the baby? He didn’t turn around right away—he kept his back to me as he spoke. “I’m mad, Adele, that I had to mourn alone.” He sounded broken, like even getting to admit this much was hurting him. But it was hurting me, too. “Do you think I wasn’t hurting, Nathan?” My voice cracked on the last note and my stomach clenched. Leaving the island, I walked to where he stood. If he wasn’t going to turn to look at me, I was going to make him see me— finally, in front of him. “Look at me,” I pleaded. When he finally did, I saw a hundred storms in his eyes, deep anguish etched into the lines around his eyes and mouth. Eyes I loved so much. But he looked at me like I was hurting him even more. “Do you think I wasn’t hurting?” I asked again. I had to say it twice, because my voice was so thin the first time, I could hardly hear it over the roar in my own head. “Say something!” I yelled, because the silence was too much, too heavy—worse than if he had physically hit me. “I can’t take silence from you, Nathan. You have to talk to me. You have to tell me, yell at me—anything, but please,” I swallowed and it hurt the whole way down. “Please, don’t give me silence.”

His eyes burned and his hands reached for me—his first instinct being to console me. But he stopped just an inch from touching me and pulled back his hands. It was akin to a slap—when he deprived me of himself. He opened his mouth before closing it right away. There was turmoil in his face, and he wore it as honestly as he wore his passion. Which made me ache all that much deeper. Finally, he spoke. “How would I know? You never once said anything—you never seemed happy, or excited, for the baby. I was alone in my excitement, and then alone in my grief.” He shook his head and pounded his fist on the counter. “I was alone, Adele.” I squeezed my fingers into a tight ball and pressed my hand against my lips. The sob was in my mouth, ready to be released, but I couldn’t give it weight. I took three deep breaths before I said, “How could you think I wasn’t hurting?” I shook my head and turned to run up the stairs. I needed out—away from him. “Where are you going?” he asked, following me into the bedroom. I wanted to laugh. I had to pry how he was feeling out of him, but now he was asking questions like he hadn’t just made me suffer through his silence. “Out.” I grabbed a pair of jeans, a bra, and a t-shirt before closing myself in the bathroom. I didn’t want him to look at me undressing and try to touch me. I shot a quick text to Leo, Do you think we could start the day a little early? Go to lunch, pregame before Paddy’s tonight? As I brushed my teeth, I listened for noise outside of the door but heard nothing. The silence was all-encompassing. I needed my best friend, I needed Leo to talk to me, distract me from the mess that was the life Nathan and I had built and then let crumble before our eyes. When my phone buzzed, I snapped it up quickly. Leo: The professor piss you off? Oh, Leo. You had no clue just how complicated this was. I replied, I need to spend a day with my best friend. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and was splashing water on my face when Leo’s text came through. Leo: That sounds ominous. I’ll pick you up? I replied yes please and waited in the bathroom, not wanting to spend another minute with Nathan and his silence. When I heard the roar of Leo’s new truck, I bounded down the stairs and out of the house. I registered Nathan standing to follow me to the door, but I was already climbing into Leo’s truck when Nathan stood outside on the porch. “Should I wave or something?” Leo asked, looking at Nathan as I did. “So he wipes that look off his face?”

“No.” I buckled my seat belt. “Let him be pissed.” “Is this girl code or something? I’m supposed to rah-rah and support you by shunning him?” I gave Leo a look as he pulled off the street. “Are you my girlfriend?” He laughed and shook his head. “No, but if you need that, I can lend you Scarlet.” I made a face. “No offense—because I’m happy that you’re happy—but I doubt there’s much Church Girl can help me with. She’d likely douse me in holy water and baptize me in her bathtub or some shit.” Leo shook his head at me and I felt bad for teasing him about his preacher’s daughter girlfriend. “If I needed girlfriends in general, I wouldn’t be spending time with you.” “So where do you want to go then, before Paddy’s?” “Somewhere with lots of alcohol. Because I’m going to drink all of it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I was just tired. So fucking tired of the back and forth, the tiny moments of forward progress before one of us did something to knock us the hell backwards again. Maybe this was simply what happened when you were in a relationship with someone who was a decade younger than you, who’d barely had time to experience life as an adult before being in an adult relationship. Maybe if Adele was dating a boy, someone who thought keggers were cool and whose messy apartment was shared with four other guys, she’d have more fun. Nope. The soul inside of Adele didn’t fit with a typical college student. She’d always felt older than that to me, which was what got us in this mess in the first place. The house was too quiet, too dark, too empty since she’d slammed the door on her way out, so I grabbed my keys and got in the car without even knowing where I was going. Like sitting in the house and watching the clock until she got home safely would make our argument worse somehow. Not that it wasn’t bad. It was. It had been bad and completely necessary. I was almost embarrassed that it took us this long to finally swap harshly spoken words about the baby. Actually, she had spoken most of the words, much to my embarrassment now. In that moment, it was like my tongue had been nailed to the roof of my mouth. Seeing her so desperate about what had had happened, finally, should have opened up the floodgates. Instead, I’d been rocked by the fact that we’d been so blind to each other’s struggle. Six months ago, I would have bet every cent to my name that I knew Adele inside and out. That I’d be able to catch a glance of her across a packed room and I’d know precisely how she was feeling. Now I didn’t feel like I knew anything. And in return, I’d shut down on her. The worst possible thing I could have done in that moment. My car drove down side-streets, some empty, some not. By the time I found myself pulling into the main entrance of Northern University, I couldn’t even be surprised. I’d spent the first six years of my teaching career on that campus. The

tree-lined main drive was bustling with students, all bundled up to walk down the snow-scattered sidewalks. Since the trees were empty of leaves, I could see everything. See all their faces as they walked and talked and laughed. There was an empty spot in front of the Student Services building, so I pulled in, not quite sure what I was even doing there. Sitting in my car felt more pathetic than getting out and walking around, so I zipped up my leather jacket and pulled a stocking cap out of the console to put on my head. As soon as I opened my door, a blast of cold air hit me, along with the sound of laughter. A group of girls walking arm in arm passed my car, two of them giving me a blatant once-over. It simply settled the exhaustion even deeper into my bones. She’d done that before. In the beginning. I remember pacing the front of one of my classrooms and feeling her eyes on me in a way that had been thrilling and completely indecent. I cupped my hands in front of my mouth and blew warm air on my fingers while I walked. No one stopped me, probably because no one recognized me. Or maybe they did, and I simply looked like a creepy former professor wandering the grounds of his old school. Two guys yelled, and I looked up to see them greeting a group of women outside of the coffee shop that Adele used to work at. Given that my hands were quickly getting numb, and I was feeling pretty fucking nostalgic about the earlier days in our relationship, I walked through the glass and steel doors. It looked the same as when Adele worked there. Generic tables and booths, a gas fireplace surrounded by rocks, and the hushed conversations from seated groups were all the same. I placed my order, watching the two baristas work with quick efficiency and felt a pang. With robotic movements, I took my coffee from the bored-looking worker and found an empty table along the wall. The coffee was so hot that it scalded my tongue, but I took another large drink anyway. By the time it was almost gone, I could barely taste anything. I didn’t even know how Adele and I had gotten to this point. Maybe we burned so brightly, so early in our relationship, that this was the consequence. That we’d been destined to reach this kind of fallout, with or without the baby. I swallowed against the rush of emotion, picturing her anguished face when she told me that she’d been mourning alone too. I’d done that to her. Just me. I’d been so wrapped up in my own grief that I had placed her in a box that she never wanted to be in. “Can’t stay away, can you?” My head snapped up to see my father bracing his hands on the back of the chair opposite of me. I lifted my eyebrows and traced the lip of my coffee cup with my thumb.

“Apparently not.” We were quiet for a moment, me not offering him a chair and him not asking if he could take one. It was an apt description for our entire relationship. “May I join you?” he asked quietly. I held his eyes and searched for rancor or ill-intentions and saw only genuine curiosity. So I nodded. “Of course.” He didn’t have coffee, so he fiddled with his phone for a second before taking a deep breath. “Things going well at Harvard?” I breathed out a laugh. “As well as I imagined, I guess. I work longer hours, and sometimes I’m afraid that my upper-level students are smarter than me.” For a second, he just stared at me, then his lips curved in a small smile. Me leaving Northern for Harvard was a Big Fucking Deal in the Easton family. I was the only son, and the Eastons had been attending or teaching at Northern for as long as I could remember. When I’d told my father that I was leaving, he’d merely sneered and told me I was a disappointment. Good times. We hadn’t had a civil conversation since then. So this also felt like a Big Fucking Deal. The fact that he was asking and actually seemed to care about my answer. Maybe my mom put him up to it. “That probably means you’re doing your job well if they surpass you at some point.” “I suppose.” I shook my head and took the last drink from my cup. The bitter aftertaste of the coffee was the only thing that made me know that this was actually happening and I hadn’t been dropped into the Twilight Zone. “No coffee? That’s new.” He shook his head. “Saw you through the window on my way back to my car. I had a committee meeting and I was about to head home.” “So you came in here just to talk to me?” I sounded skeptical, because I was feeling pretty fucking skeptical. He even had the decency to look chagrined. A group of students chattered and laughed their way out the door, blanketing the coffee shop in an eerie silence. Besides the baristas and our table of two, there were only three other girls reading quietly in the opposite corner. Would that have been Adele, without me in her life? Sitting in a coffee shop with friends and studying, maybe to avoid a crappy roommate or a quiet apartment? Going to a basketball game with a group of people and heading to a frat house afterward to celebrate? I dropped my head to take a couple of deep breaths. I’d chastened her for wanting to go out drinking with Leo on a weeknight, but that’s what normal college seniors did. More often than not when we argued, we always circled back to our roles. I was the patronizing older boyfriend, and she was the irresponsible younger girlfriend. She wasn’t irresponsible, she was simply young. Doing the same things that I did— with Diana, actually— when I was in my early twenties.

“You look like you’re thinking awfully hard over there,” my father said, interrupting my pointless train of thought. Pointless because I couldn’t do anything about it right now. Probably not until tomorrow when she was home and sober. She certainly wouldn’t be coming home that way. “I am,” I admitted and leaned back in my chair. “It’s about my girlfriend.” “Ah.” I gave him a rueful smile, still a bit thrown that I was having this normal of a conversation with my father. “You probably didn’t even know I had one, huh?” He scratched the side of his face and leveled a considering look in my direction. “No. For how long?” “Almost a year.” With an answering nod and lifted eyebrows at the length of time, he blinked a few times before talking again. “What’s her name?” “Adele,” I answered without thinking, the way I said her name sounding pathetic with how full of longing it was. I kept my eyes on my empty cup, because it’s not like there was much he could say. And I certainly wasn’t going into any details. “Where,” he cleared his throat and lowered his voice, “where did you meet her?” Something in his voice made me look up. It was suspicion. And suddenly I remembered being in this exact same coffee shop with him. Adele had been working that night. And they knew each other from my father being on the scholarship committee that had selected her. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuuuuck. “At a restaurant,” I answered far too late. His eyes were looking around, and he started shaking his head slowly. “Adele.” His eyes closed and I tipped my head back to stare at the ceiling. He couldn’t possibly piece it together with so little. “What’s Adele’s last name?” Keeping my face carefully blank, I waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, I didn’t say a word. Because what could I say? “Goddamnit, Nathan,” he ground out. “What’s her last name?” “It doesn’t matter,” I said simply. I wouldn’t lie about it. And I wouldn’t give him the truth right now. Not there. Not yet. She and I never talked about our families or how we’d broach the subject of our relationship with them. One of the things we had in common was a shocking level of apathy to the people who gave us life. I didn’t want to spend any of my free time with my family just about as much as she didn’t want to hang out with hers. Not once had I given consideration to explaining Adele’s presence in my life to either of my parents. Not one single time. “I don’t want to be right about this.” He said it so quietly that I almost had to lean forward to hear him. “You’re probably not,” I replied with a casualness that I did not feel. “There are

many women with that name, so I’m not sure who you think it is.” His eyes blazed and he braced his folded hands on the table, pinning me with a look that made me feel like I was stabbed to the wall with butcher knives. “What I think is that I recall a very beautiful student by the name of Adele, who worked here and was in one of your classes. What I think is that the semester after she had that class with you, you pursued a job teaching elsewhere. And what I think is that if I’m right, you’re the biggest embarrassment that I could have possibly conjured for a son.” “Strong words for a really fucking big ‘if’, Father.” Everything I said came out even and unaffected, but my heart was pounding. She was still a student here, and with my loose tongue, I could very well screw something up for her. Just because I was gone, didn’t mean she might not feel any ramifications. Our eyes still held, and after a long minute, he pushed back from the table and stood. But he didn’t leave. Taking his time, he walked around to my seat and leaned over so that his mouth was right by my ear. “If I’m right, then it makes me sick that I ever felt a moment of pride about you. If I’m right, then you’re the biggest fucking cliché in the books, Nathan.” Then he clapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “But please, son, feel free to prove me wrong at any time.” As he walked away, I stared at his back with a rock in my gut and couldn’t help but feel like we’d slipped back into our typical relationship. But even that couldn’t distract me from the horrible realization that he was completely right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I only waited about two minutes after he’d stormed out to push away from the table. My whole body was covered in flames, and they licked away at my clothes until I could practically feel them on my skin. The cold November air didn’t even touch me on my walk back to my car, and more than once, I got strange looks when I knocked shoulders with someone going in the opposite direction. “Watch it, asshole,” some guy called out when I all but mowed him over when I got to my car. The churning anger inside of me, coupled with the freedom of knowing that I was on the campus as just a man, made it very easy for me to turn around and nail him with a glare. “Go fuck yourself, frat boy,” I yelled back. But I didn’t wait to see if heard me, or if it pissed him off. It felt so damn good to take the leash off and just say what I was thinking in that kind of situation. And it hit me. The reason it felt so good is because I’d lost my safe place to do that. Adele. Adele had been my safe place. The person who always listened when I had something to say, and the person that I never had to filter myself around. What was painfully clear now was that she probably would have listened to me if I’d come to her with what I’d been feeling. We could have mourned together. I slammed the car door shut and breathed heavily. “Fuck,” I yelled and punched the console. Ooh, and my fucking father. I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he wasn’t proud of me. I was well past the point of living my life for his approval. But he could still make trouble for us, and for her. My phone vibrated in my pocket and I barely looked at the screen before I snarled a hello. “Okay,” Max drawled on the other end of the line. “Maybe I’ll call back.” I dropped my head back and sighed. “No, it’s fine. I just ran into my father, and while that never goes particularly well, this was a doozy even by our standards.” On the other end of the line, he made a sympathetic noise. “Daddy issues.”

In the breath of silence after he said it, we both paused and then started laughing. God, that felt good too. “They’re the worst,” I replied easily. “Have you got plans tonight?” I started my car and glanced behind me before pulling out of the spot. Suddenly, I wanted to be very far away from this place. “Just grading some papers, why?” “Push those off for a day. I’ll bring over some bourbon and cigars. We can act like we’re not too old for this.” My fight with Adele rang through my head again and I let out a deep breath. “The wife won’t care?” “No,” he said good-naturedly. “She hates when I smoke, so it’s easier if I go somewhere else when I do it.” The skies had started to darken, which meant I’d been driving around before landing at Northern for much longer than I’d thought. But I didn’t expect Adele home until well after midnight. She’d probably close down the bar just to spite me, and I couldn’t really even blame her. “All right. You’ve got my address?” “Not at home. Text it to me, and I’ll head right over.” The fire that had coated me not that long ago had ebbed completely during our phone call, and as I drove home, it wasn’t lost on me that having a sixty-eightyear-old colleague over to my house to drink bourbon and smoke cigars was the closest thing I’d had to a night with friends in years. I hung up with Max and rolled my eyes. Pathetic. But it didn’t dampen my ridiculous excitement at him coming over. Adele was the only person I hung out with. It never bothered me when she spent time with Leo, or at least it didn’t always bother me. The fact that they only had a platonic relationship was evident, and not just because Leo had a serious girlfriend. I’d only had to be around them once to see their interaction was akin to a brother and sister. It didn’t bother me that she had a friend she could spend time with outside of us, but every once in a while, it bothered me because I didn’t have that. So by the time Max’s car pulled into the driveway, I was practically bouncing off the walls. Maybe it was good that Adele had gone out. We’d talk the next day and I’d apologize for my part in our distance. We would be fine. Max knocked on the front door and when I pulled it open, he already had a lit cigar out the side of his mouth. “While I’m happy you’re here,” I said, turning around to grab my coat, “you cannot smoke that in the house.” He laughed and took a seat in one of the chairs off to the side of the front porch. Once I was settled next to him, I cupped a hand around the tip of my cigar to help it light. I sank back in my chair and took my first large puff, holding it in my mouth

before letting it back out. “It’s good,” I told him while he took another large draw, making the end glow a bright orange. “What is it?” “Nub Cameroon,” he said on the exhale, a thin line of smoke fading into the cold air. “Nicaraguan. My son-in-law likes to prove his love to me by stocking me up with all the good ones.” “Good man.” Max propped one foot on the opposite knee. “I guess. As much as he can be, considering no one is good enough for my daughters.” I smiled, shaking my head a little trying to imagine what it would be like if either Adele or I had parents who’d had that kind of outlook. That we were a prize that could never be earned. “Did I tell you that Marjorie finally settled on a thesis?” One of his master’s students had struggled all year figuring out what to do her thesis on, something that Max bemoaned constantly. I shook my head. He rolled his eyes. “Domestic myth-making in the novels of Elizabeth Bowen.” I lifted my eyebrows. “Four months of discussion and that’s what she decides on? I liked her TS Eliot one a lot better.” “Didn’t we all,” he grumbled and lifted the cigar to his lips again. The sky around us got darker and darker, the air colder. But we never left our spot. I was on my second cigar and second bourbon in so many hours, and I’d laughed more in those hundred and twenty minutes than in the entire month prior. My ears were almost frozen off, and I was fairly certain that my balls had shrunk up into my stomach due to the cold, but neither of us felt like going indoors. Max was wiping tears when I told him about one of my sophomores who started crying in class when she was arguing about the social constructs in the world of the Bronte sisters when a rumbling truck pulled up the driveway. Well, shit. With a glance at my watch, I was more than a little shocked that Leo was already bringing her home, given that it was barely ten. “Didn’t peg Adele for a truck owner,” Max said, shielding his eyes from the headlights. “It’s one of her friends’.” We sat there while the truck kept idling, and my stomach started churning uncomfortably. Partially because of the cigars, a little bit of the bourbon, and a whole lot that Max was still here when Adele got home. Maybe her earlier than expected arrival meant that she wouldn’t be drunk. The cab of the truck lit up when Leo cracked open the driver’s side door. “A little help here, man.” Or maybe not. Cursing under my breath, I ignored whatever look might have been on Max’s face and jogged down the steps to the sidewalk that led to Leo’s truck. When I pulled open the passenger door, she was singing. Not a good first sign of her sobriety.

“Hey, you’re a crazy bitch but you fuck so good, I’m on top of it,” Adele sang in an off-key voice, playing what might have been an air guitar but her hands were up by her shoulders. I gave Leo a look and he just held his hands up. “Why do you think I’m bringing her home, dude?” “I’m not a dude, Leonardo,” Adele slurred, drilling a finger into his bicep. Leo just rolled his eyes and flicked her hand away. “She’s all yours,” he said with a mildly apologetic smile. Adele whipped her head around, finally realizing that I was standing in the opening of the passenger door. “You.” The accusation among the drawn out, drunken word was completely unmistakable. She blinked slowly and then turned her head back to Leo. “He’s pissed at me.” “Yeah,” he said dryly. “You’ve mentioned that a time or two now.” I clenched my jaw, imagining them talking about our issues. “Okay, let’s go in, Adele. Can you walk?” “Of course I can fucking walk,” she snapped, sounding remarkably sober. If I’d only told Max to go home about ten minutes earlier. Searching deep, deep inside myself for any level of calm, I held a hand out to her in order to help her out of the truck. She curled a lip at it and stepped out, miraculously landing on two feet. In my anger earlier, I hadn’t paid attention to what she’d been wearing. The jeans were fine, but somehow on Adele, a simple white t-shirt managed to look downright indecent. Probably because she was wearing a bright red bra underneath that shoved her cleavage up to miraculous levels. Normally, I’d salivate or dip my hand down in the front. But with Max on the front porch and God knows how much alcohol in her system, I wasn’t feeling particularly touchy. “Did she lose her coat?” I asked Leo while Adele weaved in place next to me. He turned to look behind his seat and shrugged. “She must have left it at the bar. I’ll call and see if they have it.” With hurried movements, I unzipped my fleece jacket and laid it over her shoulders. “Cold,” she whispered and jammed her arms through the sleeves. “I don’t even care that I’m still so fucking mad at you.” “Glad to hear it,” I said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to steer her toward the house. I glanced at Leo over my shoulder. “Thanks for getting her home safely.” Leo nodded. “I always will.” “Awwwww,” Adele sang, leaning into me. “You’re the fucking best, Leonardo.” “Lots of water, Morello,” he said, pointing a finger at her. I tipped my chin at him and closed the passenger side door. “Who’s car is that? You cheatin’ on me, Easton?” Adele glared at Max’s sedate four-door sedan like it had personally injured her. “’Cause I’ll cut a bitch. I will cut her the hell up.” “Trust me, you are more than enough woman, Adele. I couldn’t possibly handle

anyone on top of you.” She jerked to a stop right before we turned the corner to the front porch. Adele laid a hand on my chest and peered up at me. The vivid green of her eyes searched my face, and the way she was looking at me made my breath catch. “Sometimes when you say shit like that, I forget how mad I am at you.” I smiled sadly. “I’m sure you’ll remember in the morning.” “Uh huh. Now who’s car is that?” And she slipped out from under my arm and charged around the corner. I held my breath when she stopped, a shocked expression covering her face. Then she smiled. Brilliantly. “Maaaaaaaaaax!” When I walked up the first step, Adele had flung herself at him to give him a giant hug. “Hello, dear,” he said with more kindness than I probably would have in that moment. He cleared his throat when she didn’t let him go and with every passing second, I could feel my blood pressure rising. “Adele,” I said gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Max might want to breathe at some point tonight.” After disentangling herself from him, she swayed sideways and then righted herself. Max shifted his eyes to me, and I forced as much of a smile as I could manage. “You were so nice to me at the party, Max,” Adele said, patting his cheek a couple times. “Nobody else was. You were so nice. You and Bonnie. My best friend Bonnie.” “Okay,” I wrapped an arm around her shoulder again and attempted to steer her in the house. She shoved my arm off. “I’m talkin’ to Max. Everyone else there acted like fucking dicks, including you, Easton.” “Adele,” I ground out. “I think it’s time to go in.” Max waved at me, embarrassment causing his eyes to flick away from me. “I’m just going to go. Thanks for letting me come over, Nathan.” Hugging him one more time, Adele said something into his ear that I couldn’t hear, and thank fuck, it made Max laugh under his breath. “Of course, dear. You go get some sleep.” By the time he was to his car, I was fuming. Adele didn’t give me a spare look before she stumbled into the house. For a few minutes, I stood on the dark porch. Dark, because she’d turned the light off on me after going inside. At the rate I was going, if I waited until I was calm to go inside and help her get into bed, she might make it there by next week. Because if I walked inside right now, after watching her completely embarrass herself and me in front of my mentor, the only friend I probably had right now, I just might kill her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I fell four steps inside the house, landing hard on my ass right at the foot of the staircase. “Fuck me,” I grumbled, leaning to rub the side of my sore ass. My eyes caught on the sneakers I was wearing and I glared at them—surely, those fuckers were to blame. It took longer than it should have for me to yank them off before I threw them across the room. One of them ended up in Nathan’s beloved study and I giggled. He was going to be pissed. He probably already was. I hadn’t intended to get totally trashed. I rarely drank more than enough to feel that delightful little brain tickle, but the last few months—with everything—had come to a head earlier today and I needed to forget the bullshit that pulled me down for a little while. My other shoe ended up somewhere in the living room behind me and I hummed, happy to leave my mark in Nathan’s house. Diana’s house. She was mother fucking everywhere. All over the wallpaper in the entry, the paint colors in every single room in the house—hell, even the table I sat at to do my work had an ink stain that Nathan had told me was caused by her. I rubbed a hand down my face, feeling a tingle in my cheeks. I needed to get something in my stomach to avoid the uprising in my belly. Crawling, I made my way to the kitchen. When I reached the island, I grabbed one of the stools and slowly pulled myself to standing. Why was it so hard to stand up after you’d fallen so spectacularly? I heard the slam of the front door and kept my back to the thunder I felt approaching as I opened the refrigerator and surveyed its contents. Milk would probably react badly with the tequila in my belly—no milk. There was a bunch of shit to assemble a salad, but fuck salad. I pushed the cucumbers to the back of the fridge with more than a little hostility, spying what I wanted. Chocolate mother fucking pudding pie. “Aw, yeah!” I cheered as I pulled it up. I felt like a champion for finding pie, and pumped my fist in the air in triumph. Not even bothering with a plate, I set the pie on the counter and grabbed a large

spoon. As I shoved the first bite into my mouth, Nathan entered the kitchen. He looked like he wanted to say something, but I was too invested in my pie to listen. I held up the spoon and looked at it adoringly. My phone started ringing to my current ringtone—"What’s Your Fantasy" by Ludacris and I immediately started dancing. It was a bit of a throwback, but it was a pretty sexy song and usually granted some blushed looks from my fellow public transportation riders whenever my phone rang. “Are you going to answer that?” Nathan asked. With a mouthful of pie, I shook my head. “Nah, I’m gonna daaaance.” And so I did, spoon in my hand as I slid in the space of six tiles in front of the fridge. I wasn’t sure what it was about drinking tequila, but it was as if it served as a direct line to my legs, turning me from someone with no coordination to someone with even worse coordination but less concern for those who witnessed my dancing atrocities. When the music stopped abruptly, I snapped up my phone and pulled up my music app—setting it on a playlist I usually ran to. When “Blister in the Sun” came on, Nathan quietly remarked, “What eclectic taste you have.” I wasn’t sure if it was a criticism or not, but I wasn’t going to let a curmudgeon ruin my dance groove. I ate three more bites of the pie while I danced across the kitchen before I put it back in the fridge, laughing at the spooned gouges across its surface. “Here,” Nathan said, grabbing the fridge door before I could close it and pulling out a bottle of water. “Drink this, so you’re not miserable tomorrow.” I swiped it from his hand and leveled him with a look. “This might help keep me from being miserable, but is it going to help you not be an asshole?” Ohhh shit. I couldn’t believe I said that. I knew the alcohol was wearing off bit by bit, especially after eating half of that pie, so I was lucid enough to know that it was a bitchy thing of me to say. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” But I was still buzzed enough to reply, “Are you sure you even heard me? You were so silent this morning that I thought I should take you in for a hearing test.” “Adele, you’re drunk.” I set the water down with more force than necessary, causing it to splatter all over us. “Gee, Professor. I think you took the wrong career path because you’re so Goddamn astute. Detective Easton has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?” I saluted him and pushed my hair away from my face. Nathan sighed and pressed the water bottle back into my hands. “Just drink this.” Suddenly, I felt a sharp press against my heart. Nathan, even though he was likely pissed at me, was still taking care of me. Like he’d promised, before everything went to shit. The tears pricked behind my eyes more quickly than they would have if I’d been sober, but I shook them off still, wrapping my hand around Nathan’s as he pushed the water bottle against mine.

He looked at my hand for a beat. Then, slowly he extracted himself from my hold. “Drink the water,” he said again, before turning around to walk away. “Nathan,” I said. He paused, his back to me and I took the opportunity to walk up behind him and press my chest to his back. My hands slid around his midsection and held on tight. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I felt the muscles under my cheek tense. “Why are you sorry?” I was still a bit too liquored up to explain myself, so I just kissed his back and ran my fingers over the rock hard abs I could feel under my fingers. With my chest still to his back, I ran my hands up his button-up shirt, sliding a nail right in the gap between the buttons. Gently, I scraped his skin and felt him again tense under my cheek. “What are you doing?” I rubbed my face against him. “Maybe you’re not as astute as I thought.” I unwrapped my arms and stepped around him, putting my hands over his pecs and sliding them up to his shoulders. God, he felt so hard, so warm. I pressed my thumbs along the curve of muscle and looked up at him under my lashes. His eyes were dark, but the lust for me burned bright. The tick in his jaw emboldened me to undo the top button of his shirt, then the next, until his shirt was open from neck to waist. With my eyes on his, I leaned down and licked a path from his belly button to his neck. When my lips hit his Adam’s apple, I sucked on it, nibbling just a little. I felt a hum from his throat when I did that, but his hands stayed at his sides. My fingers glided up his neck, my nails digging in just a bit as they scratched over his five o’clock shadow. I ran one of my nails over the line of his lips, and let my other hand travel down his chest to his waist, scratching and pressing and touching him as much as I could. I rose up on my tiptoes to kiss him fully on the mouth, and it was then that I felt the first give, with him finally relaxing against me. I led the kiss, sucking on his bottom lip as I gently bit down. There was a fire racing down the center of my chest, and I realized how badly I needed this, to kiss him and to love on him a little bit. Pressed so closely, I could feel his erection against my belly. Leaving his mouth, I dropped to my knees in front of him and kissed the hard length straining against his slacks. He made me feel downright wicked, especially like this. Tequila had nothing on Nathan. I opened the button of his slacks, breathless for a taste of him, when I felt his hands in my hair. But instead of encouraging me, they tugged me. “What?” I asked, pulling to standing. My hands wandered over his expanse of skin and muscle because I couldn’t stop touching him. I felt like I’d been starved of him, and here he was—ripe for the picking. “Not tonight.” I shook my head, squeezed his waist in my hands. “Come on.” “I said no.” He pushed me gently away, but enough for me to get the hint. I

nearly stumbled thanks to the way my head spun but I grabbed onto the island for balance. He walked away and I followed him, all the way into his study. He sat in his chair and acted like he couldn’t see me following him like a lost puppy. “Go to bed.” I stopped my pursuit as I stared at him. “What’s your problem?” He didn’t look at me, just slid his glasses on his face. Those fucking glasses. “I’m not in the mood.” “You sure seemed like you were.” I walked next to him and lifted myself so that I could sit on the corner of his large desk. “I miss you, Nathan.” I picked up one of his hands and placed it on my thigh, moving it up. “Touch me. I miss you,” I repeated, my voice hoarse. He yanked his hand away. “We need to talk about our argument this morning, but not when you’re drunk.” I shifted off his desk, a little hurt that he was pushing me away so easily. “I’m not that drunk. I’m just a little buzzed.” When he said nothing to that, I crouched beside him. “Let’s have some hot makeup sex. We haven’t had that in a long time.” He flipped open a book on his desk, not looking at me still. “We’re not making up. We can’t just fix all of our problems with sex. We’re supposed to be adults.” Whoa. I pulled my head back, surprised at his harsh tone. “What is that supposed to mean?” “Just go to bed, Adele.” Still he didn’t look at me. I stood. “Fuck you, Nathan.” “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he said to my retreating back as I climbed the stairs. I was so angry and humiliated by the turn of our conversation and the fact that he wasn’t going to sleep in the same bed as me for the first time since I moved in with him. I wanted the old us back, when things weren’t complicated—when sex brought us back together whenever we were feeling lost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sometime in the middle of the night, I was in the bathroom vomiting. As I clutched the seat and let my stomach empty itself, all I could think about was the last time I’d been in the bathroom doing the same thing. When I’d still been pregnant. So there I was, crying and vomiting and wishing that Nathan and I could find our way back to each other. It was then that I acknowledged that we’d had months of this, slowly separating as we adjusted to living together and Nathan’s new job. The miscarriage hadn’t been the catalyst to our split, but it had only driven it deeper than I felt was manageable for us both. I barely slept all night. Part of me kept waiting for Nathan to come to bed, to quietly hold me and assure me that we’d be okay. I stared at that door, willing it to open with Nathan on the other side. But he didn’t come up to even brush his teeth. I sent a text to Leo, asking him to come pick me up. He replied with a question mark but said he’d be fifteen minutes. I’d concocted a hundred things to say but as I walked down the stairs, faced with Diana’s wallpaper and my sneakers on the mat by the door—like a guest’s shoes would be—I realized what I needed to do. Nathan was in the kitchen, sitting at the island and reading his newspaper like he did every morning. The fact that the coffee maker was full of coffee—instead of just enough for him—made my heart throb over what I was going to do. The mug I pulled from the cabinet said Kennebunkport, Maine where I knew Nathan had honeymooned with Diana. My fingers curled firmly around the handle, and I loosened them only when I thought I would accidentally break it. I took the first sip of my coffee before setting it down. “Nathan.” “Hm?” He looked up from his paper for a moment before returning his attention to whatever was in today’s headlines. “We need to talk.” He set the paper down, sipped his coffee and appeared completely at ease. How was he not burning from the inside out, like I was? I felt like this conversation would tear me in half.

“I…” I wasn’t sure how to start this. How to say what I needed. I loved Nathan, but I no longer felt like love was enough to shoulder all the weight we carried. I couldn’t live with his silence; with the guilt I wore like a brand on my skin. “I love you,” I said, and stopped him when he opened his mouth. “But I can’t do this. Not right now.” His eyebrows scrunched together. “Do what?” “Us.” His eyes changed, from disbelief to confusion. “Explain.” I didn’t like how he said that, like I was a student in his class, being asked to defend my stance on a subject. “You either ignore me or patronize me,” I blurted out. “I don’t.” He shook his head, but I held up a hand. “No, you were silent yesterday when I was begging you to speak.” I took a deep breath, hoping for courage, to do this without crying. “I need to say my peace and leave.” “Leave?” He shook his head again. “And go where?” “Leo’s picking me up.” He gave me a look. “Are you going out? Again? After last night?” My heart ached. He was doing it, again, talking to me like I was a child. “Are you even listening to me? I need a break. From you,” I threw my hands up and gestured to the entire kitchen, “from this house, where I don’t belong. I’m going to stay with Leo for a while.” “Don’t be ridiculous; you can stay here. I’ll take the guest bedroom.” “No.” My voice was as firm as the fists I made with my hands. “I’m not being ridiculous. I’m hurt. I can’t live under your roof—sleep in your bed—clean your house.” “Clean?” He raised an eyebrow and I shook from the inside out—anger was an earthquake in my bones. “Jesus, Nathan! Do you think I leave messes because I don’t know how to put a fucking bowl in the sink?” I walked to the sink, set my mug inside of it. “Look—I know how to do it. It’s not that I’m incapable—it’s that I’m invisible.” “No, you’re not.” He stood but I backed away. “I feel invisible. I’m in your wife’s house. Her bed. That mug,” I pointed to the sink, “was the mug you bought on your honeymoon with her. There is nothing of me here.” I pressed my hands to my stomach, to hold in the despair that rocked me in my gut. “I leave messes because it’s my only mark on this house, your house— her house. I’m trying to remind the both of us that I’m here.” Nathan sighed, and my heart sank. He didn’t believe me. He didn’t think I was serious. I stared at him, begging him with my eyes to see how fucking serious I was. But he just stared back, his face a portrait of disbelief. “Here we are again—you acting like I’m not completely serious. Treating me like

a petulant child, throwing a tantrum.” He looked weary, as if we’d been through this before. But we hadn’t. In all our fights—and there had been many—I’d never threatened to leave. I’d never even slept in a separate bed if we fought at night. I was always the one making us have it out before we went to sleep. And still, he seemed under the impression that I wouldn’t be walking out of this house in a few minutes. “I’m going to pack a bag,” I said, before leaving the kitchen and climbing the stairs. To his credit, he followed me up to the landing, standing just outside the door to the master. “You’re not going to get me to jump when you’re being dramatic,” he said as I shoved clothes into the weekender-sized bag I had. He carved me hollow with that—with his disbelief in my decision. Closing my eyes, I told myself that he was probably just safeguarding his own feelings. I braced my hands on the bed and turned my head to look at him. “Don’t you feel it, Nathan? The emptiness? I accepted that you were too busy—that you had a lot on your plate—to cater to me. But I can’t live with your patronizing tone. I can’t live with your silence.” I wondered if he remembered the piece I’d written about my father a year before, the piece that had been a turning point in our relationship. I’d talked all about my father’s silence, how it had developed me into the person I was. I couldn’t see his face that well in the early morning shadow of the hallway, but he seemed to still for a moment. “I’m not silent now. I’m listening. Talk to me.” “Now? Now you want to talk? What about the last few weeks since I miscarried? Where the fuck were you then?” He opened his mouth but I put my hand out and stopped him. All my anger was cresting now, like a wave about to pull us under. “No, you weren’t here. You buried yourself back into work. All your grand declarations of being here for me, of taking care of me, had fallen away the moment they’d removed our baby from my body. You never once asked how I felt.” Shit. The tears were in my voice and in my eyes and just breathing hurt. I whipped my hand around the bedroom. “Diana lives in every corner of this house—she’s here more than I am. I don’t feel like I belong here.” I zipped up my bag and tried to shove past him in the hallway, but his hands reached out and wrapped around my arms, holding me still. “You’re not actually leaving.” “Yes, I am.” I shook my arms to get away from his hold. “We need a break.” He squeezed me tighter, the look in his eyes changing. He finally understood. “We don’t need a break, Adele. Maybe we just need to talk.” “Talk?” I shouted, probably louder than I needed to. “You haven’t been talking to me in months. Not until…” I waved a hand around my stomach. “You promised, Nathan.” I hiccupped, the grief settling in my throat. “You said you’d take care of

me. And then…you just stopped.” It was as if he transformed before my eyes. His face had remained impassive until I’d started packing my shit. He leaned in, maybe to kiss me? I didn’t know, because the instant he leaned in, I pulled back. “You said you’d take care of me, of us. I believed you.” I shook in his arms, trying to free myself. His grip only tightened. He wasn’t going to make this easy to leave him. “Let go.” “I won’t.” It was killing me, that he wouldn’t leave me alone. After months of wanting him like this, I now couldn’t stand him holding me, holding my heart, hostage. “So what if we’re both a little broken, Adele? We can fix it. We can.” His voice was hushed, such the opposite of mine. “It’s not the fact that we’re broken.” I shook my head as tears shook my voice. “It’s the fact that you let me pick up the pieces alone.” “So, what? You leave and then what? You come back at the end of the week?” My throat burned, fire racing up the column of my neck. I couldn’t stop the tear that fell from my eyes. “You’re not even taking me seriously right now and let me tell you, Nathan.” I swallowed, hoping to keep the nausea that threatened at bay. “I’m living with a hole inside of me.” Tears made me scrunch up my nose. “And I’ve been suffering for weeks. Alone. I don’t need silent Nathan or patronizing Nathan—I need the Nathan who loves me, who reaches for me the second he sees me. I need you. But you’re not here. And when you are here? I’m invisible to you.” “You’re not invisible, I’ve just been busy.” He shook his head and his grip loosened so that he was running his hands up and down my arms, trying to soothe me. “You’ve been busy for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I felt like a priority to you. I’m supposed to be the woman you’re in love with; we’re supposed to be building a life together. But we’re not. And I need you to let me go.” With that, I pushed away from him and walked down the stairs just as my phone buzzed in my pocket. Thank God for Leo’s timing, I thought as I opened the front door and walked out to his truck. “Adele!” Nathan roared from the door. My steps faltered for a second, because I heard the aching, the longing in his voice. It was instinct for me to want to go to him, so fighting it back was more difficult than I imagined it could be. But I couldn’t keep telling him I was a priority —he needed to see it for himself. I paused only a second before I ripped open Leo’s door and gave him a quick smile before I buckled up. “Whoa,” he said when he saw the bag. I felt Nathan moving toward the car and said, “Just drive, please.” My voice cracked as I pleaded with him to press the gas, to take me away from the one place that had felt like home in years. When we were halfway down the block, I asked, “Can I crash at your place for a while, until I figure out what I’m doing?” Leo stared at me, blinking. He was more stunned than Nathan had been right

away. “Uh, sure. But there’s not a lot of room at my house. You’d probably be more comfortable at Scarlet’s.” Oh, shit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Adele didn’t come home that night. And I knew because I sat on the couch while the skies were cold and dark, until the sun peeked past the heavy gray clouds at dawn. That was about when I cracked open the whiskey. I was drunk by noon. Passed out by five. And when I woke up on the couch the next day before the sun had begun to rise — the house dark considering I hadn’t turned on a single light the day before— she still wasn’t home. Even when she had walked out the door, I thought she was bluffing. Because never once in all the tension and silence and awkward encounters through the last two months did I ever think that she’d leave me. Adele left me. Adele left me, I chanted over and over in my head while I stared down at the empty crystal glass in my hand. “Adele left me,” I whispered, just to see if I could say the words out loud. Then I heaved the glass at the wall, feeling absolutely no satisfaction when the glass exploded. The framed picture on the wall right next to where I’d hurled the glass never moved an inch, which actually pissed me the hell off. It wasn’t enough destruction, just a small spot in the drywall where the glass had hit, and the millions of shards all over the floor. But those could be swept up. Forgotten the instant they were dumped into the trash bin. Like they’d never been there. Exactly the way Adele had described her presence in the house. “Fuck,” I said, dropping into a chair and gripping my head with my hands. There was this strange pinching around my heart, like someone was dragging the tip of a pin over the surface. It was causing enough pain that I wanted to rip out the offending organ, but not enough that I wasn’t able to function. What I hated most of all though? Adele was one hundred percent right. About everything. After I’d started at Harvard, she was the sacrifice. Time with her was the sacrifice.

When we fought, I looked at her as a child. As someone who didn’t know as well as I did what was right and what was wrong. The house that we lived in, together, bore no trace of her whatsoever. After she lost the baby, it was the worst of all. My grief had superseded hers. Instead of just asking her what was in her head, I answered the question for myself, and left her to deal with the consequences. Alone. Digging my fingers into my temples, I attempted to regulate my breathing. Each realization, each bullet point of my failure stabbed me a thousand times over. And no matter where I looked, all I saw was Diana. The pictures, the paint colors, the rugs under my feet. The dining room chairs, the couches and the duvet covers on the bed. They all carried Diana’s stamp. When I walked through the kitchen, I crunched over the broken glass. But I didn’t stop to clean it up. Maybe that was my nod to Adele’s silent displays of ownership over the house, or maybe I just didn’t want to lose my nerve. It took me three hours to fill six boxes. When I taped the last one shut, I was fully sober, just the throbbing headache at the base of my skull reminding me that I’d drank way too much whiskey. The walls of the upstairs hallway were empty. So were the walls leading up the staircase. The china set that had been given to us as a wedding present was carefully wrapped, leaving the two glass-paned cabinets on either side of the stove bare. The attic was emptier by two boxes of clothes and keepsakes from college. In fact, the only thing I’d kept was our wedding album, but I carefully folded that into the duvet from the master bed and tucked it into the shelves along the back wall of the attic. In the quiet, musty room, I felt the weight of what I’d done. Purging my house of the most obvious pieces of Diana would’ve slayed me just a short year ago. But once Adele had barreled into my life, I barely noticed them anymore. They didn’t stay out of some statement of grief. They stayed because I didn’t have the motivation to get rid of them. The pieces of my former life being plucked off walls wouldn’t erase my memories of Diana. But when Adele came back— when, not if— then I wanted her to see that I was listening. By the time the last box was settled into the backseat of my car, I knew what I had to do. So I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the contacts until I found the number I hadn’t called in five years. Nerves pitched my stomach in a slow roll while the phone rang in my ear. They probably wouldn’t answer. Just as I was waiting for the machine to click on, I heard someone pick up, and then hesitate to say anything. “Hello?” Diana’s mother said with obvious confusion in her voice.

I cleared my throat. “Hello, Elizabeth. It’s been a long time.” “It has. Is there a reason for this phone call?” Rolling my eyes felt natural, and I didn’t stifle it since she couldn’t see me. Her chilliness still shocked me, all these years later. But it’s all I’d ever felt from her. “I was just wondering if you and Robert were home. I have some boxes of Diana’s things that I thought you might like, and I’d be happy to bring them over.” Her silence was long and loaded with … something. Knowing her, she’d judge me for cleaning them out, but clutch them to her breast the instant I handed the boxes over. “Yes,” she said in a clipped tone. “We’re home. You remember where we live?” I slicked my tongue over the front of my teeth. “Yes, Elizabeth. I remember.” And then she hung up. If anything, her curt reception reminded me exactly why I was doing this. The drive to Hartford took me longer than I remembered, close to two hours with the slick roads of winter. But each mile felt like I was purging something necessary from my soul. Their house was beautiful, just like it always had been. One of the austere, brick front houses that bespoke old money and deep family roots that was so common in the northeast. The white of the snow in their front yard made the brick look blood red, and I stared at it from my car for about five minutes before getting out to unload the boxes onto the front porch. Robert didn’t come out to help me, which didn’t surprise me too much. He had never liked me, especially when Diana moved two hours away to be with me after college. But when she died? I became the scapegoat for every bad thing in their life. And I couldn’t exactly blame them. When I stacked the last box onto the porch, the door swung open. I smiled at Elizabeth, but the way her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her face pinched in a frown made it go away pretty quickly. “Come in,” she said quietly. “It’s cold out here.” I nodded. “Do you want me to take these in first?” She swallowed, turning to look over her shoulder, probably at her husband. “That’s fine.” They watched in silence while I took the boxes from the cold outside into their cold house. The heat was roaring, but every inch of that house was frosted over. When the last box was set down, Robert finally spoke. “What’s in there?” Determined to keep this as civil as possible, I extended my hand before answering him. “It’s been a long time, Robert.” After a beat, he gripped my outstretched hand with his own. “Thank you for driving out here.” “May I sit?” They looked at each other first, and Robert nodded his assent. They settled in the middle of the couch, and I took the high-backed wing chair opposite of them.

During the whole drive down to their house, I thought about what I’d say to them. Diana’s funeral was the last time we’d been in the same room. They always unleashed Elias on me when they needed something. “I know it’s not easy to have me here,” I started, smoothing my wind-chapped hands along the tops of my thighs. “And it’s not easy for me to be here. But I felt like we needed to make some peace with each other.” Elizabeth blinked rapidly and Robert watched me with a stoic expression. “I truly don’t blame you for hating me. She’d still be here with you if she’d never met me. But I did love her, and it took me a very long time to be able to learn how to respect that love and also be able to live my life.” “You’ve done that now?” she asked, her voice wavering slightly at the end. “I have. It took me almost four years to figure out how.” “What’s her name?” I blew out a breath, wishing this wasn’t so fucking hard. “Adele. And I love her very much.” They didn’t need to know what had happened in the last thirty-six hours, simply that she was the catalyst for all of this. “So you want to erase all traces of our daughter?” Robert asked, flint in his tone. “No. It’s not about erasing Diana. I’d never be able to remove her from my mind. But it is about making a home with someone that’s not dominated by my dead wife.” They both flinched when I said it, but I didn’t apologize. Because they needed to hear it. “You don’t have to grant me your forgiveness, but I would like to know that I can walk out of here and feel that we’ve settled whatever it is that needed settling between us. That I can walk out of here and be left in peace.” A tear fell down Elizabeth’s cheek, and I wondered if there was a number high enough to count how many of them she’d shed in the last five years. “No matter what you thought about me,” I continued when they didn’t speak, “I loved her very much. But I’m not going to entomb myself with her memory to make you happy. Anything of hers that I want to keep, I’ve kept. This is the rest of anything of hers with sentimental value, and you’re free to do with it what you want.” They still didn’t speak, so I stood and started walking to the door. “Wait,” Robert said. Bracing myself for whatever he might hurl at me, I turned to them. He was standing, but Elizabeth was still crying silently on the couch. “The fact that we can’t move on isn’t your fault, Nathan. And I’m … we’re sorry if it felt like we were trying to chain you to her grave.” With a look back at his wife, he smiled sadly. “Good luck.” He held his hand to me, and I shook it firmly, feeling like anvils had been unstrapped from my feet. “Thank you.” When I opened the door to leave, he’d gone back by Elizabeth to wrap her in his arms. I shut with it a quiet click and walked back to my car with a relieved smile on my face.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

One week later It had taken him a week to text me. If I psychoanalyzed that, I’d probably be more hurt than I was when I saw his name flash across my screen. Despite my determination to walk away from him, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t questioned my decision a hundred times. Regret and guilt battled in my head, long through the night. I wanted him to call—because as upset and sad as I was, I still wanted Nathan. Good God, did I want him. It wasn’t natural, being apart from him like this. Hell, I fucking ached to pick up my phone and tell him the stupid shit about my day, the ins and outs that only Nathan would get. But I had to be strong and wait him out. See if he missed me. So the words he sent me broke me a little. Nathan: Are you okay? Was I okay? No. I was not fucking okay. I was like an alcoholic in recovery, needing the next hit more than I needed my next breath. I wanted to go back home to him, spread my legs wide open and pull him into me. I wanted to fill myself up with him, because being empty was worse than anything I’d ever felt. I wanted to breathe fire into his throat, to damage him forever, so he couldn’t send me a simple text asking me if I was okay—I wanted him to burn right beside me, to breathe his fire into me, so that we scarred one another in a way that was permanent. Instead, I replied. I’m fine. It was the biggest fucking cop-out. Everyone knew what a woman meant when she said she was fine. ‘Fine’ was not fucking fine, for anyone. I thought that was the end of it. I thought I’d been granted a reprieve even though a darker part of me hoped he’d be relentless in calling me back to him. But one afternoon, as I’d tugged at the turtleneck Scarlet had given me to borrow, he’d sent another text.

Nathan: Come home. I miss you. I realized that my will was only marginally stronger than my feet, so I stayed firm—ass planted on the trundle bed in Scarlet’s room. I replied, Please, respect me enough to give me space. That’s all I need from you right now. Oh, it hurt. And the only reason I didn’t dissolve into tears and snot was because my entire upper body was slowly being tortured by cashmere. “How the hell do you handle this much cloth? I feel like I’m being suffocated,” I asked Scarlet as I stuck my fingers into the neck of the sweater and yanked it from my throat. “It’s like a fuzzy python.” Scarlet was used to my attitude, as evidenced by the way she gave me her trademark Scarlet look: one eyebrow raised and lips pursed. “You’re welcome to wear your own clothes.” I had to hand it to her. After the first twenty-four hours of staying at her place, whatever intimidation I’d held over her had disappeared. She no longer looked at me like I’d take her in one giant bite and now she gave it back as good as she got. I had to admire her, even if I still didn’t understand her fashion choices. “Yeah, well, I’d wear my own clothes, but I’m kind of in short supply.” In my haste to leave Nathan’s, I’d packed my weekender bag with three pairs of pants, eight pairs of underwear, enough socks to last me through an apocalypse, and three tops. Two of those tops hadn’t been church-appropriate, which meant they were definitely not Preacher’s house appropriate. And considering that Leo had shipped me off to Scarlet’s doorstep the day he picked me up, I’d been trying my best not to appear like the harlot everyone thought I was. “Don’t you have a key to his house? Go pick up your stuff.” Scarlet returned her attention to the textbook on her lap. I rolled my eyes. “Oh, sure because it’s just that easy.” My friendship with Scarlet was in its early stages, but we’d evolved to a lot of mutual respect. There was plenty of snark to go around, however. “He has an alarm that he changes the code to every week or so, so even if I could get in, the police would be up my ass a minute later.” “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Suck it up and wear my clothes or break into your boyfriend’s, or ex-boyfriend’s, house.” She shrugged and turned a few pages in her textbook as she sat properly straight and prim, cross-legged on her bed. “Why are you even studying if you’re not in school?” I couldn’t help the curl of my upper lip as I took her in, flipping through a book on some kind of biology, not looking the littlest bit bored out of her mind. ‘’Just because I’ve taken the year off doesn’t mean my brain should too.” She shivered and then rolled off the bed to close the window I’d cracked open during the night. An idea suddenly came to me. “Scarlet, you’re a mother fucking genius,” I said as I formulated how to get more

of my stuff from Nathan’s house. “I don’t fuck mothers, but I’ll accept the genius compliment.” She tilted her head. “What did I do?” I shrugged as I stood and ripped off the almost-Amish sweater. “It was mostly me, but you gave me an idea,” I said as I tossed the sweater at her. “Honestly, Scarlet. We need to go shopping sometime. Think, less old folk’s home and more I’m a twenty-something with a banging body.” “I’ll consider it,” Scarlet replied dryly. “Where are you going?” “To borrow Leo’s truck,” I said as I tugged on my coat. “I’m going to get my stuff.” The one good thing about wearing heartache on my face was that it made Leo all the more willing to do anything he could to make me happy, like letting me borrow the keys to his brand new baby. He’d all but thrown them at me when I’d showed up at his house, and soon I was pulling into Nathan’s driveway. Luckily, I knew Nathan’s schedule well enough to assume he’d be doing lesson planning at his office before coming home. I had about ten minutes of guaranteed safe time to get in and out and I’d use that time to get my most important shit: my clothes, some cosmetic stuff and my laptop. One of the things I’d picked up from living with Nathan was that he often slept with the bedroom window open just a crack. I’d gotten so used to it that I’d started doing it too and I knew that he often forgot to close it before leaving the house in the morning. I was betting that he hadn’t remembered today, a Monday morning, so when I walked around the house and saw the master bedroom window partially open, I did a little cheer. Navigating to the window proved a little trickier than I’d anticipated, but after climbing onto the pergola in the back, I was able to pull myself through the window without setting off any alarms. There was no way in hell I’d be transporting my shit back out the window, however, so I made my way downstairs and opened the front door, waiting for the alarm to beep. Surprisingly, nothing happened. I stared at the alarm box near the door and registered that it was disengaged. Nathan hadn’t set it. I wondered at that for a minute before realizing that Nathan hadn’t been the one setting it in recent months. I left after he did and came home before he did, so I was the one turning it on and off as I came and went. It gave me a little pang, to realize that he hadn’t gotten used to setting it himself right away. But I didn’t indulge in that pang for too long because my ten minutes was ticking down, fast. I set my laptop in the truck and returned to the house. Upstairs, I grabbed a couple of my toiletries from the bathroom, but my eyes landed on his bottle of cologne and I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the blue bottle and cradling it in my hands. I’d bought him this, on a whim, with the

precious few dollars I’d had for spending money one week. I uncapped it and brought it to my nose, inhaling the crisp, clean scent. Part of me wanted to pack it and bring it with me. Maybe spray it on my pillow. But then I remembered I wasn’t fucking twelve or a stalker, so I set it down and walked to the small backpack on the bed, stuffing my face wash and shampoo into it. I had just started packing a handful of shirts into the backpack when I heard a noise downstairs. I opened my mouth to utter, “Fuck,” but the word died in my mouth as footsteps ascended the stairs. I’d have to get the hell out of there, fast. Without even bothering to zip up my pack, I slung it over my shoulder and quickly tiptoed to the window. I had one leg through the opening when a figure stepped into the bedroom. “Shit,” I said, pressing a hand to my speeding heart. “What the fuck?” “I was going to say the same thing to you,” Elias replied, looking very much out of place in Nathan’s bedroom. “I could’ve fallen through the damn pergola,” I said, pulling my leg back into the house. “I didn’t push you—you’re the one climbing out a window.” “And you’re the one in a house that isn’t yours. I thought we talked once before about breaking and entering?” Elias held up his empty hands. “I’m still unarmed. I thought Nathan was home —I called from the front door. Which you left open, by the way.” “So you just waltz into open doors? Is that your thing?” I gestured for Elias to leave the bedroom because even though I wasn’t technically living in Nathan’s house at the moment, I felt protective of it and of him. “Like I said, I assumed Nathan was home and couldn’t hear me calling for him.” “Why are you even here?” I asked as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “Nathan did something that pissed me off, and I need to have a little chat with him about it.” “Huh.” I crossed my arms and took a subtle step back. Elias’ size and beardedgodness was making me wish Nathan actually was here, just because Elias was so very intimidating. “Well, Nathan’s not home, so you should probably come back when he is.” I nodded at the front door. “And I don’t feel comfortable having you in the house when he isn’t here.” Elias narrowed his eyes, and they were so dark that, internally, I shriveled. “Weren’t you just climbing out of his window?” he asked. “Why was that?” The last thing Elias needed to know was the status of me and Nathan and the last thing I needed to do was tell him. “I was testing,” I said on a whim. “Testing what?” “How long it’d take me to leave the house.” I tucked hair behind my ears, my tell when I was lying. “If there was a fire or something.” “Right.” Elias tucked his hands in his pockets, his arms all rippley and scary

strong looking. “I guess we’ll just both wait here for Nathan then.” “Uh.” I looked at Leo’s truck and then the front door. “I have errands to run actually. So I’ll leave you here—outside,” I said pointedly. “To wait for Nathan.” My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I pulled it out. Leo had sent me a text. Leo: How’s my baby? As I scrunched up my eyebrows, another text from him came in. Leo: And I’m asking about the truck—not about you. :winky face: Just wanna make sure you haven’t gone all Taylor Swift BLANK SPACE on my truck. Remember, you’re pissed at Nathan. Not my baby. A welcome smile spread my lips for a second and I nearly replied until I realized Elias was still standing in front of me. “Are you staying?” Elias looked at the house and sighed before shaking his head. “No, I’ll come back.” The silence between us stretched to a point where I did everything but look at him. “Okay … so … bye.” I waved a little and turned to the truck. “Let’s go for a drink.” “Wha—what?” I turned around and stared at him, dumbfounded. “A drink. I think there’s a story here. I could tell you more about Nathan than you could possibly guess. And you could tell me why you’re in such a hurry to leave his house before he comes home.” The only part of that which tempted me was learning more about Nathan, but considering the source I assumed it would be biased, and information I wouldn’t ultimately need. I shook my head. “I’m fine, really.” “Here.” He reached a hand forward—a very large hand—and took my phone from me. In the span of three seconds, he’d returned my phone. “I texted myself from your number. If you decide you ever need that drink, just call me.” “I probably won’t,” I said, tucking my phone back into my pocket and avoiding looking into his eyes. “I’m okay.” “If you change your mind, you have my number.” It unsettled me, but not in an unwelcome way. I didn’t need attention from another man. In fact, it was the absolute last thing I needed right now. But I’d be a fucking liar if I said that getting that attention, unsolicited, didn’t give me a little warmth in the places I was the coldest. I gave him a smile I didn’t feel and climbed into Leo’s truck, pulling down the road and away from Nathan’s home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dozens of times every day, I ran my thumb over Adele’s last text. It was as if she thought of the most gut-wrenching way she could have possibly punished me, by asking me to leave her alone. And if I didn’t give her the space she wanted? It meant I didn’t respect her. Fucking hell. I rolled over in bed, cursing my predicament. Again. Just like I did every morning that I woke up for the last two weeks. She was still gone. I was still miserable. Most nights, I barely cobbled together four hours of sleep. And I don’t know what I’d expected, that she’d somehow sense the gesture that I’d made for her and throw herself into my arms? Ridiculous. This entire situation was turning me into a rampant optimist with fairy tale level delusions of reality. I groaned, smothering the sound into my pillow. I’d covered said pillow with a new sheet set of basic white and bought a passable blanket to tide me over until Adele came back and we could pick something out together. Knowing her, she’d tend towards clean lines and monochromatic color schemes. The saddest part of that was that I wasn’t even sure. Standing out of bed, I stretched and made my way into the bathroom. And just like I did every morning, I actively ignored my morning wood. Every time I showered, I had to fight the urge to jerk myself off roughly to thoughts of Adele, but it didn’t feel right. She was asking for respect, and she was asking for space. This was one level of torture that I could inflict upon myself to keep me on a razor edge until she came back to me. So I brushed my teeth and leaned over the sink to splash freezing cold water on my face. After I wiped a towel over my face, I froze. Her two bottles of face shit were gone. I went to the closet and yanked the door open, frantically swiping through hangers. Clothes were missing too. “Damn it,” I roared into the empty room. She’d been here.

She had been here. I didn’t know when, or how long ago she’d walked through the house. Adele had been here. She’d purposely come when I was gone in order to pluck herself more fully out of my life. I gripped the sides of my head when it felt like it was going to explode off my neck. Unthinking, I reached down and picked up the lamp on the nightstand next to my side of the bed and heaved it at the wall. The spectacular shattering of the lamp base all over the room wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t like I could keep breaking shit every time I was pissed off. If I did that? My house wouldn’t be standing by the end of the day. Thank holy fucking hell it was Saturday and I didn’t have to work. I’d rip the first student who pushed me a brand new asshole and probably lose my job. I was jogging down the stairs when I heard a knock at the door. I stopped, gripping the banister and breathing hard, fire still racing through my veins. There was another knock, one that was harder and more insistent. Like a man was pounding on the door with his fist. My shoulders drooped while I walked down the rest of the stairs and yanked the door open. “No,” I said instantly and went to slam the door in Elias’ stupid fucking face. But his hand shot out and stopped it from closing. I backed up when he pushed into the house and I pointed a finger at him. “You have no fucking reason to be here. Your parents and I had an agreement.” His dark eyes flared and his whole massive body vibrated with rage. “Yeah, about that. Where the fuck do you get off showing up at my parents’ house?” “I was making peace with them, Elias.” I spread my arms out. “Do you think it wasn’t hard for me to call them, to drive two fucking hours and know that I am undoubtedly the last person they want to lay eyes on? It wasn’t, I promise.” “Good.” If I believed in auras, Elias’ would be a giant black cloud spreading its sickly fingers around every corner of the room. His eyes stabbed into me and I could practically feel the force of his malevolence push me backwards. “What is your problem?” I shook my head, wishing very much we were having this discussion when I was wearing more than cotton sleep pants. “I was there two weeks ago, and you decide to show up now?” He shrugged, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “Had business in Vegas. Not that it’s any of your damn business.” I laughed incredulously. “Says the man who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to stalk my house.” “You let me in, asshole.” When I lifted an eyebrow, he had the audacity to laugh. I was tired. So fucking tired. “Elias.” My voice was weary and I felt like I couldn’t stand anymore. I sank into the couch behind me. “What do you want? Do you want me to suffer for the rest of my life? Would that make you happy?”

“Yes.” The way he said it, so darkly, actually gave me a brief moment of unease. “She’s gone,” I said carefully. His eyes narrowed on me and I took a deep breath. “I went to your parents’ house because it was past due. I owed them enough to bring them the rest of her things and make peace. And we did that. Why can’t you?” Elias straightened from the wall, his face blanketed in a mask that was so icy that it should have scared the shit out of me. “Saw Adele last week.” I shot off the couch and got right up in his smug fucking face. “What do you mean, you saw her?” “Stopped by. The door was cracked open, and when I went up the stairs, she was about to climb out the damn window.” My heart clenched in my chest, and it took everything in me not to grab him by the shirt and shake him. “When was this?” His face lit in surprise. “Last Friday. Wow, Easton, are you telling me you haven’t seen her?” He bent over and started laughing. “Oh God, this is too good. She was acting squirrelly, but I didn’t actually think you’d managed to fuck it up with her.” I paced away from him, every inch of my body shaking from the most intense rush of violent rage I’d ever felt in my life. A lot of it was Elias, but I couldn’t deny that some of it was at myself. She’d gotten her things a week ago, and I didn’t notice until today. Behind me, Elias took a couple steps away from where he’d been standing. I didn’t dare to turn to look at him for fear that I’d rip his throat out with my teeth. “Fuck, Nathan,” he hummed. “She looked so fucking hot standing there in the window. Perfect fucking tits heaving out of her shirt when I asked her to go get a drink.” I flew out at him, flames engulfing my skin. I caught him in the stomach with my shoulder and he grunted when his back hit the wall. His fist pummeled into my side over and over, and I jerked my head up, hitting him on the chin with my skull. We shoved away from each other and Elias roared, charging at me. I swung my fist, catching him on the side of his face right before he brought his knee up into my balls. Toppling over the coffee table, neither of us yielded. Glass broke somewhere and I felt blood trickling out of my nose when he crunched his fist into it. Visions of him and Adele flicked through my head, and I punched him over and over right above his kidneys, his curses of pain like crack to my ears. Elias boxed the side of my head and my ears started ringing. I rolled onto my back on the floor and he did the same. The only sound in the room was our heavy breathing. Wiping the back of my hand under my nose, it came away wet with blood. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I asked without looking at him. “Because my sister was my best friend in the entire world.” He coughed and

then hissed in a breath. I hoped I broke his damn ribs. “And I still don’t know how to live in a world that she’s not part of.” My eyes fell closed. Elias had never given me such an emotionally naked answer. “I can’t fix that, Elias. You’ve got to know that trying to make my life miserable isn’t going to help.” Finally, I turned my head to the side to look at him. “And she’d hate that you were doing it.” Elias pounded his fist on the ground next to him. “You think I don’t know that? Of course I know she’d hate it. But knowing you were happy with someone else fucking pissed me off. I don’t know how to let that go either.” With a wince, I sat up. “That’s not going to be my problem anymore, Elias. Whatever issues Adele and I have are none of your business. And if you show up at my house again, I’m calling the cops.” When I glanced at him over my shoulder, he was watching me intently. “I mean it, Elias. I’m done being your whipping boy. I’ve made peace with your parents, and you seem to be the only person who refuses to accept that life has to go on without Diana. Don’t come here again.” I stood and offered him a hand up off the ground. No surprise, he didn’t take it. And when he limped out the front door, he never gave me a backward glance. It was probably a good thing, since I could still barely stomach the thought that he was here when Adele snuck in to get her stuff. Talked to her. Asked her out for a fucking drink. If I believed him, at least. I popped two Advil before going into the bathroom to clean up, my mind rolling over the fact that in her absence from my life, Adele might actually meet another man. When the blood was cleaned from my face, I had to come to the realization that unless I started showing her exactly how much I loved her and how much we needed each other, I probably didn’t deserve her. Meeting my eyes in the mirror that morning, it was the first time in over two weeks that I didn’t hate the person staring back at me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Scarlet’s family was actually Leave it to Beaver. Her mom, Mrs. Jennings, wore pearls around the house. Her dad always looked happy. And Scarlet was their pride and joy, having graduated college already and preparing for vet school in a year. During dinner, they actually had a table set, candles lit, and passed around food in baskets and bowls and platters like you see on television. They smiled and chatted about their days and weekend plans and they did this shit every single day, not just on special occasions. They didn’t drink or make snarky remarks or even throw so much as an eye roll at one another. And if all of that hadn’t rocked my gravity, the fact that they were nice to me certainly did. There I was, some blonde girl with a past reputation as a tramp, sitting at dinner with the preacher, his wife, and their wicked accomplished daughter and not once did they make me feel like the outsider I absolutely was. Out of respect for them, I wore clothes I wouldn’t usually wear, stuff that came up to my neck—but not turtleneck torture sweaters. I kept my swearing to when I was alone, which was a feat for me, because I swore like a fucking sailor. That was the other weird thing: they didn’t say any curse words. Not even hell. Not freaking. Not even F. No, her mom was the only one who said anything to emphasize her frustration and it was usually things that made me snort. Like when Mrs. Jennings pulled a roast chicken out of the oven and accidentally burned her hand. She made a quick “Ah!” noise from the pain and then mumbled, “Jiminy Cricket!” When she caught me watching from just beyond the doorway she popped her finger in her mouth and apologized. “Oh, I’m sorry dear. Forgive me.” “Forgive you for blurting out the name of a Disney character?” She blushed a little and I pushed off the doorway. “Need any help?” I asked her. It’d been a few weeks now at casa de Jennings and I was starting to feel like I was no longer a guest, but an unexpected roommate. The fact that the Jennings treated me like I was Scarlet’s friend and not their daughter’s boyfriend’s degenerate best friend proved that they weren’t the snooty assholes I had unkindly expected them to be. “If you want to stir the butter and sour cream into those potatoes, that would be swell.”

Swell. Swear to God, it was like I was living in a fifties sitcom. “Sure,” I said, grabbing the butter and sour cream she had already pulled out and set on the counter. “Do I just dump it in here?” We worked in silence, with me mashing the potatoes and her making a gravy from the juice in the pan. I didn’t spend a lot of time one-on-one with Scarlet’s mom, mostly because I think Scarlet was trying to shield her from me and my mouth. Not that I blamed her. But since Scarlet was at Leo’s, I was bored out of my mind. “Will you be staying with us for Christmas?” Mrs. Jennings asked. Christmas. Just a couple weeks away. Winter break had gone achingly slow, but somehow the fact that the holidays were looming had completely slipped my mind. “Uh…” “You’re more than welcome to,” she said, giving me a genuine smile. “You can stay as long as you need.” Yeah, this was definitely not like my family. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your hospitality.” And I did. I wasn’t sure where I would have gone after leaving Nathan’s, and I’d idly started looking at apartments for rent near campus. “I’m sure your boyfriend will come around.” Mrs. J didn’t really know what was going on, except that I’d been living with my boyfriend before Leo dropped me on her doorstep. She probably thought she was saving my soul from pre-marital sex. “Yeah, I’m sure he will,” I agreed with a conviction I didn’t feel. The truth was, Nathan hadn’t texted me again. Sure, I’d told him to respect me and give me some space, so I should have been happy when he’d listened to me. He hadn’t called or texted once. It’d been weeks without him by my side and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope he missed me so much it hurt. Because, fuck. It hurt me. A whole helluva lot. Sleeping in Scarlet’s bed made me feel like I was a child again, but having a long term sleepover. Watching Leo and Scarlet exchange R-rated looks didn’t exactly help the loneliness either. The longing for Nathan was so strong, it was like I was missing an essential part of myself. And all through dinner, I’d tried to smile, to act like everything was just peachy. But watching their family dynamic only made that ache more vibrant. Nathan had been my family. We may not have been traditional and we may not have had consistent routine with our overlapping schedules, but we’d been family. I hadn’t had family in so long. Every time Mr. Jennings asked me a question about my studies or Mrs. Jennings had complimented me for helping her prepare the meal, I’d smiled through the pain. Because being with someone else’s family just made the yearning for yours all that more poignant. After dinner, I’d pulled Scarlet away from dinner. “Dude. What’s wrong with your family?” She stared at me a moment. “What do you even mean?” I tilted my head in the direction of the kitchen and tugged at the neckline of my

sweater. “They’re so … nice. And they give a shit about you. No one said ‘fuck’ and no one cried.” “Ah.” Scarlet nodded slowly, her eyes wide. “Because that’s normal.” “Normal is fucking weird.” I tugged harder on my sweater. “Can we go to Leo’s?” The first words out of Leo’s mouth were, “Nathan’s been texting me.” “What?” I sank into the giant bean bag chair in Leo’s basement. “Why?” Leo shrugged and turned on the stereo across the room. He did this whenever I came over; it was how he kept his mom from overhearing our conversations. He dropped into the recliner opposite of the bean bag chair and Scarlet sat on the couch beside me. “He asked how you were.” I contemplated that for a minute. “What else?” “He asked where you were.” “Did you tell him? Because I’m not sure Scarlet’s parents would be down with that.” Scarlet shook her head. “You’re not their daughter—you can do what you want.” I tilted my head at her. “Let me clarify. I’ve gone three weeks, almost four, without sex. When I see Nathan again, it’s going to be very difficult for me to keep my hands off of him. Which means your mom and dad would get an eyeful of all the things the Bible didn’t teach them about sex.” “Jesus, Adele,” Leo said. “Sorry,” I said to Scarlet. Turning back to Leo, I said, “But I mean it—I don’t want Nathan coming to her house.” “I didn’t tell him where you were. Just that you were okay.” I nodded and chewed on my lip. “What else?” “He asked if he and I could talk sometime.” I stilled. “And what did you say?” “I haven’t replied yet.” Leo looked at Scarlet and then at me. “What do you want me to say?” “Nothing. I want you to say nothing. Ignore his texts for the time being.” He sighed and dropped his head back on the recliner. “What the fuck happened between you two, Adele?” Even after Leo had picked me up weeks earlier, I hadn’t told him what had happened. But considering that he was my best friend, I felt like he deserved to know. “Let me just give you guys some privacy,” Scarlet said, running her hand over Leo’s hair as she left the room. I was grateful for it, because despite our burgeoning friendship, I wasn’t ready to blow her mind with all the shit I had to say. “Tell me,” Leo said. “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Over the summer, Nathan got really busy with his new job—prepping for new students in the fall—and as a result, he was hardly ever

around. It didn’t bother me at first, because you know me,” I shrugged. “I’m kind of a lone wolf. But then when fall began and we were both busy—with him being busier than me—I started to feel lonelier. Nothing like living with someone but seeing them less than you did before you lived together.” My laugh was bitter. “And…” I pushed my hair away from my face and took a deep breath. I couldn’t look at Leo’s face as I said my next part. “And in October, I started getting sick and long story short—I found out I was pregnant.” “Fuck.” I nodded and pointed at Leo. “I said that word, along with a few more colorful ones when I found out. And, Jesus. I wasn’t ready to be a mom, Leo. But Nathan was so fucking excited, he was practically shitting rainbows. So I tried to put on a brave and excited face, but I mean, how could I? Our relationship was a baby itself. And we were going to bring an actual human baby into that?” I waited a second, playing with a loose thread on the sleeve of my sweater. “But you got drunk the night before you left Nathan’s. Is that why he got pissed at you?” “Yes, but not for the reason you’re thinking.” Would it ever get easier? Telling someone what happened—or rather, what didn’t happen? I didn’t think it would. I summoned all of my courage, of which I seemed to be in short supply. “I lost the baby six weeks ago.” It felt like heartburn. I blinked quickly, hoping the tears that formed in the corners of my eyes would take a fucking hint and evaporate. “And before that,” I swallowed. “Nathan promised to take care of me. He even seemed to make a concerted effort to be around more—to come home earlier than usual. He checked on me throughout the day. He was so very present that when I miscarried, his ensuing distance was fucking painful.” Leo joined me on the bean bag, but didn’t put an arm around me. He knew me well, so well that it made me want to start crying all over again. I didn’t need Leo to touch me to help me, I just needed him there. Like I’d needed Nathan. “And he started treating me like a child. Talking to me like I couldn’t possibly have an adult conversation with him. Then he came home later and later and when he was home, he didn’t talk to me. It wasn’t until a week before I left his house that I got the impression that he was pissed at me, about what happened. And I can’t,” I shook my head, glanced at Leo, “I can’t bear guilt from him when I’m already drowning in it myself.” “Did they say why you miscarried?” I shook my head, staring again at the loose thread by my cuff. “No. Miscarriage isn’t uncommon. They said it could have been due to genetics. Who knows? But I was alone through all of it. I wanted the things he’d promised me, but I came to realize that those things were promised because of the baby, and not because of just me.” I let out a breath. “So, anyway. I went out with you, came home shitfaced and we got into it. And he was so cold, Leo.” My hands shook. “And silent. You know how my dad is?”

Leo nodded. “Quiet, but disapproving.” “Yes. And that’s how Nathan was. The next morning, I realized I needed a break. A lot happened between he and I, and most of it wasn’t shit that you take lightly. And, stupidly, I hoped the distance would make him realize how much he needed me. Because I need him. So much. It’s like there’s a constant weight on my chest when he’s not around. I can’t stop missing him, and time has not made it any fucking easier.” “And you don’t want me to text him back?” “No.” I let out a deep breath. “I don’t think we’re ready to talk this through. I don’t think I could bear it if he talked to me as he did before. If I’m not ready to talk to him, I don’t want you to on my behalf.” “Okay,” Leo promised, rubbing my shoulder. “I won’t reply to his text.” He stood up and stretched. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a fucking drink after all of that.” “Yeah. Let’s drink,” I said, but my heart wasn’t really in it. “Let’s get your girlfriend totally blitzed. It’s fun to watch her cut loose.” When Leo left to get her, my phone chimed, an incoming text message. It was stupid, childish even, to hope it was Nathan. But it wasn’t. The text was from an unknown number, but because of the text that preceded it, I knew who it was from. Ready for that drink yet? Elias.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

There were few things sadder than finding yourself at the office on the day after Christmas. Especially when you were the only person in the entire building. But it was worlds better than sitting at my quiet dark house. If I’d done that, I probably would have just hooked up an IV of alcohol into my bloodstream. Leo had stopped responding to my texts about eight days ago, which probably meant Adele put the kibosh on the small nuggets of information that he’d graciously tossed my way. But for a few days, it had been enough. I knew she was safe. I knew that someone was keeping tabs on her. Only for a few days though. After a week of nothing new, I was starting to feel itchy again. Because I knew that it wasn’t enough. Sitting at the house felt like too much inaction, so even though I had no clear reason to be at the office given that the semester was finished, I couldn’t help myself. I was just starting to organize folders on my laptop when there was a soft tap on my door. “Come in,” I called, praying it wasn’t a serial killer. Max’s fuzzy white hair cleared the door first and I grinned. The muscles of my mouth felt uncomfortable holding the shape, probably from weeks of disuse. “What the hell are you doing here, Nathan?” I stood and clasped hands with him. The skin of his fingers was cold from being out in the bitter air. “Merry Christmas, old man.” He laughed and took a seat in the chair on the other side of my desk. “To you too.” Then he lifted his eyebrows at me. “Nothing better for you to do at home?” “You’re one to talk.” “Oh, I have a good reason. Realized this morning that I left my wife’s Christmas present in one of my desk drawers.” I rocked back in my desk chair, folding my hands over my stomach. “Shouldn’t you have given it to her yesterday?” The way he laughed only served a brutal reminder that I had no one to buy Christmas presents for this year. Just like it had been before Adele.

“We’re celebrating tonight since both of my daughters were with their in-laws yesterday.” “Ah. Makes sense.” We lapsed into silence, and for the first time since I’d met Max, it felt painful and uncomfortable. Like someone had shrink-wrapped my skin to the point that I couldn’t move. “What’s going on, Nathan?” Max asked quietly, his kindness and concern feeling heavy and warm after weeks of solitude. But I still couldn’t tell him the whole truth. I’d probably never be able to. “Adele left me. Before Thanksgiving.” He whistled. “Sorry to hear that. How long was it after the night I was there?” “The next day, actually.” “Shit. I’m so sorry, Nathan. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to give break-up advice to anyone who wasn’t my daughters. And then it usually ran somewhere along the veins of, ‘do you want me to have him murdered?’” I gave him a look. “No, I do not want Adele murdered.” “Good.” “I just want her back,” I admitted quietly. “But she wants space. And if I respect her, then that’s what I’ll give her.” “That’s what she said?” I nodded. He lifted his eyebrows. “That’s a tough spot to be in.” “It is.” “The fight,” he started cautiously. “Was it your fault?” That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Because the truth was that her leaving me was the last domino to fall in a long and slow-moving decline that had lasted months. But I looked at him all the same and gave the most honest answer that I could. “Yes. It was my fault. She’s not perfect, of course. No one is. But if I’d reacted differently, treated her the way I should have, then she wouldn’t have left. And knowing that is what makes it hard to push, when she’s asking me to stay away.” Processing that, Max blinked away and stared at the bookshelf up against the far wall of my office. The rows and spines of books that were the foundation of both of our careers. “Am I allowed to go ‘English Professor’ in my advice to you?” I smiled. “Of course.” “’In love there are two things: bodies and words.’” He pointed a finger. “Bonus points if you can correctly attribute it.” “Joyce Carol Oates. You could have at least attempted to make it challenging.” “Show off.” We both laughed, and when we stopped, he pinned me with a serious look. “You get what I’m saying though, right?” I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a slow breath. “It’s not that simple, Max.”

“Bullshit.” “It’s not.” “Yes it is. Do you love her?” “Of course I do.” He leaned forward in the chair and braced his hands on the wooden arms. “You’ve given her space. You let her breathe. But unless you show her, with your words and with your actions and with your body that you love her, how will she ever believe it? Talk to her. And don’t wait too long to do it.” Two hours later, I raised my hand to knock as politely as I could manage on the imposing black door. I heard heavy footsteps and stood back. The look on Leo’s face was almost comical. Almost. If I wasn’t so desperate to see Adele and knowing that this might completely backfire on me. “What the fuck are you doing at my house?” “Well, you’re not answering my texts anymore.” His eyebrows lifted and he gaped at me. “So … you turn into a fucking stalker and show up at my house on the day after Christmas?” I was about to reply when his face got serious. His voice came out low and threatening. “How did you get my address, psycho?” “I’m not a psycho, Leo. And I’m not a stalker. My dad has used the same password his entire life. It wasn’t hard to check your student file at Northern.” Okay. That sounded very stalker-ish. Leo just shook his head and looked me over. “You look like hell. A beard does not suit you.” I ran a hand over my jaw. “I seem to lack the motivation to shave lately. Please, Leo. Can you just tell me where she’s staying?” “Fuck. No.” “I’d wager a guess that she misses me just as much as I miss her.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame. So much for being invited in out of the cold. “I won’t deny that. But besides the fact that she would castrate me for telling you where she’s staying, why the hell would I help you? You deserted her at a time when she could not have needed you more.” Then he straightened to his full height and drilled a hard finger into my chest. “She needed you. Not me, not anyone else. The only person she needed after what she went through was you, dickhead. And you weren’t there.” Every harshly spoken word out of his mouth was a perfectly placed bullet. By the time he was done, I felt like I would bleed out from injuries to my heart and my head and my gut. Each sharp tip drew the maximum amount of blood from me, just like he’d intended it. “You’re right.” That stunned him. My admission of guilt. Leo blinked a few times and then narrowed his eyes at me. “I am?”

“All I’ve had is time the last month, Leo. I can only work so many hours in the day to distract myself from the fact that when she walked out that door, she ripped my goddamn heart out and hasn’t returned it yet. Have you ever tried to live without your heart?” My voice cracked and I thumped a hand over my chest. “You can’t. You can’t live without it. She’s got it. So yes, I know how horribly I fucked up. But I can’t atone for my sins when I’m away from her. I just need one chance to talk to her.” Leo shook his head, staring over my shoulder. “You’re both fucking psychos when it comes to each other.” “Please, Leo.” He groaned, tilting his chin up. “How am I supposed to say no to this, God? Can you hear me? All I wanted was a peaceful Christmas break where I could screw my girlfriend every day if I wanted to. And this is what I get. Crazy ass, homelesslooking, psycho professor showing up on my doorstep.” “Is that a yes?” I asked flatly. “So help me,” he said, leveling a finger at me again, “if she kills me because I’m telling you this, then you better find some magic juju shit to bring me back to life.” “Anything,” I replied and abso-fucking-lutely meant it. “Fine. New Year’s Eve. We’re going to that bar you two met at.” Then he held up his hands. “Which I thought was a fucking terrible idea, but I think she’s mildly sadomasochistic and wants to punish herself. “ “New Year’s Eve? That’s days from now.” “Do you want me to beat the shit out of you on my front porch?” he asked in a deadly voice. “You’re not my professor any more either. And one favor is all you get from me right now after what you did to my best friend.” I stepped back. “Okay. Sorry. I just … I’m really desperate to see her.” “We’re getting there at nine.” He started to shut the door. “Thank you, Leo.” I hoped he could tell how much I meant that. I didn’t care if I owed him the world’s biggest favor after this. But he ignored me. Muttering something about crazy people as he shut the door in my face. But I didn’t care. I had five agonizing days to figure out exactly what I was going to say to her.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The room smelled the same, even looked the same. I swore, if I closed my eyes I could visualize the exact moment Nathan and I had bumped into one another in this spot, more than a year ago. But I wasn’t entertaining anything that caused me to slip further into my shell. Leaving Nathan wasn’t getting one fucking iota easier. If anything, I was finding it easier to numb myself to everything around me, lest I feel too deeply again. When I first broached the idea of spending our New Year’s Eve at the bar, Leo had raised an eyebrow. “Really? Isn’t that where you first met … him?” he’d asked. “You mean Nathan, right? He’s not Voldemort. You can say his name.” I’d fiddled with my phone as I thought up an explanation. “Yeah, yeah, Nathan. Yes. We bumped into each other there and then took off. So what? It’s the best place for beers on New Year’s.” Leo hadn’t seemed convinced, but I’d talked him into it with the promise of being his designated driver, allowing him and Scarlet a chance to let me fully embrace my sober, third-wheel status. Now, thirty minutes into the New Year celebration, I was ready to either take a shot or go back to Scarlet’s house and put on the Golden Girls, such had become my existence in the weeks since I left Nathan’s. I thought of him all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. What was he doing? Had he moved on? Set his eyes on another student? Shaking my head, I told myself to knock it the fuck off. I knew I was the first student Nathan had ever messed around with, and he had done it only because he hadn’t known that I was his student. As tempting as Nathan was, he wasn’t someone who jumped into bed with the first woman that spread their legs for him. But I was haunted by thoughts of him. With nothing to fill my days except for reading all the books I’d missed out on in the last year, I couldn’t stop the barrage of Nathan images. I imagined him in his study, late at night, his glasses sliding down the line of his nose as he pored over his notes. His dark hair mussed, his shirt undone just the first two buttons. Damn it, I wanted nothing more than to just watch him, to take him in quietly, to pretend that we were okay.

“You okay?” Leo asked and I looked at him with confusion until he gestured to the hand I held against my chest. I looked like I was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance or something, so I dropped it, letting the ache go un-soothed. “I’m good.” I picked up my Coke and sipped it noisily as I scanned over the sheer number of people packed tightly in the room. “The music blows, though.” “Go request a song.” Leo angled his head back to the DJ, who looked about as excited as I felt. “Nah.” I spun my straw around the cup. “It’s not like I’m up for dancing anyway.” Scarlet, who was four girly drinks in, leaned over sloppily, bumping into me. “We could dance?” “Oh, no, Twinkletoes. I remember the last time we attempted it. I don’t think my toenails have forgiven me for the atrocities you committed against them.” Scarlet merely blinked at me, like I’d just spoken another language. She was probably the smartest person I knew—smarter than Nathan, even—but when she drank, her brain reverted to that of a typical high schooler’s. I figured it was caused by the lack of partying she’d done until she met Leo. “Never mind,” I said with a wave. “Just drink some more.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you drinking?” “Because I’m driving your drunk ass.” I sighed and set my Coke down before settling more fully in the wooden bar stool. My phone lit up on the bar counter and I picked it up. For the second time in as many weeks, Elias was texting me. Elias: I’m in town for another couple weeks. I’m a patient guy, so I’ll wait for you to respond to my invite for a drink. Jeez, he was a pushy bastard. After the last time he texted me, I ignored it. But I didn’t delete it entirely. I felt like I was betraying Nathan just with Elias having my number. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I didn’t want to drink with Elias. I wanted to drink with, kiss, fuck, love Nathan. But I needed to get Elias off my back, so I shot him a quick text. Maybe next week. I’ve been busy. He didn’t reply to that one and as I scrolled through my other texts, I came across the last one Nathan had sent me. Nathan: Come home. I miss you. I couldn’t help it; I traced the letters like I could reach through the phone and touch him. I wanted that, more than anything. Just to feel his skin under my fingertips, his lips on mine. The mere thought made my legs tremble and I was thankful I wasn’t standing. Leo came back from his spot at the other end of the bar, the only place the

bartenders seemed to be taking drink orders and handed me another Coke. “Thanks, Adele.” He wrapped an arm around Scarlet, whose eyes were closed as she shimmied in her seat to the beat of some early two-thousands boy band song. “Scarlet and I usually take turns being designated drivers for the other, so it’s nice that we both can get hammered tonight.” I reached forward and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Anything to get you laid, buddy.” He smiled, the very smile that had caused many a woman to drop her panties for him. “I don’t need to get her hammered to have sex with her.” My lip curled in disgust. “Listen. I’m happy you’re fucking like rabbits, but let’s just stop with the sex talk with,” I motioned a hand to Scarlet, “little miss Church Girl, okay?” Leo scowled. “Damn, maybe you should drink a little tonight. You’re sour.” “I’m drinking flat Coke and watching my best friend grind all over his girlfriend on a holiday that usually ends with two lovers kissing, and considering the fact that I’m currently lover-less, I’ve got a right to be a tiny bit sour.” “There’s a lot of dudes here tonight—take your pick. I bet you could take any one of them home.” Again, I curled my lip in disgust. “For one, my home is currently a trundle bed in the house of a preacher. And two, I don’t want some random hookup.” “What about him?” Leo asked, ignoring me completely as he directed my attention across the bar to some guy with a mohawk that scraped the ceiling. “He’d use up all my hair product.” “Him?” Leo asked, pointing to a guy at the other end of the bar, who was watching every woman walk by him, expecting one of them to fall at his feet because he shouldn’t have to try—especially not with the four-thousand dollar watch he was wearing. “Too smarmy. And old.” “You like older dudes.” I held up a finger. “I like one older dude.” “Okay, picky. Him?” I followed Leo’s hand to a guy hanging back from the crowd, against the wall. Under his beret, his hair was in almost-dreads, with beads hanging off the ends. He wore a black velvet vest over a concert tee and drank what appeared to be an Old Fashioned. “He’d fuck me, write poetry about me, and then move onto his next muse.” “Well, at least he’d fuck you.” I rolled my eyes at Leo. “And he’d probably steal my clothes.” “You’re probably right.” Leo tipped his beer back and then made a noise in his throat as he brought the beer back down. “What about him?” I looked again at the object of Leo’s attention, taking in the muscular guy who was showing off his skills by doing arm curls with a coed. His hair was buzzed close to his scalp and his muscles looked like they’d tear his skin each time he flexed. “I’m starting to think the last however-many years of friendship between us is

nothing.” “What?” “That guy?” I hooked a thumb at Hercules. “You think my greatest desire is to have my partner bench press me?” Leo shrugged, leaning over to watch the guy as he curled the girl right up to his chest. “It is pretty impressive.” “For five minutes, and then what? He’d probably get so distracted while having sex that he’d carry me around the house with one hand, just to prove he could.” “True.” Leo laughed but then his eyes changed slightly, and I turned my body to see who he’d set his targets on then. But instead of some lonely poet, or oily businessman, I saw him. The breath in my chest held still and my hands went numb. Nathan. His eyes searched the crowd for a minute before he found me. His mouth wasn’t smiling, his eyes were firm, and he looked determined. Holy fuck, determined Nathan was hot. I turned back around to Leo, who clearly saw Nathan too. But his expression wasn’t of surprise and now that the feeling was coming back into my limbs, I realized Nathan hadn’t looked surprised to see me either. “Leo,” I began, “what did you do?” Leo wore guilt all over his face. “Hey. He came to my house.” Holy shit. “When?” I looked over my shoulder, saw Nathan standing just inside the door. He wasn’t moving one way other another, but his gaze was firm, on me. Sweet Jesus. Seeing him like this brought with it a flurry of emotions—from longing to love to sadness and then to lust. I swore I felt my pulse beat hard between my legs. I looked back at Leo. “And you told him we’d be here?” Leo finished his beer. Slowly, because he was an ass. “Don’t be pissed, okay? I’m sick of seeing you looking like someone told you Santa doesn’t exist. You want him, I know you do. Even if you’re hurt.” I tried to process how I felt at seeing him. But everything was a jumble, making my hands shake and my legs bounce up and down on the bar stool. I peeked once more over my shoulder, and saw Nathan making his way to us. I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. “Holy shit, Leo, holy shit holy shit holy shit.” “Shit’s not holy,” Scarlet said as she leaned over and let her curls spill across the bar top. A drunken smile curved her lips. “God is.” “This isn’t Sunday School, Scarlet,” I said nervously. The music pulsed in time to my heart beat. A war waged in my head, with my heart telling me to look and my brain telling my heart to shut the fuck up. The heart won out and I looked over my shoulder again just as Nathan stepped close to us. He was there long enough for me to inhale that Goddamn cologne which caused my insides to melt. His eyes swept over my face, and down my body.

It wasn’t an innocent look—it was a look that said, emphatically, MINE. I trembled on my seat, nearly fell off of it from the smolder in his gaze. He stared down at me, but only paused a fraction of a second before he continued on. Even as he settled at the bar fifteen feet away, he continued to stare at me. When he licked his lips before taking a sip of the drink the bartender set in front of him, I shivered. It was like the mother fucking fourth of July in my panties.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Showing up at the bar wasn’t the biggest risk I’d taken all night. No, it was walking right past Adele and not stopping to shove my tongue into her mouth. That was, in fact, all I wanted to do. Seeing her terrified eyes, her tight posture and her pale, panicky face was enough to send me to my fucking knees. Her giant green eyes looked right into mine and almost turned my spine into gelatin. But I kept walking, kept breathing, until I was far enough away from her that my heart started working. This was, hands down, the worst idea I’d ever had. Because what if she walked out? What if she hated me for pushing the issue? What if she looked at me with anything other than love in her eyes? It would be so much worse than when she left me. It would kill me. I once told Adele that we needed intimacy with each other to survive. But being in the same room as her and breathing the same air had officially changed my opinion on that. I only needed her. If she never touched me again, I’d still want her every single fucking day of my life. Just being around her was what I needed. When I took my seat at an empty bar stool on the opposite side of the nicked, beat-up bar that Adele was sitting at, I did my best to not stare at her. But it was impossible. The bartender gave me an Old Fashioned in a crystal glass and I tried extremely hard not to down it in one gulp. The fiery burn of alcohol felt like the only tether I had to my seat. Without it, I might fall in front of Adele’s stool and wrap myself so tightly around her legs that she’d have no choice but to take me home. Home. I didn’t even know where that was without her. It certainly wasn’t the empty, quiet place that I’d slept at the last six weeks without her. The only place that would ever feel like home was where Adele curled up next to me. If that turned out to be a tiny-ass apartment that she could afford on her own, then I’d welcome it gladly. Just the thought of it, of sleeping next to her, made me crack. I risked a glance over at her, and I wished I hadn’t looked. Her head was

facing down into her lap, and her hands were steepled in front of her perfect mouth. The black shirt that was wrapped around her slim frame made my mouth fucking water and my dick harden in my pants. Her hair was loose, the light blonde strands looking smooth and silky. Exactly the way I liked them when I’d fuck her from behind, so I could fist them easily and pull hard enough that it hurt. “Damn it,” I said under my breath. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe this was the worst fucking idea that I could have had. Who wanted to be ambushed on New Year’s Eve at a crowded bar? Even being in the building, the place that I met her, was screwing with my head. I’d only been here one other time, a night where the quiet of my house was enough to crush my skull. It had felt far enough removed from Northern that it wasn’t a hot spot for the students there, but enough of a dive bar that I could get smashed without anyone noticing. And then she’d been there. The smooth sexiness of Adele plowing into me in the hallway outside the bathrooms. I couldn’t even think about it without wanting to fucking cry. I took another huge swallow of my drink, narrowing my eyes at the glass when I realized it was almost empty. Ice cubes clicked against the crystal, sounding louder than they should have in the crowded space. Motion from the corner of my eye made me turn my head over my shoulder. Adele and Scarlet were headed out onto the dance floor. She watched me the entire time she walked and I turned fully. If this show was for me, then I’d fucking watch it. Her jeans were painted on her and the heels she wore underneath could probably slice my jugular. I’d tilt my chin gladly, exposing the weakest part of me just to let her know that I trusted her implicitly. Adele held my eyes while the slow beat of the song thumped through my body. Her hips moved in torturously slow circles and her hands lifted above her head. The way her head tilted back made her hair touch the curve of her waist and I held my empty glass so tightly that I couldn’t believe it didn’t shatter in my hands. Maybe the shards of glass stabbing into my skin would show my love, show my devotion to her. She and Scarlet danced, only Adele kept her attention on me while I sat on the chair like a fucking chump who was trying to figure out when the best time was to make a move. But some dumbass made it for me. He was young, even younger than Adele. And he stepped up behind her like he had a fucking right to be there, his hands sliding around her hips like he had any clue what they were capable of. I was off my seat before my heart pumped a single ounce of blood into my veins. It only took me three strides to reach her. But I stared at him when I put my hands on his chest and shoved. “What the fuck, man?” he slurred. “I was just trying to dance.”

“Dance with someone else,” I warned, barely speaking loudly enough for him to hear. But he heard; I could tell by the way he stepped back. Then her cool hand slid down my forearm and I had to close my eyes to the onslaught of emotion that swamped me. Pure, undiluted peace filtered through me at one brush of her fingers after so long. It felt better than any fantasy of her that I could have conjured. “Nathan, don’t.” And her voice, spoken into my ear, felt like a rush of pleasure so potent that I couldn’t believe that I was still standing. I pivoted to face her, and she was only inches away from me. “Don’t what?” I asked in a voice that was raw with pain. “Don’t push that stupid little boy away from what he could never handle in a million years? Or don’t pretend like I have a chance to earn that same thing?” Her eyes glossed with tears and then blinked away. The DJ slowed the beat of the music into something sexy and slow, and the people around us shifted together in response. “Adele,” I started, smoothing my hand around her waist. But she stepped back, breathing hard from just a single touch of my hand. I shook my head. “No, please don’t run.” She took another step back, still holding my eyes. Red hot arcs of light must have sparked between us; I felt so hot and alive. Like I was one giant live wire. “If I run,” she asked, the low sexy pitch of her voice almost knocking me over, “will you follow?” Before I could even process that, she’d turned and disappeared into the crowd, only the flurry of blonde hair telling me which direction she went. Naturally, I did exactly what she asked. I followed her. Adele had just turned the corner to the hallway that led to the restrooms when I figured out exactly what she was doing. She was taking us back to the exact spot we’d started. But when I caught up, she didn’t stop in the place that she’d almost taken me out. She paused in front of the unisex bathroom, taking one long moment to look back at me before she opened the door and pushed into the single stall room. There wasn’t even one second that I considered not following her. When I shoved the unlocked door open, she was leaning up against the sink, chest heaving. “Adele,” I whispered, completely undone by being in such a small, private space with her. She met me halfway, her arms wrapping around my neck in the same moment that I gripped her ass and lifted her legs to wrap around me. Her lips felt like hell and heaven, the fierce possession that I felt in them the only kind of home that I could have ever wanted. I speared my tongue into her mouth and groaned from the sheer fucking torture of tasting her again. Adele tasted like sin and sex, like every light piece of life that

I’d been deprived of in the last six weeks. “I miss you so fucking much,” I said into her neck, hating that speaking the words deprived me of small moments of kissing her. But it was so worth it when she whispered back, “I’ve missed you too, Nathan.” From there it was a flurry of tangled hands and ripped clothing. I shoved her shirt up while she wrestled with my belt. I was so fucking hard, and when she shoved her hand down the front of my pants, I almost came like a fifteen-year-old. The throbbing bass surrounded us like a private soundtrack, and I started tilting into her on the same beat. “Oh fuck,” she moaned when I palmed her breast and squeezed. “I need inside of you,” I said into her mouth, and then licked the line of her bottom lip. For two long beats, we stared at each other, the world around us fading away. It was certifiably insane to do this. But getting my hands on Adele felt like the best kind of sanity. Like it would ground me to the earth in a way that I hadn’t felt since the moment she walked out of the door. Breathing into my mouth, Adele gripped my shaft and twisted her wrist, wrenching a groan from deep within my chest. I wanted to devour her, in this dingy bathroom that was quickly becoming my favorite spot in the entire world. “Why the fuck did I wear jeans?” she said when I attacked the button and zipper. “It’s okay,” I said when they were open enough that I could work my hand beneath her underwear. With two fingers, I rubbed flat circles along the hard nub of her clit. “Fuck, baby, you’re so wet. Were you saving this for me?” The way she blinked made her look drunk, even though I only tasted the sugary sweetness of Coke on her tongue. “Yes. God, Nathan, you’re the only reason I ever get this way.” “Because this pussy is mine,” I said into her ear and bit down on the fleshy part of her lobe. I lifted her so that her ass perched on the sink behind her. From there it was only the muffled sounds of the room outside of us, and the breathy exhales of Adele. I barely wanted any sound to escape from beyond my lips, because it felt greedy. The fact that I was getting this tiny, stolen moment in time where neither of us cared about the consequences was precious enough without letting the sounds of my greedy pleasure out into the universe. But when she pulled my cock out of my jeans and I ripped her jeans down her ass until they bunched at her knees, I couldn’t stop the lewd curse that came out. “Holy fucking hell, look at you,” I ground out. With just the tip of my pointer finger, I traced the seam of the outer lips of her pussy. Adele dropped her head back onto the mirror behind her. “You’re perfect.” I started dropping to my knees for a taste when she dragged my mouth to hers. Our kisses were fast and hot, no finesse and no caution. We couldn’t slow enough for practiced movements, because rational thought would probably intervene. Dipping my knees so that the angry purple head of my cock lined up at her entrance, I took a second to breathe through the fucking amazing feeling.

“Yes,” she whispered, squeezing her thighs together around me. Then I started to move. Instead of a fast, hard thrust like she was probably expecting, I slid in one inch at a time until I was completely bottomed out a few breaths later. Around me was hot, tight perfection. Adele flexed her internal muscles, God bless kegels, and I lost my fucking mind. All she could do was hold on while I fucked the shit out of her. She whimpered into my mouth while I rolled my hips fast enough that my balls slapped against her ass. The sheer overwhelming pleasure of being inside of her, the pleasure I’d missed during her absence, flooded my system. No. I couldn’t come yet. So I slowed my movements when I was fully seated in her again. Adele nipped the side of my mouth and the confusion in her eyes at this distance made my pinch my eyelids shut. “Adele, I can’t do this.,” I whispered. “I can’t let this be over and wonder whether every night of the last six weeks has been easier for you than it has been for me.” “Baby,” she replied, and the wet, fullness of her voice made me pull back. “You think this has been easy on me?” “No,” I started but the abject horror of seeing Adele cry, while I was still inside of her, shut me right the hell up. “Adele, please don’t cry.” I cupped her face with both hands when she broke down completely in my arms.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

He was wiping my face, and touching me all over. It was too much, and at the same time not enough. “Adele, you’re shredding my insides. Please don’t cry.” But it was unending, this flood of emotion. It poured from my eyes uninhibited, because it wasn’t enough. Having Nathan on this dirty bar sink would have made the Adele from a year ago very happy, but who I was now? I’d be happy for five minutes, before being hollowed out from the realization that sex couldn’t fix us. He was deep inside me, but five minutes with Nathan wasn’t enough. I shook my head, leaning forward until our foreheads touched. My body was still throbbing, especially between my legs. I shifted a little, which brought him even deeper within me. I had a thought, a wish, that we could find ourselves in this little bathroom, with him fucking me against the cold porcelain. But we weren’t young and carefree. There was so much brokenness between us that couldn’t be fixed by a quick fuck in a dingy bar bathroom. “Talk to me,” he pleaded, bracing my ass on the sink so his hands could frame my face. “Please, God. Tell me how you feel.” I pulled my forehead away from his and sniffed, the hot tears pouring down my face. He was still inside me, and feeling him growing soft as we stopped quivering around one another made the intimacy that much harder to bear. Placing a hand on his chest, I said, “It’s not enough to have you temporarily.” “Then come home.” God, if only it was that easy. “I can’t.” I shook my head sadly and gripped his shirt in my fist. All I wanted was to go home with him. But I’d been so hurt, and my abandonment issues prevented me from bending to temptation. “You hurt me.” He opened his mouth but a noise against the bathroom door caused him to slam his fist on the wood. “Bathroom’s closed,” he growled. He turned back to me, the steel blue of his gaze pinning me in place. My body positively ached to move, but moving would mean I’d lose him. Why the hell wasn’t this easy? Why couldn’t I walk away and not look back? Why couldn’t I leave him and heal? Because he was, in every possible way, the absolute love of my life. And I had

come second. To Diana. To his job. To his grief. If I hadn’t been sitting on the cold sink, I was sure my knees would have given way under my weight. “Adele,” he said, eyes searching. “I miss you. Every fucking molecule of my being misses you. I can’t go on like this, spending my nights without you. It’s killing me.” “Do you think it isn’t killing me?” I asked, swiping the back of my hand over my face. “I’m sad, all the fucking time. I can’t so much as enjoy my day because all I think about is telling you about it. And I can’t.” “You can,” he insisted, his fingers digging in my face. “You can tell me anything.” I pulled back, and shifted so that he fell out of me. We both winced, and then we were standing there, completely exposed but no longer connected. “Can I tell you that I’ve been hurting for months? That it’s been two months since I lost the baby and the entire time I’ve felt a loneliness so large that I can barely eat or drink, because the obstruction is so great that I’m not allowed to enjoy a single fucking thing without guilt.” I put a hand to my chest. “It lives in me, reminding me of what we had and what we lost. There’s no forward for me. No resolution. There’s just loss; overwhelming emptiness.” “Adele, I feel it too. Trust me, I do.” “But you never told me. You never consoled me. After we lost the baby, you distanced yourself from me. You kissed me on the forehead and left.” “I needed space.” “And I needed you.” I felt a fresh sheen of tears and angrily wiped at my eyes before they could fall. “You should’ve told me.” He sounded so sad. “I wanted what you promised me. After you found out I was pregnant, you were around so much more—and you made me feel desired and beautiful and like maybe we wouldn’t fuck this up.” I reached out and grazed a finger over his shirt, wanting to touch him but not too firmly, lest I fall back under from the feel of his skin. “And then, when I had the D&C, you were gone again.” He ran a hand over his unruly chocolate hair and I took his face in for the first time that night. His hair was overgrown, as was his beard. He looked like a man who hadn’t seen the sun in weeks, and I ached to run a hand over that hair, the reminder that he was probably just as lost as I was without us by each other’s sides. It was as if I needed him to remind me to breathe. How did I function without him these last six weeks apart? It would be far too easy to fall back into his touch and pretend that we could solve this with a round of hot makeup sex. But he’d been right earlier, when he’d pushed me away and told me that sex couldn’t solve everything. “I want you home.” His words. Jesus Christ, his words. They called to another me, a woman much less brave than I was. “It’s not my home.” Because he was. But where he laid his

head was in a home he shared with his late wife. It wasn’t my home. His mouth turned into a fine line and his eyes hardened. “It’s not mine either when you’re not there.” Again, I was nearly undone by his words. “You left me alone, Nathan. I don’t know how you thought I wasn’t hurting.” “Because you never seemed happy or excited about the baby.” “I’m twenty-two!” I reached down and yanked my underwear back up over my hips. “I’m still in college, and I don’t even have a way outside of my savings to support myself.” “I told you,” he growled, “that I’d take care of it.” “Did it occur to you that maybe I wanted something of my own, to be able to take care of myself before I brought a baby into our relationship?” “No.” At least he was honest. He touched the ends of my hair with his fingers and rubbed them together. “I assumed you didn’t want a baby because you weren’t ready.” “I wasn’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Who the hell is ready to be forever responsible for someone other than themselves? I probably would have kept on being not-ready until it was born—if that had even been a reality for us.” I took a deep breath and continued on. “But regardless, you promised to take care of me—it was the only thread of sanity I had over the whole situation. Your promise sustained me. But then when I had the miscarriage, your offer of taking care of me was off the table. You weren’t there. I was alone, all day. Every day. Do you know how suffocating it is to live with someone who is completely blind to your internal pain?” He ran a hand down his face. Another knock at the door came and Nathan slammed his fist against the door so hard, I swore I could see the ripple effect slide up his arm and into his jaw. “Take a fucking hint!” he shouted. Rarely had I seen Nathan lose his temper. When he did, I always trembled—not from fear, but from a blazing hot lust. Seeing the man I loved burn bright with rage had a direct line to my vagina, and I cursed myself for wanting him because we were getting nowhere with our talk. My tears had dried up, but they’d pooled in the hollow around my collarbone. “Where are you staying? With family?” he suddenly asked. “You were the only family I had.” I leveled him with a look. “Fuck my blood family—I’d be homeless before I’d crawl back to them like a dog with its tail between its legs.” I poked him in the chest. “You were my family. And we were supposed to build a family, together. When things fell apart, you weren’t there for me.” I dropped my hand from his chest and wavered back and forth. I wanted to lean into him, because I was so unsteady on my feet from the exhaustion that had settled around me from the outpouring of emotion. “I’m so fucking sorry.” And I knew he was. But I also knew that if I returned to his house, nothing would change. I’d be in his home, surrounded by his late wife’s imprint throughout the house. He’d work late, and I’d tell myself that my many

nights alone— with cereal for dinner— would be okay. But it was a shadow of the life I wanted with him. I wanted to be his priority, but I didn’t want to force him to make me that priority. If he couldn’t make me feel like I came first, I couldn’t settle for being second, or third. “I’m sorry too.” Unable to stop myself, I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, lingering just long enough that it hurt. After pulling back, I said, “We didn’t talk, and you distanced yourself from me. You should know me better, Nathan. You should know that abandonment is a trigger for me. It’s one thing to be busy, but it’s another thing to avoid me. Which is what you did.” I curled my fingers into his shirt. I couldn’t let him go just yet. “You were embarrassed of me at your work party. And I don’t know how to forget that.” He dropped his head and I felt the shuddering of his breath in his chest. “I’m so fucking sorry, Adele.” This hurt, so fucking bad. Seeing what my words were doing to him was unbearable. I realized that I could barely shoulder my own pain—bearing his too was crippling me. I wanted to drop my head to his shoulder, to tell him I’d go home with him and we’d figure it out. But living with him wouldn’t fix our problems, it’d only make them more pronounced. “I love you, Nathan. God. I’m desperate for you. But there’s an acre of pain between us, and I don’t think I can be with you the way I want to until we sort through this. On our own.” “I don’t want to be without you.” It was as if his words were shrapnel, imbedding themselves in my chest. I wanted to drag my nails down my chest, if only to show him how much I hurt, too. “I don’t want to be without you, either. But I think we need to be. At least for now.” “Don’t let me go,” he whispered, gripping my shoulders and pulling me close. I swallowed, knowing I had to get away from him and away from the agony that wouldn’t fucking stop. He was piercing a part of my soul with his every admission, so I said the one thing I could think to say, to get him to see why I was so completely shattered. I put my hands on his, pulling them away from my shoulders as I said, “But Nathan, you let me go first.” He didn’t deserve the pain I was giving him, but neither did I. It was all so confusing, the back and forth and the way my body suffered when I didn’t arch toward him. The way my heart yearned to be fed by his love. But it wasn’t enough. I needed him to make me feel as if I was as important to him as he was to me. So I did all I could manage the strength to do and left the bathroom, left Nathan, alone to grieve. Just as he had left me, months before.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

One week later

For the second time in two months, I found myself in my car, staring up at a house that I never really wanted to step foot in. The problem this time was that it was the house I grew up in. But it was on my list of things that I’d carefully constructed after the emotional upheaval of the ‘bathroom incident’, as I was now referring to it as. Considering I was twelve years older than Adele, she sure as hell knew how to pack a punch when it came to proving me wrong about who was the smarter of the two of us. I’d never make the mistake again of doubting that she could school me on mature decisions in regards to our relationship. Yet again, Adele was right. About everything. Touching her that night, even going to the bar, was stupid. Incredibly, selfishly stupid. But the next day I’d started going about rectifying that. Maybe she wouldn’t know for another month, all the things that I was going to do, but eventually she would. And I could only hope it was enough. With a deep, absolutely tortured sigh, I pushed out of my car and walked to the front porch. Just as I was about to knock, a bored-looking maid pulled open the massive mahogany door and informed me that my father was in his study. “Is my mother here?” I asked her just as she was turning to leave the soaring entry way. “No sir, she’s at an appointment for the remainder of the afternoon.” I rolled my eyes when she curtsied and walked away. She curtsied. And an appointment for my mom probably meant she was getting day-drunk with her country club friends. My parents were the worst sort of rich people cliché. Wandering slowly down the hallway that led to my father’s study, I took a few minutes to look at the gold framed photos that still hung on the wood paneled walls. My parents with various powerful people, some in politics, some in the entertainment industry.

Not a single photo of me. That’s probably why this would be so easy. Adele’s comment about her family had rung so true to me, but not in the moment. Her strength in knowing that she was just done with the people who raised her astounded me. A lesser woman would have caved to their expectations. I’d caved to my father’s until I left for Harvard, the only true act of defiance in my entire life. Using my knuckles, I rapped lightly on the heavy door to his study, which was cracked open. “Come in,” he called out and I took another deep breath before entering. The desk in the middle of room dominated the space. It was far bigger than necessary, and I used to think of it as my father’s way of overcompensating for something. He was seated behind it in an ostentatious high-backed chair and reading the newspaper. There wasn’t even a computer in here, for God’s sake. “Father,” I said in greeting when he didn’t look up at me. But when I closed the door behind me, he finally glanced up. “Planning on killing me?” “I’d never be stupid enough to do it here.” He almost cracked a smile, but it was like he reminded himself that he hated me again. “What’s this about?” I blew out a breath through pursed lips and gestured to a chair. “May I?” Because he was a dick, he took a second to think about it before nodding. “Should your mother be here for this little heart to heart?” “No. It doesn’t involve her. I doubt she’d be sober enough to remember I was here anyway.” “True.” My father didn’t particularly care that my mother drank vodka tonics a solid eight hours out of every day. She was still a beautiful woman in her sixties and came from a family with old money. That was about all that mattered. “You were right. About Adele.” Immediately, his face flattened in disgust. “I knew it.” But I lifted a hand. “Just hear me out. This won’t take long.” When he nodded, I settled back into the chair and propped one foot up on the opposite knee. “She was in my class last fall, and the night I met her, I didn’t recognize her as my student. She’s the first woman I touched after Diana died. The only woman.” “What the hell makes you think I want to hear this?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t really care if you want to. But you’ll listen regardless.” Oh, he did not like that. Surprisingly though, he simply ground his teeth and kept quiet. “I stayed away from her for a while after I found out who she was. But we did carry on a sexual relationship while she was in my class. It never affected her grade because she’s incredibly intelligent, as you well know since you understand the magnitude of the scholarship that she’s on. The grade she received is the grade she

deserved. Any other professor in that department would concur with what I gave her.” Then I dropped my foot from my knee and leaned forward. “I’m telling you this because she’s the woman I love. And she’s the only person I want to spend my life with.” “How sweet,” he drawled, looking a little pale in his cheeks. Then I laughed. “No, I don’t know that anyone would accuse Adele and me of being sweet. But it is real. And she’s only part of the reason that I left Northern. Of course I wanted to pursue a relationship with her, but I also wanted out from under you.” My father shook his head slowly, like he couldn’t fathom what I was telling him. “And now that I know, you think this will help? She’ll have a hard time affording her tuition without that scholarship.” “Oh, she’s keeping it. You won’t touch her standing at that school.” He laughed then too, and I hated how much it sounded like my own. “You’re certifiable if you think I won’t do anything with this information.” “Go ahead.” He narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?” “I said,” I repeated slowly, “go ahead. Please, tell everyone at that school that your only son fucked his student. How will they look at you once they know? How will they look at the Easton legacy once that comes to light?” When his eyes shuttered, I almost crowed in triumph. My father would take this to the grave. His own pride would be the greatest way to secure his confidentiality. “I will marry Adele someday. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. Then she’ll carry the Easton name too. As will our children. She’s beautiful and fierce and smart and one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. Whether you see her again is up to you and Mother. But I won’t call you. I won’t stop by, and I won’t ask to be invited over for holidays. The only way I’ll walk back through these doors is if you can accept my relationship with her, knowing exactly where it started.” Then I stood, pausing only to make sure he wasn’t going to keel over from a heart attack. He didn’t. “Goodbye, Father.” All he did was watch me walk out the door. I whistled on the way back to my car, only taking a second to start it up and pull through their gated driveway before I hit the Bluetooth button on my steering wheel to initiate a call. “Nathan, my boy,” Max said in greeting. “What can I do for you?” “Well, what would you say about bringing over some more cigars?” “I’d say yes. What time would you like me there?” I paused to glance in my rearview mirror, just to see my parents’ house get smaller and smaller. “Before I give you a time, can I ask you something?” “Of course.” My stomach tightened. “If I wanted to tell you a story in confidence, can I trust that you’ll keep it between us? Even if it might make you doubt me at the beginning

of it?” Max was quiet on the other end. “Is this story illegal?” “No.” Unethical? Maybe. But not illegal. “Okay. Then I can be there in an hour.” I hung up the phone and drove home, feeling better than I had in months.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It had been a week since I’d seen Nathan and I still felt like absolute garbage. Over and over, I’d replayed our scene in the bathroom. Half of the time, I kicked myself in the ass. I should’ve run to him, leeched on to him, promised to never leave him. Even now, as I sat nursing the hot cocoa Mrs. Jennings had made for me and Scarlet, I wished to be anywhere else. “Why is your mom so nice?” I asked as I pulled out the flask I kept buried in my purse, pouring a shot’s worth into the hot cocoa. Scarlet eyed the flask. “What’s that?” “Rum. Want some?” I asked, as I had already begun pouring. Scarlet eyed the rum and gave me a look, like she knew I was slowly corrupting her. But then she sipped the dark rum-spiked chocolate and gave me a nod. “Okay, this is good.” “I don’t trust people who don’t need alcohol to get through the holidays.” I tipped the flask back as I drank what little was left. “Technically, the holidays are over. You go back to school soon.” “Don’t remind me.” I grabbed a pillow and brought it to my chest. “I’ll have to seriously look into renting an apartment now.” “Are you sure you’re not going back to him?” I stared into the thick dark chocolate as I thought. “I don’t know. Sometimes I miss him so much that I can’t breathe. Other times, I’m not sure we’re good for one another. I never hooked up with him intending for him to be more than that. And then he was, and…” I took a noisy sip. “And then all this crap happened and maybe I should’ve stayed. Fought harder for him to remember I was there.” “But maybe your absence will remind him of what he’s missing?” Scarlet asked. “It’s been seven weeks since I left his house and I don’t feel like we’re moving in the same direction. It’s like we’re both just revolving around the issue, and I can’t figure out how to come back together. I’d have to let go of my hurt. And believe that he wouldn’t do it again.” “Has he ever hurt you like that?” I shrugged. “Early on, he had moments where he shut me out. But I hadn’t let

my feelings get the best of me yet, so it didn’t affect me the way it did after nearly a year of living together.” “Well, I’ve had one serious boyfriend my whole life so I can’t speak with much experience, but I would probably do the same thing.” She sipped her hot chocolate and seemed to be relaxing a bit from the alcohol. “I ran from Leo once, but not before I said things I didn’t mean.” “I meant the things I’ve said. I may be called a slut, a hussy, a bitch, but I have never been called a liar.” I drank the rest of my hot chocolate and set it on the nightstand with a clunk before I lay down on the bed. “I love him. But he deserted me in a time when I needed him.” “Did you tell him you needed him?” “Of course not. But he should’ve known.” “Again, I’m no expert on men, but they’re not mind readers.” Scarlet didn’t know, didn’t understand what had happened with Nathan. And for the sake of having someone—a female someone—to talk to about female things, I decided to confide in her. “I had a miscarriage in October.” Scarlet’s eyes widened in shock and I was grateful for Leo and his confidence. I didn’t have many friends, but Scarlet not knowing about my miscarriage proved I had a good one in Leo. “Wow. I’m so sorry.” Besides the doctor’s office, it was the first time anyone had said that to me about the miscarriage. I nodded my thanks, because I didn’t want to speak the word. “And Nathan really wanted the baby. He was thrilled. When I told him I was pregnant, you would’ve thought I told him he won the lottery.” Scarlet made a sound like an “aww” at that and I nodded. It had been cute. His excitement for the baby had been the one thing that kept me from losing my shit. “How did you feel about it?” Scarlet asked, as if she’d been reading my mind. “Scared. I’m still young. I have shit I want to do with my life before babies happen. And my relationship with Nathan was still so young, too.” “Did Nathan know?” I chewed my lip. “I know we talked about it, but he assured me he’d take care of me. Of us.” Absently, I rubbed a hand down my belly. The slight roundness that had been there months ago was gone. I paused my movement and clenched a fist. “And after I lost the baby, he was gone. And when he was there, he was patronizing or never noticed my presence. I wandered his house, feeling like I didn’t really belong there. I only lived there for Nathan, and when he wasn’t around it was like I lived with his dead wife’s memory.” “His wife died?” “Yeah. A handful of years back. They bought the house he lives in, decorated it together. It made me feel unwelcome, admiring the wallpaper she put up, doing homework at the table she bought, sleeping with her husband in her bed.” “Hm…” Scarlet said, tapping a finger on her chin. “After his wife died, who did he have around him?” “I don’t know?” I gave Scarlet a look—how the hell was I supposed to know

that? It was years before me. “I mean, his family, or her family. Are they close?” “No.” I thought of Elias and Nathan’s disgust for him. “Her family blames him and his family doesn’t seem like the warm, sympathetic type.” “So he likely mourned that in private. All alone.” I saw where Scarlet was going, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept that he’d pushed me away by pulling himself physically away from me. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said flatly, rolling onto my stomach. “Because you know I’m right. Nathan mourned the loss of his wife alone, and when you had a miscarriage, he mourned it alone again. That’s how he works.” “Shut up, Scarlet.” I pulled a pillow over the back of my head. “Go bury your head in some dissection documentary.” “I just think you need to see it from his perspective.” “Yeah, yeah,” I said, but felt like drinking away this conversation. When my phone buzzed from the nightstand, I pushed the pillow off of me and grabbed it. Elias: Last time, Slim. Wanna get a drink? I should not reply with a yes. I should figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life from here forward. But after that conversation with Scarlet, I realized I was even more confused than I had been. So, before I could change my mind, I shot out a quick “Yes” along with the name of a bar near Nathan’s house. “Slim?” I asked him as I walked into the bar and spotted him sitting alone at one end of it. He was nursing something the color of dark honey and gestured for me to take the seat beside him. “You’re slim. Legs up to your eyeballs, especially with those.” His eyes traveled slowly down the length of my leather-clad legs to the black stilettos I wore. When his eyes came back up, I felt myself warm. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, sitting next to Nathan’s enemy, about to have a drink with him. But when the bartender came over, I ordered a whiskey sour and pulled off my puffy coat—the coat Nathan had bought me the previous winter— and set it on the back of the chair. “What have you been doing?” he asked as he took me in. The gray and white speckled sweater I wore was oversized, to balance the way the leather leggings hugged my legs like a second skin. I watched him a moment and tucked my tongue into my cheek. The way he asked it made me think he knew I wasn’t staying at Nathan’s anymore. But I didn’t feel like talking about Nathan, so I said, “Being a lazy asshole over winter break.” The sweater dipped over my shoulder and I yanked it back up. “I have classes again soon, so I’m trying to enjoy the freedom while I can.” “Ah.” His eyes were dark, and he searched me intensely. “Do you plan on

staying in Boston after graduation.” “Yes. It’s home.” I hadn’t considered staying anywhere else. “Where’s home for you?” He lifted his shoulders noncommittally. “I’m still finding my place.” The bartender placed the drink on a black napkin and pushed it toward me. “Aren’t you a little old to still be looking for your place?” “Aren’t you a little young to settle down here?” “Touché.” He motioned for the bartender to bring him another drink. “Booker’s,” he said, pushing his glass. The bartender nodded and then paused, holding up the glass. “On the rocks? With water?” Elias stared at the bartender a moment and I watched the poor guy visibly shrink under Elias’ stare. “Water, on the side.” After the bartender stepped away I cocked my head to the side. “What was that about?” “Have you ever had Booker’s bourbon?” When I shook my head, he said, “You’ll have to try it.” Within seconds, a glass appeared in front of Elias and he pushed it to me. “You first.” It felt dangerous, to be drinking with Elias. He was so large that he took up not just the space of his seat, but he was encroaching on mine too. Bringing the glass to my lips, I met his eyes over the rim. His lips curved just a little under his beard as I tipped the glass back and took a taste. “What the fuck?” I sputtered, setting the glass down hard and pounding back the water the bartender had given him. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth as I glared at him. “What is that?” “Bourbon,” Elias said simply, picking up the glass and taking a larger sip than I had. “Robust, high proof bourbon.” “You drink that?” I asked, taking a sip of my much calmer whiskey sour. “And don’t breathe fire?” “Who says I don’t breathe fire?” he asked, his eyes dark and glittering under the low bar light. I hadn’t realized how close he was until I felt the heat of his breath on mine. I loved Nathan. Loved him passionately. But loving him hadn’t meant putting on blinders toward every other good-looking guy that I passed. And Elias? Well, he took good looking and wrapped it in a barbed wire kind of danger. From the muscles that seemed to grow from every single one of his body parts to the dark of his skin and hair and eyes, he had an undercurrent of something risky, like he could talk a woman into doing very bad things without even saying a word. The bartender set another drink in front of me and I picked it up, needing something to distract my hands. “Adele, tell me—what do you like to do for fun?”

I held up my whiskey and gave what I thought to be an obvious look. “Drink.” “But that’s not all.” “I like to write sometimes,” I said, not intending to say that. “Nothing serious. Mostly scribbles,” I amended, rushing on. The liquor was hitting me more quickly than I realized. “That’s it?” He seemed even closer to me now. I don’t know why, but I wanted to impress him. “I make a mean café au lait.” “A coffee?” He shook his head and leaned in. “Oh, Adele. But you haven’t lived.” I pushed him. Gently, just a hand on his pecs, pushing him lightly. But I yanked my hand immediately back like I’d burned it. “My sense of accomplishment differs from yours apparently.” “You’re so young. You could do so much, see so many things.” “I’m young and I still can. I’m not in a rush to see the world. I can barely navigate the T.” He laughed. “I’ll admit, the T is not the most easily-navigable method of public transportation.” He tossed the rest of his whiskey back like a fucking champ and I hated admiring him for it. He gestured to the bartender for a refill and he obliged quickly. “New York, while dirty and occupied with assholes, has one of the best public transportation systems in the country.” “Is that where you’re from?” The bartender set another whiskey sour in front of me on Elias’ encouragement, and I found myself drinking it even though a tiny voice told me I was only going to find myself in even deeper trouble. “I lived there a couple years. But I’ve lived in other places longer.” He was secretive, but still managed to pry information out of me. The balance of give and take was off, with me telling him much more than I knew about him, but part of me was a little bit afraid to ask those questions. I didn’t really want to get to know him that well, especially since I was still loyal to Nathan. When I came back from the bathroom, my legs were much wobblier than they’d been when I’d walked in. So wobbly, in fact, that I stumbled when I reached the bar. Elias caught me around the waist and held me firm. “I should go,” I stuttered, inches from his face. He waited a beat longer than he needed to before nodding curtly and setting me upright. I pulled out some cash, but Elias placed a large, warm hand on mine. “No.” Scrunching my eyebrows together, I pulled out the cash anyway. “No yourself. I’m paying for my booze.” This was not a date, I reminded myself. If I let him pay for it, we both might think otherwise. “Let me walk you out.” “Guess I can’t stop you,” I joked, trying to navigate through the busy bar. At one point I wobbled so much that Elias wrapped his fingers around my waist, leading me outside. His hands on my waist made me all tingly, but also a little sick. It simply didn’t

feel right to have another man’s hands on me. Once outside, Elias looked up and down the street. “Where’s your ride?” “I’m going to call a cab,” I said, pulling out my phone. Liquor made my eyes blurry and I blinked a few times in order to pull up the app I used for cabs. “Two minutes away,” I said happily. “I could have given you a ride.” “After all that bourbon I watched you drink?” I gave him a skeptical raise of my eyebrow. “No way, dude.” I tried to put the phone in my pocket, but it popped right back out and fell to our feet. “Shit,” I muttered as I bent down. Elias bent down with me, picking up the phone case that popped off. “Here,” he said, at my eye level with both of us crouched. He took the case from me and put the phone back inside of it in a second. As he handed it to me, his hand clutched mine. “Hey.” I looked away from our hands and into his eyes seconds before his lips descended onto mine. I was suspended in a pause—my body unmoving as unfamiliar lips pressed against mine. He was warm and smelled of leather and spice and it took three seconds for me to realize that this was wrong. “No.” I pulled my head back immediately and put a hand to my lips. Holy shit, Elias had kissed me. He didn’t apologize, even as I stumbled back away from him. Fucking stilettos, I thought. I held a hand up when he made a move like he was going to help me stand upright again. “Nope, no way.” I shook my head and was sure I looked like an animal fighting off a predator. The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed Elias kissing me. In a tiny, dark place, I had enjoyed it, but not enough to go further. That quick, three second kiss had told me Elias was not enough for me. But Nathan was. Suddenly, I didn’t fucking care about our fighting. Nothing else seemed more important than being with Nathan. It took another man kissing me for me to figure out that baggage or not, I wanted Nathan. What Scarlet had said about Nathan grieving alone had struck a chord within me. He’d been just as alone as I had. And I’d let my own hurt, my own pride, get in the way of us talking it out. I needed Nathan. Elias stood feet away from me, and seemed to take in the way everything played over my face. “He doesn’t deserve you, you know?” he asked. Elias didn’t even know me well enough to say that, but the fact that he had said it reminded me again of what Scarlet said about Nathan not having anyone for support after Diana died. Fuck it. I’d paint some walls in that house. I’d tear down the wallpaper in the entryway. I’d buy new dishes from the thrift store—shit that didn’t look like it

belonged on display in a china cabinet. I’d get a new couch, one meant for snuggling, and I’d buy a new table to do my studies at. I’d put up a hundred photos of us, in different frames. All of that could be changed. But there was no substitute for Nathan. “I don’t deserve him, either,” I told Elias as my cab pulled up to the curb. But I wanted him. Fuck everything and everyone else. My pride be damned, I wanted Nathan more than I wanted to be without him. After climbing into the cab, I gave the driver Nathan’s address, instead of the train station. Ten minutes later, I was rushing out of the car, across the icy street, to a snow-covered sidewalk. And then I just stared, stunned. In the middle of front yard, right where the grass met the sidewalk, was a large white sign. FOR SALE I blinked, staring at it as the snow seeped into my stilettos, and then I walked into the yard, with snow up to my ankles, and touched the sign. Immediately, the floodlights came on, making my presence visible to the entire neighborhood, and I lifted my head and met Nathan’s gaze through the front living room window. He stared at me, and the surprise in his eyes made my heart crack in two. All I wanted was to go to him. But, luckily—since my feet were about to fall off from the cold—he came to me, opening the front door and stepping out onto the patio. “Adele?” he asked, and I nearly fell to my knees. His voice. It’d only been a week since I’d last heard it, but it felt like a hundred lifetimes. He looked so good, standing in front of the door with the light at his back. He looked like home. I had a hundred things to tell him, but the first thing I blurted out was, “Elias kissed me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Clearly I had matured in our time apart. First, I didn’t sling her over my shoulder and bring her inside for sex. It was far more important to hear the words out of her mouth, which brought me to my second point. When I actually processed those words, I didn’t sprint off to commit homicide. “Adele,” I whispered, my eyes drinking her in. Standing in the snow like that, wearing leather and illogical shoes—if I had to guess based on how she was shivering—she looked wild. “Baby, let’s get you out of the snow.” But she shook her head. “Didn’t you hear me?” As slowly as I could manage with rampant adrenaline pouring through my veins at the mere sight of her, I walked down the steps and into the snow. White puffs of air fogged in front of me when I breathed, and it was the only proof I had that I was still alive. That I wasn’t imagining her. Of course, if I was imagining her, she’d never have said what she did. When I was an arm’s length away from her, I stopped, searching her face. The finely carved features were so precious to me. Something I’d stupidly taken for granted every single time she was in the same room. Never again. “I heard you,” I answered, my voice sounding like I was choking on glass. Her eyes shimmered, the sheen of tears making me want to claw my guts out. “Then how the hell are you so calm?” I lifted my hands, very slowly so that she could back away If she wanted. When she stayed in the same spot, I cupped her face. We both exhaled at the contact, her eyes falling shut for a moment. I kept mine open because I wasn’t willing to miss a millisecond of this. “Because I’m fairly certain you aren’t happy about it—” “I’m not,” she interrupted with a steely voice. “—which is good,” I continued, stepping closer to her. “And it’s good that you’re not happy about it, because no man’s lips besides mine are ever touching you again.” Adele blinked and a tear tracked down her face until it absorbed into the skin of my hand. “Right?” “Right.”

I deflated, wrapping her into my arms with the keenest sense of relief that I’d ever experienced in my entire life. Adele pressed her nose into the side of my neck and inhaled, humming when she let it out. “I want to kiss you so badly, but I don’t dare let you go.” I tightened my arms, relishing the weight of her against me. She laughed softly, pulling her head back to meet my eyes. There was so much adoration in that one look, so much love. Then she tilted her chin up and placed a gentle kiss on my lips. We rested there for a long moment, just testing the feel of each other’s lips. For some reason, it felt like we hadn’t kissed just a week earlier. This felt new and sweet, the longest build-up to the most innocent kiss we’d ever shared. Maybe we each thought the other person would deepen the kiss, but I was content to just feel her. I guess she was too. I pulled back. “Can we go in now? My feet are fucking freezing.” Adele smiled so widely that my heart stretched in a similar fashion. “Yes. I would like that.” Instead of holding her hand, I turned and presented my back, crouching down so she could climb on. Adele hopped up, wrapping her arms around my neck while I weaved my arms under her knees to support her weight. She kissed the edge of my jaw as I carried her through the front yard and up onto the porch. I didn’t stop when we cleared the door, only pausing so that she could turn the deadbolt behind us. I didn’t stop as we ascended the stairs up to the second floor. And I didn’t stop until we were in the master bedroom. Adele slid off my back, and when I turned around, her face was a mask of shock. “Nathan…” She turned in a slow circle, and I gave her a sheepish smile when she came to a stop. There were no pictures on the walls anymore, and the simple white bedding on the King size bed just next to us looked like something you’d find in a hotel. “You took everything out?” I shrugged. “Kind of. I didn’t buy a new duvet yet. I wanted to wait to pick something out until you were with me.” She blinked, processing that. “And the sign in the yard?” “It was one of the things on my list.” I slid my hand down her arm until I could weave my fingers in between hers. “The things you said to me last week hit me pretty hard. But I needed to hear it. I needed to hear all of it.” I pressed a thumb to her lips when she tried to say something, swallowing over the boulder of nerves lodged in my throat. It’s not like I’d known she was coming so I could practice what to say. So I looked in her eyes and spoke from my heart. “You were right about everything, Adele. I hate that I left you alone when you needed me. It feels like I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that. And I acted embarrassed at the party because I was afraid someone would figure out how our relationship started, and that was so damn wrong of me, baby. I fucked up so many things with you in the last few months. When I thought I was doing the right thing to provide a life for us,

I was completely overlooking what you actually wanted. I know that I’m not smarter than you or better than you, and I definitely know that my opinion is the not most important one between the two of us.” Since my thumb was still touching her lips, she pressed a soft kiss there with a smile in her eyes. I took my hand away and ran it over her hair, which was still cold from being outside. “And when I came back here after you left, I was appalled. I was so ashamed that I never thought about how it might be for you to live in this house. I boxed up as much, and I started getting it ready for a real estate agent.” I pulled her closer so I could rest my forehead on hers. “I don’t care where we live. I just need you. I will never do anything like that to you again. I promise.” Oh, Nathan.” Adele sniffed, the tears threatening in her eyes, but not falling over. “I love you so much.” “I love you too,” I said, just as our lips met again. This was not sweet and innocent. Our tongues tangled and Adele went up on her tiptoes. I gripped her ass and rocked into her. The backs of her knees hit the bed and we toppled over, ripping at each other’s clothes with frantic hands. My shirt came off first, then her pants. Her bra was shoved up over her tits so I could suck one into my mouth. My belt flew across the room, followed by my jeans. We didn’t even stop to remove my boxer briefs or her thong. She shoved mine down under my ass while I wrenched hers to the side with two fingers. “We can do this slowly the next time. Maybe in like twenty minutes,” I groaned when I slipped my fingers into her soaking wet cunt. “You feel too fucking good for me to be slow right now.” “God,” she moaned, fisting my cock and trying to shove it in. “Quit talking and just do it. I’ve never been without an orgasm for this long and I think it’s fucking killing me.” I propped myself up on one elbow and cupped the side of her face. At first she made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat, but when I brushed my thumb over her cheekbone, she stilled. Our eyes locked and she gave me a small smile. While we held like that, I slowly pushed forward until I couldn’t go any farther. Heaven. Pure fucking heaven. I pulled back in one long, slow, tortuous motion and paused before hooking my hips back toward her. Adele’s arms wrapped around my neck and she brought her legs up to cross her ankles behind my back. Pushing my face into her neck with an arm around her shoulders, I wrapped the other around her back. We were touching everything, so tightly wound that the only things we could move were our hips. She met my slow thrusts perfectly, and I never hurried, despite my warning that I’d have a hair trigger. Every push and pull, every drag along the hot, wet walls of her pussy felt better than the last. Her nails dug into my back and I picked up

speed, snapping my hips faster and faster. Her tits were pressed so tightly against my chest that they didn’t bounce from the speed, but I could feel each shift of the firm, round flesh against me in a way that made me want to roar. Adele whispered in my ear when I made one particularly hard thrust. “Only you, Nathan. It will only ever be you.” “Too fucking right,” I ground out when I could feel the orgasm tighten my balls and roll around at the base of my spine. “God, Adele. You feel so fucking good.” She tensed up around me, her pleasure folding around us like a physical presence. “Yes, Nathan. God, I’m so close. I’m … I’m so, fuck.” I gripped the knee at my side and lifted her legs one by one until her shins were braced on my chest. She whimpered at the new angle and I cursed at the depth that it got me. “Come on, baby,” I groaned when I felt it barreling down on me. Pleasure danced on my skin and she tightened around me. I snapped against her one more time and I felt it. She screamed my name as she came, tightening around me so tightly that it took my breath. I poured my release inside of her with clenched teeth, somehow having the presence of mind to roll to the side so I didn’t crush her. Adele draped an arm over my chest and one leg over my waist. Strands of hair clung to her sweat-slicked face and I smiled before tucking them behind her ear. “I missed you.” She opened her eyes at my softly spoken words. “I could tell,” she said dryly. I tickled her sides, loving the sound of her giggles. “Brat. That’s not what I meant. Though yes, of course I missed sex with you. But it was everything else. I just missed you.” Lifting the hand that had been on my chest, she stroked the side of my face. “I missed you, too.” I leaned forward to kiss her and pulled back after she touched her tongue to mine. “Can I ask you something?” “Anything.” “What made you change your mind? It’s not like you could have known the things I was doing this week to try to change. To atone.” She smiled. “You might not like my answer.” “I can handle it.” “Well, Elias kissing me was a big part of it.” Fuck. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to use her smell as a calming agent to the way his name instantly raised my blood pressure. But I really did want to know, so I let out a long breath and turned my head to look at her again. “How so?” She lifted her eyebrows in surprise at my calm response. “The second he kissed me, I knew that you were it for me. No man could ever touch me again without it feeling wrong somehow. And that’s when I decided that no matter what we’d said

to each other or what we’d done, we could fix it.” “Then I suppose I should thank him.” Fuck, even saying that out loud made me want to punch his fucking face in again. Adele’s low chuckle made it worth it though. “I don’t think we’ll see him again.” “Good.” I kissed her, needing that after her admission. We kept the kisses slow and sweet, just small tilts of my head to change the angle. They restored me, reset everything inside of me that had been off-kilter since she walked out of the door. “Oh!” she said and pulled back. “And it was Scarlet. She’s the other reason I changed my mind.” I blinked at the rapid change in thought. “As in Leo’s girlfriend?” Humming, Adele pecked my lips again and grinned. “Yup. That’s where I stayed. With Scarlet and her parents.” The laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. “Isn’t her dad a preacher?” Adele grinned and I tipped my head back, laughing even harder. One of her hands slid over my throat while I was doing it. “God, your laugh makes me so hot.” In the next breath, I rolled and pinned her by wrenching her hands above her head. “I fully plan on needing to hear some of your stories, you know. But later.” I dipped down and kissed her. “Much, much later.” She lifted her head to kiss me back and then smiled up at me. “We have forever, Professor Easton.” Yes. Yes, we fucking did.

EPILOGUE

Sixteen Months Later

As soon as we walked through the door, I pulled Adele’s hair over one shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Go into the room, take everything off except the cap and the shoes.” She laughed, sex rampant in her tone. “You’re such a fucking deviant.” But she did as I asked, walking away with a wicked smile over her shoulder at me. It wasn’t a long walk to our bedroom. We’d purchased a three-bedroom bungalow not long after she came back to me. The battered wood floors covered with bright rugs spoke to Adele’s taste. The cool paint colors and dark wood furniture spoke to mine. The kitchen had concrete countertops that we’d both agreed on, with stainless appliances and funky light fixtures that she’d fallen in love with at a thrift store. And in our bedroom, we had a massive four poster mahogany King bed frame that worked quite nicely on the occasions that we needed to tie/strap/handcuff the other person down. With unhurried hands, I loosened the silver and white striped tie around my neck and pulled it out from under the collar of my blue oxford. She’d picked my clothes that morning, and I wasn’t going to refuse her, given that it was her graduation day. I'd snuck into the back of the building so that I could watch her cross the stage and take her diploma, shake the president’s hand and wink at the camera that was catching it to show on the widescreen mounted for ease of viewing. That wink had been for me, and now I’d make her pay for it. Or reward her for it, rather. While I walked through the family room, I unhooked my belt and unzipped my pants. I heard something drop onto the floor of our bedroom and it made me even harder than I’d been before. Which was saying something, since she felt me up the entire drive home. I paused before clearing the doorway into the bedroom, taking a second to appreciate the fucking masterpiece that was our life since we got back together.

It was loud and colorful and messy and perfect. We never went to bed angry, and we definitely went to bed often. But it was more balanced with date nights and cooking classes and long weekends on the coast. It wasn’t just sex to cover our issues; it was intimacy that anchored us even more firmly together. “Are you going to come in or should I start this party on my own?” I grinned, striding through the door and then stopping up short. “Fuck me. You changed your shoes, naughty girl.” She glanced down and shrugged. “These felt more fun.” Ha. I couldn’t disagree that looking at Adele right now screamed that we were about to have some fun. She was stark naked, her tight stomach, high, perky breasts and freshly waxed landing strip only interrupted by two things: her black graduation cap and the black stilettos that had ribbons weaving up around her legs. The criss-crossing black ribbon stopped at her knees and made her legs look eight miles long. But as fun as they were to look at, I could not wait until they were spread open wide for me. “Turn around,” I said quietly. “Brace your hands on the bed and spread your legs open.” Adele slicked her tongue across her bottom lip, eyes tripping down my body before she did it. I almost came in my fucking pants at the picture she presented. Her tight, firm ass wiggling while she spread her legs in precisely the right position. Her straight, blonde hair cascading over one shoulder. And her legs. God. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that I got to put my hands on her. I stepped out of my pants and used one hand to pull my shirt over my head. She was panting by the time I was behind her and ran a hand down her spine. “Are you wet?” She scoffed. “What do you think?” My hand drifted down to test and I stopped briefly to press my finger against the tight pucker of skin just between her cheeks. That could come later. I slipped three fingers through her slit and hummed my approval. “Please,” she whispered, shifting backwards so my cock pressed up against her. “Did you think about this earlier when you crossed the stage?” “This precise moment? No, I can’t say that I did.” I cracked a hand on her ass, gritting my teeth at how it pinked up her skin. “Graduating college has made you mouthy. Maybe I should just go make some dinner now.” Adele stood and whipped around, gripping my erection in a tight fist. Her eyes flamed. “Don’t even think about it.” The fact that she literally and figuratively had me by the balls made something snap in me. Staring at her like this, with how fearless we were with each other now, loosened my tongue in a way that I’d been wanting to do for months. “Marry me.” Adele froze, blinking up at me. “Wh-what?”

Using one hand, I pushed her back onto the bed and crawled over her. She spread her legs naturally and I slipped inside of her in one long push. Her cap fell off her head at the force of it. “You heard me.” Her head arched back and I lightly bit the tender skin of her neck. After groaning she said, “You cannot be serious right now. Who proposes during sex?” I thrust inside of her again. “Apparently I do. Come on, baby, you know you want to.” When she didn’t answer, I came to a stop. She shoved at my shoulder. “Nathan,” she whined. “This is bullshit. Can’t I come first and then we’ll talk about the serious stuff? Because if you ruin my orgasm with a proposal you don’t mean, I’ll fucking murder you. For both things.” I slid in again and we both moaned. “Who says I don’t mean it?” Then it was her turn to stop. She cupped the side of my face and stared into my eyes. “Really?” “Really.” I dropped my head to kiss her deeply. “I love you. I want to spend my life with you. Have perfect, blonde, mouthy babies with you. Preferably with green eyes. Why shouldn’t we start now?” When she blinked again, a tear slid down her temple into her hairline. Her voice was shaky when she answered. “Well then, I say hell yes, I’ll marry you.” We kissed, laughing and smiling while we did. The most overwhelming sense of peace lit me up from the inside while I wrapped myself around her. Despite everything stacked against us, we’d ended up here. Adele raised an eyebrow at me. “Who told you to stop moving?” My bossy little girl. Our life would never be dull. And I couldn’t fucking wait.

The End

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my parents, may you forever remain in the dark about the existence of these novels. Thank you for procreating. Thank you to my beta readers: Christina, for your medical advice and personal experience; Leigh, for being honest and enthusiastic; Anna, for cheering me on. To Jenn, with Social Butterfly. You’re fucking amazing. Thank you for all your hard work and putting up with my tardy replies. To Najla, for another exquisite cover. To Lindee for the beautiful photos and help, and Emilia for wearing that corset. To Jade, with The Write Assistants. You always help me out in a pinch and put up with my (many) requests. To the number of bloggers who have gone above and beyond: Paula, Candi, and Ang of The Dirty Laundry Review. For having me takeover and for supporting my every book. Thank you. Angie with Angie and Jessica’s Dreamy Reads. You always make me smile, which usually takes great effort. Thank you for your kindness and enthusiasm. I appreciate it so. The ladies of The Literary Gossip—thank you for taking a chance on me, again. To Lex Martin, Laurelin Paige, Lauren Blakely, and Roxy Sloane for reading Tempting and for sharing it on your pages. I’m honored that you read my book, and humbled that you shared it. Thank you for being so gracious. Flossie B, get ready to be a fetus. To Jamie. Because I have regrets. And finally, to the reader. Thank you for purchasing this novel, for the support you gave me with Tempting and Beguiling, which astounded me beyond all belief, and for leaving a review. Hate it or love it, your reviews mean so much and I read each and every one.

ADDICTED

Addicted (book four in the Tempting series) by Alex Lucian © 2016 by Alex Lucian All rights reserved. Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs Interior Designer: The Write Assistants Editing: M. Wiemer, Jon Perry No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, brands, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

To Kate, because your beauty and grace will always be timeless

CHAPTER ONE

I arrived twenty minutes early, scoping out the hotel’s lounge and reception for the usual suspects. I didn’t frequent the same places in order to avoid suspicion, which kept my guard up and my eyes alert. These were important things to remember. The lobby bathroom was decked out, black marble for miles, with itty specks that sparkled under the low lighting. I touched up my makeup and reapplied deodorant and lip stain. I gargled the mouthwash I’d brought, double checking that I had a toothbrush and floss for later. After smearing a good lot of lotion across my arms, I grabbed the hand sanitizer from my bag and squirted a glob of it into my palms. I didn’t want to dry out my hands with the hotel-provided soap. Ten minutes to go. I left the bathroom for the lounge and idly looked over the heads of the patrons. Tall, dark, and bearded. That’s what he’d told me. It wasn’t much to go on, but he’d also let me know he’d sit beside an aquarium if he arrived first. I debated going to the bar for a beverage when I didn't see him there. I usually brought my flask, filled with only a shot’s worth of vodka to keep my head level but still enough to chill my nerves. But in my haste to get downtown and not have to walk seven blocks to the hotel in my black stilettos, I’d forgotten the flask on my kitchen countertop. It didn’t matter how many times I did this; I was always a little bit nervous. As my eyes searched the lounge, I became aware of a gentleman at the bar, who was staring at me unabashedly. Refusing to meet his eyes, I made my way to another side of the bar while I waited. I pulled out my phone just to make sure I didn’t have a text message from him informing me he was late before tucking it away. I didn’t need my phone as a distraction right now. The bartender set a fruity-looking drink in front of me. The maraschino cherry on top bled into the whipped cream and I stared at it like the unwelcome intrusion it was. “From the gentleman down there,” the bartender said in a low voice as he cocked his head to the blond-haired man who’d been ogling me when I walked in. I regretted flicking my eyes to him because in doing so, I had to see the way he stared

at me. There was no doubt that the dress I wore showed off my assets—it was why I’d worn it. It was black, with an opaque panel that covered my breasts and lower half. The panel was open between my breasts, but it wasn’t totally indecent, because over the panel was black lace fabric that covered the opening all the way up to my neck, stopping at my shoulders to leave my arms bare. The dress came to midthigh, and with my simple earrings and my midnight-black hair braided in one plait over my shoulder, nothing about me screamed that I was asking for attention. Especially not from the blond man, and his slug-like lips. Ignoring the drink, I looked to the entrance for the man I was meeting, but felt a little spike of urgency in my blood when the drink-buyer stepped into my sights. Always be alert: it was my mantra. “Helllllo,” he said, looking me up and down. In his hand was a short drink, and it sloshed against the sides as he leaned against the bar top. I took him in, the shirt that looked like it was inspired by a tropically located bathroom’s wallpaper. “You look lonely.” I wanted to ignore him, but seeing how he was none-too-subtly encroaching on my personal space, I couldn’t exactly pretend not to see him. “I’m not, thank you.” Pointedly, I looked over his shoulder at the entrance for the lounge. The man stepped closer. “That drink looks like Hawaii, don’t you think?” Ah, Hawaii—explained the shirt. I sized him up. Six foot, two-hundred and fifty pounds. Mid-forties with leathery-looking skin most likely thanks to repeated sun exposure. Glancing at the fruity beverage, I said, “It looks like a diabetic coma.” “You’re too good for a piña colada?” He sounded displeased and I pushed the drink to him. “Not too good, no. Just not in the mood for sugar-laden drinks or the strangers who buy them for me.” My eyes were steel as I looked up at him. “I’m waiting for someone.” Get a hint, buddy. “Let me keep you company while you wait,” he invited, sitting in the seat beside me and effectively blocking my view of the lounge entrance. “I don’t need company,” I said as calmly as possibly. I’d dealt with pushy men like this guy, men who couldn’t take a hint if it slapped them across their smug faces. But it usually got my guard up, regardless. We weren’t in Hawaii, and this man wasn’t someone who was a genuine threat, which made him easy to dismiss. “I’m just going to sit here anyway.” “Then you’ll be sitting alone,” a deep voice said at my back. The mere proximity of him set my skin afire with goosebumps and I reigned in any reaction I may have had for the sake of professionalism. I felt the man’s presence come to my side and when he said, “Hi, Ruby,” I recognized his voice immediately. I liked the way he said my name, his voice all rumbly and warm. I turned my head, already curving my lips in welcome. But then I took him in— as much of him as I could, at least.

Christ. He was huge. And dark. And daunting. Dark hair covered his head and wrapped around his jaw in a beard that made me think of flannel and wood smoke. His eyes were direct and intense, like he was memorizing my face. One bead of sweat slid slowly down my spine. He was … wow. His dark eyes searched me before he looked beyond me, to the man whose jaw had likely collapsed to the bar top. “Get lost.” Two words. Two one-syllable words and the Hawaiian-shirted man was gone before his shadow could catch up. “Elias?” He nodded once, slowly, hailing the bartender over with the lightest beckon if his hand. There was power in him, something I immediately found alluring. This was a man who owned not just the room he walked into, but the people in it as well. “Get rid of this,” he motioned to the whipped cream monstrosity before turning to me. “What would you like?” I smiled politely as I contemplated. I normally might have ordered something stronger. But something about Elias’ presence made me change my mind. “Martini, three-to-one ratio of vermouth please.” “Dirty?” The bartender wiped down the counter where the fruity drink had sat, and placed a small, blood red napkin in its place. I shook my head and the bartender disappeared down the bar. “Dirty martinis are for rookies.” Elias sounded impressed, even pleased. I angled my head and smiled softly. “I like to taste my alcohol.” “I’m surprised by the three-to-one ratio, though. Isn’t it usually five-to-one?” “Wet.” I didn’t need to tease this man with sultry words. He’d seen me before I’d seen him—he was already interested. But that didn’t make my answer any less sexual-sounding. “I like my martinis to be wet.” The low light masked his eyes, but I sensed a shift in his gaze nonetheless. “What about you?” “I prefer wet, too.” Considering he hadn’t actually ordered any alcohol, I knew he was alluding to something else. It gave me a genuine smile, not the practiced, carefully crafted smile I usually wore for situations like this one. He had a warmness that the Hawaii man had lacked, a sort of wry sense of humor at our situation. The bartender set the drink in front of me and Elias laid a shiny black card on the equally black bar top. But still, his eyes were on me. He was taking every single inch of me in, like he didn’t already know what I looked like. His eyes trailed over the braid and I registered his swallow. He’d told me over the phone, he liked the photo he’d seen of me with a braid. “Start a tab?” the bartender asked. Elias looked at me with a question in his eyes. I subtly shook my head to Elias. “Just the one drink for me.” “No tab,” Elias said, not taking his eyes off of me. “Just the check.”

I shifted on my seat, pressing my thighs together. “Thank you for the drink.” “You’re welcome to more.” He gestured an arm out and I took in his clothing. He was as he’d described on the phone—tall and dark. But he was much more than that. He was early thirties, deeply tanned, with lips that held just a bit of a pout in the lower lip. And he was in excellent health, judging by the whites of his eyes and the fit of his body. There was no hint of muscles—oh no, the muscles were obvious, but not in a way that was meant to distract. The dark charcoal sweater wrapped around his arms with just enough slack to show the curves of the muscles that coiled around his thick arms. He wore dark jeans and black dress shoes. His clothes insinuated money, which was a good sign. The heavy silver watch at his wrist touted money too, but not flashy in the way of diamonds or a large logo. My sense of professionalism was never far, however and I was reminded that this wasn’t what it appeared to be. I was almost sad when I shook my head. “I don’t make a habit of getting drunk,” I said, not adding in situations like these to the end of my sentence. It wasn’t necessary, just like the alcohol wasn’t. I was already excited. That’s what the little curl in my blood was from. Elias projected just enough masculinity and a certain kind of peace—despite his massive height and the broadness of his shoulders. Like he could keep me safe. Shaking my head slightly, I told myself I wasn’t looking for a bodyguard. “Sorry, I was a couple minutes late.” “It’s fine,” I assured him, touching a hand to his arm just because I wanted to feel the muscle beneath. I touched just his forearm, but even that smallest bit held a powerhouse of muscle shifting under my hand. And I didn’t let go for several seconds. “You’re stunning, Ruby. I regret not telling you the second I sat down.” It caught me off guard. He said it with complete sincerity. I didn’t doubt him, but I didn’t often indulge in compliments like that. Too many and they’d go to your head; make you lazy. “Thank you.” I took the opportunity to eye him up and down. “I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised.” He laughed lightly, his shoulders moving up and down. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I couldn’t wait to see what was under the sweater, beneath the dark jeans. “I feel like I’m at a slight advantage. I knew what you looked like.” My fingers played with the end of my braid. “That’s what this meeting is for, so I can determine if this is going to work.” His eyes were dark when he asked, “And?” I smiled. “I’m feeling confident tonight.” He licked his lips and it was so sexy—so primal— that I took another sip of my martini to keep from fanning my face. “I’m glad you were willing to work with my schedule,” he said, touching my hand when I brought the glass down. It wasn’t a line, and I hadn’t meant to lower my voice with its delivery when I said, “I’m quite flexible.” But he smiled nonetheless, a kind of big bad wolf smile as his lips spread. His beard was thick, but not so much that I couldn’t make out the

sculpted jaw underneath. I swallowed hard, feeling my pulse race a little. There was heat and more than a little danger in that grin. I was little red riding hood and he was out for me. He pressed his forefinger against the back of my hand, and I felt a shiver up my arm from the contact. The air around us was electric as I pushed the drink away from myself, indicating to us both that I was ready. But before we left our seats, Elias reached behind his back and revealed an envelope. I blinked at it several times as my brain fired off little reminders to pay attention under the cloud of lust that was coating us both in a heavy fog. “Oh,” I said, breathy and very, very warm. “You just leave that in the bathroom once we’re in the room.” “Are you sure?” I looked down at his hands, his very large, very masculine hands, and because I wanted to, I reached down and touched them. This put my own hands inches from his crotch, a fact that made me stutter a little. “Ye—yes, please. Just leave the donation in the bathroom.” “Donation.” His mouth curved just enough to make me feel warm all over. This was the first time, in recent memory, that a client had made me this excited. But that’s who he was, I reminded myself as he helped me down from the bar stool. I had to remind myself again as he led me to the elevator, with the tips of his fingers on the small of my back. He was a client. When he opened the door to our room for the night, or the hours we’d agreed on, rather, I looked him in the eyes and reminded myself that he was a client. He was still a client when his fingers slid down my arm like he was gliding across piano keys, before his hand wrapped around mine and he pulled me, all too willingly, into the room. The door closed quietly behind me and he stepped forward, so that I was backed up against it. As his mouth descended and his breath warmed my face, my insides shivered and I once again reminded myself he was a client. And I was his escort, paid to give him a thorough fuck.

CHAPTER TWO

Right before my lips hit hers, I stopped. Just to see what she’d do. To see if I could. Because fucking hell, Ruby was so goddamn sexy that it was almost obscene. The fact that she was being handsomely compensated to look at me as if she wanted to go at my dick like it was covered in chocolate didn’t even matter, because I could already tell she was worth every penny. The sleek lines of her black dress couldn’t conceal the luscious swell of her tits or the tight, long curve of her waist. Her lips, holy hell, her lips. They were indecent. Oh, the things I’d do to them before she left the room. So when she let out a soft huff of air through her nose—the smallest level of frustration that she could have possibly shown—I grinned. “When you smile like that, like you did at the bar,” she said, her impossibly dark eyes trained on my lips, “you remind me of the big bad wolf.” My smile dropped and I braced my hands on the door on either side of her face. Her lips pursed when I still didn’t kiss her. Using the tip of my nose at the edge of her jaw, I pushed so that she tilted her neck to the side. She smelled like spice and sin. Then I whispered into her ear. “That’s an excellent way to view me, because before this night over, I will have devoured you fucking whole.” Still pressed up against her like I was, I bent my knees and rolled my hips up against her, letting her feel how mother fucking hard I was inside my jeans. My dick felt like a steel pipe, and I was more than gratified when she let out a breathy exhale against the side of my face. “But before I get you out of that dress, you better tell me if there’s anything I’m not allowed to do.” Ruby palmed my dick through my jeans and rubbed, ripping a groan from my throat. “How about you show me what I get to play with tonight first?” I pulled back and met her eyes before yanking my sweater off with one hand. She licked her lips when I tossed it away, her gaze tripping over my chest and stomach. Maybe she was just that good, maybe she reached out and traced the tip of one finger down all her clients’ happy trails, humming appreciatively. I’m sure every man who paid a professional wanted to feel like they were different, that they got a side of her no one else got. But I wasn’t a fucking moron, and I also knew that Ruby was making seven hundred dollars off of me for two

hours, so she’d have to be good. So even though my skin tightened at her lazy perusal and her easy touch of my skin, I wasn’t dumb enough to think that she didn’t make every guy feel that way. Her long, graceful fingers pulled my belt, unhooking it from the loops with efficiency. Ruby licked her plump, porn-star lips and looked up at me from underneath her long, dark lashes while she pulled down my zipper. “Pull your dress down,” I ordered. “I need to see if they’re as good as they look on your website.” It was the first picture of her that I’d seen, and it’d caught my eye immediately. Though her face was cropped out of that particular shot, she was wearing a man’s shirt that was unbuttoned, teasing at the edges of her nipples so that all you could see of her skin was the perfect line of her stomach and the generous curves of her breasts, which were almost too big for her lithe, small-boned frame. Instead of listening right away, Ruby snaked her hand into my opened pants and wrapped her fingers around the base of my dick with a surprisingly firm grip. “They are.” I smirked, trying not to come in her hand like a fucking high-schooler. “I like your honesty.” Instead of acknowledging my compliment, she gave a slow twist of her hand before letting go. “Go sit on the bed.” “Am I not the one in charge?” I let one finger drift down the deep V of her dress, but she stepped back before I could trace the curve of her breast. “Of course,” she said easily, but lifted her chin at the bed anyway. “I just want you to have a better view of what you paid for.” I narrowed my eyes, waffled with the idea of just yanking up her dress, pushing down my jeans and taking her up against the wall so she knew who was calling the shots. But she had a spark in her dark eyes that hardened me further, and I imagined her putting on a show for me. So I did as she asked, walking back into the perfectly appointed room, shucking off my jeans before I sat on the edge of the bed. Ruby eyed my dick appreciatively, as she should, considering all nine inches were aimed straight up between my legs at the current moment. It was why I preferred to keep my sexual experiences to professionals. Their healthy appreciation for sex, their careful approach to who they took on, and the absolute desire for no connections after I walked out the door was what I loved about them. With slow, swinging steps, Ruby came to stand in front of me. She turned slightly to the side to reach the zipper of her dress, and it made the long, thick braid of her hair fall over her shoulder again. I clenched my hands on the tops of my legs, wanting very badly to fist it in my hand while I took her from behind. I smiled, knowing that was exactly where I wanted to start with her. Holding her slight hips in my big hands, seeing her on her hands and knees in front of me. Her dress loosened on her frame and she held my eyes the entire time she pushed it down her body. Every inch of skin she uncovered made my mouth go dry. I’d been with dozens of beautiful women. Some blonde, some brunette, some with big tits, and some with small, perfect handfuls.

Ruby, naked in front of me with only her stilettos and the neatly trimmed landing strip over her pussy, was the most fucking stunning creature I’d ever seen in my life. Her tits were far, far better in person than the pictures I’d seen. Heavy and full with dark pink nipples. All of her was lean and taut, except for those. And I knew, with perfect forethought, that one night would not be enough. Suddenly, I didn’t want her on her hands and knees, hiding the front of her from me. I clenched my jaw and crooked a finger at her. “Come here.” Her arms were loose at her sides while she walked the remaining distance to me. I lifted my hands to frame her waist. She pushed her fingers through my hair, and I fought not to shiver. “Now that I’m here,” she said from where she stood in between my legs, “what are you going to do with me?” Her belly button was just below eye level to me, and I stared at the small oval indentation in her smooth, flat stomach. I pressed two fingers against it and drew a straight line down until I hit the coarse, short hairs of her landing strip. Ruby widened her legs and balanced one hand on my shoulder. I turned my fingers over and pushed through her slit. “I guess you do like it wet,” I said, glancing up at her. The color in her cheeks was high, which made me happy. Her soaked pussy did too, so I pushed both fingers in while I held her eyes. Leaving them in, I stood so that I could tower over her. She was tall, especially in her heels, so I didn’t have to crouch to move my fingers in and out of her. The way she stared up at me, one hand still on my shoulder and the other wrapped around my bicep, whipped up a firestorm in my belly. There was a spark of challenge in her eyes. She was daring me. To do what, I wasn’t quite sure. So I turned us, only pulling my fingers out to push her back on the bed. The mattress and bedframe were tall enough that I only had to bend my knees slightly if I wanted to feed the head of my cock inside of her. “Condoms are in my bag next to the bed,” she whispered. I nodded, leaning down to grab one. I held the edge of the wrapper in my mouth and tore it open with my teeth, which made her smile. “That’s funny?” “No,” she said, still smirking up at me, pulling her hands up to cup her breasts. “I just knew you’d do that.” “You’ve got me all figured out, huh?” She blinked and I rolled the condom down, pinching the top while I did. “No. But I don’t need to.” I had a fleeting thought to lean over her and take her mouth, but I held back. It felt too intimate, too soon. Ruby wasn’t a giggly, fawning escort. And trust me, I’d had that kind. Kissing them had felt appropriate, expected even. But not with her. She held the power, even though I was the paying customer. And the unexpected challenge of that, of wanting to fuck her hoarse, feel her clench around me in undeniable pleasure, flooded my veins.

Ruby pulled her knees up like she expected me to crawl over her body, but I stayed standing. Holding her eyes, I braced my clenched fists on either side of her waist and leaned down to suck her right tit into my mouth in one hard pull. She arched her back up on a gasp when I scraped the nipple with my teeth as I let it go. My tongue traced the space of skin over to the left one, and I laved the flat of my tongue up over the curve, groaning at the musky taste of her skin. As I straightened, I thumbed tiny circles over her hardened nipple, watching a slight flush spread over her chest. With firm hands, I gripped both of her calves and propped her feet up on my shoulders before fisting my cock and bending my knees enough that I could fit the head into her pussy. Ruby held her breath when I did, hissing out a breath when I slowly fed her every inch until I rested against her. “So full,” she moaned while I stayed like that and attempted to regulate my breathing. “Yeah?” She nodded slightly, tightening around me with a wicked grin on her lips. “Yeah.” “Good.” Then I pulled back and slammed into her. “Fuck,” I said on a roar when I did it again. Ruby fisted the comforter while I hammered into her, each hard thrust punctuated by a delicious bounce of her tits. I snapped my hips, hooking up at the end with each movement and she arched her back on a gasp. “Oh, right there,” she moaned. Her eyes were shut, so I couldn’t tell if she meant it, or if it was just something she said. It might have pissed me off, if she didn’t feel so fucking good around me while I slid in and out. I was holding her thighs so tightly against me that I worried I’d bruise her. But I didn’t let go, my chest heaving like a freight train was roaring through my veins while I fucked her. I let go of her leg so I could thumb her clit and she tightened again, one rolling pulse that almost took my breath. So I made tight circles and her gasps deepened. Heat pulled at my lower back and I fought to keep the orgasm at bay. “Come on, Ruby, let me feel that cunt around me.” “Oh god,” she moaned, turning her head to the side when I picked up my speed. “Come on,” I said again, feeling the tingle of my impending release gather up my spine. I moved my thumb at just the right time with my thrust and she fisted around me, her mouth falling open while she did. With a roar, I came, flooding the condom. I slowed my thrusts while I milked both of our orgasms. Ruby tilted her chin up, hiding her eyes from me while she came down. When I had my breath again, I gently lowered her legs and fell into the bed next to her. She smiled over at me. “Good?” I asked her, tracing a small circle around her nipple. “What do you think?” she said dryly. “I think that in about thirty minutes, I’m going to need you to ride my dick.” I

smiled when she snorted. “That was fucking phenomenal.” I almost said worth every penny, but as I wasn’t a jackass, I held my tongue. But fucking hell, she was. And before my time was up, I’d feel her again and again, until neither of us could walk, if I had anything to do with it.

CHAPTER THREE

When he came out of the bathroom, I knew he’d left the donation on the counter. He walked to the mini bar on the other side of the room and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He held it up for me, one dark eyebrow arched in question. “No, thank you,” I said, climbing off of the bed and picking up my dress. When I lifted my head, his eyes were on my body. I glanced sideways at the bed, thinking of the last couple hours we’d spent rolling along the expensive sheets. It’d been the most fun I’d had doing this, mostly because Elias was something else—this man who emanated power and strength. He could flip me from my front to my back with the flick of his hand, leaving me breathless and bouncing throughout. I gave him a small smile as I stepped into the bathroom to freshen up and collect the envelope of cash. I wish I could say I felt disgusted with myself every time I did this, taking money from a man who had taken over my body, but I felt very little. I tucked the stack of hundreds into a pocket in my clutch and stepped into my clothes. Then I ran through my head everything I needed to do still, which included an all-nighter studying. Which was part of the reason I had turned down Elias’ offer of a drink; I couldn’t study for my Comparative Theology final with a head clouded by whiskey. I rolled my neck, feeling only a twinge of regret for agreeing to this ‘date’ with Elias tonight. Being that it was the week before finals, I hadn’t planned on seeing any clients. But my manager, Lenore, had forwarded me Elias’ information along with a “he’s very eager to meet you and will pay extra if need be” note. In truth, it wasn’t the money that made me agree to come along tonight—it was the fact that someone was eager enough to meet me to offer extra. I wasn’t knocking myself—I knew I was, by New York City standards, very attractive. But I’d been handed so many clients that had been turned away from others, the busier girls Lenore managed, that I didn’t have anyone dying to meet me. With my dark hair and looks, I didn’t fit the “market ideal” as Lenore often told me with her sympathetic smile. I didn’t care, regardless. I had a steady enough stream of clients to float me through grad school so that I didn’t need to sling burgers or fetch hundreds of coffees for impatient bosses.

Not that what I was doing was any better, especially not by any moral standards. But I didn’t have any moral conflict about having sex for money, even when it was wrapped in pretty words like “escort” and “donation.” I wasn’t trying to justify the fact that I spread my legs for men with enough money to compensate me for a tumble in the sheets. I peeked at my cell phone and tapped out a message to Lenore, All is well. It was our code. Lenore may have been a little detached, but she took care of her girls. All is well meant that there were no problems. Anything else meant trouble. Luckily, I’d never needed to text Lenore anything other than “All is well,” but I knew several other of her girls had found themselves in tricky situations. Even an “I’m great!” signaled Lenore to rally her henchmen. It was a bit dramatic to call Dave and Taylor henchmen, but that’s essentially what they were. Lenore vetted every client before they came to us, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t flip on a dime. Having Dave or Taylor within a couple minutes from us provided safety and security. I faced my reflection in the mirror and brushed my teeth. I always left appointments as fresh as I came in, which was why I reapplied my lipstick and powdered my nose in the mirror. My hair, however, was much messier than when I’d arrived. I huffed as I tried to tuck the strands back in my braid, but it was useless; my braid looked exactly as you’d expect it would after someone—Elias— had tugged, yanked, scrunched, and pulled on it. He was forgiven for it, too, considering that he knew precisely what to do with the finer parts of his anatomy. Unfortunately, not all clients did. Men like him were a treat in my line of work. When I stepped out of the bathroom, Elias was standing by the window overlooking the skyline. He’d sprung for a nice room, which I was grateful for. Some guys didn’t try to impress, not that I blamed them. I was a product they test drove, so a nice room wasn’t something necessary in their eyes especially after they spent so much on the ‘donation.’ When I’d texted Lenore, I still had about thirty minutes left on the clock with Elias. I wasn’t in a hurry to leave, despite the studying I had to do tonight. And besides that, I was looking for a steady client to carry me through the summer, when I was finally on break from classes. So I pushed a smile on my face and walked to stand next to him. “Do you want something to drink?” he asked in that low, gravelly voice. “Water is fine,” I said, giving him a grateful smile when he handed me a cold bottle from the mini fridge. “So, Elias,” I began, before taking a sip of the water and licking a stray droplet from my lips. I watched as his eyes trained on my bottom lip. “What do you do?” His clothes said money, but he had the kind of aura of a man who could live off the land, in some dark cabin in the woods. He smiled slightly and looked down, his wispy black lashes sweeping his skin. “I’m a photojournalist.” “Oh, that sounds interesting.” It surprised me. I didn’t peg him as some Wall Street elephant hunter, someone who spent time looking for the next big shtick.

But the fact that he was a photojournalist gave me pause. It was a more creative field than the men I usually dealt with, so I sized him up with that in mind. “Do you do much traveling?” “Often.” His tongue lashed over his bottom lip and I suddenly, strangely, felt unsatisfied. Those few hours in the bed hadn’t been enough. “I seem to be in the air more than I’m on the ground.” Wistfully, I said, “That must be exhausting.” But I didn’t quite mean it. I’d been holed up inside of libraries and my dorm and then my apartment for so many years that I hadn’t explored the world the way I wanted. I studied Himalayan Buddhism from the inside of a textbook, but what I really wanted to was take the hike all the way up to the Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan, a temple built into the side of a cliff. “And you?” He raised that eyebrow again, and that slight movement, that black eyebrow raised, made me want him again, in a way that didn’t define us as an escort and client. “I’m an escort, of course,” I said with a curve of my lips that didn’t quite meet my eyes. “That’s not all, though. You seem very intelligent.” He brought his drink to his lips and the ice cubes inside clinked. “You’re professional.” He took a sip, never taking his eyes off me. “Why does a beautiful young woman do this?” If I was anyone else, I might’ve bristled under his gentle, but still intrusive, questioning. But I didn’t feel shame for what I did, or who I was, so I debated telling him. I knew my bio on my website wasn’t specific, except to say I was an educated young woman. “Currently, I’m getting my master’s in theological studies. I already have a master’s in sociology.” “Ah.” He smiled, as if this news was somehow pleasing to him. “And a bachelor’s in?” “Religious studies.” I kept my voice even. I very rarely delved into this side of my life with a client, not because I was purposely private about it, but because clients rarely asked. He laughed shortly. “Religion.” He broke his concentration on me to look out the window. “The socially acceptable form of insanity.” His tone was brittle, and I didn’t miss the way his fingers on his glass clenched a little tighter. “If that’s what you believe,” I said calmly. “I believe in syncretism, that there are practices from various religions and belief systems that combine easily.” I sipped my water. “I think many people do too, actually, which is what fascinates me the most.” He looked back at me and tilted his head to the side. “How so?” “Well,” I began, surprised that he wanted to know my opinions, “it’s not uncommon for someone who receives the Eucharist to also tout their belief in karma. Karma is a concept in many religions, but not in Christianity.” “Christians don’t have a form of karma?” he asked, and I saw the way his eyes changed. He was absorbing what I was saying, genuinely interested in my thoughts. He was unlike any other client I’d had before.

“An argument can be made that karma is similar to how Christians view sin and its effects. But that’s debatable.” “Hmm.” He finished his whiskey and stepped around me to pour another mini bottle into his tumbler. “An argument can also be made that it’s all a load of horseshit.” I listened to the tinkle of the ice cubes as he poured whiskey over them. I didn’t get upset when people asked why I was an escort. For me, it was a job, something temporary as I pursued my studies. But Elias essentially calling my degree ‘horseshit’ raised my hackles. “You have a grudge against religion?” He turned around, and there was a little fire burning in his eyes. “I was raised Catholic. I received the Eucharist. I was faithful.” His voice hadn’t raised, but I could feel the tension radiating off of his body. “I was faithful,” he repeated, “until that supposed God ripped away my sister. I don’t understand a divine being who can allow terrible things to happen to good people.” I was taken aback by his admission, and it caused me to forget the only relationship we had at that moment. I spoke the first thing that came to my mind, which in hindsight was probably not wise. “In all your years as a Catholic, did you study the Bible?” “Of course I did.” He didn’t seem angry with me, but he did seem angry at God. “Then you’ll remember John 16:33, ‘You will have suffering in this world.’” Elias stared at me, his eyes hooded and his mouth in a line. “The God you believed in never said it might happen, he said it would happen. And First Corinthians 13:12, ‘Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but I will know everything completely, just as God knows me completely.’ This infers that you’re not meant to know. Not in this world.” He stood there, just feet from me, a cloud overtaking his eyes. And then I realized my gaffe and felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, a little embarrassed that I was adding that in belatedly. “And I’m sorry for the theological treatise. That’s not what you needed.” But he didn’t say anything, he just stared at me with that fire burning. Despite the anger in his eyes, I didn’t feel any threat to myself. In fact, I noticed in a rather inappropriate way, how attractive he looked like that, dark all over and storming silently inside. I knew then that I’d said too much, so I wrapped my hands around my clutch and resolved to leave. Giving him an apologetic smile, I stepped up to him and tentatively placed my hand on his chest, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “Goodbye, Elias.” As I stepped out the door, I marveled at his complete silence. And I knew that putting my foot in my mouth had nipped in the bud any chance for a steady summer client.

CHAPTER FOUR

Regardless of the fact that Ruby was the best sex I’d had in recent memory, that flash of stubborn backbone and mildly haughty intelligence at the end—not to mention the fact that I was her paying customer—should have ensured that I never thought about her again after walking out of the hotel only twenty minutes after she had. Except that’s not what had happened. Her words kept turning over and over in my head, as did the flash in her big, dark eyes when she spouted words at me that I had no problem admitting I had to look up after she left. I liked it. A fucking lot. Ruby was a pleasant surprise, much more than the easy release that I’d been expecting. Her pictures had intrigued me, her aloof personality sparking a challenge that I hadn’t felt in a while. The sex was better than good. No way was she faking when she clenched around my dick. And I knew more than one escort who told me they used lube before even laying eyes on the client so that it came off as natural. But those last few minutes were inked on my brain for the next couple days. I was still getting settled into my Upper West Side apartment, finally outgrowing the bare bones landing spot I’d rented in between jobs in the Meatpacking District. Maybe my mid-thirties were changing the biology of my brain to the point that I needed more than a mattress on a floor and a television bolted to the wall to keep me satisfied. The good thing about my spartan home base in Manhattan for the last decade was my savings account. Women were my only vice outside of travel. And to my way of thinking, they were worth every penny. Just like that, a flash of Ruby on her knees, bracing her hands on the wall of the hotel while I fucked her from behind the second time made me close my eyes. It had taken everything in me not to call the next morning and try to set up another appointment. The only reason I hadn’t was because I’d seen in her in eyes when she kissed me on the cheek that she never expected to see me again. My stony silence— intentional silence—had ensured that. But in that moment, I’d still been so fucking stunned that our post-coital

conversation had somehow turned to my sister and how her death had ripped the curtain back on any belief system I might have had. It was far more likely to me that there was some cartoonish Wizard of Oz character hidden up in the clouds than an omnipotent savior dictating the events of my life. And she’d all but nailed me to the wall calling me out on it. I still couldn’t figure out why that was making me hard days later. Not thinking too deeply about it, I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and tapped out a text to the number she’d given me. I’d like to see you again. I was staring at the screen to make sure it said delivered when someone called my name. Randall Francis from the last office I’d done freelance for in Pakistan was jogging across the street with a wide smile on his face. “Good to see you, man.” I nodded, giving him a polite smile. “What are you doing over in my neck of the woods?” “I was over at the Lincoln Center for something and thought I’d walk back to work. I didn’t know you lived over here.” “Just.” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at my building. “Moved in a few weeks ago, but I like it so far.” “The wife and I do too. We’re actually hitting up a place tonight for dinner that she just heard about, thought it sounded cool. The Library Bar?” “Oh yeah,” I said, tucking my phone away. “I’ve never been.” Randall smiled indulgently, like he always did when he was talking about his wife. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a nice guy. A lot like the rest of the guys I came into contact with through work but never went past surface politeness. “Sarai always finds the best places. You should check it out, man.” He lifted his arm to look at his watch. “Hey, I’ve got to run. Are you coming to the dinner in a couple weeks?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Not sure yet.” “Fuck, man. Your pictures are part of the book. You’ve got to come. Bring a woman maybe, so Lizette in Accounting can stop salivating over you.” We both laughed, because Lizette was pushing sixty and had more jowls than a fucking bulldog. “See ya, Randall.” While he clapped my shoulder and walked past me, I felt my phone vibrate. With a deep breath, I pulled it out. Ruby: What did you have in mind? I slicked my tongue along the underside of my front teeth while I thought through what Randall had said. Part of the reason I was going to be in New York for the longest stretch that I’d been in years was my contribution to the book he’d mentioned, a collaborative effort of over a dozen photographers’ work from the last eight years in the Middle East and Asia. There were more events that I was strongly encouraged to attend, but I fucking hated them. Hated the tedious, inane

conversations with strangers who felt like they knew me. Who felt like they had a right to ask intrusive questions about what I’d seen. Hated the monkey suit that I had to wear that felt like a straightjacket most nights. As I stared at her response, I had an idea. Care to meet for drinks? The Library Bar on W 60th at 9? Ruby: Just drinks? For now. Miss Ruby was about to go on an audition, and she had no fucking clue. I arrived before her and was sitting in a dark leather couch on the first floor, the lighting in the second level giving a perfect view of metal railings and case upon case of books. The low hum of chatter around me was soothing after my quiet day of developing photos. The beer I’d ordered was crisp on my tongue, somehow feeling like a more casual choice than whiskey. I’d just set my glass back down on the round, oak table when I saw her. Tonight she was wearing white, a long, sleek column of white covering her damn near divine body. It was sedate, covering her shoulders with only the slightest hint of cleavage and wrapping down around past her knees. Nothing about it screamed sex appeal, but because it was on her, I couldn’t stop my grin. The look she gave me back when I stood to kiss her on the cheek wasn’t a smile. It was a smirk. “You look like you should be illegal,” I said as she sat on the opposite side of the couch from me, crossing her legs so that I had no choice but to look at the wicked spiked heel of her sandals. “I am.” When I lifted an eyebrow, she laughed under her breath. “Touché.” My eyes roamed her face, and she stared back, unabashed. “But you’re worth the risk.” “Thank you,” she said with a slight lift of her chin. “I have to admit that I didn’t expect to hear from you again.” “After your theological treatise, you mean?” Ruby was about to answer when the server came back to our table and about fucking drooled over her when she ordered, looking up at him through her long, dark lashes. “Grey Goose and tonic, please.” He scurried off and Ruby turned to me again, regarding me with banked interest in her dark chocolate eyes. “Yes, after that. Though I’m impressed you knew what that meant.” “I didn’t,” I tossed back, holding my beer up to my mouth while she smiled at

my honesty. “The second you fled from the room, I had to look up about half of the words you used.” “I find that hard to believe,” she said, angling her legs more in my direction when the server dropped off her drink only seconds later. “My talents don’t lie up here,” I told her, tapping the side of my head with two fingers. “Not all of them, at least.” Her eyes not-so-subtly dipped down to my lap. An erection wasn’t prudent, given where we were, and who I knew would probably drop by our table at any minute. “Glad you don’t have any complaints in that department.” Ruby’s tongue poked out of her mouth to press along the edge of her plump upper lip, and all my skin tightened. “I almost felt like I should have paid you after the third orgasm.” I pulled in a slow breath through my nose and leaned forward so I could speak more closely to her ear. “If you’re looking to get fucked in the bathroom of this bar, then by all means, keep it up.” I was fully hard, and nothing about our interaction felt like she was selling her body and I was one the buying it. Adrenaline bubbled under my skin and I desperately wanted to use her as the outlet. “Elias,” Randall boomed from behind Ruby and I had to blink out of the sexual haze that had wrapped around my head. “I see you took my advice.” “Randall.” I stood, hoping my dick wasn’t at a right angle against my zipper. We shook hands and he gestured to a pretty, petite woman next to him. “Sarai, this is Elias. We work together.” She smiled and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you.” “Likewise.” I held a hand out to Ruby, watched her settle an amused look in my direction while she took it and stood. “Randall, Sarai, this is my friend, Ruby.” “It’s a pleasure to meet both of you,” she said, clasping both of their hands with a warm smile on her face. “Are you a photographer too, Randall?” He laughed good-naturedly, wrapping an arm around his wife. “No. I leave the exciting stuff to men like Elias. Couldn’t handle all the travel and being away from this one.” While Sarai beamed at her husband, Ruby wrapped an arm around my bicep and gave them such a genuine smile that I had to blink at her. “That’s so lovely. How long have you been married?” “Seven years,” Sarai answered, still smiling up at Randall. “Seven is the number of perfection in most cultures,” Ruby said, still holding on to my arm. “It certainly seems true with the two of you.” Well fuck, if they weren’t eating out of her perfectly manicured hand before, they were after that gem. We made small talk for a few more minutes before the Francises had to leave. As I sat, I motioned to the server for another beer. “Another Grey Goose?” “I’m fine, thank you.”

“One of the reasons I wanted to meet you here tonight was to make sure I didn’t remember you incorrectly.” She breathed out a laugh, taking the last sip out of her lowball glass. “I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to take that.” “As a compliment,” I assured her. “Despite your sermon at the end of our date the other night, I find myself wanting more.” “I’m certainly open to negotiating that,” she told me in a low, throaty voice, her eyes glowing in the dim light of the bar. “That’s good. Because I have numerous events over the next month to attend while I’m here. And I’d like you to be at my beck and call for the next thirty days. For whatever I need. Whenever I need it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I wished for more Grey Goose at that moment. “A month?” I said, trying to keep my voice smooth. I didn’t want to reflect any of the shock I felt. “Yes.” His eyes were warm and intense. “That’s,” I began, but didn’t know exactly where I was going with it. “I don’t have rates for extended periods of time.” “I’m sure your manager does.” He raised an eyebrow, and I felt a little silly for saying I didn’t know the rate for thirty days. But it had never been offered to me before. “I’m sure she does,” I said. “You know, I’ll take another drink after all.” I pointed my head at my empty glass. “Would you excuse me a moment?” He nodded, not appearing to be the least bit fazed by my leaving the table. But I needed to text Lenore, and gather my thoughts. The bathroom was bright white, decorated with whimsical, floral prints depicting literary quotes. I tucked myself into a stall to pull out my phone and when I looked up, I faced a quote that was framed and glued onto the back of the stall door. “Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric. – Anton Chekhov.” It made me laugh, possibly erring on the hysterical side. Because while I may not have felt eccentric, I certainly felt strange. The idea of thirty days at Elias’ beck and call and the amount of money that would bring in was making me feel unstable. I typed out a quick text to Lenore. What is the rate for something like thirty-days exclusivity? I knew Lenore would see dollar signs in her eyes and gently encourage me to accept such an extravagant offer. I had dollar signs in my eyes too—the six figures’ worth of student loan debt that followed me into situations just like this, the very reason I’d agreed to take Elias on in the first place. Lenore: Exclusive? Meaning every night? I don’t know. “Beck and call” is how he described it.

Lenore: 15. See if he bites. Fifteen thousand dollars sounded like five months’ rent. It sounded like a nice dent in my student loans. It sounded like freedom. It also sounded like it might be suffocating. One man, for thirty days. Right when I was coming out of my finals. I returned to the table, still not decided yet. “Sorry about that,” I said and smiled appreciatively at the filled drink on the table. I picked it up and sipped it. “Why?” I blurted out. “Why what? You’re going to need to be more specific.” He looked ever the picture of calm confidence. He didn’t doubt I’d take him up on his offer, especially with very little convincing. “Why me?” I realized immediately how that sounded and cooled my voice as I continued. “You’re obviously not a gremlin. You could pick up a date very easily. Why would you need to pay someone?” He leaned back against his seat as he regarded me. “I know that.” He didn’t say it with a smirk, like he was highlighting his enormous ego. He sounded matter-offact about it. “But I don’t want to pick up a date, especially not one with expectations.” At my look, he continued, “You know, dates and meeting the families and friends. Chick flicks. Along the line, moving in together. I’m quite happy with the life I’ve carved out for myself and I’m not interested in complications at the moment.” “Chick flicks are a deal breaker for you?” I asked, tucking my tongue between my teeth to keep from smiling at that. “They are. I’m not interested in traditional dating. I’d much prefer an agreement that you could provide for me, whereby you’re available when I need you and when you leave, I’m not obligated to do anything else.” Sipping my drink, I contemplated. “Okay. But I have finals this week.” “I’m flexible,” he said immediately. “What do you have after finals?” “Nothing, but—” “Great. Then it’s settled.” I narrowed my eyes a little. Not threateningly, but enough to show him my annoyance at being interrupted and his assumption I’d agreed. “It’s not settled yet.” He leaned forward, his lips coming inches from mine where I leaned across the table. “That—that’s why I’m asking this of you. Because you’re whip-smart, and controlled. I need someone who can do what you just did with my buddy, who can hold themselves well when introduced to a stranger. Because I know what your body is capable of. And, after I’ve fucked you, I’d like to listen to you talk some more.” The way “fucked” rolled out of his mouth made me want to indulge in the shiver that slid up my spine. But he was right; I was controlled. So I kept my feelings in check, only nodding briefly as I measured the idea in my mind. “It’s fifteen,” I said

quietly, feeling a little out of my element publicly discussing something as gauche as the price of my companionship. He nodded, didn’t seem the least bit surprised by the amount. “That’s fine. Do you have a passport?” I thought of the passport in my drawer at home, something I’d purchased years earlier when I’d entertained the idea of traveling to Thailand during my winter break, but had never had the courage to actually do. “Yes.” “Where do you live?” It was the first question I didn’t immediately answer, and instead I cocked my head to the side. “I don’t give that information out,” I told him. “I don’t need your exact address, Ruby.” He leveled me with his gaze and I realized I liked the way he said my name, the way it made his bottom lip pout a little bit. “Just, what area.” “Greenwich,” I said. “Good.” He nodded. I sipped the rest of my drink and carefully placed it on the embossed napkin. “I have to say, I’m incredibly flattered by your offer. Normally, I wouldn’t say yes to something like this,” I told him. “My schedule is quite packed, as you can probably imagine. But,” I ran my tongue over my lips, “I’m about to have an open summer, so this is good timing. Once I’ve finished my finals, that is.” “Understood.” Elias lifted a hand for the check, but didn’t move his eyes off of me. “How does tomorrow work for you?” “Tomorrow is great.” “I’ll message you,” he told me as he slid a black credit card into the check presenter and handed it back to the waiter. “Great,” I told him, smiling as I stood. He took my hand in his and ran his thumb over the peaks of my knuckles. “Goodbye, Elias.” “Goodbye, Ruby.” I took a cab home from the restaurant, which was more of a splurge than I normally partook in. But in my five-inch heels and white dress, there was no way I could let the subway grime touch me. My apartment was a relatively roomy studio near the top of a brick-studded walkup. It was a quiet building, home to retirees and single cat-ladies. I laughed to myself about that as I trotted up the steps to my studio, but when I opened the door to my tiny apartment, the first thing that greeted me was my fluffy white ball of a cat, Fletcher. “Hey, baby,” I said, scooping him up into my arms. He meowed as I scratched behind his ears before I set him down. Fletcher flopped to his back and I thumbed through the mail I had on my counter, kicking off my heels and rubbing my foot over his belly. He was my one companion, the only sensible one I could have with my studies and my escort responsibilities. He was a two-year-old stray that I’d adopted from a local shelter a few days before Christmas last year.

All my mail was bills, which was the story of my life. I made enough from escorting to pay everything my student loan couldn’t float, with some extras for cocktail dresses from time to time. I’d need a few new ones for Elias’ offer, I realized, and winced at the balance on my credit card statement before I tucked it away to deal with after finals. Sighing, I stepped behind the bookcase that concealed my sleeping area from the rest of the apartment and unzipped my dress, taking in my very neat bedroom, all my books lined up over the headboard on three white shelves. After changing into lounge pants and a sweatshirt, I picked Fletcher up and grabbed a textbook off the room separator bookshelf and collapsed onto my small sectional. The sounds of taxis and hollers outside rapped against the window, but my apartment was like a cocoon. A space that was all my own, almost completely white except for the splashes of colors that I used sparingly, from the coral-colored Dutch oven that lived on my stove due to the lack of storage, to the simple watercolors that dotted the one long wall. My phone dinged and I picked it up. The number was unknown, so I swiped up on the screen to read it. It’s Nicholas. Let’s get together, I’ve been thinking about you. I gagged. Nicholas, my ex-boyfriend. The remnant of the one serious relationship I’d had. He’d become too manipulating—to a point that I’d changed my phone number and moved after the end of us. There was no way I was going to reply to his message. I deleted it quickly, not wanting his phone number to sear itself in my brain. Minutes later, my phone dinged again and I grinded my teeth. “I don’t know how the fuck you found my number, Nicholas, but leave me alone,” I muttered as I picked it up. But, thankfully, this text was from Lenore. Lenore: Should I mark you off for the next month? I thought of Elias, his dark features and his intense gaze, and felt a strange quiver, one I didn’t usually get after seeing a client. I’d have to be careful to keep him at an arm’s length. This was new territory—not just a repeat client but someone I’d be spending considerable time with. I just had to get through finals before I could get steadily under Elias. My fingers didn’t shake in the slightest as I typed out a response. Yes.

CHAPTER SIX

The last of my meager boxes were unpacked, and I tossed the final flattened cardboard into the pile near the stainless steel fridge which held three takeout boxes, a six pack of beer, and bottle of ketchup. Pathetic, I thought, looking around my sixth floor apartment. There was furniture, a brown leather couch so new that it still squeaked under my ass when I sat on it. That was fucking weird, so I still chose the battered recliner that I’d had since college and had taken with me to every place that I’d laid my head for the last ten years. Absently, it made me wonder what kind of place Ruby lived in. I’d met working women who could pull in high six-figures a year, if they found the right long term clients. Ruby had said she lived in Greenwich, which gave me visions that escorts in NYC could probably make a killing, especially her; with the body meant for Maxim and the eyes that screwed you without her needing to move a single muscle. She was good, all right. So good that I’d willingly agreed to hand over fifteen thousand dollars for one month. What a fucking idiot I was. Good pussy could be found all over, if you knew where to look for it. Wild pussy was something else, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what I craved. The spark of fire in her eyes, the steel backbone that appeared at the slightest hint of challenge from a strong man. That was the kind of woman that brought me to my knees. Every single goddamn time. I pulled a beer from the fridge, cracking the top off and taking a long pull. The last woman like that that I’d pursued, who’d genuinely piqued my interest, had left me standing in the cold to go back to my former brother-in-law, Nathan. Literally, in a cold parking lot in the middle of winter in Boston. My sister Diana had been married to Nathan Easton for a few years before she died in a car crash, courtesy of a drunk driver who blew a stop sign. Knowing Nathan had suffered through her loss was one of the only comforts I’d had since Diana’s death. When I showed up one day out of the blue and Adele, his girlfriend, had answered the door, I’d actually felt the breath sucked from my lungs. Oh, she was wild. It was radiating from her. She’d cussed me out, followed me around their house while I looked for something of my sister’s, looking completely out of place in the perfectly appointed house that Diana had decorated. But she was

Nathan’s—not mine. There hadn’t been a single woman to catch my eye since Adele. Until Ruby. More than likely, it was a sad commentary on me when I was relieved to be thinking about a paid escort and not a woman that had barely been a blip on the radar of my life. But Ruby had that same feel to her. Like a live wire laid somewhere underneath her skin, and if I could only dig deep enough, she’d electrify us both. The next thirty days with her would be the longest I’d stayed in NYC for years. The bustle of travel and taking as many jobs as I could to keep me busy had been the best coping mechanism I could find for ignoring the realities of my life. Reality #1- My best friend for my entire life died in the middle of the night when her car wrapped around a tree. Reality #2- My parents hadn’t figured out how to function in the years since her death, making their home into a veritable shrine for Diana. Reality #3- Staying in one place for too long made me feel like I needed to make plans for my life. Make a future. Future implied hope, and hope was a fucking lie. I’d drained my beer in only a few swallows and tossed the empty bottle into the trash bin with a loud clang. The hazard of me having no work to do and no plans was that it was too easy for me to want to drink my boredom away. Boredom was dangerous for a man like me. It made my mind slip into dark places that I didn’t ever want to descend to. The last time I’d gone there, I’d ended up in a fist fight with Nathan, goading him into hitting me by talking about Adele’s tits. The moment he’d made contact, ramming me into the wall, I’d actually felt relief. And in all honesty, Adele’s tits were amazing. But somehow now, months removed from that whole situation, I couldn’t remember them exactly. All I could see in my head was how Ruby’s sat heavy above her slender rib cage. How perfectly they filled my hands, which were big. I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye socket, knowing damn well it wouldn’t do me any good to think about her. Not only would it not do me any good, but I felt vaguely pitiful, sitting at home on a Saturday and pining over a glorified prostitute whose cunt had felt like tight heaven around me. The buzzer of my speaker rang through the room, and I lifted myself up out of the chair with a sigh, poking the button with a gruff greeting. “It’s Jack, let me up.” I did without a response, smiling a little at how he didn’t actually ask if it was a good time. Jack and I had been friends for a few years. He was a reporter for one of the news magazines that I’d shot some pieces for, and I just couldn’t get rid of him. I’d tried. But like a leech or a fungus, he wouldn’t go away. When I heard his whistling out in the hallway, I unlocked the deadbolt and swung the door open. “Deadbolt, huh?” he asked, punching me in the stomach as he passed. Jack was

almost as tall as me and worked out just as much, so it actually made me grunt when he made contact. “Afraid of the big bad wolf, are ya?” I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help but grin a little at the memory of Ruby that it stirred up. Her staring up at me while I had her up against the door, telling me that that’s what she’d thought of me when she saw me smile for the first time. “He smiles,” Jack said in an awed tone. “Must have found a girl.” There was only one person in the world who knew my proclivity for escorts, and it was Jack, so I nodded and grabbed him a beer from the fridge. I handed it to him while he sat on the couch. He froze when the leather creaked obnoxiously under him. “What the fuck?” “It’s new,” I said on a sigh, falling back into the recliner. Jack held himself perfectly still on the couch, staring over at the other cushions like he was afraid to move. “Didn’t you try it out in the store? I feel like I’m sitting on that plastic shit that my Nonna used to put on all her furniture.” “Ordered it online. I don’t have the patience for the sales people in stores like that. Every time they circle me, I feel like punching something.” “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “that says a lot about you. It shouldn’t surprise me.” “I don’t know why I let you in.” “Because no one else can put up with your brooding silence and death glares at anything that radiates happiness.” Ruby put up with me, I thought, but took a drink of the fresh beer in my hand instead of saying it out loud. Against my better judgement, I gave him a dry look. “So what does it say about me?” “Your history with women has always fascinated me.” “You need a hobby, man,” I interjected, turning on the TV and scrolling through until I found the Yankees game. “Hear me out. I feel really smart right now.” He set his beer down on the end table in between the couch and my chair. “You buy your furniture online because you hate the dance. Haggling on price or delivery options with someone who just wants the commission off your purchase. Right?” “Right.” “And the way you look at women is the exact same thing. You go online and flip through pictures, only reaching out when one catches your eye. You know she’s safe and professional, will keep her mouth shut about you and not want anything from you that you’re not willing to give because going to bars, trying to ferret out what the woman drinking the margarita on the rocks might want from you the next morning is way too exhausting.” My beer was suspended in front of my mouth when I turned to stare at him. “You actually sound really smart right now.” “I know.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you say ferret?”

Jack shrugged, turning his attention to the game. “They’re on my mind because Grace has it in her head that she wants one, so I’ve been doing my research. Did you know that if a female ferret goes without sex for a year, she could die?” “I think I can sympathize,” I muttered. Jack laughed. “That’s the beauty of paying for it, my friend. You’ll never have to know.” “You should try it sometime. It’s pretty fucking spectacular.” I could say it to him because I knew Jack didn’t judge my choices. “More power to you for finding what works for you, seriously.” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t do it. I need to know she’s looking at me and seeing me, not a paycheck.” We fell into easy silence after that, and his words settled into my head. Ruby hadn’t looked at me like I was a paycheck, even though we both knew that’s what I was. And I knew why Jack felt like that. His wife had died shortly after Grace turned two, so his attempts at relationships were few and far between, and only if he saw it being something long term. Combined with his easy sense of humor, Jack was pretty much my opposite in every single way. “This one felt different,” I said after a few minutes. “Probably makes me sound stupid to say that, but she did.” “Not stupid if it was true for you. You’re allowed to feel like it was.” “I wish I didn’t. I just gave up a hefty chunk of change to have her to myself for the next month.” He choked on his beer. “Come again?” I sighed. “Seriously, you’re kidding, right?” Jack gaped at me. “Why not just try out a new one? Or sleep with her one more time and make sure you’re not losing your mind over some quality pussy?” “You know how many bullshit events I have to go to over the next month with the book. She’s fucking smart, Jack. Smarter than me, that’s for damn sure. And then I get that quality pussy every night during the month, if I want it. Trust me, if I decide you’re not too much of a jackass to meet her, you’ll see what I’m talking about.” Jack shook his head at me, a disbelieving look all over his stupid, smiling face. “Oh, I’ll meet her. No way I’d miss the chance to see the woman who finally spun your head around.” “Shut the fuck up and watch the game,” I said and glared at him. Next week. Next week, I’d try to get rid of him again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was rarely late. I was the person who set five alarms whenever I had to be anywhere, typically eight minutes apart. But thoughts of Nicholas’ text had kept me up through the night, and more than once Fletcher had crawled up to nibble on my earlobe. So when I’d woken up on the third Saturday of that month, a few days after agreeing to Elias’ offer, I peered at my alarm clock with confusion. Surely, I hadn’t slept all the way to ten in the morning, right? But after checking my phone and the stove clock as I started a cup of coffee, I realized I had, indeed, overslept. Most Saturdays I was up at six and on my way to the gym thirty minutes later. I wasn’t blessed with a svelte figure; I had to work very hard to keep myself sliding into my size four cocktail gowns. Because I loved food, I was a slave to exercise. I loathed the elliptical, and if I indulged in deep thought over that hatred, I might surmise that my disdain for the elliptical had to do with the fact that it simulated climbing, but in reality I never went anywhere. It was a metaphor for my life, a student for eight years who still hadn’t decided on a career path that wasn’t defined simply by being an eternal student. Yes, I had a master’s, almost two of them. But those two pieces of paper racked up serious debt that I’d never have a chance of paying off without my job. Normally oversleeping wouldn’t be a problem, especially since I didn’t have a client that evening. But the first and third Saturday of every month was reserved for lunch with Lenore and the other girls. And as I downed my coffee, I realized I had less than an hour to be ready before I had to make the trek to the Upper East Side. Lunches with Lenore served two purposes: one, so that we could discuss what would be happening over the next two weeks—getting an idea of what our schedules were like—and two, so she could, in her words, make sure we were “taking care of the product.” It sounded insulting, but she was first and foremost a business owner. She couldn’t afford to sell something—or, rather, someone—who was letting themselves go. If one girl let themselves go and a client noticed, Lenore would get less business. She certainly wasn’t the only glorified pimp in Manhattan. Escorts relied on word-of-mouth marketing, so we had to be top in everything to

get repeat or referral clients. Which was why I took my time gently curling my hair so that soft waves spilled down my back, and why I redid my lipstick when my lips looked the littlest bit uneven. Even though I was solidly booked for the next thirty days, I still needed to present myself as completely perfect to Lenore. After one final skim with the lint roller over my black and white patterned dress, I set off to hail a cab to a small restaurant Lenore favored in the summer, one that had patio seating so Lenore could scrutinize us in the daylight. I arrived with minutes to spare, which caused me to lightly break out in sweat. Lenore wasn’t only a stickler about how we presented ourselves, but she was very strict about being on time. And to her, on time meant ten minutes early. I cursed under my breath as I made my way to the table on the patio, where Lenore was already sitting with everyone she managed except for me. “I’m sorry,” I said to her with what I hoped to be a contrite expression. I gave a smile to Stella, one of the girls I was closest to, and slid into the empty seat between Lenore and Stella. “Did you get lost?” Lenore asked, with a tone that bordered on apathetic as she surveyed the menu. “No, I overslept.” As soon as I’d said it, I wished to suck the words back in my mouth. “Overslept? Are you ill?” Lenore was more in tune with our daily schedules than most managers would be, but it enabled her to be a solid manager, someone who could detect when something was off with any one of us. “No, my phone died last night and I didn’t set an alarm.” The lie slid as easily from my lips as the admission of my oversleeping had. “I’m fine.” I gave her a smile, which she looked at with scrunched eyes for a moment before she turned to the rest of the group. “What’s everyone ordering?” Lunch was always Lenore’s treat, but I said that lightly because she always made sure we were eating balanced meals. Not too much fat, because it would affect our skin. Each girl took their turn telling her about the salad they’d selected from the menu, something which made me curl my lip a little. Lenore knew my penchant for eating steak and always ordering dessert, something she didn’t approve of, but had said very little to me about because I went to the gym enough to keep myself slender. When it was Stella’s turn, I held my breath. “I’m eyeballing the Croque Monsieur, with some hashbrowns on the side.” Lenore turned her head to Stella so slowly that I swore I could hear her neck creaking. “Really, Stella?” I elbowed Stella, whose favorite thing was this—antagonizing Lenore to the point where her temper was tested. She was, as Lenore coined her, the quintessential New York girl, which wasn’t necessarily a compliment. But she fit the bill for men who weren’t married but didn’t want someone obnoxiously out of

place to accompany them to events. Her accent wasn’t cultured or smooth, like the rest of us, and her manners reflected that too. “Calm your tits, Lenore, I was just eyeballing it.” She discreetly elbowed me back. “I’ll get the tomato-gruyere omelette.” When Lenore raised an eyebrow, Stella added, “With the berry salad as the side.” To anyone else, Stella telling Lenore to calm her tits may have sounded radical, but Stella was Lenore’s first girl and still looked barely legal; she could get away with this stuff. The rest of us had to keep our manners in check. Every group had its wild card, and Stella was ours. After the waiter took our orders, Lenore pulled out her tablet and a notebook, laying them on the table. She put eyeglasses on and as she studied her notes, she looked the picture of a successful businesswoman. I’d never asked about her age, but I guessed she was in her early forties. Not that she showed wrinkles—no, wrinkles were abhorrent to Lenore. From her trim black suit to the black hair she wore, pixie style, she was just … compact. That was the best word to describe her. “Jessica, you have two clients next week and one the week after.” She peered at Jessica, a young blonde who was the quietest of us all. As Jessica smiled, Lenore asked, “Have you been to a dentist recently?” Jessica quickly lost her smile and Lenore added, “See if you can be fit in for a cleaning,” before she turned back to her notes. “Ana, you have three clients next week. And two clients the following week. One of them,” she paused and I could tell she was waiting for the blowback, “is Mr. Peters.” “Yikes,” Stella said under her breath at the same time that Ana groaned. “Mr. Peters?” Ana asked. “Fish hands, Mr. Peters?” I shuddered in sympathy for Ana. Though I’d never had the misfortune of spending time with him, I knew he’d “tried out” most of the girls. He was in his sixties, widowed for the last ten years, and a very frequent customer. And, from what the girls had concluded, his hands were always wet and slippery. Like he routinely squirted them with lube. “Can you swap?” Ana begged Lenore. “Please?” Lenore raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow at Ana. Such a request was a bit unorthodox, especially at our lunches. But before she could say anything, Stella spoke up. “I can take one for the team,” she said. “Give me Mr. Peters next week.” Lenore turned that raised eyebrow to Stella. “I’m afraid he requested Ana. Your particular … style … was a little overwhelming for him. Besides, you have three clients next week already, four the week after and, according to the schedule you provided me, you won’t have room for another.” She wrote something on her notepad before flipping to another page on her tablet and turning to the last remaining girl, Brienne. “You have four clients next week. Three are back to back.” She paused. “Your Friday is married and requested you be as discreet as possible.” Brienne pulled up her phone and made a note. “Got it. Mens deodorant on

Friday.” “And no lipstick,” Lenore added, marking a check next to something she’d written. “The following week, I have you off for your family reunion.” She gave a look to Brienne. “I hope I don’t have to remind you to be careful around the potato salad.” Brienne nodded her understanding and sipped a big glass of water. Then Lenore placed the tablet and notepad back into her oversized purse and said, “That’s all for next week.” “Whoa,” Stella said, “What about Rubes?” “I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” Lenore said with a sigh. “Why?” “Because it sounds like Pubes,” Ana said with a giggle. “Or Lubes,” Stella said thoughtfully, tapping her chin with her pointer finger. “Rubes Lubes. Could be good marketing material, Lenore. You’re welcome.” Lenore gave her a look of annoyance before saying, “Ruby has a client for the next month.” There was silence around the table as all their gazes fell upon me. “The same John. For the whole month?” Stella asked. “Precisely.” Lenore gave me a smile that bordered on pride, an emotion she showed so rarely. “You could learn a thing or two from Ruby.” “What kind of voodoo magic did you do with your vag, Ruby?” Stella asked before I gave her a look, one that I hoped relayed to her I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. She merely raised an eyebrow at me, indicating that we’d be catching up after lunch. After everyone had eaten and Lenore had paid the check, the table slowly began to clear. When it was just Stella and me, she turned with a fork pointed at my face. “Spill it.” I tilted my head to the left for a stretch. “There’s nothing to spill. We had one night, and then we met again. I think he kind of had a trial interview for me in mind and I must have passed. That’s literally all the information I have.” Stella looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was being honest or not. “Trust me, I’m sure I’ll have more for you as the month goes on, but right now I’ve got nothing.” “Is he hot?” “He is.” I nibbled on the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. “And he’s got a big dick, too.” “Oh, fuck off,” Stella said, but there was no heat in her words. “You would get that lucky. Men flock to you like you’ve got some neon blinking sign pointing to your pussy.” “And what would that sign say?” I asked before sipping my ice water. “Best Cock Trap in the Five Boroughs.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s a little dramatic.” But it made me think of the text from Nicholas, and I found myself staring intently at my water as condensation dripped down the side of the glass. “But speaking of men flocking, guess who

texted me?” “Who?” “Nicholas.” Stella scoffed. “What does that fuck face want?” “He said he wanted to meet up.” “And you said?” “Nothing. I deleted it.” The thought of his text had made me look at my phone cautiously every time a text beeped through. “Good. Don’t give him the time of day.” I wasn’t planning on it. But I still couldn’t shake the unease that stuck to my skin.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Are you sure you don’t want more salad, sweetie?” my mom asked from across the table, holding up the white china serving bowl like the contents would singlehandedly make my life better. Also, file ‘sweetie’ under the worst term of endearment possible for a man in his mid-thirties. The sheer, unadulterated feeling of emasculation behind it was staggering. I almost cupped myself under their twelve-person dining room table to make sure all my equipment was still there. But I didn’t say anything, because the biggest lesson I’d learned when it came to dealing with my parents in the years after Diana’s death was that I had a well of patience so deep that I’d yet to find the bottom. And my mom only called me things like that when she was in a good mood, so I’d shut my mouth and take another helping of the bland salad. “Sure, thanks.” I tried to hide my smile when she filled half my plate with the wilted, underdressed salad. “Why didn’t you replace Martha when she retired?” “I’m perfectly capable of functioning without a cook, Elias,” my mom admonished. “And it’s not a necessary expense considering that anyone cooking for us is only doing it for two people. Waste of money, if you ask me. We kept Martha on because she’d been with us for so long.” I shoveled in a bite of salad with a grimace. She had. Martha had baked me and Diana cinnamon cookies after school, and given the overcooked pork chop that I’d pushed around my plate before my extra helping of salad, I would have given my left testicle for one of her meals just then. My dad must have been thinking the same thing, because he lifted his fork and stared at the piece of pork chop like it had done him personal injury. “You know,” my mom said, pretending like she didn’t see what my dad was doing, “you could always bring someone with you when you come for dinner.” As subtle comments went, it was fairly reserved for my mother. It had started slowly, only about six months earlier. Apparently Nathan had decided it was time to face my parents and they’d succeeded in reaching some sort of a tenuous truce after years of tension between them. He was … happy now. Happy with Adele, a woman so opposite of my sister that it seemed unbelievable that they’d worked out their

issues last winter. And my parents, for their part, seemed content to let him be that way. Or, as content as they were capable of, at least. My mom was still prone to outbursts of tears, my dad long silences while he stared at one of her pictures. The one he favored was from her college graduation. She was flanked by me and mom, her bright smile wide and unaffected. I had my arm around her shoulders, and my mom, an arm around her waist. I had the same photo in a simple frame, but I kept it in a box, unwilling to pull it out unless I was feeling depressed. Lately though, I’d seen a few more cautious smiles, warm conversations and the occasional guilt-trip about my somewhat nomadic lifestyle. If I remembered correctly, the first had been a quiet comment about how difficult it would be to maintain a serious relationship with all the traveling I did. The next had been an innocently posed question about whether the guest bedroom upstairs would make a nice nursery, just in case they ever had grandkids who needed to sleepover. “I know I could bring someone along, Mom,” I said patiently, grimacing when my fork made a horrible screeching sound against my plate. “But I’d need to have someone to ask.” “Whether it’s a woman,” my dad spoke up, then darted his eyes away from me, “or a man. We don’t judge.” My eyes fell shut, the distinct beginnings of a headache forming at the base of my skull. “I know you don’t judge, but if I was gay, I would tell you.” “Not all kids do,” my mom said, an excited gleam in her eyes. “Mona down the street didn’t know her daughter was a lesbian for four years, can you imagine? Now she’s got a wife and little black baby that they adopted. Cutest thing I’ve ever seen. You could adopt one too!” I set my fork down, giving them a long look before speaking. “I’m not gay and I’m not adopting a little black baby. Any color baby, as a matter of fact. If I’m ever in the kind of relationship where those kinds of discussions need to happen, with a woman I might add, you’ll be the very first to know.” “That’s all we ask,” my mom sighed. She was sad now, it was apparent in the downward curve of her mouth. Diana had been their shot, their gimme at being a grandparent considering she and Nathan had been married for almost four years at the time of her death. And that shot was gone now. They were starting from scratch with a son who avoided relationships like they carried the Plague with them. So I couldn’t fault her interest. “I’m sorry I’m a relationship delinquent.” I attempted a smile when I said it, and she clucked her tongue while she patted me on the forearm. “Nonsense. You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure it out.” Then she shared a look with my dad. “Hopefully before we’re dead.” Instead of answering, I shoved another bite of salad in my mouth, willing the hands on the clock to move faster so I could be on my way home to call my paid escort about the dinner she’d be joining me at in a few days. I almost laughed,

thinking about my parents’ faces if I were to tell them that. My mom thought I was smiling at her, and the slight look of happiness on her face was worth the nagging I had to endure. Almost. “Hello, Elias,” Ruby greeted me, the smile in her voice drawing one of my own. “If I ask you what you’re wearing, does that make me a cliché?” When she laughed under her breath, I settled back against the massive headboard of my king sized bed. The mattress was still so new that it barely budged underneath my considerable weight. “Maybe I’m wearing nothing.” I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly, flipping through the mental pictures that I had of her naked body. “I’m sure you say that to all the men who call.” She made a thoughtful noise, and I could hear the shuffle of papers in the background. “You know, I don’t have many phone conversations for … work.” “You’d make a killing if you switched to phone sex,” I told her honestly. Just the sound of her voice in my ear had me semi-hard. “Oh, but then I couldn’t have fun with men like you. That would make for a sad Ruby.” “We wouldn’t want that,” I said with a smile. “Is that why you called? To convince me to change my career?” I clicked the screen of my phone so that she was on speaker and fisted my shirt behind my neck so I could take it off. “No, I’m calling about Friday night. There’s a black tie thing that I’d like you to accompany me to.” “Thing?” “Yeah, it’s for a publishing house that I worked with on something. Same place Randall works. You met him and his wife the other night.” “Ahh. Yes, they seemed nice.” She paused and I could hear her walking around. “What time on Friday?” I squinted, at the invitation in my hand. Fuck, I needed glasses. “Seven. Do you want me to send a car for you?” “No,” she said quickly. “Thank you, though. If you text me the address, I’ll meet you there a bit before seven.” “Sounds good.” We lapsed into silence and I closed my eyes, trying to picture where she might be sitting, what her place would look like. “Are you really wearing nothing?” Ruby laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If the sound of your voice just made my clothes simply disappear.” “I’d never stop talking. Your body is … God, Ruby. It’s fucking incredible.” She hummed, and my scalp tightened like she’d just run her hands over it. “Thank you. So is yours. How you know just exactly what to do with it, too.” I pulled in a slow breath through my nose, hardening fully when I thought about how it felt to slide inside of her with her long legs flush up against my chest.

“You trying to tease me, Ruby?” I unzipped my jeans and reached my hand down to grip myself. “Because I’m going to need you to finish me off if you are. You told me you’re off limits this week, and that means I’ll have all sorts of shit pent up when I see you Friday night.” “Are you hard?” she asked quietly. “What the fuck do you think?” I chuckled, the sound dark and devious. “Just thinking about you gets me this way.” “Good. I’m already thinking about how I want you take me when you see me.” I tightened my fist and lifted my hips so I could use my other hand to lower my jeans down my ass. “Yeah? I’ve got a few ideas of my own.” “Tell me,” she demanded. “Fuck,” I groaned, twisting my hand with a slow jerk, from root to tip, feeling a bead of precum slide out of the angry, red head of my cock. “From behind again, maybe in the bathroom mirror so I can watch your fucking perfect tits bounce when I thrust in.” “Mmm, yes. I like that. I want to be able to see your face the whole time. See what it does to you to be inside of me. Fucking me.” She sighed. “You can do so much behind me. Spank me, bruise me, go so deep that it almost hurts.” “Fucking hell,” I panted, moving my hand faster. “Yeah, all of it. Do I get your ass, Ruby? Will you let me go there?” Ruby whimpered, and I imagined her sleek, elegant fingers moving in tight circles over her clit. “Tell me, baby,” I growled. “My dick is so hard it hurts, I can’t jerk it hard enough right now thinking about your pussy. Tell me how you feel.” “Wet, oh God, so wet. I wish I could see you, Elias. I wish I could see you jerk yourself off. I want it on me, on my skin,” she panted. “Come on, Elias, come for me. Let me hear it.” I tugged again, grinding my teeth as the orgasm fled up my spine in a blinding flash of heat. I came in long, hot spurts on my stomach. I milked the last few waves of pleasure, unable to hear anything but my own heavy breathing in my ears. “Good Lord, woman. You are potent. I haven’t had phone sex since I was nineteen.” Ruby laughed, and I grimaced when I realized she sounded completely puttogether. Unruffled. “You didn’t actually touch yourself, did you?” I asked, trying not to sound pissed. But just under the surface, I was. Because that had felt real. Maybe because I hadn’t set down an envelope of cash, who knows. “Of course I did.” But I didn’t believe her. I sighed and leaned over to grab a tissue from my nightstand, shaking my head while I wiped my stomach clean. “So I’ll see you Friday at seven, right?” “Of course,” she purred into the phone. “Call me again if you need a little pick me up. Free of charge.” I snorted when I hung up. Free of charge, my ass. So far I’d paid fifteen grand for

a self-given orgasm. Ruby was making me lose my fucking mind.

CHAPTER NINE

Finding a dress for this black tie event had proven harder than usual. I’d stared into the bowels of my closet for what felt like an eternity, mentally rejecting everything my gaze fell upon. Everything was too flashy, or too boring—there was no inbetween. So I’d dragged myself through a nearby shop, handing over more cash than I typically spent for a dress that would wow. If Elias could fork over fifteen thousand dollars for my company, I should certainly look worth every single red cent. I was in just my bra and panties, two wisps of lacy fabric held together by some wire and heavy duty-thread. Their scarlet color matched my dress, which hung from my closet door as I finished up my makeup. The dress was unlike anything else I owned—it screamed for attention in capital letters—from the sweetheart strapless neckline all the way down the column to where it fanned out, mermaidstyle, at my feet. Usually, I opted for demure; classic. I favored dresses that were understated in their elegance, but my presence had rarely been required for events like this. I often played up my face with makeup, but the dress didn’t need any competition in that way. So I wore a nude lip with a smoky eye. As I stood in front of the full-length mirror, I pressed a hand to my stomach as I took myself in. I wore my hair over one shoulder, full waves that came to my breasts. And in my eyes, I wore the lightest trace of nerves. Elias wasn’t like any of my other clients. For one, Elias was hot. And I’d had fun with him, something that wasn’t typical of any escort. Sure, many men had tried to please me, but after I’d pushed them away from giving me oral sex—a no-no in this industry—they usually just accepted what I could give them, without worrying about reciprocal pleasure. But Elias had pressed all of my buttons, paid attention to my cues, made sure that I was enjoying myself as much as he was. Which also made him the tiniest bit dangerous. I was paid to provide pleasure to my clients. Receiving pleasure, while not necessarily unheard of, was rare. And, what’s more, Elias had never treated me like an escort, like someone who was paid to open her legs. He’d treated me like someone he’d had instant chemistry with, someone he genuinely wanted to get to know. For the next thirty days, at least.

I checked the clock, which was closing in on five. The address Elias had texted me was on the other side of Manhattan, so I’d hired a car to bring me there. Again, a splurge—a break from the usual for me. I didn’t trust a taxi, not when I was wearing a dress like that and sliding on seats that probably hadn’t been wiped down in so long they were sticky from various bodily fluids. The mere thought gave me a shiver of disgust, remembering the time my yoga pants had physically stuck to one taxi seat. I’d never determined what the sticky substance was, not that I’d actually spent much time trying to dissect it. Fletcher wrapped himself around my legs and I reached down to rub his head. “You going to be okay without me tonight?” I cooed to him as my recently manicured nails lightly scratched down his back. My phone chimed and I picked it up instantly, half expecting Elias to text me, telling me he was coming to pick me up himself. He had a little bit of an alpha air about him, something I knew I’d need to watch for. The thought itself had strange timing, when I opened the text message to see something from an unknown number, but no doubt my manipulative ex-boyfriend. It’s Nicholas. I’m not sure if you received my text the other night. Let’s get together. Tonight? With disgust, I dropped my phone and shook my hand, as if I was shaking his presence from my life. I debated for only a fraction of a second to reply, to tell him, politely, to fuck off. But he wasn’t worth even one letter, so I picked my phone back up only to delete it and block his number. Just then, a text from Stella came in. Stella: What dress are you slaying with tonight? I held my phone up and took a photo of the dress, still on the hanger, and then pressed send before I applied the final touches on my makeup. Another text came in just as I was packing my clutch. Stella: Hot. What makeup are you wearing? I sent her a photo of my face and then slipped into the dress finally, realizing the car would be arriving at any moment. When my phone buzzed again, I was nearly headed out the door. Stella: With a dress like that, you need a red lip. Don’t even argue with me on this. Stella was a pushy bitch. I equally loved and was annoyed by that, but when I looked at myself in the mirror by my door, I decided, with great reluctance, that she was right. After swiping a tube from my vanity, I slicked the bright red on my lips

and took another photo of my face, with an added middle finger held up for her, too. Stella: Nice manicure. And much better—he’ll be thinking about those lips wrapped around that Godzilla dick of his all night. I laughed at that and tucked my phone in the clutch so I could lock my apartment up. A black car was waiting curbside, outside. As soon as I’d stepped up to the curb, a man in a suit walked out of the driver’s side and greeted me. “Hello, Miss Stavros.” I smiled at Joseph, Lenore’s driver. “Hi, Joe.” He opened the back door and I slid in, settling into the cool leather and breathing a sigh to eliminate my nerves. Joseph worked for Lenore, but he didn’t come free to us girls. He was more affordable than most drivers, but Lenore took a cut of our earnings to use him. “How are classes?” Joe asked, his crinkled brown eyes peering at me through the rear view mirror. “Just finished my finals,” I said, my voice betraying none of the excitement I felt at that. This would be my first summer off of studying in eight years, and I was looking forward to not combatting stress pimples every few weeks. Lenore hated when I got them. The drive to upper Manhattan felt fast, mostly because talking with Joe was like talking with an old friend. But by the time he pulled up in front of a spectacle of lights and rope, the nerves returned to my belly. Joe stopped the car and got out to open my door as I looked through the window, seeing if I could spot Elias. There were so many people, and the entrance was blocked off by thick ropes as people stood in front of a backdrop emblazoned with logos, to have their photos taken by the photographers who waited on the opposite side. When Joe opened my door, it was like I’d been in a noiseless bubble that had suddenly burst. There were people hollering, loud chatter from those in line to get in, and the beeps from the cameras that were flashing frequently as they took photo after photo. I’d never been to an event like this one, which did nothing to calm the anxiety that slid with me out of the car. Once my heels were firmly planted on the sidewalk and I’d thanked Joe, I searched again for Elias. He should’ve been easy to spot, but considering I was surrounded by a sea of men in black suits, my search for him was difficult. But then, suddenly, he was there. The throng of people in front of me separated enough to allow his body to fill their void, and he was walking straight to me. All the clothes I’d seen Elias in before erred on the side of business casual, so seeing him in a tux was surprising. His hair was slicked back, and his beard was very neatly trimmed. It was strange, looking at him like he was a completely different person. But when he was directly in front of me, giving me a wicked smile,

heat burned in my belly all the same. “You clean up nice,” I told him and cocked my head to the side to admire him more fully. All the black covered up the ink that covered his arms and upper chest, and already I couldn’t wait to see his body again, under the expensive threads. “You…” he shook his head as his eyes glided down my body and then up again, taking all the time in the world to admire me. “Exquisite.” His eyes echoed the heat that lay low in my belly as he took my hand in his and gently pulled me to him. He leaned down and put his lips near my ear so I could hear him above the noise. “Ready for this?” Nodding, I turned my face and kissed him where his beard started so as not to leave lipstick on his face. With my lips at his ear, I told him, “I’m ready for the after.” When I pulled back, the look in his eyes was enough to make me nearly ask if he was up for blowing off the party altogether.

CHAPTER TEN

Ruby tucked her hand into the crook of my arm as we bypassed the main entrance into the hotel, choosing a smaller door to the right of the press line to avoid the cameras. Her red dress was too perfect, everything about her tonight too stunning for her to not draw notice from a nosy photographer who might want to know who she was. Especially since my name was on the book we were celebrating. She didn’t know that yet, of course. Not even my parents did. I gave my name to a sharply dressed woman holding a clipboard and she checked it off and was on to the next. The massive hallway decorated in rich colors and gold crown molding along the stamped iron ceiling felt old, a strange contradiction to the black and white photos from the book that were blown up and evenly spaced along the walls. “Whoever decided on this location should be shot,” I said under my breath. “Does it offend your sensibilities?” Ruby asked in a teasing voice, tightening her hold on my arm. I shook my head, staring at the shot that I had taken of an old wrinkled man smiling over his cart of vegetables. He was missing most of his teeth, and his eyes all but disappeared into the lined skin because of the wideness of his expression. “On its own, no.” I gestured to the picture. “But these get lost among the decadence. They should be the showcase, not add to the busyness. You can’t even appreciate this because your eye is drawn to so many other places.” Ruby watched me and I felt a flush on my face. “What?” I said after her curious look got to me. “Nothing. Just thinking about how I’d like to see the world through your eyes, just for a day. You must think visually all the time.” We kept walking, pausing every so often to look at another shot. A blank-faced server carrying a tray of champagne stopped us just as we turned the corner into the ballroom, and when Ruby smiled, I took two flutes. She sipped on hers, looking around the room with wide eyes. With the makeup she was wearing, which was different than anything I’d seen on her, she looked so polished and so beautiful. Almost as decadent as the room itself. And I was the one who would get to gorge myself on her when the night was done.

“Oh, look at that one,” she said, turning to another photo against the far wall. I followed her, smiling when I realized that it was one of mine. The two women, one much older, leaned up against each other on a weathered bench. One was laughing, clutching the wide gold hoops that adorned her neck while the other smiled down into her lap. Their clothes were dirty and tattered against their dark skin, despite the gold jewelry they held in their hands. “What do you think?” I asked her. She was staring at the picture with such a rapt expression that I felt a rush of pride. I’d been in Myanmar for two weeks before capturing that shot, and every day leading up to it had been spent getting to know the families in the village. “They look so happy.” “You see those gold hoops around their necks?” “Mmhmm, they’re beautiful.” She glanced at me. “They look a little out of place though.” “That’s how they survive. They make jewelry; those are customary for that area, and these women sell it at a local market because the husband of the older woman died. He provided all the income, so they had to figure out a way to feed their children.” “You took this?” I nodded, watching her carefully. People milled around us, but no one was paying us any attention. It felt like a private moment, despite the grandeur of the room. She smiled at me, her eyes honest and direct. “You like it?” “It’s amazing, Elias.” “Thank you,” I said gruffly, feeling a touch overwhelmed by her simple praise. “Let’s go find our table.” Ruby gave one last look at the photo before holding on to the arm that I offered her. “Will you show me more after we eat?” I smiled. “Of course.” Randall and Sarai were seated next to us, and they were as besotted by Ruby as they had been the first night. As was the rest of our table. She asked questions and listened with intent when anyone answered her. The interest that she showed in the book and the publishing house was so well-received that she got a job offer within the first hour from someone in the marketing department. She laughed, leaning into me where I had an arm around the back of her chair. “That’s so kind. I’ll let you know if I send my resume over.” When I slid a hand up her back and rested it on her shoulder, she gave me a tiny wink. “Did you like your dinner?” I whispered into her ear. “The chicken was a bit underwhelming. Do you think we’ll get dessert too?” I dropped my chin, laying a kiss underneath her ear and taking a deep inhale of her scent. It was light and clean, not overwhelming, but potent all the same. “I think you and I will get dessert later.”

“Ruby,” Sarai said from the other side of me. “You never told us what you do.” The table quieted, all eyes on my luminous date. “I’m a perpetual student, I’m afraid. Every time I finish one degree, I find that I haven’t quite satisfied my thirst for knowledge. Nothing too exciting there.” “Nonsense,” the sixty-plus year old woman across the table said with a kind smile. “What do you study, dear?” Ruby took another small sip of champagne before she answered. “Well, right now I’m finishing up my first year of a master’s in theological studies. Before that it was a master’s in sociology.” “Goodness,” the woman laughed. “That sounds awfully exciting to me.” With a slightly embarrassed smile at all the attention on her, Ruby looked at me. “What can I say? People fascinate me.” Everyone laughed and Ruby blushed just enough that only I could see it. “And your family? Do they live here too?” There was a slight tightening around her mouth, a cooling of her eyes when she smiled again. “No, home was Pennsylvania.” It was a strange feeling, to know that she wasn’t lying, but that there was a definite emotional line that she wasn’t willing to cross with that subject. Ruby had been forthright with me in almost every area, but it was apparent to me that her family, her background, was a soft spot. Join the fucking club. “Dance with me?” I asked her, standing and holding out my hand. She gave me a relieved smile, gripping my fingers and letting me help her up. Randall and Sarai stood after we passed the table, taking our lead toward the dance floor. “Thank you,” Ruby said under her breath when I pulled her into my arms. “The spotlight can be bright sometimes.” I laid a hand on her lower back, taking a deep breath when her hand smoothed up my chest and settled over my heart. “I don’t mind the spotlight,” she said as we swayed together to the soft strains of music. Her heels brought her tall enough that it would take barely anything for me to dip down and kiss her. I still didn’t know what her mouth tasted like, and when I pulled my head back to search her face, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the redpainted curves of her lips. I decided to let her statement stand, even though I knew she didn’t want the questions. Tucking her closer into my chest, I felt my skin close up around my bones when she made a subtle rocking with her hips, bringing us even tighter against each other. I was completely at war with myself, feeling her against me like that. On one hand, I wanted to rush, wanted to have her in a bed immediately. But on the other hand, I wanted to draw this night out. Enjoy her, enjoy the things that I knew we could do to each other. “Are you teasing me again?” “Maybe,” she whispered, tilting her chin up so she could meet my eyes. “Do we

get to leave soon?” I laughed, smoothing a hand up the curve of her spine. “God, I hope so. You in that dress is the worst form of torture.” “Wait until you see what’s under it,” she said against my ear, her lips brushing my skin with each word. “And with that, we say our goodbyes” I announced, grabbing her hand and walking us off the dance floor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The car ride over to the bar had been intense, intoxicatingly full of desire emanating from both of us. Elias was fucking hot. As he sat beside me in his hired car, his hair slightly mussed and his eyes intense, all I could think about was curling my fingers into the front of his shirt and ripping it open. I wanted to see that expanse of tanned skin, decorated with black ink that I’d only had a glimpse of before, not enough time to give it a leisurely perusal. His eyes were dark in the car, but I knew the whole time he was blatantly staring at me. He didn’t make me feel like his property, not like I was something he owned —even for the night. Which made sense, because he didn’t make me feel like he was my client. It was surprising how easily I forgot the rules of our relationship. The bar was in the lobby of the hotel Elias had booked a room at for the night. It sat tucked to the side of the reception, all dark golds and blacks. It made it intimate, and I would have bypassed it completely for the hotel room if it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted to heighten the anticipation by just a few more notches. Elias and I sat at the bar, which I was grateful for so that I could straighten my legs a little more in the dress. “Martini?” Elias asked me and I nodded, shooting a quick text to Lenore. Even though I was under an agreement with Elias, Lenore still needed to make sure all was well. Elias turned to the bartender who was drying off the stem of a wine glass. “Martini, three-to-one ratio of vermouth. Not dirty. And a bourbon. Neat.” I smiled a little, pleased that he’d remembered how I took my martinis. “You remembered.” “Hard to forget that you said you liked your martinis wet, Ruby.” His eyes were dark, and had a direct line to my core. “You have a good memory.” I plucked a piece of popcorn from the bowl the bartender placed in front of us and popped it in my mouth. I hadn’t eaten a lot at the event, and if I was going to drink a martini, I’d need to fill my stomach with something a bit more substantial. Flavor burst on my tongue and I looked at the popcorn as I savored it. “What is this?” “Rosemary and butter,” he said, which told me he’d been here before. With

another escort? I looked at him, but he was plucking a piece of popcorn himself. “An upgrade from the typical peanuts and pretzels, right?” I nodded and chewed another piece of popcorn. “Did you know where Rosemary gets its name?” “The Virgin Mary?” he asked, sliding his card across the bar top to the bartender when he returned with our drinks. “Well, there is the legend that Mary spread her blue cloak over a rosemary bush, turning the white blossoms blue in the process. But it has origins from earlier than that.” I glanced at him, to gauge his interest. But his eyes were open and his face looked as if he actually wanted to hear, so I continued. “The name Rosemarinus means ‘dew of the sea.’ Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, stepped forth from the ocean draped in rosemary, born from the waves of Uranus’ sperm after his son had castrated him.” Elias laughed. “His son cut off his dick? That puts most father-son discords to shame.” “Uranus was kind of a dick himself,” I said with a smile. “And Cronus tossed his genitals into the ocean, thus resulting in Aphrodite’s birth.” I popped another piece in my mouth, chewing as Elias drank his bourbon. “And, of course, rosemary is an aphrodisiac.” Elias’ eyes traveled down my body for a moment as he held the drink between us. “I don’t need an aphrodisiac tonight.” An eruption of butterflies in my belly caused me to forget that this wasn’t a date. The chemistry I felt with Elias was new and strange, but not unwelcome. However, as I watched him toss the rest of his bourbon back and I ached to lean forward and lick the droplet that clung to his bottom lip, I reminded myself that he was a client. And he’d paid for my company. When the bartender came back over, Elias glanced at my still-full drink and ordered another bourbon, which prompted me to pick up my glass and catch up. “So, why theological studies?” I blotted my lips gently with my cocktail napkin, not wanting to smear red all over my face à la the Joker. “Well, initially I just focused on religious studies. I wanted to learn about all religions; their stories, their practices and their deities. After I got my bachelor’s, I wanted to learn more about mankind, how we socialize and how our behavior is affected by social change.” I sipped more of my martini as I carefully crafted my response. It wasn’t necessarily that I was lying to Elias. But telling him why an orphan would want to study sociology wasn’t something I wanted to delve into. “And now that I’m working toward my master’s in theology, it’s more of a way to understand what Christians believe.” I laughed at the look on his face, which defined perplexed. “I know what you’re thinking. Why is an escort studying a God that would frown upon how she earns a living?” “That’s not what I’m thinking,” Elias said, his voice low but warm. “I’m just absorbing what you’re saying. I think it’s fascinating, actually. That you have such a well-rounded and informed way of looking at religions and societies, and can

appreciate them for what they are. You’ve talked about Buddhism, Greek mythology, and Christianity with me. They’re things to ponder.” I’d been pleased when Elias had remembered how I drank my martinis, but the pleasure I felt from hearing that he was actually interested in what I had to say made me even more ready to ditch the bar for the hotel room. So I picked up my martini and tossed it back in one gulp, giving Elias a meaningful look as I stood from my stool. And that’s when I heard my name, that one word uttered by a voice that I’d know in my sleep. “Ruby?” I froze for only a moment, making sure my expression was mild when I turned. “Nicholas,” I said, looking at my ex-boyfriend with absolutely no feeling reflecting in my face. What is he doing here? I asked myself, hoping this would be brief. He pushed a hand over his forehead, brushing back his blond hair that was too long and slightly greasy-looking under the lights of the bar. His eyelashes were practically transparent against his pale skin, and his pale blue eyes looked like he had a plea in their depths. “I’ve been messaging you.” I thought of Elias at my side, who, out of my periphery, was sizing Nicholas up. Elias easily had seventy pounds of muscle on Nicholas, but Nicholas had the benefit of knowing me better than Elias did. “I thought my lack of reply would have given you enough of a hint not to continue,” I said blandly. I kept my voice steady, not betraying a single ounce of my anxiety at seeing him again. “I’m not interested in speaking with you.” He stepped forward and instinctively I grabbed the crook of Elias’ arm as if I was protecting myself with his presence. That seemed to be Nicholas’ first hint that I wasn’t alone, because he looked up at Elias and swallowed before turning back to me. “I just need a few minutes.” “No,” I said and turned to leave before Nicholas stepped back in front of me, blocking our way out of the bar. My grip on Elias tightened and I closed my eyes, wanting him to just go away. “Hey,” Elias said, his voice low and threatening. “She’s clearly not interested. Leave her alone.” Nicholas stared at Elias for one long, tense moment. A vein rippled up Elias’ neck and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the way he stared Nicholas down. “You have my number, Ruby,” Nicholas said, not taking his eyes off of Elias. “Call me.” “I won’t,” I told him and Elias tugged me away, not giving me a chance to stay. Not that I would have. I knew Nicholas watched us walk out of the bar, but I didn’t turn my face to look at him. That would only give Nicholas satisfaction, seeing me turn my attention away from the man who could’ve kicked his ass with the slightest push of his hand. Elias led me to the bank of elevators and punched at the up button on the wall. An elevator opened immediately and Elias pulled me on and pushed the button for

the twenty-first floor. As soon as the doors closed, he turned to me. “Who was that?” His mouth was in a line, and I detected a trace of the tension still remaining from when he’d stared Nicholas down. “A former client,” I lied immediately. Elias and I may have had a month-long arrangement, but I didn’t owe him anything of my past during that time. “A former client?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrow. He didn’t believe me. I swallowed back the nerves I felt under his gaze and nodded. “Yes.” Elias laughed under his breath before he stepped forward and punched the emergency stop button on the elevator.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide in her face. Her pale face. Ever since that douche stepped into her space, all the color had been sucked from her skin. Which is how I knew she was fucking lying to me. No former client would have given her that kind of reaction. That guy knew her. And not just biblically, but definitely that too, given the crazy-ass gleam in his eyes when he looked at her. When I didn’t answer right away, she fidgeted, crossing her arms over her stomach and then letting them drop again. Then she swept a hand through her hair, making sure the curls were still laying over one shoulder. “Beck and call, right?” I rasped out, leaning my shoulder against the wall of the elevator. “What?” “You. You’re at my beck and call for these thirty days, right? This being day one.” She mimicked me, leaning her shoulder against the opposite wall, essentially facing off with me in the small space. “That’s right. Do we need to discuss this now?” There was a slight edge to her voice that I’d never heard before, and I wasn’t ashamed in the slightest to say that it hardened me even further. “Why not?” “Because I prefer not to have business discussions when I’m in a box that’s suspended sixteen floors above the ground.” “We’re not going to have a discussion.” I straightened, undoing my belt. Her eyes tracked the slow movements of my hands. “I’m not having sex in this elevator.” “No, you’re not.” I raised one eyebrow, and lifted my chin at her. “You’re going to get on your knees for me. I want to know what your lipstick looks like on my dick.” Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, and she never dropped my gaze. She wanted to say no, wanted to push me on it, but she couldn’t. She’d agreed to this when she got out of that car earlier and showed up where I wanted her to. And

maybe she wouldn’t believe me, but if we’d never run into that douche, I wouldn’t be doing this right now. But Ruby needed to get out of her head. And the strange feeling of ownership that I’d felt when I saw the possession in his eyes had manifested itself in a churning, dark swell of emotion inside of my body. When I knew she was lying to me, I snapped. He didn’t have her anymore. And I wasn’t stupid enough to think she was mine. But for tonight, for the next thirty days, I could fucking pretend. Ruby opened her mouth, and I expected her to tell me to fuck off, but she merely swiped her tongue over her bottom lip, then held out her hand so I could help her down to the floor. “Good girl,” I said, gripping her fingers in my own and holding her eyes while she lifted her dress enough so she could lower to her knees. “I’m not a girl,” she told me, eyes flashing as she ran her hands up the front of my thighs. “No,” I agreed with a smile. “You’re not.” My smile dropped when she lowered my zipper and pushed my pants open enough to pull my aching cock out. I hissed in a breath through clenched teeth when she dragged her thumb down the vein that ran along the underside. “There better not be cameras in this thing,” she whispered, looking up me with innocently widened eyes as she moved her mouth closer and closer to where I needed it. “Because if there are,” she placed a kiss on the side, leaving scarlet-red lip marks, “someone is about to get one hell of a show.” “It’s only me. I don’t want anyone’s eyes on you when you’re with me. Only mine.” I worked my fingers through her silky hair and gripped. “Now show me what you can do.” Ruby wrapped a fist around the base of my dick and lowered her mouth slowly, working the flat of her tongue against me in slow waves. I cursed at the hot, wet feeling of suction. She pulled back, using the edge of her teeth on my sensitive skin just hard enough that I knew she wasn’t happy with me. “God,” I groaned, tightening my fingers in her hair. “You’re a firecracker, aren’t you? Trying to top me from the bottom.” As I expected, Ruby didn’t answer, just bobbed her head, pulling me in and out of her lips while she twisted her fist at my base. Pleasure flooded me, and my hips started making tiny thrusts into her mouth. I went a little too far on one thrust and she made a gagging sound when I hit the back of her throat. “Fuck, why is that so hot? Seeing you take so much of me?” Her eyes held mine and they glowed in her face, like the darkest parts of a fire that you can barely stare at because it’s so mesmerizing, so hypnotic. She went back at it, moaning around me when I gripped her hair in a fist and tugged. The vibration of the sound made me gasp her name. So I did it again, and was instantly rewarded by her guttural noise of pleasure. “Yeah, baby, you like that. I’ll do it again later. I’ll make it feel so good, it almost

hurts.” Then a voice came over a speaker in the panel of the elevator, making us both freeze. “This is hotel security. Is everyone okay in there? Do you need emergency help?” I cursed, pulling myself from Ruby’s mouth, only smiling when she wiped along the bottom of her mouth with a feisty as fuck expression in her eyes. Punching the button much harder than necessary, I told him we were fine. I helped Ruby back up and pulled the emergency stop back out so we could resume our smooth ascent up to the twenty-first floor. Ruby was grinning at me from the other side of the elevator when I finished zipping my pants back up. “Something funny?” “I’ve just never done that before.” She lifted her eyebrows when I must have looked like I wanted more clarification. Which I needed because there was no fucking way that girl had never given head before. I’d remember the feeling of her mouth around me while I was on my death bed. “Blow job in an elevator.” My frustration at being stopped before I could come in her mouth was momentarily abated at the thought that I’d done something with her that was new. The craving to repeat it was sudden and fierce. I had twenty-nine more nights after this one, and I was going to make them fucking count. The elevator stopped on our floor before I could say something cheesy, and I gestured for her to exit first. Ruby waited for me, wrapping her hand around my arm so I could direct us to the room. Feeling the weight of her fingers on my suit jacket after the last few hours, after the strange roller coaster we’d been on since I saw her standing on the sidewalk, made something snap in me. I stopped walking, even though we weren’t at the door for our room and looked down at her. “What is it?” she asked with a concerned look. Instead of answering her, I withdrew her hand from my arm and walked her backward until her back hit the wall. “I am not giving you a blowjob in the hallway,” she said, narrowing her eyes. I only grinned, which made her squint her eyes at me even further. Ruby’s hands were braced on my chest, her fingers edged underneath my jacket and curving into my chest. I wondered if she could feel the thundering of my heart, a product of the unreleased tension coursing through my body. Or, that was part of it, at least. The other part was her. She did weird fucking things to me, in my head and in my heart. She was about to speak again when I cupped the back of her neck, halting her immediately. Her mouth hung open while she stared up at me, confusion clear in her eyes. There was a beat where we were frozen like that before I kissed her. She let out a soft puff of air into my mouth when I slanted my lips over hers and pressed against her with my entire body. Our tongues tangled and her arms wrapped around my

neck, holding me tightly against her. Her taste was sweet and warm, her tongue slick against my own. Everything was wet and hot, and I wanted to know if she felt the same underneath her dress. If only I could slide my hand up and find out. If only I’d waited to do this when we were behind the privacy of a door. More, more, more, a voice chanted in my head and I deepened the kiss. We were wrapped so tightly around each other—or as much as we could be with her in that fucking dress—when someone walked past us and cleared their throat. Ruby pulled back with a gasp, and the flush on her cheeks was so fucking satisfying that I couldn’t help but smirk. I wanted to make her come so hard that it would cover her entire body. “Where’s our room?” she asked, staring at my mouth. I backed away, yanking my wallet out to find the key. As soon as it was free, she snatched it from my hand and gave me a smile so devilish that I couldn’t believe I didn’t come right there. Her hand gripped the lapel of my jacket and she walked backwards, holding my eyes until we came to the right room. She only turned long enough to slide the key into the slot, and I wrapped my hands around her tiny waist, dipping my head so I could suck on the curve of her neck. The door opened and we went in. There was a frantic energy in her hands when she turned and shoved at my jacket, and there was a brief moment where I worried that she wasn’t feeling the same mind-numbing desire that I was. But it didn’t matter whether she did or not, I had to remind myself. Because I was her client. No matter what that douche did to her, or who she was when she left this room, I was her client. So I ripped at my shirt, matching her frenetic pace, knowing that I’d do my damndest to fuck her until we were both raw from the inside out before the sun rose.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Where the fuck is the zipper?” Elias growled against my neck as he pawed at my body, big hands searching for the zipper tucked against my side. His breath was hot and sent shivers down my bare back. I guided his hands in my own to the zipper, which he dragged down roughly. Rough enough to break the zipper, but in that moment I didn’t care. I’d worn this dress for Elias. I couldn’t imagine wearing it again for someone else. Just then, a thought of Nicholas popped into my head, momentarily distracting me from Elias. “Fucking finally,” he breathed, when the dress slid down my body to a heap on the floor, around my ankles. He stepped back to get a better look. “Jesus.” I was in heels and a matching bra and panties. From the way I was already breathing, I knew my breasts were heaving, spilling out of the top of the bra’s cups. He traced a finger over the lace, dragging his nail along the curves of the petallike cups. Then, he dipped a finger between the top of the fabric and my skin, and yanked so one breast fell out and into his awaiting palm. His face was in the shadow of the dark room as he rolled my nipple in between his thumb and forefinger, twisting gently at first and causing my body to jut in reaction. “You like that?” he asked quietly, but with a hint of darkness in his voice. I nodded and he moved his fingers to the other lace cup, dipping his finger in and releasing my breast from its confines so that I stood there, my breasts spilled over the slip of lace still wrapped below them. My breasts were generously sized, but not so much that they didn’t work with my body type, and when Elias covered them with his palms and curled his fingers down, they felt like the perfect size. “You’re perfect,” he said huskily, as if he was echoing my thoughts. “Back up.” I did as he asked, walking backward toward the bed until he stopped me with his hand. “Turn around.” Once again, I obeyed, turning so that I faced the mirrored closet doors. “Put your hands on the mirror.” I didn’t even hesitate. As I placed my palms on the mirror, I took in my face. Lipstick was smeared all around my mouth, my hair was much fuller than it had been earlier. My nipples were pointed and a pink flush covered my chest. And, in

my reflection, I saw Elias admiring me over my shoulder, from behind. I watched as he stepped closer to me, his features becoming more defined the closer he stepped, so that his face wasn’t in the shadows but was in the light the mirror reflected. He’d removed his dress shirt, so when his arm wrapped around the narrowest part of my waist, I got to see the way all of his tattooed skin looked when it laid across my bare stomach in the mirror. “I like this,” he said reverently as his face came to my shoulder. “I can see. And I can touch.” My legs felt rubbery, like they were suddenly carrying too much weight as I watched his hands slide up the curves of my hips to my waist and to my breasts again. Once again, he covered them with his hands and curled his fingers down, squeezing hard enough that I bucked against him. Not in discomfort, but in the sharp pleasure his touch had caused. He dropped his hands and his gaze in the mirror to look at my ass. “I didn’t give this nearly enough attention the first time,” he said as his hands slid down my back, sending shivers of anticipation up my skin. He pulled on the back elastic strap holding my underwear in place and then let go so it snapped against my skin. The sting wasn’t uncomfortable; if anything, it made me more eager to see this through. But his hands kept gliding down my ass, over the rounded curves of each cheek. When he reached the bottom of them, he cupped them in his hands. “I like holding all the curves of you, just like this.” He’d crouched behind me so that I couldn’t see his reflection in the mirror anymore. I could just feel him, admiring my backside as he touched all that his eyes could see. His fingers came to my inner thighs and tapped, motioning for me to spread my legs a little. My body was teetering on the edge of impatience, but I did as he asked, spreading my legs so they were a little more than shoulder-width apart, and was instantly rewarded with his fingers slipping in between the thong and my pussy. All he did was rub along the seam of my lips with two fingers, and I felt that impatience simmer violently within me. I pushed myself into him, wanting his touch to become more firm, but he removed his hand from between my legs and stood behind me. “Are you needy?” he asked, bringing his hands up to my breasts to pluck and pull at my nipples. I could only nod because the sharp stings of pleasure were making my body react irrationally, pushing me against him when I should’ve pulled away at the assault on my nipples. Then his hand slid down my torso, coming to rest at the top of my panties, his fingers then sliding beneath the fabric to brush against the front of my pussy. When he scraped one finger against my clit, I bucked against him again. But he slid further down my front, spreading my lips with two of them as a third finger grazed against me.

“Please,” I said, my head falling back as he teased my opening, circling around it before pulling away. “You want more?” he asked, his lips right at my ear, his breath hot on my neck. His other hand came up to my neck and tilted my head back further, so I rested it on his shoulder and his fingers rubbed against the skin of my throat. He dipped one finger inside of me and I felt myself clench down, greedy for the contact. “Yes,” I answered him, but my voice sounded foreign to me, all breathy and broken. “Where should I fuck you?” he asked, using his teeth on the sensitive skin down my neck. “Here? In front of the mirror?” My fingers on the mirror curled to hold me steady, because I was coming unglued from his voice and his touch as he dipped inside again and swiveled that finger around before hooking and pulling down on its way out. “I want you on the bed,” he said, before pulling his hands from my body. I nearly whimpered at the loss of touch, but he had turned me around and, holding onto my hips, walked me back to the bed that was covered by a comforter that reminded me of a cloud when he laid me on it. “Look at you,” he said, standing over me and undoing his pants. “You look like some kind of Goddess.” It made me smile, watching as he unbuttoned his pants and freed himself of his clothing. I reminded him of a Goddess, but there he stood before me like Adonis, the most prominent lover of Aphrodite. His hands came to the straps of my panties and stretched them. “Are these expensive?” “Very,” I said. “I’ll owe you then.” And then he ripped them by the lace that held them together before tossing the scraps away. He tapped my inner thigh again and I spread my legs, feeling like this position was much more intimate than when he’d been behind me in front of the mirror. Here, I was laid out for his perusal, open and vulnerable. His fingers dragged between my lips before his thumbs spread me open. I watched his face descend and his mouth was a second from kissing me in the most intimate place on my body before I grabbed his face and yanked him up to kiss me on the mouth. If he was surprised by my interruption, he didn’t show it. His tongue speared into my mouth, and feeling that alone was enough of a hint of what he might’ve done to me had I not stopped him. I felt his arousal against my belly and lifted my hips to bring him closer. “Fuck,” he said against my mouth before rolling off to grab the condom off the nightstand. As soon as he’d sheathed himself, I climbed over him while he was still sitting up, still wanting to be in control by being on top, and gave his balls a squeeze before I positioned myself right above the tip of his cock and slid down. The sensation of being filled by him made my eyes close in sheer pleasure. His

body was so warm, and when his hands tangled in my hair, I dropped my head back. “Fuck me,” he ordered, moving a hand to my hips. I opened my eyes to look at him, and took my time lifting my body up and down, raising myself up so high that he nearly fell out before I sank back down slowly. I could tell, from the vein that bulged in his neck, that my pace was undoing him. But he’d teased me in front of the mirror. Over and over, I rode him slowly, little breathy sighs escaping my lips when I wasn’t careful. But then he gathered me in his arms and tipped me back onto the bed so he was on the top, and pumped into me while holding my wrists in his hands above my head. Each thrust was bringing me closer and closer to falling into a white hot kind of oblivion, but I didn’t want to be on the bottom when I came. “Let me ride you,” I said, when his lips came to my breasts. To his credit, he maneuvered me agilely, flipping me to my stomach before his arms came around my waist and pulled me up so that I was sitting on his lap, both of us facing the mirrored doors. “Do it,” he ordered again, and this time I did, sliding up and down on his cock over and over as the orgasm built even higher within me. His hands again tangled in my hair and pulled my neck back so that he could kiss my skin. And when my body started tunneling into my orgasm, Elias pressed his finger right against my clit as he bit down, gently, on my neck. White spots flashed behind my closed eyelids and one long moan rang from my lips as he grunted his own release. And after, when Elias was in the bathroom disposing of the condom, I realized how completely and wonderfully distracting he had been. I hadn’t worried about Nicholas once.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A crack of sun slipped through in between the hotel room curtains, hitting me full on the face. I squinted, stretching my arms over my head with a groan. Every muscle in my body was loose and relaxed, the kind you can only get from a thorough fucking. And I’d had that. Three times the night before, in fact. Next to me on the bed, Ruby sighed and snuggled into her pillow. Her dark hair was in tangles around her face and over her shoulders. We were both stark naked, realizing after the second round that it was probably easier that way. The third time, I’d woken her up by sliding into her from behind, using short, hard thrusts to bring us both to completion. Getting up to throw away the condom had felt like the biggest chore in the world afterwards, given that my body had wanted to do nothing more than wrap around her just like that and fall asleep. When I’d returned to the bed, she was already rolled onto her side and breathing deeply, apparently lulled to sleep by her third orgasm of the night. I grinned, tucking my hands behind my head and letting out a deep sigh when I thought about how perfectly we seemed to match each other in bed. I turned my head to face her, skimming my eyes over the smooth, unblemished skin of her back, the plump curve of her breasts where they were pressed against her arms. Her mouth was relaxed and her face looked younger than it did in the light of day. Ruby was a fucking stunner. Maybe even the most beautiful woman I’d ever been with. The fact that she seemed to have the brain and the personality to match was almost staggering. How had she fallen into the life of a paid escort? I wanted nothing more than to dig around and figure it out, but there was no doubt she was good at shutting down, cutting off the flow of personal information with the ease of twisting a faucet off. With a frown, I carefully stood from the bed and searched for my boxer briefs, only sliding them on after I took a piss. She was still sound asleep when I flushed, and it did strange things to me. In her line of work, it didn’t seem possible that she could sleep so heavily unless she felt comfortable. Maybe with me, Ruby recognized that she was completely safe.

Using hushed tones, I called the concierge and ordered some room service. “Yeah, two orders of buttermilk pancakes, side orders of bacon and sausage patties. A ham and cheddar omelet and some coffee.” I glanced over at the bed and saw her stir. “And make sure to add extra syrup, please.” I hung up and made my way back to the bed, sliding in next to her and burying my nose in her hair. She shook with laughter when I started growling, nipping along her shoulders and down her spine with tiny, sucking bites along her skin. “You’re insatiable,” she said in a sleep-thick voice. It made me ravenous for so much more than food. For her. I wanted to swallow her whole and see how she felt if she was completely inside of me. “Your fault. If you woke up looking like a hag, I’d be able to leave you alone.” “Ah, but you’re not paying me in order to leave me alone,” she teased, sitting up and stretching her arms over her head. I lifted my eyebrows, strangely disappointed by her words, even though they were true. “You’re right. I’m not.” Before I could say anything, she smiled at me, all but erasing any annoyance that I had. “Did you sleep well?” She was sitting naked in the bed, with the sheets only covering parts of her legs, and she was asking me if I slept well with a sweet smile on her face. “Like a fucking rock.” Ruby laughed. “Me too. And you say that a lot.” “Fuck?” She nodded, finger-combing her hair into some semblance of order. It didn’t really work; she still looked a little wild and a lot hot. “Did you know that one of the earliest instances of the word fuck was in the thirteenth century and had nothing to do with sexual intercourse?” I couldn’t contain my smile. Ruby blushed. “What?” “You’re so fucking sexy when you teach me things.” Her eyes darkened when I said it, and she crawled to me, using one hand to push me back on the bed. “We could play a game next time I see you.” “Oh yeah?” I sounded breathless, because she was dragging her fingers down my chest, using the tips of her nails to lightly score my skin. “I’ll be the teacher; you can be my naughty student.” Ruby leaned down and tugged on my earlobe with her teeth, which made me hiss. “I’ll even bend over my desk for you.” “God, you’re potent, aren’t you?” I gripped her face and took her mouth in a hard, fast kiss. Her hips started making tiny, maddening swivels on my lap when there was a knock on the door. “Fucking hell, why do we keep getting interrupted?” I groaned while Ruby flopped onto the bed next to me. I opened the door wearing only my boxer briefs. A smiling hotel worker moved to push the cart past me and I shook my head,

preventing her from entering the room. “I’ll take it from here. Thanks.” For a second, her eyes dipped to my chest before darting back up again. I handed her some cash and pulled the cart into the room. Ruby was clutching a pillow to her chest, smiling up at me when she saw how much food there was. “Good Lord. Hungry?” With a pointed look between her legs, I said, “Starving.” She rolled her eyes, scooching to the end of the bed so she could lift the metal tops of the various plates. “Mmm, I love pancakes. Thank you.” “I had them send extra syrup in case we wanted to play a little bit before we left.” Ruby didn’t even flinch at that, taking a delicate bite of pancake off of her fork. “Too sticky. I prefer whipped cream if we go that route.” I laughed. “Noted.” It felt perfectly natural, to sit on the bed with her and share breakfast. She took a bite of my omelet and I shared the bacon with her. We didn’t even talk all that much, which made it even more interesting. Sharing silence with someone is the ultimate test of compatibility, at least to me. If it feels awkward, then you know you’re not fully comfortable with them. But Ruby and I didn’t seem to have that problem, unless she was that good with all of her clients. The thought gave me pause, so much so that my fork was suspended in front of my mouth. “So,” I started after setting the utensil down. “You said that guy was a client, right?” “What guy?” she asked, licking a spot of syrup off of her lip. I raised an eyebrow. “From last night.” “Oh.” Ruby took a deep breath, visibly shoring herself up. “Yeah. A client.” There it was again, that careful blankness in her eye. Suddenly the silence didn’t feel easy. It felt loaded. Like she damn well knew that I didn’t believe her, but she had no plans to let me in further. “How long did you see him?” “On and off for two years,” she said without batting an eye. “Long time.” I took a sip of my coffee, watching her over the rim of the mug. She shook her head, meeting my gaze head on. “Not really. A lot of us get repeat customers.” “So what happened with him?” “He got too attached.” There was no life in her eyes. Not a single spark of the woman who’d used her teeth on my dick the night before. “Simple as that, huh?” “Simple as that,” she repeated. Whether I believed her or not about him being a client, I couldn’t help but think about what I would be like if I saw Ruby for two years. Even if it was once a month, I’d feel like she was ingrained in me. She’d made her mark on me in the two weeks since I first laid eyes on her, so how much more invested would I feel after

countless nights together? It was unfathomable. Again, the impermanent nature of our relationship was like someone flashing bright lights in my eyes. Thirty days was probably nothing to her. Maybe she’d had long term clients like me before. I clenched my teeth and took a deep breath. “I’ve got a busy day ahead,” I told her. “I’m going to go hop in the shower.” If I wanted her to tease, to beg, to plead with me to stay, I would have been sorely disappointed. “Okay,” she said, smiling at me before taking a sip of her coffee. I showered quickly, using rough hands to wash my skin off, trying desperately to forget how she’d looked at me in the mirror the night before. Like I was the force of gravity holding her down to the earth. Because it wasn’t real. She was a professional, and I was the chump believing every second of it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I think I need to change your food, Fletcher,” I told my ball of white fluff as I picked up yet another hairball beside my bed. “And brush you more often.” After throwing away the paper towel wrapped hairball, I scooped him up and ran my hand over his long, white hair. “Sorry I left you alone all day.” He purred in my arms and rested his head on my shoulder, something that was common for his breed. He was a Ragdoll, and didn’t object to me picking him up for a snuggle from time to time. I was scratching behind his ears when I heard the knock on my door, alerting me to Stella’s arrival. After setting Fletcher back down and wiping the white hairs that clung to my black silky chemise, I opened the door and immediately moved aside for the hurricane that was Stella on girls’ night. “I got beer. And Riesling. And,” she paused, her arms laden with plastic bags as she pulled out a bright green bottle. “Jager?” I asked her. “Are you tending bar, or are we drinking?” “The wine’s for you, pussy.” She stepped in my tiny galley kitchen and leaned down to let the bags fall from her arms to the counter. “But after the fucking week I’ve had, I need me some bitch slap number threes.” I closed the door and followed her into the kitchen, a look of pure confusion on my face. “What’s a bitch slap?” “A bitch slap number three,” Stella amended, setting glass bottles onto the counter with a loud clank. “It’s Jager and grape soda.” She held out the two-liter of grape soda and shook it to illustrate what she was saying. “It’s basically like wine.” I pulled my corkscrew from the drawer next to the fridge and gave her a raise of my eyebrow. “It’s not quite ‘basically like wine.’ It’s more like soda and a liqueur.” I handed Stella one of the ice cold glasses I’d put in my freezer just for her. “And what happened?” Stella spun the top off the grape soda and poured it over the jager in her cup. “Let me get a little buzzed first. But let’s just say, Lenore got her revenge on me after our lunch together.” She rolled her eyes before tipping the glass back, downing the full cup in one go. “Are you trying to get drunk before you spill the beans?”

“Oh, God. Beans.” Stella gagged on air before making a sour face with her mouth. “Just wait. Before I fill you in, distract me. How’d the thing go with Godzilla dick?” She certainly had a way with words. I laughed and she did too, shaking so hard that the high pony she wore shook, fanning her auburn hair all over her face. “Great. He kept me busy, to say the least.” Stella’s sour face returned and she pushed her drink to me. “You get preferential treatment; I know you do. Lenore loves you, so she gives you the Godzilla dicks and I get the dudes with flatulence problems and creepy obsessions.” Ooh, this was going to be good, I could tell. But to assuage her, I filled her in on my night with Elias. “You gave him a blowie in the elevator?” she asked, on her third drink and the color high in her cheeks. “Up top,” she said, holding her palm up for me to highfive her. “I knew you had it in you.” “Oh, I certainly did,” I said with a coy smile, sipping my wine and leading Stella to the couch so we could sit before she delved into her own exploits. “But if it makes you feel better, Nicholas showed up at the hotel bar.” “Fuck outta here,” she said. “He did not.” “He did.” I’d hardly thought about it, not since running into him. “Elias asked who he was, and I told him a former client.” “Why? From how you described Elias, he could’ve kicked your ex-boyfriend’s ass just with a look.” “He probably could have,” I agreed. “But Elias isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my client. He’s not paying me for my baggage, and besides,” I shrugged, “I don’t think he needs to know who I’ve dated. Or really, anything about my past.” Stella nodded thoughtfully, sipping her drink as she looked off at one of the walls of my apartment. “Okay. But you still could have said he was an ex and then not gotten into it.” “I just didn’t want to create any illusion of intimacy.” “Are you serious with this shit?” she asked. “He’s fucking you. A whole hell of a lot, from the sounds of it. What’s more intimate than that?” “That’s just it,” I said. “I can fuck—that only requires my body. But intimacy, for me at least, is deeper than me spreading my legs. It’s my past, my future, and talking about those things with someone who isn’t important to me personally is not something I take lightly. I’m certainly not going to put myself through that with a client, of all people.” “Whatever,” Stella said, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “As long as you’re not mixing up feelings, who cares? It’s just sex, like you said. And after these thirty days, maybe you’ll see him again. Or maybe you won’t. But him knowing a part of you doesn’t mean he owns that part.” I gave her words some consideration. Stella and I approached escorting from different directions. For Stella, she was bored. Being with different men kept things interesting for her and required zero emotional effort from her. Though she might

play at being closed off, under her armor she wore her heart on her sleeve. I escorted purely for the money. The fact that we both enjoyed sex made it much easier to stomach accepting money for our services. “How did Nicholas know where you’d be?” she asked, bringing the conversation back. “I’m not sure. I don’t even know how he got my number.” I sipped my wine and thought. “I mean, we ran in the same circles a year ago. Maybe someone, a mutual friend, gave him my number. But I still don’t know how he knew where I’d be.” “Maybe it was a coincidence. That hotel is near where he interned his third year, isn’t it?” She wasn’t wrong. I’d known Stella longer than I’d been escorting, and she’d kind of pulled me into it after my breakup, but she’d been around when the Nicholas bullshit had been happening. “Yeah, I guess it is on the same block. Maybe he used to drink there. Beats me.” Nicholas had never taken me out when we’d dated. He was usually too busy, or his manipulative ways were too exhausting. That dress is too short, he’d tell me when I’d get ready to go out with him. Or, do you really need that much lipstick? Everyone is going to be staring at you. My appearance had been one of the things he worried about more than nearly anything else. “Well, be careful. And find out who gave him your digits. That’s not cool. He could’ve creeped in your direct messages, like dudes do nowadays.” “I’m sure he’d have realized I’d block him,” I told her dryly. “But the whole exchange reminded me how badly I needed to be in control.” “Which is why I brought you in to the business,” Stella said. “Sex is great, but at least you know you always are in control as an escort.” Stella shuddered. “Nicholas gives me the mega creeps, Rubes. I hope you’ve blocked his number from your phone.” I nodded. “I did. Now tell me why half of that bottle of Jager is already gone.” Stella dropped her head on the back of the sofa and sighed. “Fucking Lenore thinks she’s got jokes.” She lifted her head and pinned me with an unamused look. “She set me up with a dude who likes sploshing.” “What’s that?” “It’s where you eat food off of the other’s body.” I pursed my lips. “That doesn’t sound too bad.” “Of course it doesn’t, because you didn’t have someone pouring baked beans all over your body while you laid on a tarp. Five cans, Rubes. Five fucking cans of baked beans, from my neck down to my,” she circled between her legs. “I had to cut him off when his tongue traveled past my belly button, but dear God, I felt like I was wet dog food.” “And he was the dog, slurping you up?” “Yes. And he made eye contact with me the entire time.” She winced and her lip curled in disgust. “Do you know how fucking awkward it is to make eye contact with a guy for ten minutes as he, loudly, slurps up beans off of your body?”

I shook my head. “And he had beady eyes. Beady eyes! Who gets off on eating baked fucking beans off of someone? And that was just the first course. The second course was spaghetti. From room service. He poured that shit all over my chest and slurped up each noodle. One by one.” Her mouth opened in a silent wail. “And he kept making these moaning sounds while he was slurping the spaghetti,” she closed her eyes and mimicked a very obnoxious moan noise, “and what made it all the worse was that he sounded like a teenage boy beating himself off for the first time while simultaneously going through puberty.” She mimicked a boy’s voice cracking from high to low pitched. “He sounded like a dolphin trying to bark like a dog. Jesus.” She gagged as she continued, “And he kept getting flecks of sauce all over me and him, and he would not fucking stop poking me with his dick. After he was done eating spaghetti off of me, he poked my tit with his dick three times before he came all over the goddamn place. Then he said, with a smug, satisfied look, ‘Are you close?’ Like, was he fucking kidding? I had just spent twenty minutes with some balding, middle-aged asshole eating baked beans and noodles off of my body. I had zero penetration!” She threw up her hand, illustrating the tragedy she had been dealt. It sounded awful. I didn’t blame Stella for being disgusted. “That’s pretty awful,” I said. “But I know Lenore has assigned some of the weird fetish guys to you before.” “It’s like she thinks I have a fetish for weird fetish dudes or something. But then he insisted on washing me in the shower, and again, I had a flash where I wondered if he was a virgin. Like, did he think this was how sex went? Spend several hundred bucks to eat your dinner off your date? He did some kind of weird shimmy in the shower, dancing around me instead of helping me wash off the remains of his meal.” She pounded the rest of her drink. “It was almost as bad as the guy who made me fake breastfeed him, Rubes. Almost that bad.” I winced in sympathy for her, remembering the guy who had been obsessed with being a baby in her arms. “I don’t even know what to say,” I told her honestly. “Yeah, because you’re getting regular giant penis penetration. Us peasants have to make do with our baby-dicked baked beans fetishists.” She groaned. “Enjoy that while you got it. Get that peen as much as possible, because once your thirty days are up, Lenore might hand off the perverts to you.” I shuddered at the thought and reminded myself that Elias was just a thirty-day commitment. Just thirty days of him was all I would get, and after? I watched Stella go to the kitchen to pour herself some more of her drink and hoped to god that I’d never have to do the things she did. I was lucky to have a man like Elias as enamored as he was with me, but it was just a temporary arrangement. As long as I kept reminding myself of that, I should be fine. I hoped.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I think he’s dead, Daddy,” a tiny voice whispered somewhere by my head. I groaned, turning into my pillow. The voice giggled and I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Not dead, sugar plum,” Jack said from somewhere further away. “Hungover, probably. But not dead.” “I’m not hungover,” I mumbled into my pillow, but I was sure they couldn’t understand me. The night before, I’ll admit that I stared at the bottle of bourbon for a solid hour before slamming it back into the cupboard. Over-sexed was a likely diagnosis, as was emotional instability due to one Grade-A escort who already had me tied in knots. I lifted my head, pinning Jack with a glare. “How did you get in here?” “You gave me a key, dipshit.” “Don’t swear, Daddy,” Grace said. “Yeah. Don’t swear, Jack.” I grinned up at him, and I could tell he wanted to flip me off if not for the little angel next to me. “The building. How’d you get into the building?” “The cute old lady who lives on the floor above you let us in.” He winked at his daughter, Grace, who was perched on the edge of my mattress. “She can’t resist me.” “She’s eighty-two. That’s hardly a compliment,” I said dryly, tweaking the edge of Grace’s long dark hair when I sat up. She giggled, and the innocent sound instantly made me feel better. I didn’t see her all that often, maybe a few times a year when I was in town, but she was easily one of my favorite people in the world. That was probably a sad commentary for me, that a six-year-old topped the list of people who always made me happy. And she was probably the real reason I’d never actually get rid of Jack. “How’s school going, Princess?” She giggled, and my heart wanted to fucking explode. “It’s summer.” “Shit. Yeah, I guess it is.” “Don’t swear, Uncle Elias,” Jack and Grace said at the exact same time. She didn’t look much like her father, since Grace favored Jack’s late wife, Natasha. I’d never met Natasha; she passed away from a brain aneurysm when Grace was only a

baby, and I didn’t meet Jack until about a year after that. But if Natasha had half the sweetness and compassion that her daughter did, she must have been one hell of a woman. “Do you want to come to the farmer’s market with us?” Grace asked, giving me the big puppy dog eyes that she knew worked on me every single fucking time. “You paying, Princess?” I tickled her until she was gasping for breath. When she yanked on my beard to get me to stop, I glared at Jack. Only one person would have taught her that. “Daddy is.” “Sold. Okay, you two go wait in the other room and let me get dressed, I’ll be out in a minute.” Jack hustled Grace out of the room and I took a minute to flop back onto my pillow. The way I’d left the hotel the day before, with a curt nod to Ruby, stuck in my gut like a block of cement. I’d acted like a pussy, and it was my own fault. Before giving it too much thought, I reached over to grab my cell phone where it was plugged in on the nightstand and tapped out a quick text to her. I’ve got a thing at a bookstore tomorrow late afternoon. It’s casual, no pressure if you can’t make it. Sorry I was a dick when I left the hotel, I added as an afterthought. She might not have even noticed that I’d pulled back a little, but in case she did, I didn’t want her feeling like I was mad at her. I rolled my eyes. It sounded like I was asking her on a date. It felt like I was asking her on a date. And the truth was, if I’d met Ruby at a bar or on the subway, I’d have noticed her. But even if we’d managed the same type of stimulating conversations that I already knew we were capable of, I doubt I’d have asked her out. That’s how far down the path I was of refusing to see women as the potential partners they were. Even with her stunning looks, her quick brain and dry sense of humor, I really didn’t think she would have registered. Because I would have worried that if we went on a date or two, spent some time in bed together, that she’d start nagging. She’d complain about my travel and strange hours, the occasional inconsistency in jobs. She’d hate when I traveled with a female photographer. I shook my head and rolled out of bed, pulling on the first jeans and t-shirt that I laid hands on. I’d never dissected a relationship with any of the woman I’d paid before. There were a handful of girls in Vegas, way back at the beginning of when I thought of escorts or high-class prostitutes as a viable option for my pent-up sexual proclivities. The very first girl that I’d paid had natural red hair, a crooked smile, and breasts so fake that I was afraid that I’d pop them if I squeezed too hard. But she’d ridden me like a fucking rodeo queen and came four times in the hour we spent together. Then she kissed me on the cheek and made me promise to visit her again the next time I was in town. And boom, just like that, a lifestyle change had been born. Even through all of those women, though, I’d never met one like Ruby. And it

pissed me off that I seemed incapable of keeping my thoughts about her compartmentalized. Normally I wouldn’t think about the girl until it was time to meet up with her, when I needed the outlet, needed a warm body to sink into. Grace knocked on my bedroom door. “Daddy says to hurry the hell up.” I chuckled, opening the door and scooping her up in my arms. “Don’t swear, Princess.” “It doesn’t count if you’re repeating what someone else said first,” Grace said, giving me a solemn expression that made my heart squeeze. She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a hug. I patted her back, accepting the fact that a hug from her still gave me a thick ball of emotion somewhere in the base of my throat. “Aww, sugar plum, you made him smile,” Jack said when we walked into the living room. “For that, you get an extra donut from the market.” Since it was a beautiful day, with flawless blue skies and enough breeze that it cut through the heat, we walked to the market with Grace chattering away in front of us. A blonde woman passed by, smiling at the three of us. Jack turned his head to watch her and then swore under his breath. “Do you think she thought we were gay? Because that was like a, oh how sweet are they with their daughter smile, not I need to bed him now kind of smile.” I gave him only a cursory glance, keeping my eyes on Grace skipping on the sidewalk. There was always a slight murderous feeling humming under my skin when someone bumped into her or didn’t move to the side to let her pass. It was probably best that I never planned to have kids, because I’d probably commit homicide before the hypothetical kid’s second birthday. We wandered through the packed farmer’s market on 79th, Jack’s arms getting progressively weighed down with each item that lit up Grace’s face. “You know,” I told him when he bought another loaf of cinnamon bread that she pointed to, “you don’t actually have to buy everything she wants.” “I know,” he sighed, shifting the bags. “It’s how I assuage my guilt at working so damn much. I’m mom and dad and still have to work sixty hours a week around both of those roles. Fucking sucks, man.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re doing good, Jack. She’s happy, and she’s the sweetest fucking kid I’ve ever met in my life. That means you’re doing something right.” Jack stared at me. “I think all this sex is doing strange things to your brain. That was so … nice. And supportive. What’s wrong with you?” I opened my mouth to tell him to piss off when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Instead of being Ruby like I’d hoped, it was the editor of one of the bigger travel magazines that I’d done some freelance work for in the past. “I gotta grab this,” I told Jack, and put the phone to my ear. “Hey, Donovan, how’s it going?” “Depends on whether you say yes to me right now. If you say no, I’m fucked for this piece.” I laughed, scooting around a stall selling fresh fish. “What’s the job?”

“I need someone in Amsterdam next week to cover the Kwaku Summer Festival. The other photog I had booked fucking broke his leg yesterday and my other freelancer is on maternity leave. Can you go?” Blowing out a slow breath, I thought through what events for the book I’d miss, and knew there was nothing vital. “How long?” “Eight days. Enough to catch events on the first two weekends.” My mind raced at the job, it was something lighter than I’d been doing lately. And I hadn’t been to Amsterdam in years. “Can I bring someone with me?” He snorted. “If you’re paying, sure. I only have approval for your expenses, and you damn well know it.” “I’m doing you a massive favor, Donovan. I’m missing events for the book, which is a big fucking deal. You can at least spring for a higher daily stipend.” “You’re such a dick.” He hummed and I heard him clicking some keys on his computer. “Fine. I can double the daily stipend but airfare is on you.” I grinned, imagining Ruby’s response to jetting off to Amsterdam. Hopefully her form of gratitude involved nudity and more blowjobs. Before my thirty days were up, no way was I not finishing in her mouth at least once. And now I’d have eight solid days of access to her body. “You got yourself a deal.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The day after my girls’ night with Stella, Elias asked me to come along to a signing he had in lower Manhattan, at a specialty bookstore. He’d told me to dress down for this one, as it was more of a meet and greet, so I wore my black pencil jeans and a white silk, sleeveless tank that had four buttons beginning from the v-neck to my waist. It was more casual chic, but I had enough décolletage to still garner an appreciative smile from Elias when he saw me outside the bookstore. “Hello,” he said, taking my hand and leaning in to kiss my cheek. He smelled amazing, some kind of woodsy fir scent, something reminiscent of dark nights under a cloud of stars. I pressed my lips to his cheek before pulling back. “Glad you could make it,” he said, holding my hand warmly. Behind him, a line of people had gathered behind a black ribbon, and they watched us carefully. I wondered how we looked to them, this tall, dark hunk of muscle beside me—an escort trying to look more like a girlfriend. “Thanks for inviting me,” I told him beneath my lashes. He looked down at me like he had a hundred things to ask, but had tucked them away for the moment. “What do you want me to do while you meet with people?” “Well.” He looked up at the building. “Explore? See if there’s anything on the shelves that interests you. I can’t imagine you often get an opportunity to indulge in some pleasure reading.” The way “pleasure” rolled off his tongue made me momentarily tighten my grip on his hand. “I don’t, you’re right.” I gave him a sincere smile. “I’m good at exploring.” “Ah,” he said with a laugh. “I’m positive you are.” I followed him into the building and he was pulled away to speak with someone wearing a headset and someone else holding a stack of papers. So I did as he’d invited me, I perused the shelves. It was my first time in a bookstore like this, one that catered more to travel nonfiction, and it made me yearn a little for the chance to escape from the confines of my studio apartment, to hop on a jet and fly to the places books were written about. I pulled a book about Italy from the shelf, a book detailing the churches of Rome.

The photos were abundant, and showed the ornate artwork painted on ceilings. Altarpieces that depicted the Madonna and Child. My fingers traced the lines in the ceiling fresco of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus and I felt that ache deep in my bones. The ache to travel and see these with my eyes before me, instead of the pages of a book. I had very few regrets in my life, because I believed that each choice I’d made had brought me to the point where I stood, living and breathing and healthy. That was more than a lot of people could wish for, so I harbored my blessings despite my climbing student loan debt. But, I did regret not traveling back when I’d purchased my passport. I’d done it on a whim, a few months before spring break. A bunch of students in my Christianity and Art class had planned to take a week in Rome, and I’d very nearly boarded the plane along with them. But I was plagued by anxiety. What if it hadn’t lived up to my expectations? What if on the journey over the Atlantic, the plane plunged into the ocean? I wasn’t someone who fed on irrational fears, but because I’d grown up flitting from home to home, I’d never had the opportunity to enjoy a vacation with a family. And I worried that going to Rome would cause me to question my pursuit of study. I closed the book and set it on the shelf with a wistful sigh. There was no opportunity for me now, not with my debt as high as it was. I may have had a relatively healthy paycheck, but I was practical—any extra cash was tucked away, not spent purchasing airfare that would likely cost a month’s rent. I wandered down another aisle, picking up a book on a student’s journey into the heart of Africa, and his experiences connecting with the Pygmies of Central Africa. A hunter-gatherer society, they form intimate connections to the forests. I knew from my recent sociology studies that many forest peoples had begun to be evicted from their lands, which had devastating consequences. I looked at the photos of people who held their sticks for photos, looking directly at the camera with just a hint of a smile. They’d likely lose everything that had formed their entire identity and forced them to the bottom of mainstream society. It struck a chord with me. Not because I’d ever suffered such a profound loss of self. But because I wanted to feel like my studies could help me somehow. That the piece of paper granted to me by my university wasn’t just something in a gold gilded frame to hang on a wall. Something I’d need to remember to dust. I wanted to leverage my studies into something productive, something meaningful and impactful. Once again, I sighed as I replaced the book, feeling like a fish floundering on the shore, aching for its own environment. I studied sociology partly to become more sympathetic to the people who needed it the most. But I didn’t know yet how to accomplish that goal. As I stepped out of the aisle, my gaze fell upon Elias, who was standing beside a desk covered in the books he’d helped work on. He was talking with someone a head shorter than him, but he had the ability to not look like he was talking down

to them at all. He maintained eye contact, nodded, smiled, and did everything to make the person welcome. Perhaps I was projecting, but I felt he was making this person feel like he cared what they had to say. Such a simple thing, really, but something undervalued and rare, too. “Hot photographer, huh?” a woman asked beside me. I glanced at her, but she was looking at Elias with a dreamy kind of look in her eyes. In her arms she held three of his books. “He is,” I agreed quietly, turning my eyes back to Elias as he greeted the next person and wrapped an arm around them for a photo. He looked completely at ease, and in his dark jeans and charcoal t-shirt, I found myself warming just looking at him. He certainly was attractive—and not just from far away, like some men were. He’d treated me kindly in public and he’d been attentive to my needs in the bedroom. It was so unlike most of the clients I met with, that it was easy for me to forget he wasn’t mine. Maybe for the thirty days our agreement would last, but not longer. “He smells incredible,” the lady said, and reminded me of a fawning woman from some Disney movie. And in comparing her to that, I felt a small trill of annoyance filter through my head. “He does,” I told her, not letting that annoyance color my voice at all. “Are you waiting to meet him?” she asked, but didn’t look at me for my answer. “I’m tempted to jump back in his line, just to have another minute of his time.” “I’m not,” I told her, “but why don’t you go for it?” And then I walked away, my back a little stiffer than it had been before speaking with her. Why did the lady bother me? She wasn’t much older than I was, and perhaps a little dowdy in her oversized shirt and baggy jeans. Elias was not mine. As long as I reminded myself of that, I would be fine. Two hours later, the last straggler was being all but pushed out the front door and the woman with the headset was speaking with Elias when I slid into a seat a few feet from him. Elias met my gaze before turning back to the woman and saying something that had her smiling and nodding. Elias stepped around her and came to me. “So,” he said, tucking his hands into his jeans. “Thanks for hanging out.” I stood and gave him an easy smile. “It was nice. Seeing you, interacting with the people who came to meet you.” “Well,” he said and looked around the room, “all that talking has worked up an appetite.” He raised one dark brow and I felt myself titter a little on my heels. “Want to get out of here?” Did I ever. “What’d you have in mind?” “We could go back to my place. I can order some takeout?” “No,” came from my lips before I could stop it. I never ever entertained clients at my own home, for obvious reasons, but I definitely never went to a client’s house. Partly because it was safer to be in a hotel, where Taylor and Dave could assist if needed and partly because—as vile as it may sound—many clients were

often married or at least living with their partners. “Elias?” the headset woman asked and Elias turned away from me for a moment with an apologetic smile. I pulled out my phone and shot a quick text to Lenore, asking if it was against the rules to go to Elias’ house. The situation was different, considering that I had thirty days with him instead of the one night. I certainly didn’t expect him to drop hefty cash for a hotel every time we were together, but going to a client’s house was so foreign that I didn’t know if it was even allowed. Lenore: What a silly question. We have all of his information, so you could go to Antarctica with him if you want. Of course it’s all right. It was amazing how three simple sentences could make me feel so stupid. It was Lenore’s gift, perhaps. So when Elias joined me again, I turned to him with a smile. “Actually, that sounds great,” I told him, not wanting to elaborate on why I’d said no with the several employees still milling around. “Good. Let’s go.” He said it in one breath, like he couldn’t wait to get me alone. And as my eyes tracked over the muscles bulging against his sleeve, I felt just as impatient.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ruby wandered around my apartment, eyeing the framed photos on the wall behind the couch with a tiny smile on her face. It felt pretty fucking foreign to have her in my space, to have any woman in my space, I guess. “Did you take all of these?” she asked over her shoulder while I poured some wine for us in the kitchen. “Most. The one you’re looking at isn’t mine. New Zealand is actually one place I’ve never been, and that’s in Christchurch. Hamner Springs.” She hummed and gave me a small smile when I handed her the glass of cabernet. “Pictures are all I have of all these incredible places. I guess I should be thankful for people like you who take them for me.” The simple way she said it, with no trace of bitterness, said a lot about her to me. It wasn’t an invitation for pity either, because I knew that the path I’d taken in seeing the world wasn’t typical. Most people hadn’t seen all the places that I had during my career. Diana’s death was definitely the impetus, lighting a flare in me so bright that I had no choice but to avoid the places that she’d been. Ruby’s deep-seeded desire to explore other cultures was why I knew she’d say yes to joining me in Amsterdam, but I still wanted to tread carefully. I’d asked her about the passport as a formality, not really expecting that we’d do any international travel during our time. When she turned her attention from the photo to me, I could see the spark of desire in her dark, bottomless eyes. It had been simmering in me since I saw her outside of the bookstore looking more casual than I’d ever seen her. It suited her. All the facets of Ruby that I’d witnessed suited her. The calm professional. The voracious student. The uninhibited vixen. It almost felt like I was fucking three different people sometimes, seeing glimpses of all the parts of her personality. Not like she was crazy, but it felt like there was so much untapped depth to her, and I wanted nothing more than to dig as far as she’d let me. “Food will be here in about twenty,” I told her, setting my wine glass down so I

could touch the ends of her hair where she’d pulled it back into a simple ponytail. “I hope it’s okay that I took the liberty of ordering for us.” Her mouth slid up into a smile. “What if I had deadly food allergies?” “You don’t.” My eyes dropped to her hips, which were encased in tight denim that did fucking phenomenal things to her impossibly long legs and perfect ass. “Who’s the little girl?” Ruby asked, looking over my shoulder at the small framed photo of Grace. She’d decorated the black frame with pink and purple foam stickers in shapes of crowns and hearts. “What if I said she was mine?” I watched her face carefully while she thought about that. Grace could have easily passed for my child, with her long dark hair and brown eyes. Ruby didn’t miss a beat. “I’d say she’s beautiful, and has great taste in stickers.” With a laugh, I turned to look at the picture. “That she does. Grace is the daughter of my friend, Jack. She wants to be a princess when she grows up.” “At least she knows. I can’t imagine what that must feel like,” Ruby said ruefully. Moments like that, when Ruby lowered the veil and gave me a massive chunk of honesty, I knew well enough not to waste them. “Oh come on,” I said, using a finger to trace the edge of her lower lip, gratified to see her take in a shaky breath. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.” “Of course I’ve thought about it,” she answered, staring at my mouth. My finger never left her skin, following along the line of her jaw and the graceful column of her throat. “I know someone that could help you.” That snapped some of the thick haze of desire from her eyes. “What?” “A professor that was part of a piece that I shot a few years back. She was a pretty fucking cool chick, and I know she’d be happy to sit down with you if you wanted to talk to her about some of the options you might have. Her education background is similar to yours.” Ruby stared up at me, and even though the lust had cleared slightly between us, I felt a tidal wave of satisfaction at the fact that she was so obviously blindsided by my offer. “You’d do that?” I furrowed my brow, cupping the side of her throat. “Of course.” In the next breath, her hands were in my hair and her mouth was over mine. She moaned into my mouth when I gripped her ass in both hands and clutched her to me. Her fingernails pierced into the skin of my scalp, and I sucked her tongue into my mouth, driven half-crazy by the taste of wine mixed with the taste of Ruby. “Not that I’m complaining,” I said between kisses, half-carrying her, halfguiding her until her back hit the wall. “But is this always how you’ll show your appreciation?” “God, yes,” she breathed, palming my aching erection with a firm grasp. “I can’t wait to hear you say that in my bed later.” I punctuated the statement by palming one breast, plucking at the nipple that I could feel through her thin bra.

“All fucking night, you’ll be saying that.” Ruby thumped her head against the wall, exposing her neck for me. I placed my mouth right over the skin that showed the rapid beat of her pulse. Knowing that her blood raced like that for me, because of me, because of us, made me feel savage. Pressing my hips against her to find some sort of relief for my unfettered lust, I shoved a hand up her shirt so I could feel the weight of her tit in my hand, against my skin. “Oh fuck, yes, Elias.” “You need my hands on you, don’t you, baby?” “I need more than that,” she hissed, trying to rip at my zipper when the buzzer on the wall went off. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I sank my forehead into the curve of her neck, chuckling at the awful luck that we seemed to have when it came to interruptions. “I swear, every time that happens, I feel like I’m experiencing some sort of karmic punishment.” Ruby laughed, cupping my face and dropping a sweet, short kiss on my lips. “Maybe you are.” While I buzzed in the delivery guy, I gave her a dry look, but the teasing from her didn’t feel dry in the slightest. It felt so strangely natural, like we’d been born to do this. Maybe that bordered on thoughts of destiny and fate, which I didn’t believe in for a fucking second, but they tumbled through my head regardless. They didn’t stop while I unloaded the Italian food, opting to keep everything in its containers rather than dirty plates. Had I been directed by some unseen force to Ruby’s pictures on the website? It felt laughable. Except it wasn’t. A woman who soaked up knowledge like a fucking sponge, who studied cultures and religions but had never been able to experience them firsthand, was now sitting in my living room so I could ask if she wanted to join me across the world. How could that be anything but fate? I joined her, keeping my thoughts to myself, and we ate baked ziti and a penne vodka over wine and small talk. She laughed when I told her how Grace and Jack had woken me up the day before, and she told me about drinking with her friend. When there was a lull in the conversation, I took a sip of my wine and watched her. “I got a call yesterday from an editor that I’ve freelanced for in the past.” “Yeah? Did you like working with him?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Yeah, Donovan is a good guy. Works too much, but I can’t exactly judge him for that.” “Me neither.” We both smiled when she said that. “He needs a photographer to be in Amsterdam next week to cover a festival.” Ruby blinked, taking a slow bite of her pasta before speaking again. “What kind?” “Kwaku Summer Festival.” I smiled at her blank look. “At its core, it’s a celebration of multiculturalism. Food, music, everything you could want. They started it to celebrate the abolition of slavery, and it’s a massive draw in the

summers.” Her eyes lit up while I spoke, the sociology degree probably screaming in her head how fascinating it would be to witness. “It sounds wonderful.” “Should be.” “So you’re going?” I nodded slowly and I could visibly see her process. “You’ll be so lonely while you’re there,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “You better not visit the red light district during your visit.” Bingo. When I laughed, she narrowed her eyes. “No worry about that happening.” “Why not?” I leaned forward over the coffee table, gripping her chin in my hand. “Because you’re coming with me.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“I am?” Thrill sped through my body. Thrill and anxiety. I’d never flown, never traveled somewhere as incredible sounding as Amsterdam. “Of course. Remember I asked you about having a passport?” “Right.” He let go of my chin and I thought for a moment. “I’m going with you?” “As I said.” He drained his glass of wine. “I’m going to be gone eight days. That’s eight out of thirty days of our agreement. You’d be crazy to think I’m not bringing you with me.” He set his glass down on the table and leveled me with his gaze. “So. Want to go to Amsterdam?” A smile tickled the corner of my lips and I drained my own glass of wine before answering. “I certainly won’t object. I’d love to.” I leaned over to press my lips to his mouth, a reaction that took me aback the moment our lips met. Was it too much? Kissing him in gratitude, in a way that wasn’t directly sexual, or a lead-in to sex? Elias held my face in his hands, returning the kiss with all of himself, so I took that opportunity to hook my fingers in the front of his jeans, rubbing my nails gently against the skin behind his zipper. “Let me show you how much I appreciate this,” I said after pulling my lips from his, wanting to translate that kiss directly into sex, so that I didn’t have to think about the fact that I hadn’t kissed him with sex in mind. “I won’t object,” he said, echoing the words I’d said to him as I tugged him down the hall to the bathroom he’d shown me on the tour. It was all black marble, from the vanity to the shelves above the toilet. But my eyes were on the generously sized shower, with three different shower heads. I spun around and grabbed a fistful of the front of his shirt, pulling him down so that he bent to kiss me again, his hands tangling in my hair. “Want to clean off?” he asked against my lips. His large hands slid out of my hair and down to cup my ass, squeezing and bringing my face to his ear. “Something like that,” I said, “Start the shower.” Elias opened the glass door and leaned in as I kicked off my heels and peeled the jeans off of my body. But before I could take off my shirt, Elias bent over in front of

me and threw me over his shoulder, kicking off his own jeans as he carried me, both of us still wearing our shirts and underwear, into the shower. I laughed as he brought me down so my bare feet were on the cool tile, both of us soaking through our clothes under the spray. Elias pulled my silk shirt from my body and gave me a sheepish look. “I didn’t ask if this was expensive.” “It’ll be fine,” I told him as the water poured off his head and splashed onto me. “As long as you take it off right away.” “I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” he told me, his fingers already slipping the buttons free of their holes one by one, before he peeled it off my shoulders and tossed it over the top of the shower on the other side. “Ah,” he breathed, running his finger over the curves of my breasts in the simple demi bra I wore. “This is nice.” “It’s also expensive,” I said throatily. “I better remove it, quickly,” he said with a raise of his eyebrow. “We wouldn’t want this to be ruined.” “Definitely not,” I agreed, turning around so that his fingers could more easily find the clasp in the back. The shower was dark because of all the black marble, but the light over the bathroom sinks provided enough light so that I could look over my shoulder and see Elias. Gently, he pushed my hair over my shoulder and dragged the flat of his palm down my spine before he stopped at my bra strap. It took very little effort for him to unsnap the bra, which I then let slide down my arms before I tossed it out of the shower too. His lips came to my shoulder and he said against my skin, “I’d say it’s a shame that I don’t get more time to appreciate these.” He ran his hand over my front, pressing against the soaked fabric of my panties before he slipped beneath the fabric and caressed my opening. “But I much prefer no limitations when it comes to this.” As one finger slid inside of me, his other hand came up and pinched my nipple. The sensation of both at once was enough to cause me to jolt back against him. He chuckled softly against my skin before pulling out and then moved me so that the primary showerhead was sending water down my back. My hands were on the tile, like how I’d been in the hotel the last time we’d had sex. But the sensations were different this time, especially when he pulled the back of my thong from my crack and ran a finger down the skin between my cheeks. I’d engaged in back door action before, but I’d never preferred it over vaginal penetration. But Elias just explored the skin there, up and down, before the pad of his finger lightly pressed against the hole. A shiver went up my spine and I tightened up completely, but not in repulsion. “Yes,” he hissed against my skin, his warm breath prolonging the shiver down my spine, before moving his hand away. I had a feeling that he wanted to be in control this time, and as he tore my panties off of my body, I didn’t have it in me to object—even if I’d wanted to. Turning around, I saw he was still wearing his t-shirt and boxer briefs. “Are

these expensive?” I asked with a quirk of my mouth as my fingers slid under the soaked tee and pulled up. “Extremely.” A smile curved into his cheeks as he looked down at me. “They come in a pack of six.” I laughed as I tugged the shirt up and Elias helped me tear it off his head since he was so much taller. I dragged my nails down his chest, scraping against his nipple and dipping into the line that separated his abdominal muscles from one side to the other. When I ended at his underwear, I dipped my hands under the elastic waistband and pulled down, freeing his exceptional dick in the process. “Condom?” I asked him as he kicked his briefs to the other corner of the shower. Elias tapped the shower inset, where his shampoo and body wash were, and true enough, a foil-wrapped condom rested. I was more than willing to let Elias take the lead this time, but I didn’t want to lose myself so much that I forgot how important protection was. Wrapping one arm around my waist, Elias pulled me toward the center of the shower so we stood together under the middle spray. With his mouth back on mine, his hands slid down my ass, cupping it in his hands and lifting me so that I had to wrap my legs around his waist. I trusted him completely, I realized, not worrying that he’d drop me at all as he backed us to the other side of the shower. When my bare back met the cold tile, I gasped in his mouth and he pulled away, just slightly. “Let me warm you up,” he said huskily. With my legs still wrapped around his waist, he anchored me against the wall with the angle of his hips as his fingers slipped between us. He held my eyes when his fingers found my pussy, and watched the way each place he touched me changed the expression on my face. I felt languid in his arms as his fingers dipped in and out of me, and played with my lips. Pinching and pulling, and gliding along them in an erotic exploration. When he hooked his thumb inside me, I felt his fingers reach behind and dip into my other hole. Instantly, I clenched down in reaction and a triumphant grin spread Elias’ cheeks. “I like that,” he said, his voice low and echoing off the marble around us. It felt forbidden with Elias, as he gently pulled out before dipping in again. “You like that too, don’t you?” he asked, and I felt myself shudder from the feeling of having him in both holes at once. I could do nothing but nod and bite on my lip when he did it a third time. It was like my body seized up, and I felt both surprised and eager for more. Suddenly, he pulled out of both and lifted me higher on the tile so that he could capture my breast in his mouth. As I watched his cheeks hollow as he sucked on me, I felt a thousand sensations of sheer pleasure illuminating me from the inside out. Slowly, his mouth loosened its grip on my breast, letting it pop out of his mouth before he moved to the next one, sucking hard enough to send a sharp spurt of pleasure through me. My eyes closed and I savored the feeling just when I felt a spray of water under my ass.

I popped my eyes open and watched as Elias displayed the handheld shower head in his hand. He brought it over my front, replacing his mouth with the warm spray of shower. The shower had fogged up considerably, so he was all I could see. He let me back down on my feet but tapped on my inner thigh, so that I spread my legs for him again. The handheld shower head disappeared as he brought it between my legs, spraying warmth all over my tingling parts. It wasn’t enough; I wanted more. I wanted Elias to bend me over and take me roughly. To use me so that I could use him. “Please,” I begged breathlessly. The sensations were too much to have just a taste of, over and over—I needed all of it, all of him. “God, Elias.” “Turn around,” he ordered, his voice firm. I turned immediately, pressing my hands against the tile as Elias adjusted the other showerheads so they poured over my body. Still, I shivered in anticipation. “Just take me,” I said against the cool tile wall, in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. “I’m going to,” he said roughly. I was barely aware of the empty foil packet that fell beside my feet in the shower before I felt the full force of his dick slamming into me from behind. I screamed, something unintelligible as he slammed into me again. He moved punishingly fast, so fast that I felt the quake surge up within me. I was seconds away from collapsing, I knew, when Elias barked, “Touch yourself, Ruby.” I reached a hand down between my legs as Elias repeatedly slammed into me, and found my clit with my thumb. My fingers reached further back, brushing against his dick as it slammed into me. I heard a grunt from him before he said, “Brace yourself on the wall, but don’t stop touching yourself.” My arms felt weightless, completely free of muscle. But I willed my hand to hold firm to the tile when I felt his fingers at my ass, spreading my cheeks. He never stopped his rhythm, even my legs trembled beneath the two of us. I was so close, so close. He must have known, because he pressed a finger into my other hole which, once again, caused me to clench down hard. My mouth opened but no sound came out. The distinct and sharp pleasure of feeling so full made me want to cry out, but my voice box seemed broken. He pulled his finger in and out in time with his dick in my cunt and finally, it was all so much that my voice returned and I screamed loud enough to feel it vibrate through the shower as heat flooded through me and spots dotted my vision. Elias’ pumps moved faster right at the top of my orgasm and then he grunted, long and low, muttering “Fuck” over and over as we came together. Slowly, I became aware of my surroundings. My knees, which were locked, were the only things keeping me from collapse. As if he sensed it, Elias wrapped an arm around my waist and picked me up, carrying me out of the shower. A fog poured out of the shower as he carried me to his sink. I felt completely empty, in the very best

possible way. Wordlessly, he wrapped me in a towel and then pushed my hair from my face, gently tucking it behind my ears before he disposed of the condom. Then his arms came around me, and I felt myself lean into him. Time was inconsequential as he held me in the bathroom, but he held me long enough that I started feeling my brain working again. In that moment, as Elias just held me in the silence of his bathroom, I realized he wasn’t just a regular client. It wasn’t just the exceptional sex, it was a combination of that and the fact that he’d actually cared enough about me to try to help me with an introduction to someone who might give me direction in my career path. So when Elias pulled back and looked at me, I gave him a kiss on the lips that I knew, in a place I didn’t want to acknowledge, wasn’t at all about sex … but was about something else. Something I wasn’t ready to examine too much.

CHAPTER TWENTY

My cell phone vibrated on my nightstand while I rolled the last pair of socks into my basic black suitcase. When I saw my parents’ home number come up, I groaned a little, but still hit the screen to answer. “Hey, Mom.” “Sweetie,” she chirped happily and I cringed at the name. “Dad just told me about your trip to Amsterdam tomorrow. That’s so exciting.” I smiled, thinking she didn’t know the fucking half of it. “Should be. What’s up?” “I was thinking you could come out tonight to see us before you leave.” In the background, I could hear the sound of cupboard doors closing. Even though I didn’t have plans with Ruby before meeting her at the airport at the ass-crack of dawn, I grimaced down at my bed when I thought about the fourhour drive to my parents’. The fact that I owned a car and lived in New York made me a fucking unicorn to most people, but public transit wasn’t my thing. I did enough of it overseas that when I was back home, I wanted to be able to drive wherever the fuck I wanted without having to pay someone or wait for someone else’s schedule. “Sorry, I need to get to bed early. My flight is at six, so I can’t really afford to be driving back too late.” “Oh,” she said after a loaded beat of silence. It didn’t take much for me to be able to envision the disappointed pinch of her mouth. I’d seen it enough in the years since Diana died. They were left with me, the gruff one who got annoyed when she used a nickname and made it seemingly impossible to imagine they’d ever become grandparents. I pinched the bridge of my nose while a wave of guilt swamped me. “I’ll come and see you as soon as I’m back.” “Okay, sweetie.” She cleared her throat in the awkward silence that followed. “Have a safe trip. We love you.” “Love you too,” I said gruffly before disconnecting the call. It felt out of the realm of possibility that I’d ever not feel guilty that I was the only one they had left, the only person they could pin their hopes on. It might explain why I went the

opposite route in my relationships, actively seeking women who I knew would never want more. It was their job to be able to let me walk away. That had always been the appeal of escorts. Until Ruby. The rest of our time together felt like a noose around my neck, and every day that passed tightened it further and further. The idea that it was there, coarse and thick around my skin made me rub at my throat when I laid down in bed later that night just to be sure that I was imagining things. When I drifted off to sleep, I dreamt that I was swinging beneath a platform, clawing at a thick, impenetrable rope that Ruby held clasped in her hand. “And you’re sure you’re not nervous?” I asked her for the third time while we waited at the gate to board our plane. Someone had replaced my calm, collected Ruby with one so jittery that she hadn’t stopped moving since the moment we met outside of LaGuardia. “Just excited,” she assured me, fidgeting with the purse in her hands. “Did you know that there are more canals in Amsterdam than there are in Venice?” “I did know that,” I told her with an amused smile. Her eyes were bright in her face, like she’d mainlined coffee into her veins before arriving. “They’re beautiful.” “And that the Red Light District is actually one of the safest areas in Amsterdam? That surprised me, I don’t know why. Have you ever been there?” Then she shook her head. “Never mind. That’s none of my business.” While her eyes flitted around the cramped gate, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few pictures of Ruby when she smiled at a young couple sitting across from us. “I walked through it once the last time I was there,” I said, with the viewfinder still up to my eye, waiting for her to turn back to me. “To look, not to sample. But I can’t lie and say I wasn’t tempted by a few of the windows.” Her eyes were fierce when they landed on me. I pressed the shutter with an audible click. I’d title that one Jealousy if it turned out half as amazing as I thought it would. “Why’d you take a picture?” Her hands fluttered to her hair, tucking a dark, silky chunk behind her ear. “Because you’re beautiful. When you’re nervous. When you’re jealous.” “I’m not jealous,” she said, her eyes darting around again, never landing on me for more than a second. “It’s okay if you are.” I took one of her hands and sandwiched it in between my own, hoping that I could help steady her before we boarded the plane for a long ten hours. “Would it help if I told you that the thought of you with other men makes me want to break things?” She laughed softly before pulling in a huge breath and turning in her chair to face me. “A little. And yes, I’m nervous.”

“I know.” I let go of her hand, feeling a strange sense of disappointment when she brought it quickly back to her lap. “Were you able to sleep last night?” “Some. I kept rolling over to check the time. And then I’d think, if I go to sleep right now I can get six hours of sleep,” she babbled, which made me smile again. Nervous Ruby was fucking adorable. Adorable in the way that made me want to kiss her, feel her, touch her to try and soothe those nerves. “Did you?” I nodded. “I always get to bed early before a morning flight like this, especially when it’s this long. Jet lag is a bitch, so it’s important to get good sleep.” Talking about sleep made me think about my mom again, which caused a twinge of guilt. “What’s that face for?” Ruby asked quietly. Surprised at her ability to read my face so easily, I rubbed my hands along the top of my jeans. “Thinking about my mom, actually.” I winked at her. “Sorry if that kills my uncontainable sex appeal.” Ruby smiled. “Not at all. What were you thinking about?” “She called me yesterday, wanted me to come for dinner.” I shrugged. “But I needed sleep, and they’re up in Boston, so I’d have spent like eight hours in the car.” When Ruby didn’t answer right away, I looked over at her, and sat up straighter when I realized how serious she looked. She licked her lips, clearly struggling with what to say. “What is it?” I asked. “I don’t want to overstep, and obviously I don’t know anything about your relationship with your parents.” She swallowed, holding my gaze. “Don’t take for granted that you have parents who want to see you. Some people don’t have the option to feel inconvenienced by something so simple as a car ride.” “Ruby,” I said and then paused. What the fuck? She looked and sounded so sad, so serious when she said it. There was a story —probably a heavy one— behind her carefully worded answer. Seeing these different sides to her felt an awful lot like sensory overload. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as badly as it sounded.” Lame. Fucking lame. Every word sounded ineffectual and trite. “The next time she asks,” Ruby said, still keeping her eyes trained on mine, “promise you’ll go.” “What happened to you?” I asked before I could stop myself. The iron wall that she usually kept lodged around any personal information was briefly lifted, I could tell. The brief opening made me want to do nothing more than dig my hands in and pry it back further. She took a small inhale through her nose before she spoke. “Just take a piece of advice from someone who’d kill to have their parents only four hours away. Okay?” It wasn’t much, but it was something. Something that she’d volunteered, that I hadn’t had to go searching for. So I took a deep breath and vowed to be patient. I had eight days of uninterrupted time with her. I could wait her out. “Okay.” When I didn’t press her, she risked giving me a relieved smile. I cleared my throat when the moment snapped. “So what are you most nervous

about? Is it the flight? Or what comes after?” “All of the above?” “And you’ve never flown before?” I asked, smiling at the way she answered with a question, like she didn’t exactly know. “No.” She groaned, slapping a hand over her eyes. “I probably sound so provincial to you.” “Not at all,” I told her honestly. “I’ve seen a lot of the world, and most people haven’t. You’re more normal than I am when it comes to that.” “I don’t know about that. My life isn’t precisely normal either.” Ruby lifted her eyebrows, like she was surprised at the turn in our conversation. But I watched her blink out of it, looking at me again with interest bright in her eyes. “What’s your favorite place that you’ve ever visited?” I stretched my arm across the back of her chair while I thought about that. “Nobody has ever asked me that before.” “Really?” “Really. I guess I’d have to say either Greece or Austria.” “Why?” She leaned forward, the frank curiosity in her beautiful face making me itch to take another picture of her. By the time our eight days was up in Amsterdam, I wanted an entire memory card filled with pictures of Ruby. “Greece is stunning, especially along the coast. The bright colors and the buildings on the cliffs make it a photographer’s wet dream. They have a very strong sense of family, so the people are warm and friendly, at least in my experience. And Austria is just,” I blew out a breath, “fucking beautiful. There’s so much history from World War II that it never ceases to fascinate me when I’m there.” Ruby settled into her seat, which made her back press against my arm. My instinct was to curve my hand around her shoulder and bring her closer into me, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but while we were still in New York, still on solid ground, it felt like I needed to keep the boundaries in place that we normally stuck to. We weren’t on display right now, pandering to a crowd of people who thought Ruby was a girlfriend or a lover. It was just us. And anything that happened outside the walls of a hotel room would happen because we wanted it to. I’d have to believe that she’d want it to happen too, or I’d go fucking crazy. “I hope I can see them someday. I just want to go … everywhere.” “You still can.” Ruby waited to answer until after the dry, disembodied voice of the speaker system made an announcement. “I guess.” “Come on.” I nudged her shoulder with my hand, but returned it to the seat instead of leaving it on her. “You’re young, plenty of life left to live. And you’re about to see your first new country. Nothing to be sad about right now.” She smiled at me, searching my eyes so intently that I wanted someone to be able to snap a picture of the two of us. What would we look like to a complete stranger? Would it even remotely mirror what I pictured in my head? “Careful, you sound awfully optimistic right now.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” I muttered, letting the sweetness of her smile and the quiet intimacy of the moment soothe some of the dark edges inside of me. The flight attendant at the podium for our gate called for first class to board, and when we stood up, Ruby leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. “Thank you for letting me come with you, Elias,” she said with so much sincerity that I wanted to clutch her against me, let her wrap her arms so tightly around me that I’d struggle to breathe. Sacrificing oxygen seemed like a small sacrifice to make for her, when it was becoming so glaringly obvious that I was in deep fucking trouble with this woman.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I wasn’t sure what flying coach was like, which sounded like an absurdly pompous thing to say, but the fact of the matter was that my very first flight was a transcontinental flight, with me seated in first class. The seat was roomier than what I’d expected, from my vast experience of flights gleaned from watching many movies growing up. My ass sank right into the cushion while Elias stowed our carry-on bags in the overhead bins. A flight attendant stepped beside me. “Coffee?” I didn’t think I could do coffee, not with how jittery I already was. “Vodka and tonic,” Elias said easily, handing her our jackets when she gestured her arms out to him. “And two bottles of scotch.” The attendant’s eyes widened as Elias straightened, and I recognized her attraction to him immediately. “My pleasure,” she said before turning away and scuttling up the aisle like it was a race to get his requests. “I don’t need vodka.” “Well,” he began, folding himself into the seat beside me, the window seat, “you may not need it, but you’ll want it.” He tapped on the plastic covering the window. “Once we’re thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic, you will want to drink.” He gave the stewardess a grateful smile as she returned, handing him two cups with ice and the bottles of liquor. “I do, and I’ve flown hundreds of times.” I took his proffered bottle of vodka and tonic water as he set a cup with ice on my tray. “I’m not sure how much you’ll want of both,” he said, eyeing the bottles in my hands. I poured all of the vodka in, the words thirty-five thousand feet echoing in my head, and topped the glass with tonic before sipping it as delicately as possible. People brushed past us as they spoke with a flight attendant or placed their things in the overhead bins. The plane had boarded with first class on the left and coach on the right, so it was surprisingly quiet for the number of people who had been waiting to board. “Are you all right?” Elias asked, leaning in and placing a hand on my back from where I kept myself sitting straight up, inches from the backrest.

Nodding, I gave him a smile that was a sum of all the courage I could muster. I took a bigger sip this time, the warmth of the alcohol burning a path down my esophagus. “I’d distract you the normal way, if I could, but I’m afraid the first class cabin would frown upon that.” “Distract me how?” He rubbed a hand over his chin, thinking. “I could shove us into the bathroom, do inappropriate things to you. But you’re a loud one.” He gave me a devilish grin, one that lifted one side of his mouth. If it wasn’t illegal, I probably would’ve taken him up on the offer. Such were my nerves at the moment. “So sex is off the table.” “No mile-high club for us,” he said. He made an exaggerated pouty face at me which earned him a smile. “I guess we’ll have to make up for it then,” I said. “Absolutely.” His hand on my back rubbed gently. “I’ll have the stewardess get you a blanket, and maybe you can sleep the rest of the flight. We have a layover in Warsaw, but then we’ll be on our way to arrive in Amsterdam tomorrow around noon.” It sounded so far, nearly twenty-four hours from now. I knew most of that was thanks to the time change as we crossed over the ocean, but I decided to take Elias’ suggestion and finished my vodka tonic before settling into my seat, with Elias showing me how it could recline. Before I knew it, I was asleep. The first thing I noticed after being tucked into a cab outside of the Amsterdam airport was how clean everything smelled. Living in New York City, with exhaust and the smells of a condensed city, you forgot what clean, fresh air smelled like. And that’s exactly what Amsterdam smelled like, to me. The cab driver spoke very good English as Elias checked through the itinerary and asked him some questions. I looked out the window, taking in the different architecture. As we came closer to the heart of Amsterdam, I saw more and more graffiti art. In my ear, Elias said, “Amsterdam, in an effort to decriminalize graffiti, has legal places for artists to paint.” We drove by a garage door with a scene from The Little Mermaid brilliantly colored. But the thing that stuck out the most amongst the architecture was the sheer number of bicyclists. Down several streets I saw more bicycles than cars. The cab pulled up in front of a tall building and Elias handed him some local bills he’d picked up after we’d gotten through customs. I stepped out onto the sidewalk as Elias grabbed our luggage from the boot of the car and set it on the sidewalk. Our hotel was an old-looking brick building, with large, arched glass windows decorated with window boxes that spilled over with red flowers. On the road level was an

attached restaurant, beautifully appointed with bright red awnings. People brushed past me on the sidewalk and I clutched my purse a little tighter. It was the one thing Elias had told me as we left the airport, that though Amsterdam was, contrary to popular belief, one of the safer big cities in Europe, pick pockets were still all over. A bright red double decker bus passed us on the road, right before a white tram buzzed down the center of the road. It was so different from New York City that I stopped and stared, taking it all in for a moment. “Ready?” Elias asked as he set our suitcases on the sidewalk in front of me. After checking in, Elias led me to the elevator to go up to our room on the fifth floor. Tulips were just about everywhere in the hotel, and the staff seemed very friendly as they smiled from ear to ear at us at the check-in. It was just after one in the afternoon, and though I’d slept on the plane, the moment I saw the white fluffy bed, my first inclination was to lie on it. “Tired?” Elias asked as he unzipped one of his hardback camera gear cases. I yawned and shook my head across the white comforter. “I didn’t think I was, but here I am.” I let out a sigh and closed my eyes, enjoying being completely horizontal for the first time since I’d woken up the morning before. I felt Elias’ hands on my feet a second before I felt the sheer relief of my shoe being popped off and air hitting my insole. He did the same to my other foot and I flexed my toes, sighing. I opened my eyes, seeing him load a soft-sided black bag with camera gear. “I have to run over to the festival,” he said when I looked over the stuff with surprise. I sat up in the bed and ran my fingers over my hair. “Oh, okay. I can be ready in a few.” “No,” he said, stepping to the foot of the bed and running a hand over the back of my head. The gesture felt … romantic. And with how comforting it was, I wanted to sink a little bit deeper into his touch. “Why don’t you take a nap?” Looking up at him, I furrowed my brow. “But I can come with you. Really.” “It’s actually just behind-the-scenes stuff today,” he explained, moving his hand down to my shoulder and rubbing his thumb into the muscle between my spine and shoulder blade. “I have to meet with a few people. The next few days will be busier, so why don’t you catch up on your rest so you’re not exhausted going into tomorrow?” I still felt a little bit bad for being so tired after the flight, especially because Elias should be just as—if not more—tired as I was, but there he was getting ready to work. But when he leaned down and pressed his mouth to mine, I didn’t argue further. “Okay,” I said, flopping back into the blankets when he let me go. “I’ll be back before dinner, and we can decide what to eat then.” Nodding, I crawled back onto the bed, so my head lay on the pillow. “See you in a bit,” I told him, giving him a grateful, sleepy smile. But twenty minutes after he left, I was still awake. In fact, I was wider awake

than I’d been when I first laid down. I paced the room for a minute, after giving up on the television. Our room faced the street, which moved in a kind of organized chaos outside the building. Bicyclists, tour buses, cars and the tram all moved down the road perfectly synchronized. Restless, I grabbed one of the magazines on the desk and flipped through it, taking in the different things to do in the area. I knew Elias wanted to do a few things he had in mind to do with me while we were here, but I figured because this wasn’t his first trip to Amsterdam that he didn’t want to do any of the traditional tourist stuff. I made my way downstairs to reception and caught the attention of a pert, blonde attendant. Elias had told me that Americans were often perceived to be, to put it in his words, “giant assholes” as tourists, so he’d called everyone by their name so far on our journey. “It makes them people and not just someone helping you,” he explained to me, so I took a page out of his book and glanced down at the attendant’s name tag. “Heleen, can you tell me what kind of tourist stops there are within walking distance?” Heleen smiled, showing off a full set of bright white, straight teeth. She was pretty, probably not older than twenty-five, with blonde hair cut to her shoulders. “Ah, yes. There are many places near here. And the bus can take you places.” I didn’t want to take a bus or a cab to visit anywhere by myself. Not having an international phone number, I would have had no way to contact Elias if I got stuck on the other side of the city. “I’m thinking something within five minutes’ walk?” “Of course.” She smiled again and stepped around the desk, pointing down the sidewalk opposite the direction we’d arrived. “If you walk that way one block, you’ll encounter the National Monument. Very popular spot.” Her accent caused me to smile with her. She handed me a pamphlet beside the entrance, and pointed at the photo. “Thank you, Heleen. I’ll do that.” I didn’t know what the National Monument was, but I figured it couldn’t be hard to find the white statue that was photographed on the outside of the pamphlet. After making sure I had cash, just in case, I made my way to the National Monument, which, as I’d suspected, was easy to find. It stood in the middle of a square, a white travertine pillar that tapered at the top. In the front of the pillar at the base were four chained men, and above them was a woman holding a child, with doves flying around her. From the base of the pillar to the ground were dozens of people, sitting on the concentric rings that surrounded the monument and formed a sort of stair case to the monument. After staring up at the statue for a minute, I found a space to sit on the steps and opened my pamphlet. I was sitting in Dam Square, which was indeed a square surrounded by a road and then buildings. All the architecture reminded me of

something from Pinocchio, or some other movie with European history. The pamphlet explained that the statue was a World War II monument, and the urns that were contained within the wall behind the pillar contained soil from World War II execution grounds and war ceremonies in the Dutch provinces. Near the front two corners of the square were lion statues, where people had wrapped their bicycles to rest. There was so much activity across the square, which surprised me for a monument dedicated to the lives lost in a devastating war. But as I sat there, and saw all the life that moved around the square, I thought it a fitting contrast to the sadness of loss. It seemed less lonely somehow, that this stark white cone sitting on a corner wasn’t behind rope or barriers. That people walked by it every day, ate their lunches here and took their children to play on the steps. After I’d sat there for an hour, people-watching, I made my way back to the hotel with a stomach growling for food and hands itching to touch Elias.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A couple hours after I’d left Ruby, wishing fucking desperately that I didn’t have to, I let myself back into the hotel room as quietly as I could. If she’d managed to fall asleep, I didn’t want to be the one to wake her. Except when I shut the door with soft snick and turned, she was sitting on the bed with her back against the headboard. “Did you get a good nap?” She shook her head, but was smiling at me. “I couldn’t sleep. Knowing that there were all these amazing things outside was keeping me awake. I decided to do the tourist thing instead of lay here pretending to sleep.” The disappointment that I felt was so swift and so acute that I walked into the bathroom so she wouldn’t see it on my face. The entire time I’d been shooting and getting to know some of the event organizers and documenting the setup for one of the headliners, I was making a mental list of the places I wanted to bring Ruby. Witnessing her experience Amsterdam, witnessing a different country for the first time, made me excited in a way that I wasn’t really prepared for. I wanted to be able to see her face the first time she tried bitterballen, which was one of my favorite things to eat when I was here. What a fucking pussy I was, staring at myself in the mirror and trying to be okay with the fact that she was okay with the fact that I hadn’t been with her the first time she ventured out. “What did you see?” I asked, still bracing my hands on the bathroom sink. “I walked to the National Monument and did some people watching.” “What’d you think?” I walked out of the bathroom and pulled my camera bag off my shoulder, setting it down on the floor of the small closet. Her eyes were bright, but she looked tired. Join the club, I thought. Nothing sounded better than falling into the bed and not moving for about thirteen hours. Maybe another blowjob, but it was a toss-up of what I’d take first. “Busier than I thought. But beautiful. I could’ve sat there all day and watched people.” I tapped her hip, motioning for her to move over, and she did. With a groan, I stretched out beside her and buried my face into one of the starkly white pillows. It smelled clean, but sterile, and immediately, I wanted to bury my face into Ruby

instead; mask the antiseptic scent with her spicy, warm one. She was smiling down at me when I turned to my side and looked up at her. “Did you see anything else?” “No. I wanted to be back here when you were done.” Too fucking right. My eyes swept down her body, taking stock of her wicked curves underneath the simple clothes that she’d traveled in. The black leggings were soft against my hand when I felt a path from her knee to her thigh. When the tips of my fingers hit the hem of her grey t-shirt, I didn’t stop, pushing up underneath the cotton so I could feel the smooth skin of her stomach. “You know what’s a good way to make yourself fall asleep on time the first night in a foreign country?” My voice was dark and rumbling, and her eyes looked heavy when I spoke. “What?” “Orgasms. Lots and lots of orgasms.” Ruby smiled, a full one that showed all of her straight, white teeth. She was stingy with those kinds of smiles, normally giving me close-lipped ones that were full of teasing and mystery. But she was happy. Here with me, she was happy. Giving the slope of her belly button one more touch with my fingertip, I rolled off the bed until I was standing and pulled at my belt while I toed off my shoes. Ruby sat forward and in one lithe movement, slid the shirt from her body. The simple nude bra that she wore underneath did things to her tits that almost made me fall to my knees prostrate before her. I may not believe in a higher power directing the universe, but the sight of Ruby’s curves made me feel fucking worshipful. Her dark hair spilled around the flawless, olive-toned skin of her slim shoulders. With only silence stretching between us, we undressed, letting each piece of clothing fall to the floor without a single word. For the first time since I walked into the room, I noticed the handful of condoms on the nightstand. I smirked, handing her one. “Put it on.” Before she did, Ruby held her hair with one hand and kneeled over so she could place a slick, open mouthed kiss on the tip of my cock. Then she pinched the tip of the condom and rolled it down my length. When it was on, she skated her hands over my abs, tracing the underside of my pecs, taking extra time to follow the line of my tattoos over my shoulders and down my biceps. “You’re a work of art,” she told me in a husky voice. Through clenched teeth, I said, “Lay down on your side, angle your legs toward the window.” “Bossy.” “Horny,” I corrected. Before she complied, Ruby placed a sharp bite on the meat of my shoulder. When she was laid out, her toned back and ass on display for me, I kneeled on the bed and gently pulled the arm that she was laying on and stretched it up toward the

headboard. With reverent hands, I swept my palms over the gentle slope of her waist, the plump lines of her tits. Her head was arched to the side so she could watch me and I wanted to fall into her sinfully dark eyes. Without another word between us, I slid a knee in between her legs so I was straddling the bottom one. The leg that was on top was draped across my thigh. When I fisted my cock and braced my free hand on her lower leg, we both took a deep breath. Without testing her wetness first, I slid into her in one long, smooth thrust, only stopping when I bottomed out. Her back arched at the deep angle, and I breathed heavily from the way she gripped me. I pulled out and slammed back in. “Oh my god,” she said on an exhale. “You’re so deep.” “And you’re so fucking tight. So wet, baby.” Her chin tilted up when I thrust again, but the way we were positioned, she couldn’t really move. She could only lay there, let me feel her, let me fuck her, let me do whatever the hell I wanted to her. I pulled back until only the tip of my dick was still in her scalding heat. “Please,” she whispered. I braced my hands on the bed on either side of her. “When you beg like that, it makes me goddamn insane.” I hooked my hips, bottoming out so sharply that my balls slapped against her. My pace stayed smooth after that, and from the way I was over her, I could pinch her nipples, press my thumb against the tight pucker of muscle of her ass. Ruby groaned and turned her face into the bed when I did that. Pushing off the bed, I straightened again, gripping her tits so roughly that she’d probably see marks in the morning. “What do you need, baby?” “Harder, Elias, oh god, harder.” Quite fucking happily, I complied, ramming into her with such force that she cried out. With my thumb, I pressed tight circles against the hard nub of her clit and her chest heaved with sobbing breaths. “Hard enough?” I punctuated it with a punching thrust, our skin slapping together so loudly that there was no way the people next to us wouldn’t be able to hear. Her eyes snapped open and trained onto me. “Harder.” “Fucking hell, Ruby,” I rasped out and fucking went at her. My chest was coated with sweat, and I swear to God, I saw tears in her eyes when I lifted her top leg and hit a spot so deep inside of her that she screamed. “Yes, yes, oh my god, yes.” And she exploded around me, almost causing me to black the fuck out. I roared, the pleasure was so bright and intense, so sharp that it probably tested the limits of how much the condom could hold. I was so fucking spent that I couldn’t even milk the remnants of our simultaneous orgasms. With one arm around her waist, I fell onto the bed next to her, only barely remembering to pull out of her. There was a dark part of me that

flared with pride at the wet gush between her legs when I did. I’d made Ruby come so hard that she’d made a mess herself. She laughed under her breath and laid her hand on my arm. “Wow.” “Yeah.” I buried my nose in her hair and sucked in a lungful of her scent. “God, woman, you are fucking potent.” Staying underneath the weight of my arm, Ruby turned until she was facing me. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glowing. “Me? Elias, I’m pretty sure you just hit a spot that made me see another planet.” “That so?” I growled, dropping my mouth for a sucking kiss against her pornstar lips. “I can try to hit again if you give me like ten minutes.” Ruby laughed, dropping her forehead onto my chest. “Maybe tomorrow. I think you’ve put my pussy into a pleasure-coma.” “Well that’s a new one,” I said dryly. “Want me to order some room service before we try to sleep?” When I asked, her eyes were already half-closed. “I’m okay. I think I’ll just sleep right here.” I smoothed an arm up her back and she hummed. “We should talk about what we want to do the rest of the week.” “I don’t care,” she said sleepily. “I’ll go wherever you want to take me.” With that, she was out. For a long time, I didn’t move, just laid with my arm around her and our legs intertwined on top of the comforter. After I pulled carefully from her embrace, I lifted her enough to tuck her under the blanket. She sighed, tucking her arms under a pillow. I didn’t join her right away once I’d cleaned up, just sat in the chair next to the bed and watched her sleep, feeling like something in my chest had just been ripped completely open.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Our second full day in Amsterdam, Elias decided to make it more low-key. After spending our first full day in Geithoorn, a tiny village that was a three hour train ride from Amsterdam, we were both so travel-weary that low-key was just what we needed. After inhaling espresso in the restaurant attached to the hotel, Elias had the reception desk hail a taxi for us. “Where are we going?” I asked him as we waited on the brick-paved sidewalk. Elias gave me a small smile, but turned to the driver. “Oude Kerk, please.” I looked at him curiously, but he just smiled, patting my knee. The driver pulled a block away from what looked to be a very large, old stone church set near the edge of a canal. It had many gables, with large arched windows reaching near to the top. “Oude Kerk,” the driver said and Elias paid him before ushering me out of the car. As I stood on the sidewalk and looked up at it, I tried to imagine just how old it was. The large windows had intricate leading in the tops of the arches, making it look positively medieval. “Old Church.” I turned to Elias who stood beside me. “Oude Kerk means Old Church?” “Exactly.” There had to have been hundreds of windows covering the massive structure, but my eyes went immediately to the bright white steeple. The look of the church said gothic, and the juxtaposition of this dark, old church against the bright light of the day was almost eerie. “Ready for the tour?” Elias asked. Nodding, I took his offered hand and followed him in to the visitor center, where he paid for our entrance fee with cash. I was surprised by how barren it seemed in the church, and commented on it to Elias. “Originally,” he said, looking through the brochure in his hands, “it was a Catholic church, but after the religious wars, the Protestants began removing the more showy Catholic sculptures.” He pointed to the floor, where names and dates were etched into stone. “The floor consists entirely of twenty-five hundred

gravestones. See?” The idea was incredible to me, and only heightened the eerie feeling I had before I had even stepped into the church. “We’re walking across the graves of twentyfive hundred people,” I said, feeling the need to keep my voice hushed. “Actually, there are ten-thousand Amsterdam citizens buried under this church. Even Rembrandt’s wife is buried here.” “Rembrandt’s wife?” I asked. “How old is this church?” “Eight-hundred years.” I pressed a hand to my stomach as I absorbed that. “Eight-hundred,” I said in an awed whisper. “That’s…” I shook my head. I was at a loss for words as I tried to take it all in. “And look up,” Elias said, pointing to the ceiling, which was covered in wooden planks. “This roof is the largest medieval wooden vault in Europe. The planks are Estonian and date back to the thirteen-hundreds.” I closed my eyes, trying to imagine what it must have been like to attend services here. The wooden ceilings would have provided incredible acoustics. “Have you heard of the Miracle of Amsterdam?” The name rang a bell from one of my classes as an undergraduate. “It’s familiar, but I don’t recall the exact story.” “In the year 1345, a dying man vomited the Host after taking communion.” “Yes,” I said, as it began coming back to me. “They threw his vomit into a fire, but the Host remained intact and the event was proclaimed a miracle.” Elias nodded, “After, they put the Host in a chest and tucked it away, but it disappeared during the Protestant Reformation.” “That would make sense, since the Protestants typically enclose very few artifacts within a church.” “That’s right.” “But the Catholics certainly like their religious paraphernalia.” He laughed and said, “That we do.” Elias led me over to where the stained glass windows were, their reds and blues so bright with the incoming sun. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, my voice low as people stepped around us. “It is.” He seemed to be in deep thought as we stared at the stained glass, and I wondered at what was going through his head. “You know what I think about when I’m in places like this?” I asked him. “What’s that?” I slid my arm into his and leaned in, my head on his shoulder. “About the people who were so deeply inspired by their beliefs to help construct a place for them to worship. I mean, this is eight-hundred years old. They didn’t have forklifts or nail guns or anything a modern contractor would use to build something this size.” My hand slid down his sleeve to clasp his hand. “But back then, it was literal backbreaking labor. Just imagine the number of generations of people who have worked to keep this building from crumbling.” Elias ran his fingers over mine as I spoke,

and it felt so soothing that I kept talking. “And we’re standing here, where probably thousands of people have stood at some point in their lives. On the bricks laid by people who have been dead for hundreds of years. Isn’t that incredible?” Elias cleared his throat. “It is.” “And when you think, that this building has been standing longer than some of the most historic crises of Europe, it’s even more thought-provoking.” “Tell me,” he said. Warmed by his interest, I thought of my many studies. “Well, take the Black Death, for example, in the mid-1300s. Right around the time of the Miracle of Amsterdam, in fact. This church was built before then, and as the pandemic spread up from the Mediterranean, it wiped out entire families. Children were orphaned.” That gave me pause, but I continued. “The effects created a series of social and religious upheavals, which ultimately affected European history in a significant way. You’re talking thirty-to-sixty percent of Europe’s total population, gone. Can you imagine?” “I can’t,” he said honestly. He waited a beat before looking at me. “I’ve experienced loss.” I immediately thought of his sister, and what he’d told me when we’d met. “I don’t think you can make it through life without suffering at least one tremendous loss,” I told him, though I didn’t think it sounded particularly comforting. “I agree with that,” he said, and didn’t seem offended by how unaffected I had sounded. As an orphan, I was no stranger to losing myself. But that wasn’t what defined my religious beliefs. “I feel the empty space that my sister once filled every Goddamn day. But,” he paused and nodded gently, “death is inevitable. I haven’t experienced it on the scale of thirty-to-sixty percent of the people I know, being wiped out.” “I don’t think most people have.” “Very few, I hope.” He let out a breath, like he was putting aside the heaviness of the moment. “Tell me, what happened to Europe after?” “Well,” I began, as Elias led me from the stained glass to the other gravestones marked on the floors. “The healers of that era couldn’t explain the cause, so people lost their minds—and attacked everyone they could think of. In many parts of Europe, Jews, the homeless, lepers—anyone that looked like a vagrant—were executed. Even people with acne were singled out. Some citizens in a town in Germany murdered some two-thousand Jews.” “Makes you think about how bad the Jews have had it, in many eras of European history.” “It does,” I agreed. “But it makes me think about how you and I—if you’re of European descent—are descendants of people who survived things like the Black Plague. How distressing is it that we stand here, hundreds of years later, walking across the gravestones of people who lived during that time? Many people had to die in order for us to be here now.” Elias was quiet for a long moment as we stared down at one stone in particular. I

didn’t think the name on the stone itself was what caused his silence, but he was quiet nonetheless. He turned to me and squeezed my hand. “How lucky are we, then,” he said with a soft smile. I returned his smile, thinking about how this conversation with Elias was one of the deepest conversations I’d had with anyone outside of my classes, about the things I was most passionate about. And Elias had been the one to initiate it, to press me for more information. It gave me a little thrill, to be able to talk about this with someone who wasn’t in class with me. “So, are you glad we came here?” I smiled softly at Elias. “Part of my fascination with religion is its history, so yes. I’m thrilled you brought me.” “Are there other churches you’d like to visit?” “In Amsterdam?” He shook his head and tucked his hands in his jeans. “Anywhere.” “Well,” I began, thinking. “There's this chapel in France … the Chapel of St. Michael d’Aiguilhe.” “Ah, that sounds sexy coming from your mouth.” I blushed, and I was almost embarrassed for even mentioning it and gave him a funny smile. “What’s special about it?” he asked. I blinked, surprised he was asking me. Of all my boyfriends, though there had been few, never had one taken an interest in this sort of thing. Never asked me about my future, the things I wanted to see, the places I wanted to travel. In fact, Nicholas had brushed me off one night when he’d talked of his years traveling through Europe, brushing me off by saying that the places I wanted to see were insignificant in comparison to the places he’d seen. It’d been easy to keep it to myself ever since then. Discussing it with Elias felt weird. But I let out a sigh and said, “It’s this little chapel, perched at the top of a tiny mountain. From the photos I’ve seen, it looks rather dramatic; this lonely, needle-like mountain jutting up toward the sky.” I shrugged, my embarrassment coloring my cheeks. But he looked at me expectantly, so I continued. “It was built in the tenth century, so it’s even older than Oude Kerk. It’s had a number of renovations since then, of course, expanding and updating it, but the original sanctuary still survives, a thousand years later.” “How do you get to the top?” “There are steps that wind up the side of the rock. The mountain is a puy,” I explained, but Elias looked at me with a question in his eyes. “A puy is a volcanic hill.” “It sounds worth a trip.” “I mean,” I shrugged, trying to brush it off, “the chapel itself is supposed to be beautiful inside. It’s even said that the mother of Joan of Arc went to it, to pray.” But I gave him a smile, feeling foolish for bringing it up. “Not that I’ve been, of course.”

“What’s stopping you from going?” I sighed. “My studies. My lack of free time. My fear of flying.” I paused a beat, ashamed to admit the last one, the most significant one, “Money.” “The good news is, you’ve conquered your fear of flying.” I laughed with him. “You’re right, I have.” “So you just have to work on the others.” He reached forward and tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m well-traveled, Ruby, but I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything. You should make time to see the world.” I could only nod at that, gladly accepting his hand when he reached out toward me. After looking over the gravestones of a few of the more famous Amsterdam citizens, Elias and I left the church. It was strange, trying to describe how I felt after being in a structure as old and historically significant as Oude Kerk. It had felt like walking through a graveyard in some parts, and other parts like I was witnessing a place left, mostly, untouched by time. As we stood outside, Elias said, “You know, this is the last building in its original state in Amsterdam that Rembrandt walked through.” “Really?” “Yes. He visited it often, and had all of his children christened here.” As we stepped away from the building, I encountered a bronze statue I must have noticed on the way in, considering its placement in front of the building, but hadn’t paid attention to until now. It was a full-breasted woman, standing in a doorway. The way her hands were placed on her hips and how her chin was held high told me she was confident, maybe even proud. Below her, the inscription read, “Belle.” “Respect sex workers all over the world,” Elias read off the plaque from beside me. His arm came around my waist as I let that settle in. Escorts weren’t necessarily sex workers, but that’s certainly what I boiled down to. Looking up at Elias, I tried to guess what he was thinking. “Are we in the Red Light District?” I asked him. Nodding, he smiled down at me. “We are. This statue is honoring the prostitutes of the world.” He squeezed his hand on my waist and led me from the church. Surprisingly, I wasn’t tired. I thought being in a church that was home to thousands of bodies would have drained me, but after stepping back outside, I felt different. Like I was finally getting a glimpse of what I’d studied for so many years, able to touch the buildings that had only existed in my textbooks. And Elias had seemed interested in my knowledge. It made me smile to myself, that he’d wanted me to share my thoughts even when the subject matter wasn’t something heartwarming. “Come on, let’s go to a coffee shop,” he said, interrupting me from my thoughts. “I don’t think I need any more caffeine,” I told him as he steered me into a shop with blue umbrellas outside.

“It’s not a café,” Elias said on a laugh as he pulled me into the shop. The walls were a deep, midnight blue, and along the right was a bar top and several stools with patchwork-covered seats. Twinkling lights covered the ceiling, giving it a cave-like feeling. “Do you just buy coffee beans here then? It looks like a bar,” I asked. I looked around the room, taking in the different seating areas. And then the smell hit me. “Ohh,” I whispered as several patrons turned to look at us. “This is where you buy pot, isn’t it?” “Yes.” He laughed again and wrapped an arm around my waist as we walked around the place. It had a distinct Asian theme, with the Thai Buddha heads that decorated a few of the low tables and the large stone Chinese guardian lions that were placed on either side of the wood door we’d walked through. On one of the tables was a beautiful blue glass bong, surrounded by people on their phones and tablets. It struck me how different marijuana culture in Europe was when compared to the culture in the states. Inspired, I turned to Elias. “Let’s get high before we leave Amsterdam,” I said in an excited whisper. He looked at me with eyebrows raised. “You, high?” Shrugging, I grinned. “Why not? Just one little joint.” “I don’t think they specifically make little joints,” he replied dryly. “But all right.” There was glint in his eyes when he smiled down at me and I felt my legs go a little gooey from the look he gave me. “Let’s do it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“You sure you’re ready for this?” I asked Ruby, who was all but pressed against the train window as the Dutch countryside bled green beyond the glass. “For the cheese city?” She grinned at me. “I’m ready.” “Of course you are. You get to see another church.” She practically vibrated in her seat. “I can’t wait. The stained glass windows at Saint Janskerk have been preserved through two military invasions. In World War II, they actually pulled them out and buried them in sand dunes to protect the glass from when the Germans inevitably bombed the city. People go to incredible lengths to preserve the symbols of their faith.” Ruby shook her head. “I mean, think about it. You’re worried that you’ll be killed, your entire village leveled, and they risked it all to protect the windows of their church. It amazes me.” You amaze me, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I settled into the high-back red seat opposite of her. My legs stretched across to the empty seat next to her for the almost two-hour train ride south to Gouda. “I wish we had longer. We’d be able to see more of Europe while you’re here.” “You won’t see me complain about a single part of this trip.” She sank into the seat with a happy smile. It was one she was wearing more and more frequently as our days blurred together. Sitting like we were, in the half empty train, it was becoming more and more difficult for me to remember the Ruby from the first night. So cool and distant. Even the memory of the sex was going fuzzy in my mind. It had been hot. We’d both come. But it couldn’t touch the way things were between us now. Everything felt heightened between us. Her hands were greedier, more possessive when they were on my skin, her kisses were deeper, her moans louder, her orgasms more explosive. When she came, she clamped around my dick so fucking hard that it sucked the breath from my lungs. Every time. And now, I couldn’t remember if it had felt like that the first night, or if the fact that we were complete strangers then had lent a sterile aspect to the sex. Knowing her now, even though the full picture wasn’t completely clear, there wasn’t one thing about our relationship that could be considered sterile. “I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing windmills,” Ruby said, breaking into my thoughts while she stared out the window.

“It’s beautiful here,” I agreed. She hummed. “Can I ask you a question?” Ruby nodded, taking a sip of water from the bottle out of her large, leather purse. “Sure.” I took a beat to think about how I wanted to word it, since she had no fucking clue what was tumbling around my head. “You said something to me at the airport in New York. About how you’d kill to have your family four hours away.” Her eyes lost a bit of a happy glow they’d had, but she didn’t shut me down. You know what that means? Mother fucking progress. “That’s not a question,” she said quietly, even though no one was close enough to hear what we were talking about. I gave her a quick grin. “Such a smart ass.” She nudged my feet with her elbow. “And you like it.” “Even talk of your world-class ass won’t distract me.” “Fine,” she sighed. “Ask away.” “Where does your family live?” Ruby gave me a level look. “Couldn’t you have started somewhere easier? Like, how did you become an escort?” I tipped my head back and barked out a laugh. “Fine. How did you become an escort?” “You don’t really want to know this, do you?” “I do,” I said simply. Because I did. I wanted to know how someone so beautiful, so smart, and so accomplished ended up selling her body to strangers. And I wanted to know what happened to her that she made men promise to go visit their mothers like it held such deep personal value. “My friend Stella got me into it. She knew I’d just gotten out of a bad relationship and had student loans that were about to cripple my entire life.” She shrugged, and I kept a tight lid on my tongue when I wanted to ask her about the bad relationship. “Lenore met with me, wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into, and then set me up with my first john.” “How long ago was that?” “Almost two years.” “So you … you like it?” My heart tanked into my stomach while I waited for her to answer. I wanted her, desperately, to say no. Or to say something that made me feel like what was between us was different. I’d have been lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge the sense of ownership that I felt over Ruby. The thought of another man’s hand on her perfect body made me want to break someone’s fucking neck. “Sometimes I do. Other times, I don’t.” She laughed, shaking her head. “I’m sure that sounds awfully ambivalent for someone in my line of work.” “A little.” Her eyes were trained on the seat over my shoulder when she spoke again. “Occasionally, I think about what my life would be like right now if I’d hated it that first night. If I’d had a horrible experience. Where I’d be living, how … how fucking

poor I’d be.” There was a sick, masochistic side of me roaring to know what her first night was like. What if it had been me? What if I had been the guy to hand her the cash, ram my dick into her inexperienced cunt? Maybe I would have ruined her for every man that came next. Maybe if she’d been my first escort, she would have ruined me for all the other sterile transactions that would’ve followed. They didn’t feel cold before. But now, they did. Faceless, nameless, empty transactions that didn’t make me want to fucking explode from the pleasure. What if I had been there on her first night? Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask, a voice screamed in my head. “What was your first night like?” “You really want to know?” Her dark eyes were trained in on mine, like she knew that there was a violent struggle going on in my head. That the dominant side of me, the possessive side of me was warring with the sick desire to know more about her. My feet dropped off of the seat so I could sit up straighter. “Yes.” Ruby waited to answer. Outside the windows of the train there was lush green and bright swaths of color from flowers. If I hadn’t been looking at her, I would have been snapping my camera the entire train ride. But she was all I saw, the only thing I wanted to see. She opened her mouth and I clamped down on my teeth. “He was nice. Older. Probably in his fifties. Married to someone that bored the hell out of him. But he treated me with respect, asked questions about me,” she trailed off and her face got sad. “God, that sounds pathetic. Because he cared enough to try to make me come and asked trite questions, I kept going back.” Mother fucking hell, my blood was roaring, picturing some sick old fuck’s hands on her. “It’s not pathetic,” I said softly. Softly, because if I let the leash off of my temper, I’d throw her over my shoulder and fuck her against the back wall of the train. “You look mad,” she said in the exact same measured tone. “I’m fucking furious, Ruby.” I fisted my hands on my thighs to keep from reaching for her. I’d shred her shirt open, tear the bra from her body, shove my fingers into the front of her leggings and pull all the wetness from inside her so I could smear it over my face like fucking war paint. “Because right now, having you here with me, makes it fucking impossible to think about you with someone else.” “Then don’t,” she answered quickly, soothingly. Her eyes were like black coal, but they were so hot, so intense. “Don’t think about me with anyone else. Just think about me with you. That’s all that matters.” Her soft, cultured voice was meant to tame, meant to smooth the hackles that were raised on my back. My chest heaved with deep breaths when I couldn’t blink the visions away in my head. “Where does your family live?” Ruby’s eyes widened at my abrupt change in topic, but she answered. She actually fucking answered. “They’re dead.”

I wish she hadn’t. “What?” “My mom died of breast cancer when I was little. Not even four.” “Fuck, Ruby,” I whispered, leaning forward, hating that I was far enough away from her that I couldn’t easily touch her. Hold her. Anything. “I’m so sorry. What about your dad?” She pulled in a ragged breath. “I usually say that he died of a broken heart. But,” she swallowed, “the official cause of death was an accidental overdose. Drank too much one night about a year after she died, took a few too many pain pills that had been left in the medicine cabinet from my mom’s treatment. After that, it was foster homes for me until eighteen.” Unable to sit, I shifted across the space so I could sit next to her. We angled toward each other, and I marveled at how she tilted her chin up and met my gaze in a way that practically dared me to pity her. I didn’t pity her. I was in fucking awe of her. “You’re amazing,” I told her. She averted her eyes, but I reached out to grip her chin so I could force her face back to me. “No, I’m not.” “The fuck you aren’t,” I said fiercely. “Do you know how many people would have curled up and let life keep screwing them over after that? Accepted that life was some fucking cruel joke and not even tried to better themselves? You’re amazing.” Her eyes sharpened with the sheen of tears and I cupped the side of her face, used my thumb to swipe the impossibly soft skin over her cheekbone. It struck me that I hadn’t been half as strong as Ruby since Diana died. I’d accepted that life was a cruel joke. I’d actively avoided any relationship of significance because I refused to put myself in the position that my parents or, fuck, even Nathan had been in. “Elias— “ “Unless you’re about to say thank you, I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupted. She breathed out a laugh. “I’m serious. Losing my sister was hard. So fucking hard because she was my best friend. If I’d been able to show even one percent of the grace and … god, the faith that you have, I’d probably have been a lot happier the last six years.” A light bulb went off in my head. A really fucking big one. “That’s why you study what you do, isn’t it? To try to answer the questions you’ve probably had? About a higher power and why people believe what they do.” Since I still had her face in my hand, she couldn’t look away. She only nodded. “I never knew what my parents believed. But I had to know that there was something beyond this life. Beyond this place that people live and die in every single day. Every culture, every group of people has a common thread. For the most part, people want to know that the life we live has a purpose, has a meaning outside of this world. No matter what divine being they believe in.” It was so easy, so simple, to slip my arms around her back and pull her into my chest. She came without resistance, angling her legs so that she could press herself into my embrace, tuck her forehead against my neck. After I let out a huge breath, I

kissed the top of her head, drinking in the feel of her cool, silky hair against my lips. Even now, Ruby smelled dark and sinful, like I could douse myself in her and feel the indulgence of her down to my bones. “I’m sorry about your parents, baby.” The endearment slipped out and I stilled, wondering if she’d correct me. But she merely tightened her arms around my waist. “Thank you.” We rode the rest of the train ride like that, her wrapped tight around me with my chin resting on her head. I took her hand when we stepped out of the train station onto the brick paved roads of Gouda. She marveled at the tiny row houses and curving roads, the entire village looking like it was propped up out of a fairy tale. She laughed when I made her try to pick up a massive round of cheese in the middle of the town square in the cheese market, and I snapped her picture when she only managed to lift it up a couple inches. In the dark, quiet sanctuary of Saint Janskerk, Ruby took my hand and threaded our fingers together while we looked at the stained glass windows. Somehow, I managed to keep myself at a low simmer all day while we wandered the streets together, never touching on any subjects besides the things we could smell and taste, see and feel. I made it until after we ate a late lunch in a quiet café that we only shared with a few other people. The yellow tables and white chairs, the kind smiles on the faces of the waitress felt light and airy, but inside of me, there was a violent storm brewing. Ruby took a delicate bite of a stroopwaffle and laughed when a string of syrup stayed connected to the cookie. When she swiped her tongue against the side of her mouth, I snapped. I pushed my chair back from the table and leaned over behind her. “Meet me in the bathroom in one minute or I will come back here and drag you behind me.” She didn’t make me wait. I’d only been in the men’s restroom for about thirty seconds when she walked in behind me. “Lock the door.” With movements so slow, they could only be purposeful, she did, holding my gaze the entire time. “Do the Dutch generally approve of sex in a public place?” she asked, staring at the obvious bulge of my erection. “I guess we’ll find out.” I walked up to her and pressed her back against the door, leaning down to suck on the side of her neck. “You’ve been driving me crazy all day. Little touches and little smiles. Did you think I’d let you get away with that?” She gasped when I bit down. “I hoped you wouldn’t.” “Pull my dick out, Ruby.” I lifted my head up and locked eyes with her. “Now.” With nimble fingers, she unhooked my belt and pulled my zipper down. When she wrapped her cool fingers around my hot flesh, I fucking attacked her mouth. I sucked her lower lip into my mouth and palmed one of her tits through her cotton

shirt. Our tongues tangled, harder and wetter until we were writhing against each other. I ripped her leggings down her legs and when she was free of them, shoved aside her underwear and used the tips of my fingers to smear her wetness around her clit. “Fuck, baby, you’re ready for me.” “I’m always like this around you,” she breathed, rolling her palm over the head of my cock and pulling a hiss through my clenched teeth. “Condom?” “Back pocket. Hurry. Fuck. I need in you.” I groaned, thrusting my cock against her stomach to seek some relief while she fished for protection. “I need to feel that wet pussy all over me, baby.” She rolled the condom down and hiked her legs up around my waist when I braced my hands under her ass. “Hurry, Elias, hurry.” Holding her with one arm, I used my free hand to line my dick up, the tip easily getting sucked into her heat. Then I made one, long, hard thrust, and we both groaned. “Yes, oh yes.” I took her mouth in another kiss, a sloppy, wet kiss that matched my short, hard thrusts. Her back hit against the door and my balls slapped against her ass. I could feel my orgasm looming, circling like a fucking atom bomb. We breathed into each other’s mouths, her sighs getting higher and shorter with each vicious pump. “Get there, baby. Get there.” I boosted her up another inch, and it changed the angle of where my pelvis rubbed against her and she dropped her head back on a moan. When I didn’t think I could hold out any longer, she clamped around me, her hands digging into the back of my neck so fucking hard that I’d probably be counting nail marks for a week. I let go after her, chasing the white-hot ball of pleasure with a few lazy thrusts. I sagged against her when I carefully let her legs down to the ground and she laughed huskily into my ear. “This just became my favorite bathroom in the entire world,” she said, kissing my cheek and hugging my neck. “Me too, baby. Me too.” We cleaned up, smirking at each other in the mirror, and walked out of the bathroom hand in hand, receiving two winks, one embarrassed cough, and a whistle from the old lady sitting in the back by herself. While we walked back to the train, knowing that we only had two days left, I wondered how I’d ever be able to let her go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The festival was slammed—bodies gyrating and bumping, bass loud enough to send a beat into the very ground we walked on. Before leaving the hotel, Elias had encouraged me to dress casual, since it was an outside event. The way he’d said casual, with a skeptical look, had told me he didn’t think I could dress casual. But as I waited for him, I thought I looked like I fit right in with the mid-twenties crowd the festival attracted. My shorts were shorter than I typically wore, with visible wear and a few rips in the front, and the flowy white tank had beading along the spaghetti straps holding it up. I had chucks on my feet and my hair was contained in two braids, one over each shoulder, secured by beaded elastic bands. I wore large hoops and a braided yellow bandana over my hair. Elias had called it “hippie chic” when he’d given me a once-over before we’d left the hotel. But he’d tugged on my braids, the ones I’d done just for him. Once we’d arrived at the festival, he’d told me he had to meet with an organizer to go over the different musical acts that would be coming up but then he’d meet me at the beer tent I was currently standing in front of. I lifted my wrist to check the time, feeling bereft without my phone. But then I remembered that I’d removed my watch, in favor of a half-dozen beaded bracelets. As I looked over the intricately carved beads, I thought of what Elias had told me, back when we’d looked at his photographs. I’d purchased the bracelets over a year earlier, when one of my classmates had gone on a service trip to East Africa. She’d helped a small village, where women made money by braiding and beading bracelets. Their supplies were donated to them by a non-profit organization, so all the proceeds from sales of the bracelets went right into the women’s pockets. I’d never had an opportunity to wear them, mostly because I didn’t like wearing bracelets when I was doing school work and I didn’t wear such casual jewelry when I was meeting with clients. I could almost trick myself into believing that that wasn’t what I was doing, because spending time with Elias certainly felt different. I no longer assumed he seemed interested in the things I had to say, because he just was that interested. He didn’t ask me questions to pass the time, he asked because he genuinely wanted to know more about me.

It was easy to shrug off the pretense that we wore in New York when we were together—here, in a country another continent away, everything felt, somehow, more real. I never had to remind myself to keep his attention, or to make him happy, as I often did with other clients. With Elias, I was just Ruby. Not the escort, paid to spread her legs. When I spied him making his way through the crowd, his head bent as he looked at the viewfinder on the back of his massive camera, it was easy to smile. He wasn’t looking at me, so the smile was honest, a reflection of my happiness to see him. But I knew if I focused on that thought for too long, I’d start pulling back. Pulling back would’ve been safer, but in that moment I was having too much fun to put distance between us. “Hey,” he said with a quick grin when he lifted his head and saw me. “Hey yourself,” I said and handed him the beer I’d purchased while he’d been away. “Can you drink on the job?” Laughing, he took the cup and wrapped his other arm around my shoulders as he led me away. “I’m going to say yes. Though I normally wouldn’t.” It felt right, walking with his arm over my shoulder, around the many people gathered, speaking excitedly about things I couldn’t translate. I didn’t feel like I was pretending with Elias, which was not just a breath of fresh air but also incredibly enlivening for my soul. “Are you a good boy?” I asked, giving him a wink and curling my arm around his waist. He wore a fitted black tee, with black cargo shorts. He wore what looked like a heavy pack on his back and his camera hung from his neck. Despite the fact that his clothing was severe in its hue, he seemed completely relaxed. We stopped near a picnic area and he let go of me to cradle his camera in his hands, staying completely still as he captured three quick snaps. It was my first chance to really see him work, and I found it immensely interesting. “Sorry,” he said, looking at his camera. “I’ll have to do that a lot.” “No, I understand. This is your work, after all.” Which was the reason I’d tagged along. “It’s easy to forget you’re a photojournalist, since I haven’t seen you actually at work until now.” He propped his arm back around my shoulders and ran his fingers over the curve of my neck. It always amazed me how he could do that, touch me so gently, but in a way that made me want to curl even closer to him. “I know. I hope you won’t be too bored.” “Bored?” I said with a laugh and gestured around. “This is … exhilarating. Being around so many people, seeing how they interact with one another—how energized they become just by watching a performance. It’s, well, arousing. Not sexually,” I said when Elias raised an eyebrow. “But, intellectually? It’s very stimulating.” One corner of his mouth lifted up as he took in what I was seeing. “Thousands of people would be very stimulating,” he joked. I gently jabbed my elbow into his side. “You know what I mean. It’s just

energizing. The music, the laughter, the heat.” I sipped my beer and watched as he lifted the camera again, curving his hand around the lens as he rotated it just slightly. “How’d you get into photojournalism, by the way?” I asked when he broke his attention from the shot. “After high school, I decided to stop being a total fuck up and enlisted in the Army.” The idea of Elias, all burly and muscular, wrapped in fatigues, was like a punch to my pleasure center. “Ooh,” I said, turning to face him as my hand wrapped around his bicep. “Okay, that visual is pretty hot.” I closed my eyes and hummed. “Yep. Hot.” When I opened my eyes, Elias was laughing. He leaned down and pressed his lips to my hair. “I was just a kid when I joined. No beard.” I reached up and ran my nails through his trimmed beard. “What a shame.” “Half the reason I even have a beard is because of the Army.” “How so?” “Well,” he said, leading me further into the crowd toward a stage where a band was playing, “I nicked myself so many times shaving over the twelve years I was in that when I was discharged, I threw my razors away.” He rubbed at his beard and then over his hair. “I also had a buzzed head. It wasn’t a great look.” The beard was so Elias, I couldn’t imagine him without it and without a full head of hair. “What about these?” I asked, running my hands over the bulge of his biceps and over his forearms. “Nope. I was a scrawny little shit. Which was probably why they threw a camera in my hands. Maybe they thought I’d do better with it than the gun.” “And were you better?” “I still carried a rifle, all three times I was deployed. But the majority of my shots were taken with one of these,” he held up his camera, “than an actual firearm.” But when he said it like that, he lost a little bit of his smile. “Was that your job in the Army? Photojournalism?” He shook his head and tipped his beer back. “No,” he said after swallowing. “I didn’t do much of the journalism side. My job mostly consisted of filming combat and noncombat operations.” I tried to imagine what it must have been like to film combat, in action. In comparison, I’d lived a very sheltered life, buried in between the pages of textbooks. He offered me a smile. “But I learned a lot doing it. A photo, or a video, should tell a story. And that’s what I’ve always believed. My photograph should tell the viewer everything. The things I write are only secondary.” “I never thought of it that way,” I admitted softly. Elias paused the conversation to lift the camera and took a few more snaps. “You’ve made me want to look at photographs in a different way. I can’t help but feel a little ashamed that I always took them at face value, not really looking too deeply at them.” “Don’t be ashamed, Ruby. Think of it like this—I work in a creative field. You’ve

studied religion and sociology extensively. You utilize the hell out of the left side of your brain, the analytical side, and I favor the right side, the creative side.” He tugged on one of my braids. “I think that’s sexy.” He tugged a little harder, and I stepped right up against him. He lowered his voice when he said, “It’s not just that ass that I like, you know.” His fingers lightly traced over my hairline. “It’s what’s in here, what powers your thoughts, that poked at me, telling me to get in touch with you again.” The way his eyes searched my face made me suddenly feel vulnerable. Very rarely did I feel at a loss for words, but when Elias looked at me like that, like I was something else to him, I couldn’t find the words to pretend anymore. Gently, very gently, he pressed his lips to mine, almost like if he kissed me too hard, I’d shatter into a hundred pieces in his hands. The funny thing was, that’s exactly how I felt in that moment, in that brief bit of tenderness between us. The scent of pot wafted around me as we kissed and I pulled back, trying to compartmentalize all my emotions in that same second. “Hey, remember that pot we bought?” Elias nodded, but kept looking at me like he was waiting for me to say something about what he’d said to me. “When you’re done, do you want to get high?” His mouth tipped up in a smile, washing away his seriousness for a moment. “I’m just about done.” He looked around for a second and then leaned in, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “Let’s do it.” “Is that against the rules? Am I being a bad influence?” He laughed and capped the front of his lens. “It might be, but I’m not too worried about it. And you’re the best kind of bad influence.” His eyes were heated, and the tension between us dissipated. “I’m guessing you brought them?” I nodded eagerly as I pulled the joints out of my purse. “Elias the bad boy.” I narrowed my eyes as I looked him up and down. “I like it.” “You don’t even know how bad I can be,” he said, plucking the joints from me. “Is that a promise for later?” I asked, trying not to sound too desperate. But I was. Having this conversation with him was like a different kind of foreplay, only satisfying my touch and sight senses. I wanted all of my senses to be obliterated by Elias. “It can be, depending.” He pulled out a lighter and placed one joint in his mouth. I waited for him to bring the lighter to it, but he brought it to the one he held in his hand instead. I watched, fascinated, as he spun the joint in his hands, applying the flame to just the tip. As the tip smoldered, he pulled it from the flame and brought the other end to his lips, swapping it out with the joint in his mouth. I watched as he inhaled and then pulled out, applying the flame again. He did this a couple times until he said, “Ahh,” in a satisfied-sounding tone. He held it up for inspection before handing it to me and then repeated the process with the unlit one in his hand. “You don’t light it while it’s in your mouth?”

He shook his head, and inhaled deeply. Opening his lips, he closed his eyes as the smoke flowed out from between his lips. The visual was incredibly erotic, and I found myself forgetting about my own joint as I watched him smoke his. “You have to create a cherry at the tip,” he said when he’d exhaled. He held the joint between his first and middle finger, turning his hand so I could see what he was talking about. “You want it to burn evenly, and if you inhale while you light it, you’ll get an uneven cherry.” I brought mine to my lips and sucked on it softly, not wanting to go hard right away. The taste was different, but not entirely unpleasant. I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, to see if I could get a better grasp on how it tasted. “Cherry, huh?” I asked as I exhaled. Elias’ eyes glittered in the sun and his smile looked wider as he took the next inhale. As I watched him exhale again, I felt even more desperate to get the hell out of this festival, so I could get high with Elias alone, with preferably fewer articles of clothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Down the hallway of the hotel, Ruby kept the same beat that she’d maintained through the end of the festival and through the streets of Amsterdam. Her hips swayed with each step, a potent indication of what she was capable of doing with them in bed. “Where do you think you’re hurrying off to?” I called down to her. “I have the key.” She lifted her arms up and let them sway to a rhythm that I couldn’t hear. Weed, apparently, made Ruby really fucking happy. For two solid hours, she’d been dancing and smiling, a far cry from the woman who’d met me in the bar wearing a skin-tight black dress and a reserved smile. This Ruby was wild and free, uninhibited and happy. The walls were down around every part of her. Her hands touched me freely, her lips found mine countless times throughout the last two bands and we’d swayed together to the undeniably sexy beats of the final show. When she reached the door of our room, she turned to me, twisting her body into the kind of fluid movements that strippers dreamed of. Suddenly, a vision of Ruby on the pole, rolling her body around the stage stymied me. I wanted to see her dance for me. Just once. When I reached her, I pulled the key from my wallet and handed it to her, lifting my chin in expectation. Weed didn’t have a huge effect on me, only loosening the tight grips of my politeness. Sounded fucking ridiculous, I know. But the part of me that thought about how I spoke in public, how I introduced myself to people, the way I thought about how they might perceive me, that was not very present when I was under the influence. Basically, I was stripped down to the bare bones of what I wanted. I wanted to know Ruby. Wanted to see the sides of her that she kept hidden. And by god, I’d get to them tonight, since tomorrow we’d be boarding a plane. So instead of pushing her into the room, I gripped Ruby’s hips and tasted her top and bottom lip before sucking her tongue into my mouth. My hands were down into the back of her pants, gripping the taut flesh of her ass with my fingers. She broke her mouth away, sliding her hands underneath my shirt to finger the grooves of my abs.

“You’ve got the key, sweetheart,” I whispered into her ear. “But if you keep feeling me up like that, I’ll fuck you right here.” Ruby laughed, pulling her hands away and turning to face the door. Perfect, I could press myself against her back and tuck my hands down into the front of her shorts. Those fucking short shorts. All day, I’d had trouble keeping my eyes off the impossible length of her legs. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said while she fumbled with the key in the heavy wooden door. “I wouldn’t?” I licked up the side of her neck when she finally clicked the key into place, and we fell into the room. Ruby walked backward, pulling the yellow bandana out of her hair and using her fingers to pull apart the braids. “No. You wouldn’t take advantage of me in this state.” That stopped me short. Like someone had dropped a forty-foot brick wall right in front of me. “Of course I wouldn’t. Have I made you think that I would?” “No.” She shook her head, even though she already answered, which made the dark kinks of hair settle around her shoulders. Then she cocked her face to the side and gave me a considering look while she leaned back onto the bed. “But if you did, what you would you do?” “If I what?” My brain didn’t work when she looked at me like that, casual and sweet and curious. “If you wanted to take advantage of me, what would you do?” Dick? Hard. Heart? Pounding. I didn’t have the resolve for this kind of test. If Ruby pushed me, I’d fucking fall. But the thing she might not have realized is that I’d pull her down with me if I did. “I’d ask you questions,” I answered easily. It didn’t even register that she might find that funny until she laughed. “Really?” When I nodded in answer, she slumped back, her shoulders losing their frame. Her eyes were open and curious. “What would you ask? Hypothetically, I mean. If I were to tell you what you wanted to know.” I took a deep breath, sifting my thoughts like someone had just dumped out a box of puzzle pieces. “I don’t want to go down this path unless you actually mean to give me a truthful answer.” She smiled. “No games then?” “No games.” “Okay.” “Really?” I clarified. “You’ll answer me?” Her eyes were direct when she nodded, trained on me with so much candor that I forgot we had both taken a foreign substance. Nothing about this felt tainted or forced. It was me and her, an us that we’d never been before. “Okay then,” I said on an exhale. “I want to know about Nicholas.” I had enough presence of mind not to keep going. I wanted to say, I know he’s not a former client. I know you lied to me. I know you couldn’t trust me with the

truth. But I didn’t say those things, I just waited for her to confide in me. There was enough of a pause that I knew it would be the truth. When Ruby answered quickly, I trusted it less. Then it was practiced, a line off a script that I didn’t know we were reading. We both had cues, sending us offstage at different times, changing the lighting and the mood without the other’s knowledge. Me the client. Her the escort. Roles, characters, masks. But for once, it seemed, we were on the same page. Ruby and Elias. Student and photographer. Woman and man. No falsities, no pretense, no disguises. When she opened her mouth, it was truth that came out. I could tell before she said a word, just by seeing the look in her eye. “He … he wasn’t a client, like I said before.” She tucked a crimped piece of hair behind her ear. “We met in class, during undergrad. He was smart. Wittier than anyone else in that room, by a long shot.” I hated him. Just like that, more than the fucking psycho feeling he gave me at the hotel bar so many days ago, I hated him because I heard from her lips that he was smart. That he was witty. “How long were you together?” Her eyes were steady on me, despite the bouncing Ruby that I’d seen on our walk back. She was transparent now, willing to let me question her to satisfy the ridiculous alpha urges that were coursing through my veins. “Eighteen months.” I hissed in a breath, undoing my belt without even realizing that I was doing it. Her eyes tracked the motion, and in answer, she pulled the tank over her head, revealing her bare, full breasts underneath. Thousands of people had milled around us, and underneath the scant layer of white cotton, Ruby had been braless. It was enough to drive me fucking insane. And as much as I wanted to blame the weed, that wasn’t it. It was her. It was me. The combination of Ruby and me was enough to change my very DNA. Something welled up inside of me, possessive and greedy. Eighteen months was a long time, which is probably why his beady little eyes had looked at her like he owned her. I’d rip them out if I ever saw him again. “What happened?” Her fingers floated over my shoulders and her eyes followed them. “He got strange. Manipulative. Demanding. Didn’t like when I went out. Didn’t like when I dressed up. Always thought I was cheating on him. Finally got to the point where he was keeping me from class, because if I looked too nice before walking out the door, he’d threatened to kill himself if he found out I was cheating on him.” “What the fuck?” I said under my breath, unable to believe she was actually giving me all of this and didn’t expect me to fucking murder this guy once we were back in the States. “How long ago were you with him?” “Two years.” I pulled back and her hands fell away. “Right before you started this.”

She nodded and stood up. Her hands touched my waist and I could feel my skin tighten underneath her fingers. Could feel my dick stir right along with the visceral protective feelings that I was having. That guy made her feel out of control. Setting the parameters with her johns gave her that control back. “Did he hurt you?” I asked, trying to keep my thoughts centered, but her hands were moving over me, steady and sure. “He never hit me.” “That’s not a fucking answer.” Her eyes hit mine, like a fucking bullet. “Yes, it is.” “So what did he do to you?” “I don’t want to answer this,” she said immediately, harshly. But her breath was still mingling with mine, she was standing so close to me. “So tell me why I want to tell you.” “I don’t know,” I breathed, taking her mouth in a long, soft kiss. But I knew. I fucking knew. And I refused to believe that she didn’t know too. This was different, it was just for the two of us. And the idea that some numb-nut got into her head, into the brain of someone like her, oh, it fucking burned. “He … he just made me less. He made me feel small. Made me feel insignificant.” “Fucking hell, Ruby,” I growled, rolling my forehead against hers, like the touch of her skin could calm me, could soothe me. Then I pulled back. “When we ran into him at the bar, was that the first you’d seen him since you broke up?” She nodded, smoothing her hands over my skin. “He’s texted a few times over the years, but I usually just switch my number. I’ve never figured out how he keeps getting my new ones.” “Do you know what that does to me? To hear that?” Mother fucking Nicholas. I’d rip his balls out through his skin with my bare hands, shove them down his throat and let him choke on them for taking the beautiful, smart woman that Ruby was and making her feel so wildly out of control that charging strangers for sex felt like a good alternative. But without him, I’d never have met her. It stopped me short, right as I stepped up to her, ready to take her mouth with my own. “Don’t let him in here,” she begged me, lips a hair away from my own. “He has nothing to do with us.” I groaned, sliding my tongue in between her lips and splaying my hands on her naked back. Our mouths met over and over, her tits pressed tight against my chest. “Elias, please,” she said, when I ripped at the button of her miniscule shorts. “Tell me, Ruby. Fucking tell me what you want.” She braced both hands on my chest and shoved me back onto the bed. With sure hands, she pulled at my shorts, taking my boxers with when she pulled them off. Completely ready, my dick bobbed up and I gripped it with one hand. “That,” she whispered, looking at my cock. “I want that. It feels so fucking perfect inside of me.”

My fist worked up to the tip and unbidden, my hips lifted with the action. She bit her lip, crawling over me and licking up the base before kissing over my abs. The valley between her tits brushed over my dick and I bit out a curse. Ruby paused, looking at me with glowing eyes. “This?” she asked, pressing her breasts together over the head of my cock and working it in between the firm globes of flesh. “God, Ruby,” I groaned, tilting my chin up so I could see my dick sandwiched in between her tits. “If you don’t stop, I’ll come all over that pretty neck of yours.” She moved away, and I hated myself. Hated myself for breaking the moment, for correcting whatever the hell she was doing. Until her mouth was on mine, her tongue swirling in my mouth. Then there was no hate, no self-pity. It was all perfect. Her kisses were artless and a little clumsy. She grabbed at me with ferocious hands that held on too hard and cut too deep. I fucking loved it. Because it allowed me to do the same. I pinched at her nipples with fingers that had no finesse, and she gasped into my mouth. When I slicked the pads of my fingers over her hard clit, she swore, tilting her head back like she was a wanton sacrifice. And maybe she was. Maybe Ruby was sent to me as a sacrifice to a god of sex, of pleasure, of avarice. She couldn’t possibly last, because no one could feel this good, look this good, and fit this perfectly with me without there being some catch. Ruby held herself over me, her knees balanced outside of my legs. All of her curves were on display, and I wanted to be able to touch all of her at the same time. With one hand, I wanted to be able to cover her entire body. But I couldn’t. So when she rolled her hips, slicking the wet part of her pussy against the hardest part of me, I didn’t stop her. And when she gasped, using the head of my dick against her clit, I didn’t stop her. Stupid, yeah, it might have been. But when I felt the pure, unaltered, unfiltered heat of her against me, I wanted to push and thrust and conquer. It’s just the tip, I thought. Just the tip could go in and it wouldn’t hurt anybody. “Oh my fucking god, you feel so good,” she moaned, working herself over me in a cruel display of her body, one long undulating roll. It was cruel, because we shouldn’t have felt each other that way. Another inch into her scalding heat, and sweat beaded on my forehead. One more and I damn near sobbed. Then Ruby froze, her wide eyes meeting mine. “Holy shit, the condom.” Yeah. That. I held one hand on her hip, not allowing her to move. With the other, I grabbed a foil packet and ripped it open with my teeth, only slipping my dick out of her to roll it on with a quickness that I had no fucking clue I possessed. Once it was on, I used the hand on the sharp edge of her hipbone to guide her down again, until I was fully seated inside of her. Fucking heaven. “Yes, baby. That’s it.” She worked me, raising herself up and down, back and forth, in such slow,

tortuous movements that I almost cried. “Like that?” “Faster, baby. Show me how you fuck me.” Her eyes flared and her back arched so that she took me so deeply, so completely that my eyes rolled back in my head. Ruby moved her hips in a slow figure-eight movement and I gripped her with both hands. I wanted to see my fingerprints on her skin the next day. Wanted to know she’d see me for days after being away from me. The thought she might not made something snap, and I lifted one hand, only to slap her ass on her down thrust. She gasped, moving faster. I spanked her again, harder, so that my palm stung from the contact. “Harder,” she moaned. Down thrust, spank, pull of her hips up, hammer of my hips along with her, down thrust, spank, over and over until I knew she’d bruise. On her last down thrust, I hit her so hard that she cried out, and I let my fingers curve into her firm flesh while I filled the condom with a roar. We were leaving tomorrow, but no part of me wanted to separate from Ruby. After we cleaned up, she curled into my side, her forehead pressed into the most vulnerable spot on my neck. The same place that if she pushed hard enough, if she opened the skin there, she’d let all the blood spill out of my body. And while we fell asleep, wrapped around each other, I whispered to her, “I don’t want you to be anyone else’s but mine.” And I knew she’d done about the second most damaging thing she could have possibly done to me. Ruby implanted herself in my heart, next to my pulse, into my veins, and I’d never be rid of her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Even though we’d only spent a week in Amsterdam, something had changed between us before we’d landed back on U.S. soil. I’m not sure when the change had been initiated, because everything we did had seemed natural. But when Elias had said goodbye to me at the airport, he’d held me a little tighter than he’d ever held me. And when he had let go, I’d nearly called him back to me. Instead, I stood on the pavement by the open door to my cab, watching him walk away from me with a mix of anxiety. The thin pump of my heel had quivered as I’d slid into my cab, and I stared at my phone the entire ride to my apartment, waiting for Elias to text me again. Which he had, that night. Elias: Does it make me less of a man to admit that I want to see you again already? That was one of the things I appreciated about him the most—his gutless honesty. And his ability to say exactly what I was thinking, but what I didn’t feel— as his paid company—appropriate to say. I’d typed up my reply, It makes you more of a man, to tell me how you feel. It made me a little breathless, to know that his interest in me wasn’t just thanks to our paid arrangement. So when his reply came through, I felt my entire chest constrict. Elias: I haven’t even touched the surface, Ruby. After that, we’d made plans to meet at one of the hotels on the upper east side, away from the areas we’d frequented. In a way, it felt like we were capturing a small moment of the privacy we’d had in Amsterdam. The thought of alone time with Elias had made me positively giddy, and had warmed a part of me that hadn’t been warmed in so long I’d forgotten it had existed altogether. It was crazy—mind-bogglingly crazy. I couldn’t be falling for my client. No way. I’d kept myself always at a distance, at least emotionally. Right? That’s what I’d convinced myself of at least, as I stood in the hotel room I’d

gotten for the night. It’d been two days since I had said goodbye to him, and to say I was looking forward to being spread out underneath him was a major understatement. I’d just felt … happy. The word itself seemed inadequate for the way I felt after returning home from Amsterdam. Something had clicked between me and Elias, something I couldn’t articulate. As I applied another coat of mascara, my phone chimed from the inside of my clutch. Stella: Drinks tomorrow? Lenore hooked me up with a foot fanatic and he chewed off most of my pedicure. She’d included an emoji that looked like it was visibly ill. Laughing, I tapped out my reply, Should I break out the nail polish so you’re ready for your next date with him? Stella’s reply was a meme of someone vomiting in the street. I laughed again and checked the time. I had just about fifteen minutes before I was supposed to meet Elias in the bar, so I checked my appearance again in the mirror just as a knock sounded at the door. Elias. The thought made a smile form easily across my red-slicked lips. An effortless smile, I acknowledged, as I strode to the door and checked my reflection one last time. Excitement bubbled up inside of me as I closed my fingers on the door handle and just as I was about to turn the handle, my phone rang. I knew because of the customized ring tone that it was Lenore calling me, but knowing Elias was on the other side of the door caused me to ignore the phone completely as I turned the handle. The smile fell just as fast as my stomach when I saw who was on the other side of the door. In fact, I was in such tremendous shock from it that I couldn’t form a single word. “Ruby,” Nicholas said, stepping into the room uninvited. I had already been stepping aside, automatically, when I’d thought it was Elias on the other side of the door. But seeing Nicholas instead made my heels feel like I was walking on toothpicks, and I nearly stumbled as he brushed right on past me. My blood ran cold at seeing him step into the hotel room and crane his neck around the space. He was taller than me, that much I’d remembered after so long away from him. He still looked the same, with his blonde hair slicked back and eyes piercing as he looked into the bathroom. Finally, I found my voice. “What are you doing here? How did you know I was here?” “I’m resourceful.” He gave me a once-over before stepping fully into the bathroom. With legs that felt like they were made of cement, I stepped around the corner and watched him go through the items on the sink before he picked up a bag I’d packed especially for that night. I’d rarely brought it around, but tonight had

felt special. I’d packed some of my favorite toys, oils, and lubes, with every intention of catering to Elias. It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience, watching him as I stood frozen, unable to stop him from tearing apart my life all over again. It was the thought of Elias that made me speak. “No,” I said, firmly, my backbone shoring up for a confrontation. “Get out, don’t touch my stuff.” I was so shell shocked by his presence that I knew my voice sounded weak. “I’m serious, Nicholas.” He ignored me, unzipping the bag and up-ending it onto the counter. Glass bottles of lube clattered across the marble countertop and a feather boa fell to the floor. “What the fuck is this, Ruby?” I realized in that moment just how crippling running into him was. Because I found myself formulating excuses, instantly, as if I’d become conditioned to his presence again, and his unwavering requirement for me to explain myself. “I…” I started, but didn’t continue. He made me powerless, a feeling I had abhorred so tremendously that I’d sought out the job I was in—something that gave me control. And I just stood there, while he ripped through my things like he had every right. He plucked the bullet I’d kept in my bag of sex toys and held it up, pinched between two fingers. When he looked at me, his mouth was curved down and his eyes were full of disgust. “And this?” I pressed my palm to the wall to steady myself. Already, I felt myself crumbling before him. He’d never hit me, but his words had still had an effect, reducing me to a pile of woman who was ashamed for being exactly who she was. “Get out, Nicholas,” I said, forcing steel into my gaze. “I don’t want you here.” “Oh yeah?” he asked, swiping my sexual paraphernalia off of the counter so that it clattered to the floor. I shook from the sound of everything crashing onto tile and backed up from the door as he strode toward me. “Get out,” I said, not actually afraid he’d hurt me. But the effect of his presence was doing a number on my resolve. I had never felt weaker than when I was facing off against Nicholas. Just then, my phone rang and I knew, because of the ringtone, that Elias was calling me. Nicholas glanced at the table where my cell phone was, and picked up my phone. “Who’s Elias?” I kept my mouth shut, because no matter how I tried to reason with him, nothing would help him. When I stood there, doing nothing, Nicholas spun around. “Who are you waiting for?” he asked, and for the first time, his voice sounded almost shrill. The phone stopped ringing and I watched him, helpless, as he tapped my code to unlock the phone—my birthday—and then reached for it when he opened up my text messages. “Give me my phone and get out of here. I don’t want to say it again.” I tried to take the phone from him, but he held his arms up and gave me a look, all wild-eyed

and crazed that I pulled my hand back in fear. “Look at you,” he spat, lifting his head at me. “Dressed like a slut. Who are you spreading your legs for, Ruby?” His words can’t touch me, I chanted. “What do you want? We’ve been over for two years.” “Oh, so you can answer—” he paused and squinted “—Elias’ texts, but you can’t reply to mine.” His anger was palpable, a presence itself in the room. I knew I needed to keep my voice calm and even, so that I didn’t incite more rage. “Honestly, I thought you’d see my lack of response and drop it.” I should’ve known better, I told myself. Nicholas was like a dog with a bone. He’d never have let up. It was inevitable that he’d turn up. “What the fuck?” he asked, holding the phone for me to see. “Who is he, Ruby? Who? He must be someone important, for you to dress like a five-dollar whore.” He flung a hand toward the bathroom. “For you to bring all that garbage with you. What? He’s not good enough that you need toys to get you off?” I wouldn’t entertain his diatribe. I reached for my phone again but he stepped toward me with eyes so cold, I stepped back until I was up against the bed. For the first time, I felt true fear. I’d seen Nicholas controlling, I’d experienced his manipulation. But I’d never seen him out of control—not like this. “You know,” he said, waving my phone in the air, “I heard a rumor about you. Through the grapevine. Is it true? Are you a prostitute?” I wouldn’t dignify his assumptions, either. It didn’t matter if I told him I was an escort. If nothing else, it would only be gasoline to the fire already burning within him. “You are, aren’t you?” He laughed, but he didn’t sound like he was enjoying himself. “You’re paid to fuck dirty old men in rooms like this.” He looked around the room, his hair coming undone from the slicked back look he’d sported when he’d walked into the room. “Because that’s really all you’re good for, isn’t it?” He stepped toward me and I backed up so far that the back of my knees hit the bed and, ungracefully, I sat on the edge. “I remember. You used to blow me really good.” As if he was lost in that memory, he brushed a hand down the front of his pants. “Do you remember?” I didn’t want to. “Get out, Nicholas.” Oh, how I wanted to sound strong. Powerful. But I was reduced to who he’d sculpted me into when we’d dated. My phone rang again in his hand and he stared at it. I wished I could will him to answer it, somehow. Elias would know something was wrong right away. “You were really great at giving head,” he said again, and stopped his advance toward me to tap on his chin. “Where could you have learned that?” It was one of the arguments we had often, and the first time I’d given him a blowjob, he’d accused me of cheating before I’d been able to even clean myself up afterwards. “You used to cheat on me all the time, that’s how you learned how to be like a

fucking gymnast when we had sex, right?” He was reducing me, smaller and smaller, as he tore at me. I’d never cheated on him. But I’d endured a year and a half of questioning before I’d finally had the courage to walk away. I needed to find the courage again. Nicholas picked up my clutch and dumped it, picking through its contents. I felt trapped, unable to walk away without him coming after me. And because I was on the fourteenth floor, I knew I was a long, long way from help. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the hotel room phone. If I could get to it, I could call down to reception. I waited until Nicholas was distracted by my cell phone ringing again when I dove for the hotel room phone. His hand closed on my ankle just as my fingers closed on the receiver. And when he yanked, the phone ripped off the nightstand and clattered to the floor. My fear amplified when he stepped around the bed to rip the phone completely away from the wall. I was afraid to look at Nicholas’ face, because I knew I’d see someone who terrified me to my bones. Elias, I thought. He was the only thing I wanted in that moment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Another drink, sir?” The bartender asked me in an obviously flirty tone, leaning her elbows on the slick black bar top so that her cleavage was obvious in the tasteful uniform she was wearing. “No, thank you.” My polite tone and apologetic smile was the best I could do, instead of saying, fuck no, you’re not brunette enough, with dark enough eyes, or with the right kind of smile to interest me. “I’m waiting for someone.” “I’ll check back when they get here.” I rolled the glass around, listening to the sharp clink of the ice cubes against the glass before taking another look at my watch. Ruby was late, which was unlike her. Over my shoulder, I looked around the hotel bar again, just in case she was sitting somewhere with her back toward me. Sad how I now viewed women under a different light, a different framework, comparing them all to Ruby. It wasn’t just her looks, her stunning body, or the raw sex appeal that she exuded just by walking into a room. There was a spark in her brain, so bright and quick, and it called to me in the same way that her body did. Her lips and legs and breasts held the same demand that her wit and her humor, her voracious need for knowledge did. How the fuck did that happen? Thirty-four years old, and I was feeling fucking butterflies for an escort. Someone I’d hired to screw me senseless. I snorted. I was senseless, all right. Completely without my faculties for feeling nervous about seeing her again. For wondering if she was planning something special for us, with the hotel and the meet-up in the bar, like our first night. The ticking hands on my watch were mocking me with each slight movement. Slight, they may have been, but by the time the ice had melted in my glass, I was really starting to get worried. Ruby would never keep me waiting for twenty minutes without responding to my call. I tried again, holding the phone up to my ear and frowning when it went right to her voicemail. Instead of leaving a message, I pulled up my text screen to Ruby. You standing me up, beautiful? Even though I was smiling when I sent it, I wasn’t feeling all that amused. The

text didn’t show that it was delivered, like it always did. Ruby told me once that she always kept that phone on. Always. That Lenore didn’t like it when she couldn’t get in touch with the girls. I drummed my hands on the bar and felt the pit in my stomach grow. She’d never been late, not by a minute. And she never turned off the phone. Without thinking too much about it, I pulled up the number that I had for Lenore. She answered smoothly, and I barely let a single word get out. “Lenore, it’s Elias, and I’m worried about Ruby.” “What’s wrong?” she snapped, her tone shifting from polite to fucking army general in an instant. “She’s twenty minutes late for meeting me, and her phone is off.” “Fucking hell,” she whispered, and the sound of clicking computer keys filled the background. “Dave and Taylor are about ten minutes out. Another girl just checked in safe, so they can head to you.” “I don’t want to wait that long.” I tapped my fist on the bar top. “Come on, what name would she keep the reservation under? I can’t get a key unless I know the name, and she didn’t tell me the room number because we were supposed to meet in the bar.” “I never give out that information to clients.” “Cut the shit, Lenore,” I barked at her, and drew a surprised look from the bartender. I stood and fished a twenty out of my wallet before tossing it onto the bar for my drink. “I’m worried, and you know she’d want you to give me the information.” “No need to get testy,” she said in a cool voice, still typing away. “Fine. It’s under the name Stevenson, in room Fourteen-Twenty.” “Thank you,” I told her meaningfully, and hung up so I could head to the front desk. A young woman in a sleek black jacket stood behind the perfectly appointed granite. I gave her the most charming smile I could manage. “Hi, I lost my key. Last name is Stevenson. I’m in room Fourteen-Twenty.” “Of course, sir,” she said with a small smile, flicking her eyes over my face before pulling up the reservation. “Here it is.” I winked, even though my body was vibrating with the need to go check on Ruby. “Much appreciated.” When she slid me the key, I tapped the counter in thanks and tried my best not to sprint to the elevator. It was empty when the shining doors slid open and I jabbed at the button for the fourteenth floor. “Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered at the painfully slow ascent of the sleek elevator. You’d think if a hotel would spring for modern décor, they could have put one in that moved at more than two miles per fucking hour. At this rate, I could’ve rappelled up the elevator shaft faster. With a pleasant ding, the doors opened on the fourteenth floor and I jogged down the hall in the direction of the room. When I reached it, I took a second to pull in a deep breath, so I could calmly

listen at the door. There was a crash and a curse. A male voice. Calm got thrown right out the fucking window. As quietly as I could, I slipped the key into the slot on the door and waited for the light to turn green. The voice got louder, and I heard a few words that made a murderous red haze cover my eyes. Whore. Bitch. Slut. Quiet got thrown right out the fucking window. I was in the room, door slamming up against the wall in my next breath. Ruby was huddled on the floor up against the bed, her face white and her eyes terrified. The hotel phone was ripped off the nightstand. That fucking psycho—Ruby’s ex—turned with wide eyes when I charged at him. I grabbed him by the shirt with both hands, shoving him against the wall with a roar. “I will fucking end you, asshole,” I ground out, using all my strength to hold him up so that his feet couldn’t touch the floor. His arms swung ineffectually at me, glancing hits that didn’t even register. I pulled one arm back and rammed it into his stomach. Again, but harder, and I felt something break under my hands. “Stop! I didn’t touch her!” I slammed him against the wall again, then pressed my forearm against his throat. When he squirmed, I pressed harder. My face turned briefly to Ruby, who had unfolded herself and was staring at me with an expression that was half misery and half awe. “Did he?” I asked her. “Did he fucking touch you?” “Ruby, tell him,” Psycho wheezed. “Tell him I didn’t touch you.” “Shut up,” I roared at him. When I narrowed my eyes and leaned in so close that our noses almost touched, the whites of his eyes doubled in size. “If you can still manage to talk, then I’m not going my job.” “My ankle,” she whispered and I snapped my head to her. “What?” Ruby lifted her chin and leveled a glare at Nicholas. “He grabbed my ankle and yanked me down when I tried to run for the phone.” Nicholas flipped out when I turned my eyes back to him. Maybe he saw the switch, maybe he saw that I was imagining all the ways I could make his body disappear. There were so many demons that I battled on a regular basis. And the things that I knew I was capable of, but hadn’t done in so many years, resurfaced in a rush. I grabbed his throat with both hands and squeezed, relishing the way his eyes popped and he clawed at my hands while I towered over him. “You fucking touched her? Huh? God, you don’t even know what I could do to you, do you, fucker?” “Elias,” Ruby said, standing up and touching my shoulder. One touch and something settled inside of me. Something quieted, something steadied. “Don’t kill him.” “Why the hell not?” “Because I’d rather not have to visit you in jail.” Her voice was shaking, and I

pinched my eyes shut, because that slight tremor was enough to make me want to rip his head off with my bare hands. Mine, mine, mine, I wanted to say to him when I did it. He touched what was mine. Hurt her. Scared her. Made her fold herself up to be smaller, to be less of a target. Made her want to be less than what she is. My fingers tightened and he wheezed. Then I let go, and he slumped onto the floor, rubbing at his neck and struggling for breath. I turned and folded Ruby in my arms, and she let out a few shaky exhales. “Asshole,” Nicholas rasped out. I pulled my head back and looked at Ruby briefly, then turned so I could pull my leg back and kick him in the ribs. He groaned and rolled into a ball on the floor, when there was a knock on the door. Ruby’s eyes widened in fear until someone spoke. “Ruby? It’s Dave and Taylor.” Her shoulders slumped in relief and she hurried to open the door. Two massive guys in suits walked in. No necks, wide shoulders, and no hair. Nondescript faces. Cold eyes. They were the perfect goons. The one on the right gave Nicholas a chilling look before turning to me. “You do that?” “Yes, sir.” “Thank you,” he said, and lifted his chin at the other one, who nodded and walked over to Nicholas. “You okay, Ruby?” She smiled, but it was shaky. “Yeah. Thanks for getting here so fast, Dave. Who called you?” “He called Lenore,” he said, pointing at me. “Said she’d chop our dicks off if we weren’t here within five minutes.” Ruby looked at me with gratefulness in her eyes and reached for my hand, weaved her fingers in between mine. They were ice cold. Dave noticed her gesture, but didn’t say anything. Taylor hefted Nicholas up, who groaned, clutching at his ribs. “What are you going to do with him?” I asked. Both men looked at me, but didn’t say anything. “Got it. I’d rather not know anyway.” “How are you going to get him out of here without anybody noticing?” Ruby asked from beside me, looking at Nicholas without a single ounce of compassion. Actually, she looked just about as bloodthirsty as I felt. “You let us worry about that, sweetheart,” Taylor said with a heavy Jersey accent. Nicholas whimpered in between them, and my fists curled with the raging desire to break his nose. Maybe he’d choke on his blood if I snapped the cartilage badly enough. Dave and Taylor traded hushed words and then Dave tapped out a text with meaty fingers. He pinned Ruby with a serious look, but there was affection underneath it.

“You don’t need to worry about this prick anymore. You got me?” “Yeah. Thank you.” And then they were gone, practically dragging Nicholas between them. If I thought too hard about what they were about to do, I might have felt bad. But when I looked over at Ruby, who was staring at the closed door like it held some sort of dark curse, that feeling went away. I’d have helped, if they’d asked me to. “Hey,” I said softly, squeezing my fingers around hers, trying to imbue her with some strength. “Are you okay?” Her breathing picked up and her hand shook in mine. “Oh my god, Elias.” I shook my head and faced her, sliding my free hand up her arm so I could cup the side of her neck. When I pressed my thumb underneath her jaw, she was forced to look at me. Her lips trembled, and my fucking heart broke. If something had happened to her today, I’d have never gotten over it. Never. I wrapped her in my arms and shut my eyes against the knowledge that I was fucking falling in love with her. And it changed everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

He’d saved me. Elias had saved me. He was holding me tight enough to make me believe that nothing bad could happen to me, ever again. The harrowing ordeal of the last however long slowly slipped from my shoulders as Elias held onto me. I pressed my nose against his shirt, breathing in his calming scent. His heart was pounding beneath my ear, and I found myself counting the beats, one by one, to keep myself focused. “Thank you,” I whispered. His arms around me shuddered for a moment and then he said, “Fuck, Ruby.” The raw emotion in his voice made me squeeze my eyes closed tightly. I thought of the state Nicholas had been in when Taylor and Dave had practically dragged him out. Part of me almost felt bad for the state he was in, like I was thinking about it in an abstract way. That part was eclipsed by the fact that Nicholas had ignored every request for him to leave, and that—unforgivably—he’d put his hands on me. Seeing Elias pummel him had washed me with satisfaction. And now that the room was calmer, and I was wrapped in the same arms that had fueled those punches, I felt myself sinking into Elias’ touch. Pulling back, I leaned up and pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. His pulse there leapt against my lips and his hands ran up my back, soothingly. He made a little noise in the back of his throat when my fingers climbed up his chest, to hook my arms around his neck as my kisses moved the length of his jaw. Heat was spreading through me as my kisses turned urgent, spreading across his neck and down to his chest as I undid the buttons of his shirt. “Ruby,” he said, but didn’t make a move to stop me. His hands found my hair and dipped behind, gently massaging the base of my scalp as I freed the last button of his shirt and ripped it open. He was so beautiful, all that ink over his pecs and down his arms. You wouldn’t know just by looking at him, that he was covered in this much ink. I pressed my lips to the sharp lines of a geometric feather, and then glided my tongue along the line of the quill. His heartbeat was slowing under my hands, so I slipped my hands underneath

his shirt to climb up his spine. He was so warm, so muscular; I didn’t think I could ever not feel safe when I was with him. A mix of gratitude and sudden arousal was spreading through me, and I desperately wanted to show him my appreciation, right there and then, in the chaos of the room. Gently, I backed him up so he hit the bed and sat on the end. Just like I’d done, when Nicholas had advanced toward me. The thought slipped past my defenses and I pressed on, willing it to be erased with Elias’ touch. I tore the shirt off his arms and flew it across the room before I stepped back and pulled the side zipper down on my dress. It fell in a soft swoosh, and the only sounds in the room were our breathing. His chest was heaving as he looked at me, and I could tell he wanted to say something. But I didn’t want words, I just wanted him to distract me from the shambles of the room. I stepped toward him, and my feet brushed up against the phone on the floor. I again thought of Nicholas and I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to forget what I’d just gone through. “Ruby,” Elias said, and diverted my attention enough so that I remembered what I was doing. Quickly, I crawled up onto the bed and straddled his lap, wrapping my arms around him. I wanted the feel of him around me to make me forget. I wanted to lose this memory in Elias’ arms. I planted my mouth on his and kissed him hard enough to bruise us both when his hands came to my waist. I could feel his erection pressing against my ass so I ground myself against it roughly. I wanted Elias to be rough with me, for his touch to erase Nicholas’ touch. Elias rolled, flipping me to my back on the bed. For a second, I lost my breath, remembering when Nicholas had grabbed my ankle and pulled me down. The thought must have registered on my face, because Elias leaned up and looked at me. “What are you doing?” he asked me softly, pushing strands of hair away from my cheek. If I talked about it right then, I’d go back to feeling weak, powerless, defeated. I didn’t want to talk to Elias about what had happened. I just wanted to forget. So I lifted my arms to encircle his neck and pulled him down so he was kissing me. His touch was gentle—too gentle. “Kiss me,” I said against his mouth. I nipped at his bottom lip with my teeth, hoping my rough touch would inspire him to be rougher with me too. “You don’t want to do this right now,” he said, but I could tell his body was at war with his mind as his hand slid down my chest, over my bra’s front hooks that held my cups in place. “I do,” I said, hooking my hand in the front of his pants and yanking him closer when he tried to move away. “Come on.” My voice was a little pleading, but my

hands were hungry. “Ruby,” he said on a sigh and tried to move off of me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled so that I was lifted off the bed, sucking at his lips hungrily, my nails biting into his back. All the things I knew he liked. “Stop,” he said softly, but I kept kissing him, pressing my palms against his erection over his pants. “Please,” I said and this time I lost the finesse I’d forced into my voice. “Please, help me forget.” At that, he pulled away completely, but reached down to pull me up so he still held me, as he had before, with nothing sexual about his touch. “I don’t want to have sex with you as a means for you to forget what just happened in this room.” He pulled back and pressed two fingers to my chin, bringing my face up so that he looked into my eyes. “Then don’t think of it like that,” I pleaded. “Just kiss me. Let’s get lost in each other.” His fingers glided back from my chin to brush along my cheekbone. “Ruby, I’m already lost in you. But I don’t want our first time—our real first time—to be like this. In this room. I don’t want it to be a distraction, I want it to mean something on its own.” The blood drained from my face, very slowly, as I absorbed that. Our first time. What did that mean? Did I even want to know what that meant? “Hold on,” I said, prying myself from his arms and tucking into the bathroom. Once the door was closed between us, I slid down the cool wood until my ass was on the cold tile. Our first time. It kept repeating itself, an endless loop in my head. It wasn’t our first time having sex—a fact that was incredibly obvious. But then what? Our first time as … what? Slowly, I stood back up and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess of tangles and curls, my red lipstick was smeared over my lips. I looked like a woman completely lost. I’m already lost in you, he’d said. Was I lost in him, too? “Fuck,” I said in a horrified whisper. I hadn’t clung to him like an escort seducing her client. I’d clung to him seeking refuge from the nightmare that had just occurred, but I hadn’t once thought about the fact that he was my client. He’d just been Elias, the man I’d wished for when I’d been scared. I knew, right then, as I stood barefoot among the items splayed across the floor, that I was falling for Elias. I might have already fallen. He wasn’t just a client to me, and if I was brave enough to admit it to myself, he hadn’t been just a client for a while. Maybe it had happened in Amsterdam, when things between us hadn’t been built on pretense. Everything had felt so natural, so … real. “Fuck,” I said again. I could not be in love with my client. Rule number one as an escort: don’t let it get messy. That four-letter word? Was messy—in capital letters.

I had to get away from Elias. I was a little embarrassed, sure, that I’d tried to seduce him as a way to forget what had happened with Nicholas. But I was deeply, profoundly, horrified that I’d fallen for him. I quickly pulled my hair into a ponytail and rubbed a wet washcloth around my mouth until the skin was raw. Reaching into the closet, I grabbed the outfit I’d packed, intending to wear it home the day after Elias and I had had sexual acrobatics all over the room. I couldn’t put myself back in the dress I’d been wearing when Nicholas had touched me. No fucking way. A knock on the door was quickly followed by Elias saying, “Are you okay? Come out, so we can talk.” There was no fucking way I could talk with Elias about this. If he had even a tiny bit of the same feelings I had for him, we were in deep shit. If he didn’t have any feelings for me, I was in deep shit, all by myself. I slipped on the flip flops I’d packed and opened the door, my bag in hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, and dragged a hand through his hair. He looked tense, but eager to hash everything out. “Talk to me.” Spying my phone on the floor, I scooped it up. I put on my most professional face and said, “Actually, I’m just going to leave.” He looked at me, stunned, and tried to follow me to the door. “You’re leaving right now?” I nodded, not wanting to say a single word as I kept my back to him. “Don’t leave. I’m sorry for pushing you away. It’s not that I didn’t want you, Ruby,” he began. “I understand,” I told him. “But it’s best if I leave this room.” My voice was calm, cool, a complete contradiction to how I felt inside. “Want to go to my place?” he asked. “No,” I said as I opened the door. “I need to be alone.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “What’s going on, Ruby? Come back, we should talk.” “No,” I told him again, still not meeting his eyes as I walked stiffly to the elevator. I punched the down arrow and prayed it would hurry. Elias stood in the doorway of the hotel; I could see him in my periphery. And as the elevator doors slid open with a ding, I kept my face forward so he couldn’t see the hurt I wore plainly on my face. Back at my apartment, Fletcher meowed for attention from me the second I opened the door. The whole cab ride to my home, I’d thought about how Elias had looked at me as I’d left—confused and desperate. It had hurt me, walking away as coldly as I had. But I couldn’t verbally process my feelings, not with Elias and not in that moment. Fletcher nuzzled against my neck and purred happily as I scratched behind his ears. I was so thankful to have that white fur ball, the one thing who expected so little from me.

That’s how it should have been with Elias. Our arrangement had been for my services as an escort. Feelings had been completely off the table, because they were never a worry or expectation in this line of work. And yet, there I was, curling up on my couch in the dark with Fletcher on my lap and a heart that was positively aching. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d thought I only needed reprieve from Nicholas, and how he’d affected me. But more paramount was the fact that I’d fallen in love with a man who had, essentially, paid me for sex. “Shit,” I murmured and rubbed a hand over the sore spot in my chest. Fletcher pushed his face against my hand, needy for affection, and I rubbed over his soft coat absently as I looked out the window of my apartment, into the dark evening skyline of New York City. Saying goodbye to Elias had momentarily distracted me from what had happened with Nicholas, but now that I was alone, it all crept back in. Wrapping the throw blanket from the back of the couch around my shoulders, I remembered the fear I’d felt, the way I’d shrunken down to almost nothing. I turned on the television for a much-needed distraction, flipping through all the channels until I settled on a romantic comedy, something to brighten the dark night. One movie bled into another, and by the time I told myself to go to bed, I was bone-deep tired. The emotional upheaval was setting in, and I climbed in between my flannel sheets with a heavier heart than I’d had when I’d last been in this bed. Right before my eyes slid closed, I wondered what Elias was thinking, feeling, doing. I shook my head. I couldn’t think about him like that. I couldn’t worry about Elias. I needed to end our business relationship so that we could both move on from this … mistake.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Where to, man?” The taxi driver asked me, giving a mildly annoyed look when he smelled the alcohol on my breath. “Millennium Tower on W 30th,” I said, settling into the seat and closing my eyes. After a few blocks of fitful starts and stops, I opened my eyes and watched the city sweep past in a colorful blur. It was still barely light out and the streets were packed, like they always were when the weather was nice in New York. Happy people, living their lives, not being in love with an escort. Those fuckers. I must have made a disgruntled noise, because the driver looked over at me. “You okay?” “No. I fell in love.” “Ahh.” He scratched the side of his face with blunt fingers, lifting his eyebrows. “That’s the pits, man. I take it she don’t love you back?” I glared at him and he wisely shut up for the rest of the drive to Jack’s apartment. I gave my driver a good tip for keeping his mouth zipped and got a disapproving look from the doorman when I had a hard time walking a straight line through the massive lobby. “Jack Waterman. Tell him it’s Elias,” I told him and tried to stay in one spot in front of his imposing desk. How my friend was so fucking rich, I didn’t quite know. I asked once if he had gold bricks stashed somewhere once and he only flipped me off. On the other end of the receiver, I could hear Jack’s voice. The doorman smiled. “Yes, sir. I’ll let him up.” I rolled my eyes and got another stern look. The elevator opened and I hit the button for the twentieth floor. Jack was waiting for me outside of his door, with an amused expression on his face. “Well, well, look what the pussy dragged in.” Then he tilted his head. “Or kicked out by the look of you.” “Can I come in or not?” He pointed a finger at me. “If your drunk ass wakes up Grace, I’ll string you up.” “Deal.”

I walked in behind him, making sure the door didn’t slam shut. Jack’s apartment was probably twice the size of mine, with a clear view of the Hudson and sparkling city lights from the long line of windows framing his apartment. It would have been a killer bachelor pad, if not for the princess castle in one corner, crayon art all over the fridge and Barbies littering the couch at random intervals. “Water?” He asked, tossing me a bottle without waiting for an answer. “How about some bourbon instead?” “Nuh-uh, no way. I actually do care about the wellbeing of your liver, and would prefer not to contribute to any alcohol poisoning we’ve got going on here.” Jack sat on the couch and pinned me with a look. I gave him one right back. He bent his brows when I didn’t say anything. “Listen, you’re the one showing up drunk at ten on a Saturday night. That’s only allowed if you actually talk to me.” “You’re gonna judge me.” “I’ll do no such thing.” His arms spread open like, hit me with it. So I did. “I fell in love with Ruby.” “You fucking idiot,” he groaned. “You don’t fall in love with a hooker.” “Hey,” I barked. “She’s not a hooker.” His jaw dropped open. “Dear God, you’ve lost your mind. Does she have a magic pussy or something? Drenched in gold? Does it do your taxes for you? Because that’s the only reason I can see this happening.” I gripped the sides of my head when I sat opposite from him on the couch. “If I had any other person I could confide in right now, believe me, I’d be with them. You fucking suck at this.” “Dude, this is why you meet women the old-fashioned way. Buy them a drink, hold the door for them and tell them they have a beautiful smile before you go out with them. You don’t slip them an envelope of cash first and expect things to play out in a normal, healthy way.” My knee bounced while I stared at him. Why the fuck was I friends with Jack anyway? “She doesn’t want to do this forever. She’s so damn smart, Jack.” “So you asked her? You asked her to quit her job selling her body to be with you?” My teeth clenched together so hard that black spots danced on the outer edges of my vision. “No.” “How do you see this playing out, Elias? Honest question. No bullshit.” I dropped my head back onto the couch and stared at his ceiling until my eyes dried out and I was forced to blink. Even though the feelings were there, and had been there since before Amsterdam, if I was honest with myself, Jack’s question wasn’t something I’d really thought through. How I saw it playing out was I’d somehow fumble through a profession of how I felt for her, she’d tackle me (preferably naked), say she felt the same way, and we’d screw ourselves into oblivion. Forever and ever, end of story. She’d quit that day, and we’d travel the world together.

In the haze of bourbon in my head, it all made perfect sense. But I knew her well enough now. What happened with Nicholas scared the shit out of her, and I couldn’t blame her for it. Couldn’t blame her for seeking an outlet once we were alone. If I’d felt even half of what I did for her, I wouldn’t have told her no. I would have laid back and let her use me until the darkness had abated. But if Ruby had fucked me to help her clear another man from her head and her body and her heart, I would’ve wanted to rip my skin off and let it burn. Fuck, she made me think violent things. “I don’t know how I see it playing out, Jack,” I lied. “But I can’t know until I talk to her.” “You tried earlier?” I nodded. “She had some fucked-up run-in with an ex, and it shook her up. She totally shut down on me.” He sighed. “Look, man, that was her real life, right? You’re in her business life. Mixing the two together has got to be weird for her. Just give her some time to figure her shit out.” Immediately, I could feel my defenses rise. I wasn’t business for Ruby. There was no fucking way that she was like that with all of her clients. Even a single other client besides me. And it wasn’t because I took her on a trip. That was the vehicle, sure. We were able to spend all that time together, completely isolated from this situation, but there wasn’t one fucking part of me that doubted that we would have gotten that close anyway. It may have taken every single day of the thirty we had, but we would have ended up right fucking here. But I didn’t argue with him, because no matter what he said, Jack did judge women like Ruby. It wouldn’t do me any good right now to try and convince him that I wasn’t crazy. My feelings were real, and that was all he needed to know. If Ruby gave me a chance, God, he’d see it. He’d see exactly why I was whining on his couch because I couldn’t stand being alone at my place. I could do it. I could talk to Ruby and let her see how well it would work. There was no fucking way she didn’t see how we fit together. “I just want to be with her,” I said quietly, staring at the windows of Jack’s apartment. “Like, long haul, future shit?” When I looked over at Jack, there was no laughter in his expression. He knew what a big deal it was for me to even contemplate going down that road. “Yeah. All of it.” He lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Well. That’s something I’ve never heard from you before.” “I know.” “I’ll say this. If she’s everything you say she is, and if she’s been able to actually make you hope for the kind of future that you usually avoid like the fucking Plague, then I hope it works out for you. I really do.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, a little uncomfortable about how weighty he

made her influence sound. Not because it wasn’t true, I knew that it was. It was uncomfortable because I knew how much power she had to fucking crush me if she didn’t want the same thing. “Daddy?” A little voice said from the hallway. Grace yawned, rubbing at her eyes while she walked toward us in a light purple nightgown that dragged on the floor. “Uncle Elias?” “Hey, princess,” I said, holding my arms out for her. She crawled into my lap and tucked her face into my chest. “Did we wake you up?” She shook her head, eyes already closed. “I had a dream about Mommy.” Jack gave me a sad smile. “Want to tell us about it?” Grace yawned again. “No. I just wanted a hug.” My heart cracked a little, picturing Ruby at Grace’s age, without a dad to hug her in the middle of the night if she had a dream about her mom. I kissed the top of her head and blinked away the burning sensation in my eyes. Great, now I was fucking leaking. “Why don’t you go hug your daddy, princess?” I whispered to her. She smiled sleepily at me and slid off my lap to go do as I asked. Jack picked her up and carried her down the hall, talking softly to her. Imagining kids was a stretch, but the fact that it didn’t terrify me anymore is how I knew this was so fucking real. I just had to be able to sit down and talk to Ruby before I lost my damn mind. But considering where I was at, in my head and in my heart, I was already halfway there. If she turned me down, or walked away, I didn’t want to think about how I’d feel then. Probably like somebody ripped my heart out and expected me to keep living. I took a deep breath and pulled my phone out so I could look at the pictures of her I had on my phone from Amsterdam. Living without my heart? Yeah, that sounded like a fucking appropriate description.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The lunch with Lenore that week had ended early, with Lenore dismissing all the girls except for me. I knew she probably had had at least one conversation with Elias, because I’d been ignoring all of his messages that week. I cringed, thinking about that. Because no matter what had happened between us, he’d still been a client that I’d had an agreement with. And I was definitely reneging on that agreement, based on the fact that I had ignored his requests to see me, repeatedly. Stella gave me a look, one that asked if I wanted her to stick around—a fuck Lenore look—but I shook my head and gave her the smallest smile I could muster. “So,” Lenore began, signing the check with a flourish and setting her pen down quietly. “Let’s discuss your arrangement with Mr. Sutton.” Today, she wore glasses. Narrow rectangular glass specs that kept slipping down her nose. I stared far too long at them as they slipped over one freckle to the next one. “Ruby.” The sharpness of her voice was more effective than a snap of her fingers in calling my attention back to her. “Oh,” I said. I ran my fingers over the fabric napkin in my hand as I contemplated what to say. “I know it’s probably unorthodox, but I’d like to be let out of my arrangement with him.” Lenore pushed her glasses back up to her eyes as she peered at me. “Early, you mean?” I nodded and sipped my ice water. “Yes.” “Well, what am I to do with that?” she asked plainly. Very, very rarely did Lenore look at me so sharply. I wasn’t the girl who needed to be reminded to groom her eyebrows, or visit a dentist, or cut back on the carbs. Rarely had Lenore given me more than a glance when she looked over us all for our lunch meetings. But now, I was her sole focus. I missed the safety of having the other girls around us to distract her attention. I shrugged. “I don’t know how it works,” I said, feeling myself shrinking under her scrutiny. “That’s because this situation isn’t ‘unorthodox,’ Ruby. It’s unprecedented.” “I can’t be the first girl to have a long term arrangement with a client,” I

protested. “Oh, trust me darling, you’re not. But you’re the first one to attempt to back out of one, unless there are extenuating circumstances you’d like to enlighten me to.” Shaking my head, I told her, “No. I just think it would be for the best.” “Ah, well.” She made a little noise in the back of her throat and sipped her water before speaking again. “That is precisely why I am your manager. Because I know what’s for the best, and I don’t book you with clients unless I think you can see your obligation through.” Lenore sure had a talent for making me feel small. “I don’t want to see him again,” I said, firmer. “What kind of business do you think this is? I feel like you’ve been made aware of how we operate.” When I was silent, she sighed and slid off her glasses. “Do you think Ana wants to let Mr. Peters grope her with his ‘fish hands?’ Do you think Stella wants the clients with … unusual sexual proclivities? The answer—in case you’re not sure—is no.” Her gaze was still on me, and I knew she was analyzing me for the smallest fleck, to betray the reason I didn’t want to go back to Elias. “We’re not in the business of catering to our individual desires, Ruby darling. We’re in the business of fantasy, and that’s what we sell. We’re selling their fantasies, not our own. If you’re ending an agreement out of your own selfish desires, then you’re wrong. Bottom line. Ending a business agreement is never simple. What you’re asking of me is more than I should reasonably have to deal with.” She picked up her purse and carefully tucked her pen inside of it. “So, I implore you, to meet with Mr. Sutton at least one more time before you ask me to terminate your agreement.” And then she left, leaving me feeling sufficiently chastised. I sent Elias a date, time and location after Stella had encouraged me to follow Lenore’s request. Not that you could really call it a request—because she was my employer, essentially telling me to do my job. Elias had replied immediately, confirming that he’d meet me at the hotel. It was a new venue, something that wasn’t tied to our past, and I hoped it would help me not to fall back to the feelings I’d stupidly developed. But all it took was one look from him at the bar for me to realize my feelings weren’t associated with a place, but with a person. With Elias. He was waiting when I arrived, his drink already gone and I wondered if he had been waiting long enough to nurse the whiskey or if he’d recently arrived and had slammed it. He stood as I made my way to the bar, and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. His scent wrapped me up and made me feel more imbalanced than I’d been on the walk to the seat beside him. He pulled out my chair and I slid in as gracefully as possibly, trying not to betray an ounce of feeling in my movements. “How have you been?” he asked, signaling the bartender with a flick of his hand.

“I’ve been very well,” I said placidly. “And you?” “I’ve been the opposite. Would you like a drink?” I smiled softly. “I don’t think I need one, actually.” Elias slid his credit card across the bar top, not taking his eyes off me all the while. “I booked a room. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I thought it best. Just in case.” “That sounds lovely,” I said in a way that was warm but still detached. I wasn’t sure if I could pull off detached with Elias, not with the way he looked at me; like he hadn’t slept in weeks and I was a warm bed, beckoning him to fall into me. But I had to try to see if I could keep everything professional between us. I didn’t want alcohol to loosen me up when I was struggling to hold onto control. After Elias signed the check, he stood and took my hand, leading me away from the bar to the elevator. I tried to clasp his loosely, but his hold was much firmer. It was as if he thought I’d slip away from him, but in fact the opposite was true. I wanted to see if it would be easy to kiss him and feel nothing. To lay under him with only a professional kind of interest. This was new territory, having feelings like this for a client, and I wanted to see if I could remember to keep it separate as we rolled over one another on the bed. When Elias opened the door to the room, I turned to him and made the first move. I knew he liked it in the past when I’d been a little more aggressive, so I decided to do everything he liked tonight, anything to get through this in one piece. He practically growled into my mouth as his hands pierced my hair and backed me up into a wall. With his lips firmly on mine, I could feel myself already dropping back to who we’d been just a week earlier. His kiss was too much. Too deep and reaching, too profound. I pulled my mouth away, determined to not let him take me there again. We moved toward the bed, still fully clothed. When we reached the footboard, Elias picked me up and laid me across the bed. He moved to my feet and slipped my heels off, one by one, and then pressed his thumbs into my heel, massaging the spot that ached the most. How could I protect myself with him touching me like that? I felt my own arousal light up just by getting to look at him. Knowing his bedroom skills had made my body betray my head as I felt my pussy practically vibrate. Looking at me the whole time, his hands moved up from my feet to my legs, his large hands massaging the muscles of my quads. He was taking his time with me, making sure I was comfortable, and the idea that he was caring for me so gently made my eyes burn with tears I hadn’t shed yet. When he tapped my inner thigh, my legs spread immediately. As they always did, when he did that. I saw the triumphant satisfaction in his face, the smile that shone brighter than anything else in the room. I couldn’t open my legs wide enough for his liking because of the restrictive material of my skirt. So Elias shoved it up, so it bunched at my waist and tapped again for me to spread my legs.

This time, I had more hesitation in doing so. But still I did and he climbed onto the bed, sitting right between my legs as I laid there, exposed. “Are you wet?” he asked me. I hesitated again, but nodded just as he yanked my panties to the side and placed a finger at my entrance. “You sure are,” he said, slowly pulling in and out, his eyes on mine the whole time. The room was so dark, but I could see everything about him clearly. Which was both a curse and a relief. I heard myself sigh when he hooked a finger and pressed against the walls of my vagina. I didn’t want to be affected, but my body reacted to him like we were chemicals reacting to one another. Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine myself far away from this moment. But then he hooked his finger again and I clenched down on his hand. I bit my lip to keep from shouting and swallowed my scream. “You’re fucking drenched,” Elias said appreciatively. But I didn’t speak, I just laid there, as interactive as a dead fish. “You like this, I know you do.” I felt my pussy stretched as he slid another finger inside of me and continued pumping in and out. Refusing to look at him, I turned and stared at my reflection in the mirror across the room. My body moved back and forth on the bed, but my face remained completely aloof. Until he pressed my clit, and my reflection blurred. I bit down so hard on my lip, I was sure I’d draw blood. “Tell me what you want from me, Ruby.” He added another finger and when he pumped into me, I felt my body tremble. I was close, I could tell. Just from a minute of pumping me with his fingers, I was ready to fall over the edge into orgasm. I stayed silent still, not daring to look at him. I looked everywhere else, trying to keep myself disconnected from what was happening. And in doing so, I was breaking my own damn heart. I didn’t want this, to be cold when Elias touched me. His movements picked up pace and my body reacted against my control, bucking and sliding as he hit every pleasure spot I possibly had. I was seconds from coming, and I knew I’d lose all control of my own aloofness when I orgasmed. But then he drew his hand out of me and, finally, I looked over the bunched up material at my waist to where he sat between my legs. “Do you want to come?” he asked, his voice silky in the dark. That alone made me want to come—the way the words came from his mouth so delectably. I didn’t want to answer, so I forced a cool tone in my voice when I said, “Don’t you?” His brow furrowed, and I could see his frustration in the set of his jaw. “I know you do,” he said, but he didn’t need to convince either of us because he pressed his fingers back inside of me, and my eyes nearly rolled to the back of my head when he continued his gentle, quick thrusts. I was so close, again, and when he pulled his hand away for a second time, it took every ounce of patience in me not to scream at him. This time when I looked at him, he held his hand up.

“Look how wet you are for me.” He turned his hand, and the glint of the moon from the window cast a brief second of light over it. “I’ve wanted a taste of you for so long, Ruby.” And, with his eyes still holding mine, he put his fingers in his mouth and pulled them out after one long suck. The image made my insides quake. But I kept my composure, even though my body was doing everything it possibly could to betray me. I was practically vibrating, I was so ready to come. So ready to give in to Elias. “It’s not enough,” he said, and for the first time I wondered if he was talking about the taste of me he’d had on his fingers or our arrangement not being enough. Both scared me—the first because escorts didn’t receive oral sex, ever. The second because I didn’t think Elias being my client was enough for me either—but I couldn’t give it up. Not right now. I didn’t say anything to that, just held his gaze as he tapped on my thighs and I spread them wider. He braced his hands on my inner thighs and stared down at my cunt before looking up at me. “I want more.” He drew a finger down my pussy, not entering me but just teasing me. “More than just about anything, I want to feel you come on my tongue, Ruby. Right now.” I didn’t have it in me to say no.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

With Ruby laid out before me like an offering— even though the blankness was back in her eyes, in her hands and her body language— there was no way I would ignore the invitation she’d just given me. The second she widened her legs, I dropped to my knees and hooked my hands around the back of her knees to drag her to the end of the bed. With careful hands, I pulled her lace underwear off and tossed it onto the floor. My fingers smoothed up the inside of her thighs, stopping just shy of where I wanted to be more than anywhere else. Actually, that was a lie. There wasn’t a single part of Ruby that took precedence over the others. Her brain, her heart, her skin, I wanted it all. And I wanted to be as deep in her as she was in me. Which is why that past week had been like being doused into hell. I felt out of control, a hair trigger on my emotions and no idea what might send me over the edge. Two days ago, I spotted a woman across 5th Avenue that I thought was Ruby. I sprinted two blocks, only to discover it wasn’t her. So with her here, opening a part of herself to me that I hadn’t been able to indulge in, the weak, selfish side of me refused to say no. With a greedy mouth, I started with a long, slow lick up her wet slit and then stopped to draw a tight circle with the tip of my tongue around her clit. Her breathing increased, but she didn’t make a sound. Anger and frustration welled, fighting for dominance with my raging lust at the taste of her on my tongue. I kissed her lips, slipping my tongue inside of her pussy with lewd motions, and her hips arched up. Determined to see her crack, I wrapped my hands around the tops of her thighs and tightened my fingers into her skin. Ruby rolled her lips in over her teeth and pinched her eyes shut. I ate at her pussy and she whimpered quietly in her throat. When I sucked her clit into my mouth and lightly bit on it, she did it again. The same two fingers that I used before slipped into her while I worked at her clit. In and out, hooking up at the end, hard lick, soft bite, again and again until she started clenching around my fingers. When I bit the last time, I growled and pressed in with fingers at the spot that most men wouldn’t know how to find with a fucking GPS screaming at them. And speaking of screaming, when I pressed on her G-spot, Ruby screamed, one

hand clamped over her mouth to try and muffle it. But she pulsed around my fingers in a long wave, and I prolonged it with another slow lick to her clit. I dropped light kisses to her hip bones, feeling a sharp tug of disappointment that she didn’t grip my hair with her fingers, and ride my face with slow rolls of her hips. I’d gotten a glimpse of the Ruby I wanted, but only a glimpse. This was the Ruby from the first night. Experiencing pleasure, unabashed in the fact that she was really coming, but about as engaged with the fucking bed as she was with me. It made me want to rage, that I’d lost the woman who was mine for all those nights in between that first one and tonight. This was a robotic version of Ruby, and I wanted to rip her open to be able to get the real one back. She sat up with a polite smile on her face. “That felt good.” “Good?” I laughed incredulously. But Ruby only nodded, standing up so that I had no choice but to back up and give her room. Holding my eyes, she shed her dress, leaving her naked. Flawless stretches of olive skin, only broken up by the curves of her bones, the dark pink circles of her nipples and the tiny indent of her belly button. And her eyes … her fucking eyes were blank. “Would you like me on my hands and knees?” she asked, sliding her hands up so that I had no choice but to pull my shirt off. “Your body is so incredible.” “Stop it,” I ground out. “Stop what?” “Quit acting like I’m some stranger.” She tilted her head like I was crazy. Then her hand came up to cup my face, my beard. Her fingers were spread, so she touched my lips and my mouth opened. The edge of her thumb traced the inside line of my lips, and I caught it with my teeth, soothing it with my tongue. “I know you’re not a stranger, Elias.” Her voice was throatier with her thumb trapped in my mouth, so I held her wrist to keep it there. With the back of my fingers, I lightly touched her hardened nipples and watched her chest heave with a deep, even breath. When I pulled her finger from my mouth, but kept a hold of her wrist, she flicked her gaze down to our hands. “I don’t want you on your hands on knees,” I said absently. Keeping a firm hold of her, I laid her hand over my heart, watched helplessly as panic flared in her dark gaze. “I want to see your face when I’m inside of you.” Not when we fuck. But not when we make love either. If I’d said that, I’d lose her forever. As the days went past with no word from her, I knew it was no coincidence that the day I hinted at the depth of my feelings, she shut down on me. So I’d have to show her. I’d love her body, let her love mine, and she’d have no choice but to see how good we were for each other. There was no way, in my mind, that Ruby could put her hands on me, feel how deep I was inside of her, and be able to ignore the inferno that was in between us. I’d felt flickering matches before. Slight pulses of heat that made my skin warm. Being with Ruby was like someone covered me in gasoline and shoved me into an

open flame. For a moment after I spoke, she watched me, and I waited for her eyes to heat, for her smile to grow. But it didn’t. She simply laid back on the bed and opened her legs for me. Even though she raised a hand to beckon me onto her, I had to take a beat and control the crashing waves of righteous pissed-off-ness. It was the only way to describe how she was making me feel. So fucking pissed off. Because this was no passive choice. Ruby had made a decision to act like this. Fine. She wanted to play a role, then so would I. After shucking my pants off and rolling on the condom she’d had laid out on the nightstand, I crawled over her, stopping to cup one tit and suck it into my mouth. Her back arched when I did, but that was it. Her hands laid limply on my back, not stroking, not scratching her nails into my skin. With a growl, I sat up onto my knees and gripped both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them to the bed above our heads. There was a flash of heat in her eyes and I dipped down to catch her mouth. At the last second, she angled her head away so that her neck was my only option. I was breathing heavily into her skin while I reconciled the fact that she’d just fucking avoided kissing me. My hands tightened over her wrists, and for a brief moment, I thought about stopping. Pulling away from her and leaving the room. But I couldn’t. No part of me wanted to admit it, but if this was my last night with Ruby, I’d take it. I’d take the moment she was allowing me. I rolled my hips so that the head of my dick pushed against her clit. Her nostrils flared and her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t give in. So I teased. With small ins and outs, one inch forward before I’d pull back, I fed my cock to her in torturous increments. Sweat coated my chest by the time I surged forward all the way. Ruby bit down on her lip when I did. I pulled back, leaving only the tip inside of her and then snapped my hips forward so that our skin slapped against each other. Suddenly, playing wasn’t fun for me. I covered her fully with my body, so that every inch of her was plastered against every inch of me. She pulled her knees up so that she was hugging my waist with her legs, and it changed the angle. We both sucked in a breath when I thrust in again. Unable to keep my hands off of her, I released her wrists and wrapped my arms around her while I pushed and pulled, came in and out of her, the low slow drag out raising every hair on the back of my neck. The sharp push in making my heart thunder in my chest. I tried to kiss her again and she turned her chin in the other direction. “Fucking hell, Ruby. Kiss me.” I dropped my forehead into her neck when I pushed inside of her again. One hand cupped the back of my neck, playing with the hair on the back of my head and I picked up the pace, even though there was barely enough room for me to move with how close we were. My sweat slicked with hers, and her tits slippery against the skin of my chest. But she didn’t kiss me. She arched her chin up, turned to the other side when I hammered into her. And in the end, I didn’t even have to touch her clit for her to come. I bit down on her shoulder on a particularly vicious thrust and she fisted

around me. No dirty words in between us. No whispered pleas for more. Silently, I came, with my arms still tight around her back. We lay like that for a few minutes, and more than anything, I wanted to stay there. Because without seeing her face, I knew she’d be empty. And sure enough, when I pulled out and walked to the bathroom to take care of the condom, she’d already started dressing. By the time I flicked off the light, she was pulling her dress up over her shoulders and slipping her shoes on her feet. The black of her dress suddenly felt like an omen I’d missed. But that was because I was so blinded by her. Blinded by what I felt for her, and blinded by the excitement I’d felt at being able to see her again, breathe the same air as her again. No way would I make this easy for her though. I stood, naked as a fucking jay bird and watched her collect herself. When she met my eyes, I could see her search for words. What she said though almost knocked me sideways. “This is our last night together, Elias.” “Excuse me? We have over a week left in our agreement.” “Can you please put some clothes on?” Her eyes were trained on the wall. I narrowed my eyes at her but yanked on my boxers. But that was it. “Explain,” I said tersely, struggling for calm. “Because we had an agreement.” Her chin lifted. “I’ll refund you the appropriate amount of money.” “This isn’t about fucking money, Ruby,” I yelled. “I don’t care about the money; I care about you. You know that.” “Do I?” And then she fucking tilted her head again. I wanted to break something. But there was no way I’d do anything that might remind her of that fucking psycho. “Yes. Yes, you fucking do.” I walked closer, using gentle hands to cup her shoulders. “I don’t want our time to end because of how fucking amazing we are together. You feel it, I know you do.” Her eyes were maddeningly, impossibly blank when she answered. “I don’t know what you mean. You’re my client, and you’ve been a good one, Elias. But that’s all it is.” “Bullshit.” “Excuse me, I’d like to leave,” she said in a steady voice. I didn’t stop her when she brushed past me. But before she opened the door, I said her name. “I’m not him.” She turned slowly. “What?” “I’m not Nicholas.” Ruby blinked rapidly, clearly thrown by my change of topic and quiet approach. Yeah, join the fucking club. Normally, I’d yell and rage, grab her and kiss her, show her how explosive it is between us. But now I knew. I knew what she’d been through and how little trust she had. With good reason too. “I … I don’t know what you mean.” “Yes,” I said slowly, walking up to her with my hands raised. “Yes, you do. I

would never treat you like he did. I’d never manipulate you or make you feel like you weren’t as amazing as you are, because Ruby, you are the most fucking incredible woman I’ve ever met in my life.” Her eyes shone, but she didn’t move. “It doesn’t matter.” “Yes it does. It matters because I’m not stupid, and I know you feel what I feel.” On impulse, I grabbed her hand and pressed it on my heart. “This is fucking beating your name every time I breathe, and I don’t know how it happened, but it did.” “Elias, stop,” she begged quietly. “We can do this. We can be together.” For a brief moment, her fingers curled into my skin, like she was holding me, not pushing me away. Then she tugged her arm back and she lifted her chin. “The fact that you think that just means I did my job.” “Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I sell a fantasy, Elias. Your fantasy, not mine.” She hitched her bag over her shoulder and gave me such a sad smile that I wanted to tear my eyes out just so that I would never have had to see it. “And apparently I did a good job.” “You’re a fucking liar.” Ruby pressed her lips together and held my eyes. There was a flash, a moment, a second where I thought I saw hurt. Saw pain. But then it was gone. “I know.” Even when the door shut behind her, and she didn’t come back in to throw herself into my arms and tell me she was kidding, I stood there staring at the block of wood that separated me from the rest of the world. Then I sank onto the edge of the bed and hung my head in my hands.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The days since I’d walked out on Elias had dissolved into weeks. Two weeks without him. It felt like forever, but it also felt like no time at all had passed since I’d broken my heart in my own hands. If things were different—if my life were different—I could have run back to Elias. Dropped a grenade on my life and watched it burn while in his arms. But the reality was that there was no way I could be in love, dating someone like Elias, and continue escorting. And escorting was the only thing paying the bills and paying down my massive student loans at the moment. I’d sold my soul to the devil, and my debt was far from being paid off. In my time since walking out on Elias, Lenore had told me to take care of myself. And to her, that didn’t mean fixing my broken heart. To her, taking care of myself meant getting waxed, exfoliated, and having my roots touched up. Maintenance on the product she was selling, so that when I was ready to make some money again, I would be up to her standards. Which was why I spent the first week on the couch, binge-watching every show I could find on Netflix and going through pints of ice cream like they were my only source of nutrition. “Jesus,” Stella said one day when she’d come over and had kicked away an empty container of cookie dough. “Please don’t tell me you’ve spent all week on the couch.” She’d looked me over with clear disgust in her eyes. I knew her disgust wasn’t mean-spirited, but bred from concern for her friend. Either way, I hadn’t cared. “Not all week,” I told her, “I answered the door for the pizza guy yesterday.” “Uh huh, right. And then you plopped your ass back on the couch and watched Sons of Anarchy for the fifth time, didn’t you?” I didn’t have it in me to deny it. So I grunted and turned the volume up on the television. “Fuck that,” Stella said, her heels clacking across the wood floor as she marched up to the TV and ripped the plug from the wall. “You’re smoking crack if you think

I’m going to watch this shit from the sidelines.” “I’ve never smoked crack,” I said absently as I picked up a tortilla chip from the bowl I’d had on my coffee table all week. I stared at its triangular shape for a moment before saying, “But I did smoke some weed in Amsterdam. With Elias.” Just saying his name was like opening the floodgates I’d locked up after leaving him. “So you fell in love with your client. What are you going to do about it?” I looked up at her with tired eyes. “Nothing. I can’t.” “Says who?” She stooped to pick up one of my ice cream cartons and stalked to the trash to throw it away. “Says these,” I said calmly, spreading the stack of bills across the coffee table. “I can’t afford this place and tuition and books on a barista salary.” “Then what choice are you left with?” “Technically,” I said, holding up a finger, “I don’t think it’s a choice if there’s no alternative.” “Don’t go using your philosophy on me, Rubes. If the only thing you can do is buck up and be an escort, then get your ass off the couch before it sucks you in. Brush your teeth and your hair and call up Lenore for another date.” I didn’t want another date. I just wanted to wallow inside my tiny apartment, with the help of every brand of cookie dough ice cream I could find at the corner store in the middle of the night. “Take it from a master like myself,” she said, hooking her thumbs back toward herself. “The best way to get over someone is to get poked by another dick.” “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” I told her, unamused. “Sure it is.” She pushed her hair off her shoulders and then lifted them up and down like she was pumping herself up for something. “Let’s get you a date. And maybe a shower.” So I’d done as Ruby had suggested, and met with Lenore requesting that she assign me to another client as soon as possible. What did I have to lose anyway? Lenore had hesitated at first, before telling me to visit a spray tanning salon so that I didn’t look so “sickly.” After I’d agreed, she set me up with Mr. James, a well-known favorite among Lenore’s girls. I’d never had him as a client before, but I knew he was gracious and—judging by the way Stella had thrown the book she was glancing through when I told her—he was a catch. Catches were hard to find as an escort. Most of them toed the line of “normal” or “creep” but every once in a while, we got lucky. Like Elias, I acknowledged, as I waited in my scalloped-edged strapless black dress, at a hotel bar that was new to me. I needed the unfamiliarity, so I wouldn’t see reminders of Elias in something as stupid as an elevator, or a mirrored wall. Nothing in my life felt safe from his influence, a thought that made me sigh as I set my martini onto the shiny bar top.

Mr. James was my first client since I’d laid eyes on Elias, but if Stella was right the whole process should feel like getting back up on the bicycle. When he walked in and scoped his eyes over the crowd, I felt my first tingle of anxiety. His gaze fell upon me and he smiled, the curves dipping into his cheeks as he meandered through the bar to me. I held onto my smile as he stepped to me and placed a hand on my waist, leaning in for a kiss on the cheek. I waited to feel a spark, a trickle of chemistry. He was fucking hot—there was absolutely no doubt about that. From his perfectly sculpted undercut hair style to the very trim facial hair on his face, and the magnetic blue eyes that shined warmly as he sat beside me, I should have been bowled over. But, in fact, I was … underwhelmed. Not that it was through any fault of his own, but because I looked at him and saw through him, imagining what Elias might be doing on a night like tonight. “Mr. James, so nice to meet you,” I said in my smooth, cultured voice. “Thomas, please.” He patted my hand before raising it to signal the bartender. And I didn’t feel a single thing. Not a spark, not even a minor fizzle. I was sitting beside an incredibly attractive man, dressed in a fitted three-piece navy suit, and I felt nothing. “Did you find the place all right?” I asked. “Of course. You gave exceptional directions.” He ordered a beer and then angled himself in his seat so that he faced me. “Have you been waiting long?” I shook my head and gave him a long-practiced smile. And then I fucking blanked. Just … lost all thought. Not a single thing could come to my mind to say. It was as if I’d exhausted all my topics of conversation in just two sentences. “So, tell me about yourself, Ruby,” Thomas said, looking genuinely interested. And all I could think about was Elias. Shit. “I study theology right now,” I told him, to which he gave me a polite smile. “How is that?” This was all wrong. All fucking wrong. I kept waiting for Elias to walk through the door and drag me out of the bar. Briefly, I closed my eyes, willing all thoughts of Elias to get the fuck out of my head so I could give this an honest shot. “It’s exhausting,” I admitted to Thomas. “I probably spend more hours inside of the school library than I do my apartment.” “I understand. I studied industrial and organizational psychology, which was,” he said on a laugh, “intense, to say the least.” I didn’t know a single fucking thing about industrial and organizational psychology. And moreover, I didn’t care. But I nodded like a parrot and said, “Is that what you do?” “Well, no. I actually work for an organization that provides clean, safe drinking water for African communities.” It should have piqued my interest, after all the research I’d done myself regarding African tribes. But I couldn’t focus enough to engage him, because all I could think about was the fact that he was drinking beer and I missed the smell of

bourbon. “That sounds very demanding,” I offered, which felt like a pithy answer. “Well, it is. But it’s ultimately very rewarding.” He took a pull of his beer and then set it down, his long fingers running over the condensation circle his beer bottle had created. “We’re changing the future of entire generations of Africans, by providing them something as simple and essential as water.” It was admirable work. I knew that. But it was as if I’d had a moment of adult ADD, because I couldn’t focus on anything he was saying long enough to ask him more about it. Suddenly, his hand caressed the back of mine and I yanked my hand back as my vision cleared. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You looked a little lost there for a minute.” I must have spaced out, I realized. Under the bar top, I rubbed the top of my hand over the spot where he’d touched me. It had felt like a brand; another man touching my skin simply didn’t feel right. In fact, it’d felt—strangely—like I was cheating on Elias. Elias, my client. I sputtered an apology as I looked at Thomas. I couldn’t stay here. I most definitely couldn’t allow him to join me in a room for the evening. If I couldn’t stand to have him touch my hand, I certainly couldn’t accept him touching me in the places my clothing covered. Abruptly I stood and dug into my clutch for a twenty. “I’m sorry,” I told him, but it felt weak. “I need to go.” Lenore was going to chew my fucking ear off. He sighed, resigned, but didn’t seem the least bit surprised. He opened his own wallet and tossed a bill onto the bar. “It’s fine,” he said after a moment. “Lenore said this would probably happen.” I stared at him blankly. “She did?” He nodded and offered me a sad smile. “She did. So don’t worry or anything.” After an awkward goodbye kiss on the cheek, I bolted the hell out of the bar and hailed a cab. Once I slid in and buckled my seat belt, my biggest regret was actually dressing up for the night in the first place. Lenore had known? That baffled me the most. She’d known that throwing me in the deep end would have left me drowning? I closed my eyes as the lights of the city passed over the cab, and tried to figure out what the hell was next for me. I let myself into my darkened apartment and made a beeline for the bed while Fletcher danced around my feet. After collapsing face-first into the duvet, I pressed my mouth against my pillow and screamed. What the fuck was I going to do? If I couldn’t let someone as handsome and interesting as Thomas touch me, I couldn’t let anyone touch me. I groaned in my pillow, feeling like the entire world was bearing down on me in that moment. I had no one to talk this out with, no one who would understand. Fucking Elias, I thought. He’d ruined me. Which meant he’d ruined my job, because if I couldn’t be an escort without feeling like I was somehow cheating on Elias, I’d never be able to go to that safe place in my head, where I’d stayed

whenever I’d met with a client. That cool, detached place, that allowed no one too close. Except Elias.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice,” I told Lenore from across the table. I didn’t even attempt to hide my open perusal of her. What I expected in a woman who managed a professional escort service, I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t Lenore. She looked strict and dignified. Nothing flashy or sexy about her. You’d be as likely to find her heading up accounting at a major money firm as coordinating a business where men paid large sums of money to spend time with her girls. “It’s my pleasure,” she said smoothly, taking a long sip of her tea and watching me over the rim. Her black hair was severe and short against her pale skin. She’d photograph beautifully, probably for the rest of her life, but I doubt she’d ever loosen up enough to let someone put her in front of a camera. “What can I help you with?” “You already know. I’d like to know how to get in touch with Ruby.” The restaurant she’d picked to meet me at was quiet, tucked into an alley with small bistro tables and blooming pots of flowers. The wait staff was discreet, never lingering at the tables for too long. It made me wonder how often she met … clients here. The word rankled, it always would to me, especially after Ruby lobbed it at me like a grenade twenty-two days earlier. The longest twenty-two days of my life. She ignored texts, calls and emails. Which probably meant she’d blocked me. And the only reason she would have blocked me was because I’d terrified her in a way that she’d never experienced. Because I was right. Ruby would have been able to face me again if she felt nothing. I was sure it would surprise her that the longer she went ignoring me, the firmer I became in my decision, in my resolve to lay every single fucking card on the table before she decided to walk away from me forever. Lenore set her white tea cup down without making a sound against the table. “Ruby made the decision to terminate your agreement, despite how I felt about it. That tells me she had her reasons. Why would I help you find her if she doesn’t want to be found?” I leaned forward and laid my clasped hands on the table. “Because you know it was more than an arrangement. I’m in love with her.” Her eyes never wavered, but they did narrow. “Many men have fancied

themselves in love with my girls over the years. Then the next pretty face comes along and they forget. Why should I assume you’re any different?” “Because I’ve never experienced anything as terrifying as falling in love with her. I have every reason in the world to move on, to pretend like it didn’t happen, because she has the power to crush me. She does, and I’m handing her that power with my eyes wide open.” I took a deep breath and fought the desire to squirm under the weight of her hard stare. “It’s been three weeks since she told me that the only reason I felt so strongly was because she did her job in selling my fantasy. Why would I ever want to subject myself to that if I wasn’t really in love with her? I’m not a glutton for punishment, Lenore. In fact, I’ve often made cowardly decisions in my life, but this is not one of them.” Lenore broke our stare-down first and glanced over my shoulder at the table behind us. “What do you think?” “Me?” I asked, confused. “She’s talking to me, big spender.” A stunning woman around Ruby’s age with deep reddish brown hair and wide green eyes said as she pulled up a chair in between me and Lenore. Then she held out a hand. “I’m Stella.” Recognition made me nod, and I shook her hand. “Ruby’s friend.” She grinned and propped her elbows on the table. “That’s me. Which is why your fate ultimately rests in my very talented hands.” Then she tilted her head to look at my lap underneath the table. “Sorry. Just checking to see if Rubes was exaggerating.” “For god’s sake, Stella,” Lenore said under her breath. I laughed. “It’s fine. And no, she wasn’t.” “Lucky bitch,” Stella said and fell back in her chair. “If I didn’t love her so much, I’d fucking hate her right now.” “Please watch your language while we’re in public,” Lenore admonished. Stella continued as if Lenore hadn’t said a word. “Because she’s getting the dream right here. Even though we all have our different reasons for doing this, we’d retire our vaginas in a fucking heartbeat if someone like you said the right words. And from where I’m sitting, they’re right. More than that, I think you actually mean them.” Hope exploded in my chest like a bomb and I fought the urge to shake Stella until she gave me Ruby’s address. “I do mean them. All I want is a chance to speak to her. I didn’t tell her everything I should have the last time I saw her, and even if she chooses to never speak to me again, I’d be doing both of us a disservice if I didn’t have the chance to be honest.” Stella laid a hand on her chest and shook her head. “Goddamn, I’m having a Sex and the City moment right now. You’re Big, and Ruby’s Carrie. But she’s not in Paris. Thank god.” “I don’t know what that means,” I told Lenore. Lenore was giving Stella a look that should have turned her into stone, it was so cold. “Get to the point, Stella.”

With a Cheshire cat grin, Stella leaned toward me. “Tell her she owes me when you talk to her.” I expelled a heavy breath. “You’ll give me her address?” “Yeah,” Stella said slowly. “What the hell did you think I meant?” In one movement, I stood and swept Stella up in a bear hug. She laughed, patting me on the back. Even Lenore had a small smile on her face. But as soon as Stella stepped back from me, it was gone. “Thank you,” I said to both of them while Stella scrawled the address on a napkin. Lenore nodded and opened up her laptop, effectively dismissing me. I winked at Stella and walked out of the restaurant. I’d barely made it ten feet when she called my name. “Hey, I wasn’t sure I should tell you, but Ruby quit a couple days ago.” “What?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you keep asking me questions when my meaning is pretty fucking crystal clear? She quit. Came in and told Lenore that her pussy was officially off the market.” My heart raced and all the blood rushed down to my feet. I didn’t know what it meant other than that I fucking knew it. When Ruby had said I know after I called her a liar, it didn’t immediately click. But with every unanswered call, every text that got ignored, I knew exactly what she had meant. That whole exchange in the hotel room during our last night, she was lying to me. The blank, empty look in her eyes was one giant lie. And this was the proof. I tipped my head back and started laughing. The fact that she quit, didn’t tell me, and was still being so stubbornly quiet only made me fall even further. “Thank you,” I told Stella again. “I’m glad I know.” “But you would have gone to her even if she hadn’t, right?” “Yeah.” I shook my head. “Maybe that makes me crazy, but yeah, I would’ve.” Surprisingly, Stella’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away before speaking. “You are worthy of her, Elias. And that makes me happy.” “Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Me too.” Four hours later, I stood in front of a humble walk-up on a quiet street. Stella promised she’d send Ruby a text saying she would stop over, so that my chances of getting buzzed in were better than a zero. Because if she knew it was me, there was still a chance she’d freeze me out. The nerves swarming inside of me were completely foreign, but I’d also never had the stakes be this high. I smoothed my hair back and ran a hand down my newly trimmed beard. Then for the fortieth time since I left my apartment, I patted the front pocket of my white button down shirt to make sure the folded up piece of paper was still there. When it was, I shook my head for stupidity and hit the small white button. “Come on up,” Ruby’s voice crackled through the speaker and just the sound of

it almost brought me to my fucking knees after three weeks without it. I pulled open the security door and walked up the flight of stairs to the third floor. Her door cracked open and she had a smile on her face. Until she saw me. “Elias,” she breathed, with a hand to her chest. There was no fear in her eyes, thank god, but there was a fuck-ton of surprise. “How … how did you get my address?” I tucked my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, so I didn’t grab her and clutch her to me. “Stella.” Her eyes shut and she let out a heavy breath. “Of course.” While she wasn’t looking at me, I drank her in. She was casually dressed, in a simple white T-shirt and light grey linen pants that hung off her hips and showed a small sliver of flat stomach. “Wait,” she said and gave me a suspicious look. “How did you get in touch with Stella?” “I met with Lenore. I didn’t know Stella was going to be there.” I smiled at her. “She took her job as your gatekeeper very seriously.” Ruby laughed. “Yeah, I bet.” “Can I come in?” Her eyes were unguarded and clear, but she still paused before nodding and opening the door. A fluffy white cat wrapped around her legs when she stepped back to let me in and she picked it up with an indulgent smile on her face. “This is my guard cat, Fletcher.” With a grin, I reach out and scratched underneath his jaw. When he purred and pressed into my hand, I lifted an eyebrow at Ruby. “Seems vicious.” Standing in front of me, cuddling with her cat that I didn’t know about, in her simple, clean apartment, I was seeing a different Ruby. And I liked it. A fucking lot. Her home was organized, full of books and bright splashes of color. It was small, but not cramped. I could tell she cooked by the items I could see on the open shelves in her tiny kitchen area, and suddenly, the thought of sitting on her couch and watching her prepare a meal sounded like the most appealing vision I could conjure. “What are you doing here?” she asked, drawing my attention back to her perfect face. “Can we sit?” My obvious deflection didn’t go unnoticed, but she nodded and sat on the far edge of her couch. I took the other end, and then stared at the open newspaper on her coffee table. The classifieds. I swallowed against the rush of emotion and met her eyes. “I’ve had a lot of time to think the last few weeks. About you and me, and us. Mostly about you though. About how much you fascinated me, from the very first night.” Ruby looked down at her lap, at her folded hands and kept listening. The shiny strands of dark hair fell over her shoulders and curtained her face from me. But she was listening. It was all that mattered. “I won’t lie and say that your looks, the way we fit so well together wasn’t part

of it at first. It was. But that’s only a fraction of it, Ruby.” I took a deep breath and pulled the paper from my shirt pocket and handed it to her. She looked up in surprise and took it. “What’s this?” she asked quietly, staring at the folded paper. “Open it.” The muscle on her jaw popped when she clenched her teeth together, but she did. Her eyebrows creased as she read, then she covered her mouth with one hand. “Elias,” she whispered. “I can’t accept this.” “Yes, you can.” The ticket voucher was for a round trip flight to Lyon, France so she could see the chapel on top of the volcano. If I hadn’t needed to go home to purchase it for her, I would’ve come straight to her apartment after meeting with Lenore. “I want you to go see it.” “Why?” Her voice was thick with tears. When she lifted her eyes, they shone, and it made my heart crack around the edges. I shifted closer and laid a hand over one of hers. She let me keep it there. “You talked before about how powerful it was, seeing these places that people risked their lives to build. To bring each brick and stone up in order to have a place to worship.” I smiled at her. “It’s selfish, actually. Why I want you to go.” She shook her head, clearly confused. One tear spilled down her cheek, and as gently as I could, I reached out to wipe it away with my thumb. “I want you to see this testament to unwavering faith. Because that’s what I have in you. Have in us. And when you come back, I hope it’s because you know, without one single doubt, that you can believe in me. Believe in us. Can you do that for me?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Jesus,” I said, pressing a hand to my stomach to quiet the butterflies that tickled my belly. “Actually, you can call me Elias.” I was so overcome with emotion that I laughed, and pressed the back of my hand to my forehead. It was easily the most romantic moment of my life, and all I could do was laugh. “I’ll be honest here, Ruby. I’m not sure how to take your laughing.” I went from confusion to understanding to humor and to the deepest form of love I’d ever felt in my entire life, before oscillating back around. I couldn’t not touch him, so I cupped my hand over his, as he cupped my face. “I’m sorry,” I told him earnestly. “But you’re making me laugh, when I’m already experiencing such a serious synthesis of emotion.” He shook his head and his fingers cupping my face tightened imperceptibly. “And that’s one of the many things I love about you—that giant head of yours and how you speak in tongue twisters.” Love. Elias loved me. The awe of knowing—of hearing—that he loved me made my eyes fill again. At my look, Elias continued. “Yeah, that’s right. I love you.” He cupped the other side of my face with his hand. “I fucking love you, Ruby. And I’m willing to do anything for you right now, including buying you a plane ticket so you can visit one of the places I know you’re desperate to visit. Even though that means sending you thousands of miles away from me.” I glanced at the folded paper in my hands and saw that it said just one passenger. “You bought me my own ticket?” “I didn’t want to buy one for myself, just in case you wanted to go alone. This trip isn’t about me, it’s about you.” Nodding, my hand slid from his and I stood to look at the paper, turning my body at an angle away from him as I stared at it. I wasn’t reading as much as gathering my thoughts, and I didn’t think I could do that with him touching me. I was hopelessly, desperately, in love with Elias. I wasn’t an escort anymore, merely a professional student with a mountain of student debt to my name.

And he loved me. Without turning to him, I said, “I’m not an escort anymore.” “I know.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “How do you know?” “Stella told me.” “When did she tell you?” For some reason, the answer was incredibly important to me. “Right after she’d given me your address.” I didn’t realize until that moment that I’d had a noose around my heart. Hearing him say that had caused it to loosen considerably. “So you were going to come to me anyway?” “Of course I was.” He ran a hand over his hair, leaving it a mess. “Do you think I give a fuck that you were an escort?” “It would bother some men.” “It would be pretty callous of me to limit my feelings for you simply because you’re an escort—especially because that’s the only way I had the fortune of meeting you.” He seemed helpless as he stood and tucked his hands into his pockets again, like he was restless with me on the other side of the room. “I would have tried to get you to leave, of course, because there’s no fucking way I’d be cool with any other man touching you if you were mine.” “I had a date, a week ago.” I watched a vein in his neck jump. “Oh yeah?” Nodding, I walked past him and placed the paper on my bar top, smoothed it flat. “He was very handsome, well-traveled, educated.” The burn of Elias’ gaze was like a brand upon my skin, an insignia that told the world in bold, capital letters, that I was his. “And?” he asked, impatiently. A small smile curved my mouth as I turned to face him fully. “And I realized in less than five minutes that I couldn’t let another man near me without feeling like I was betraying you. Which is why I quit.” We were three steps away from one another, a distance that felt like it was shrinking by the second. So I had to get everything off my chest, before either of us closed the gap and made any type of commitment to one another. “Look,” I began, swallowing. “At the moment I’m, by New York standards, poor. I’m a career student, with a mountain of student loans that won’t be getting a substantial monthly payment towards the principal now that I’m unemployed.” I waved a hand at the classifieds I’d been studying when he showed up. “I’m grossly under qualified for any type of career at the moment, and though I’m not too good to sling burgers, it won’t do a thing to help support my living expenses and also pay toward my student loans.” I folded my hands together in front of myself. “Being an escort was the only reason I could afford to live alone.” “Why are you telling me this?” “Because you have your shit together. You have a career, your own place. And no

matter how I feel about you, the fact remains that I come with baggage and complications. It’s not fair of me to saddle you with those.” “Before we get into that, how about you tell me just how you feel about me?” I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with all the courage I could muster. “I’m in love with you, Elias.” He closed the gap in two steps and hauled me into his arms before I could take my next breath. “Then the rest doesn’t matter.” He pulled back and pressed his lips to mine, kissing me hard enough to rob me of any objections to what he’d said. He pulled away and pushed the hair from my face as he stared into my eyes. “I don’t fucking care, Ruby. I don’t care if you’re poor in money, because you’re rich in everything that matters to me.” “My lease is up in two months, and I won’t be able to renew it,” I told him, holding onto him to give me strength. “I’ll have to find a roommate wherever that’s convenient, which will make things inconvenient for us.” “Then you’ll move in with me.” I shook my head in protest. “I can’t move in with you.” “Technically, you can. But you don’t have to move in with me right away. We can wait until your lease is up, and then, if you’re ready, we can resume our arrangement from before.” I furrowed my brow in question. “Our arrangement?” “Right. You’ll be at my beck and call, only this time we won’t call ourselves ‘escort’ or ‘client’ unless you feel like role-playing. I’m not opposed to roleplaying.” He waggled an eyebrow at me and I couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know, Elias. It’s too soon.” “It won’t be in two months. Besides, who says it’s too soon? Let’s be real clear here—we began our relationship in a very untraditional way. So, fuck the rules. Let’s just do what feels right.” I nibbled on my lip as I thought, until his thumb pressed down on the skin under my bottom lip, loosening it from my teeth. “Hear me out. You can live with me and finish your master’s. I’ll get you in touch with my professor—the one I told you could help you plan what to do when you finish. And we’ll go from there.” “You’ll hate having me around all the time,” I said, trying to come up with any excuse not to move in with him. If I were being honest with myself, all of my excuses sounded pathetic even to me. “The fuck I will,” he barked, and slid his hands down to cup my ass and lifted me onto the counter. “Besides, I’ll be traveling a lot this fall—so I won’t be around to distract you as much from your studies. It’ll be like you’re on your own a lot of the time, with the added benefit of reunion sex every time I come home.” He stepped right between my legs, pressing his erection against me. “I meant what I said, Ruby. I don’t give a fuck about anything as long as it means you’re mine.” He pressed his forehead against mine and squeezed my waist with his hands. “You’ve made me a different man, Ruby. A man less angry. I still haven’t fully

accepted my sister’s death, but you’ve given me so much to think about. Perspective.” He kissed my forehead and let out a sigh. “You’ve given me tremendous perspective. You’re one hell of a package.” I speared my hands through his hair, curling my fingers so that my nails bit gently into his skull. “Then there’s only one thing left to discuss.” “What’s that?” I let go of him to grab the folded paper and opened it up again. “This says one passenger. But I don’t want to go without you.” “I’ll book my ticket right now,” he said, but then paused and narrowed his dark eyes on me. The look was so intense, I nearly shivered. “Fuck it, I’ll book it as soon as I’ve worn you out. The last three weeks have been fucking brutal and all I want is to be inside of you right now.” I squirmed at that and pressed an enthusiastic kiss against his lips. “Lay back, Ruby.” I did as he asked, and twitched a little when my skin met the cool counter. His hands came to my waist and a second later, my pants and panties were in a pile on the floor beside me. The cool air caressed my pussy right before Elias pressed his large, warm palm to it and put pressure on me. I arched from the contact and my body responded immediately to his touch. He wrapped his hands under my thighs and yanked me down the counter toward him before he shoved my shirt up over my breasts and yanked down the cup of my bra. His hand covered my breast and squeezed and I closed my eyes. Impatience surged through me and I gripped his arm before opening my eyes. “I don’t want to go slow,” I told him, desperate to feel him inside of me again, desperate for my first release in weeks. Weeks sounded like an eternity since I’d first found myself under Elias. “We can go slow later,” he agreed, and I heard the satisfying sound of his zipper yanking down. When I saw the glint of his foil packet, I shook my head. “I don’t want a condom this time. I’m on birth control, and I know you’re clean.” The heat in his eyes was as seductive as a touch. I watched as he flicked the condom over his shoulder, where it plopped on the floor with hardly a noise. He put two fingers in his mouth and sucked on them. I watched him curiously as he pulled them from his mouth and pressed them just at the tight circle of my cunt, just circling. He dipped them just inside and spread them apart before sliding them all the way in. The deep stretching was hot, and started the build of an orgasm already. When he curled his fingers and pressed against the front wall of my pussy, I let out a moan. “Keep that up and I’ll be done quickly,” I said when I could breathe again. “You’re not even close to done,” he promised as he pressed the head of his cock at my entrance. Knowing I was seconds away from having him inside me caused my hold on his shoulders to soften. But he didn’t move for a long moment, waiting until I was looking him in the eyes. “After this, I’m taking you to my place,” he

pressed himself an inch inside of me, causing me to wiggle to get him deeper, “because when you move in with me, you’ll be at my beck and call, permanently. And we might as well practice now.” “I’m game to practice.” He slid an inch deeper and I groaned, trying to slide further down the counter. “Fuck me, Elias, please,” I begged, lifting my hips to encourage him to slide all the way in. “I’m going to,” he assured me, right before he thrusted all the way and spots dotted my vision. Over and over, he pounded into me, and I met him thrust for thrust until my orgasm blindsided me, sending me careening over the edge. He followed me, letting out a low moan as he bit down on my shoulder. My hands rubbed soothingly down his spine as he breathed against my neck. “I missed this,” I told him while he was still inside of me. He turned his head and kissed my neck. “I missed it too. And as soon as I can feel my legs, I’m going to bring you to my home to do it all over again.” “And then buy your ticket to join me in France.” “Yes.” He lifted his head and dropped his chin to my chest, looking up at me through weary, but sated eyes. “And whatever comes after, we’ll figure it out together.” I smiled, and brushed my hand over his hair. “Because I’ll be at your beck and call?” “Exactly.” He kissed my chest, and sighed along my skin. For the first time in a long time, I saw a future outlined for me—a future that wasn’t abstract. I didn’t know what I’d be doing five years from now; whether or not I’d have a career. I might still be a student, still ticking away at my student loans. I didn’t know if I’d find and subscribe to any one faith; if my studies would lead me to any God in particular. Those things were still unknown, but the one thing I was absolutely sure of was that somehow, someway, I’d have Elias by my side through it all.

EPILOGUE

Two years later “You ready yet? Plane won’t wait for us,” I called down the hallway to our bedroom, but settled onto the couch because I damn well knew she wasn’t ready yet. “Almost! I can’t find my passport.” I smiled, looking over at the coffee table, where it had been sitting for the last three days. Ruby and I had been to fourteen countries in the last year. Half for my job, and half for hers. When it came time to work on her thesis, Ruby (with the help of her advisor) decided on Religion and Sex: A Study on Sexual Frequency, Religious Affiliation and Moral Relativism. It was a hit with the panel. So much so that one of them suggested she write a book on it. Which she did. With the help of the professor that I’d suggested Ruby talk with so long ago, she now did guest teaching at universities all over the world. Last month we’d been in Ireland, so she could do a class at Trinity College Dublin. So far, it had been one of her favorite places to visit. Of course, she said that with every new country we went to. And every time we came back home, to the apartment that she’d moved into with me not long after our trip to the south of France, she said that home was her favorite place. I tended to agree. We’d probably always want to travel. It wasn’t in my nature to stay sedentary, and Ruby had officially been bitten by the travel bug, so we’d committed to at least two trips a year that weren’t work related. She didn’t know it yet, but I’d booked our tickets to go to New Zealand a month after we returned from Hong Kong, which was where we were headed now for one of my assignments. My parents thought we were insane for how much we were overseas, but they said it with smiles on their faces, since bringing Ruby home with me three weeks after we officially became a couple seemed to rank as one of the best days of their lives. “Marry that girl before she comes to her senses,” my mom whispered to me the last time we were there for dinner, which was now a biweekly thing, thanks to Ruby. “She’s too good for you, sweetheart.” “Gee, thanks,” I’d said back. But I couldn’t disagree.

Ruby’s heeled boots clicked down the wooden floor and I grinned when she came around the corner, fidgeting with one of her big hoop earrings. Definitely too good for me. These were the days where it was almost impossible for us to leave the house, because I still had a hard time keeping my hands off of her. The black boots came up over her knees, and she had light colored jeans plastered over her slim, long legs. Her black sweater wrapped tightly over her luscious tits, showing off enough of the curves that my mouth watered. “Come here,” I said quietly, spreading my arms over the back of the couch. She did, taking slow, measured steps that made her hips sway. When she was standing in between my open legs, she smiled down at me. “Don’t we have to leave?” I shook my head. “Flight doesn’t leave for another three hours.” Ruby scoffed, but her eyes were bright. “You lied to me?” “Not lied,” I said, sitting up to slide my hands around her ass. “Made a strategic decision. Because I knew you’d lose your passport and I knew I’d want to put my hands on you.” She hummed and straddled my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck and smiled into my kiss. My hands slid through the slippery strands of her hair and I gripped it so I could angle her head to the side. While I kissed down her neck and leaned to bite the swells of her breasts, Ruby gasped out my name. “Do you think this will ever fade for us?” I lifted my head. “Will what fade?” “This.” She traced the edge of my nose, followed the line of my lips. “How much we want each other.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Baby, the only thing that will change for us is that someday, you’ll have my last name.” “Oh yeah?” She lifted an eyebrow and rocked herself over my erection. “You going to make that happen any time soon?” “Patience,” I whispered and brought her mouth back to mine so I could sip at her lips. “Fuck patience,” she whispered back. I laughed into her mouth, still hardly recognizing the lightness that she’d brought into my soul. Diana would have loved her. We talked about that every once in a while, and that was the other thing Ruby had brought me, the belief that everything happened for a reason. “I love you.” She pulled her face back and smiled at my softly spoken words. I said it to her all the time, as if the more times I said it, the more power the words held. “I love you, too.” When I wrapped her in my arms and I felt her sigh contentedly in my ear, I couldn’t help but marvel at the last thing she’d given me. The biggest thing, besides her love.

She’d given me peace. And a hope for the future. “The other thing that will change,” I said, leaning back so I could spread my hand over her flat belly, “is that someday, I’m gonna knock you the fuck up. Watch you get big with my baby.” She laughed and cupped the side of my face. “Such a man thing to say,” she teased. “Your man.” Ruby nodded and kissed me again. “My man,” she whispered against my lips.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my parents, may you continue to believe that I’m paying off my student loans the old-fashioned way. Thank you to my beta readers: Christina, for your honesty and enthusiasm; Leigh, for your attention to detail; Anna, for reading even when you didn’t have the time. To Najla, for having an eye for design and color, and knowing how font, color, tone, and texture all work together in a way so brilliant, it shines. To Jade, with The Write Assistants. I couldn’t do this without your assistance. This book would look like a kindergartener stapled some pages together without your exceptional talent. Thank you for your patience. To Jena, with Indie Girl Promotions. You are thorough and competent and professional. You put Tempting on the map. You’re phenomenal. Thank you. To the number of bloggers who have gone above and beyond: Paula, Candi, and Ang of The Dirty Laundry Review. For having me takeover and for supporting every book. Thank you. Angie with Angie and Jessica’s Dreamy Reads. Your enthusiasm for my books is unbelievable. May you never lose your gift for evoking emotion with your words. I appreciate every second of time you spend on my books, and I hope you know how valued you are. The many bloggers who message me, who host reviews – I am so grateful for the time you take away from your life in order to give to others, like myself. To Lex Martin, an author I’m indebted to, thank you for following my work and supporting it so passionately. You’re warm and genuine, in an industry where it actually means something. To Kate. Because you’re luminous. Through and through. And finally, to the reader. Thank you for purchasing this novel, for the support you give all my novels. I know I wouldn’t continue to do this were it not for you.

OTHER BOOKS BY ALEX LUCIAN Book One: Tempting A romance between a college student named Adele and her hot professor, Nathan, that is much deeper than just the forbidden aspect of their relationship. Buy it here Book Two: Beguiling A romance about Leo, the all-star quarterback, and his pain-in-the-ass, preacher’s daughter neighbor, Scarlet whose bucket list will make their summer fly by a little bit faster. Buy it here Book Three: Provocative The continuation and conclusion to Adele and Nathan’s tumultuous romance. Buy it here Book Four: Addicted Elias, a man haunted by his beloved sister’s death, hires an escort named Ruby who is much more than she seems. Buy it here

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