Megan Hart
Switch

www.spice-books.co.uk

To my trusted crit partners, you know who you are.

To my family, for your support and love.

To my readers—without you, I’d have no success. Thank you.

I don’t write books without music. My thanks to the artists and musicians who make it possible for me to sit at my computer day after day and make worlds and the people who populate them. Please support their work through legal sources.

Don McLean, “Empty Chairs”; Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, “It Ain’t Me, Babe”; Joshua Radin, “Closer”; Justin King, “Same Mistakes”; Lifehouse, “Whatever It Takes”; Meredith Brooks, “What Would Happen”; Rufus Wainwright, “Hallelujah”; Sarah Bareilles, “Gravity”; Schuyler Fisk, “Lying to You”; She Wants Revenge, “These Things”; Tim Curry, “S.O.S.”

Chapter 01

Sometimes, you look back.

He was coming out. I was going in. We moved by each other, ships passing without fanfare the way hundreds of strangers pass every day. The moment didn’t last longer than it took to see a bush of dark, messy hair and a flash of dark eyes. I registered his clothes first, the khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Then his height and the breadth of his shoulders. I became aware of him in the span of a few seconds the way men and women have of noticing each other, and I swiveled on the pointed toe of my kitten-heel pumps and followed him with my gaze until the door of the Speckled Toad closed behind me.

“Want me to wait?”

“Huh?” I looked at Kira, who’d gone ahead of me. “For what?”

“For you to go back after the dude who just gave you whiplash.” She smirked and gestured, but I couldn’t see him anymore, not even through the glass.

I’d known Kira since tenth grade, when we bonded over our mutual love for a senior boy named Todd Browning. We’d had a lot in common back then. Bad hair, miserable taste in clothes and a fondness for too much black eyeliner. We’d been friends back then, but I wasn’t sure what to call her now.

I turned toward the center of the shop. “Shut up. I barely noticed him.”

“If you say so.” Kira tended to drift, and now she wandered toward a shelf of knickknacks that were nothing like anything I’d ever buy. She lifted one, a stuffed frog holding a heart in its feet. The heart had MOM embroidered on it in sparkly letters. “What about this?”

“Nice bling. But no, on so many levels. I do have half a mind to get her one of these, though.” I turned to a shelf of porcelain clowns.

“Jesus. She’d hate one of those. I dare you to buy it.” Kira snorted laughter.

I laughed, too. I was trying to find a birthday present for my father’s wife. The woman wouldn’t own her real age and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her “twenty-ninth” along with the appropriate coy smirks, but she sure didn’t mind raking in the loot. Nothing I bought would impress her, and yet I was unrelentingly determined to buy her something perfect.

“If they weren’t so expensive, I might think about it. She collects that Limoges stuff. Who knows? She might really dig a ceramic clown.” I touched the umbrella of one tightrope-balancing monstrosity.

Kira had met Stella a handful of times and neither had been impressed with the other. “Yeah, right. I’m going to check out the magazines.”

I murmured a reply and kept up my search. Miriam Levy, the owner of the Speckled Toad, stocks an array of decorative items, but that wasn’t really why I was there. I could have gone anyplace to find Stella a present. Hell, she’d have loved a gift card to Neiman Marcus, even if she’d have sniffed at the amount I could afford. I didn’t come to Miriam’s shop for the porcelain clowns, or even because it was a convenient half a block from Riverview Manor, where I lived.

No. I came to Miriam’s shop for the paper.

Parchment, hand-cut greeting cards, notebooks, pads of exquisite, delicate paper thin as tissue, stationery meant for fountain pens and thick, sturdy cardboard capable of enduring any torture. Paper in all colors and sizes, each individually perfect and unique, just right for writing love notes and breakup letters and condolences and poetry, with not a single box of plain white computer printer paper to be found. Miriam won’t stock anything so plebian.

I have a bit of a stationery fetish. I collect paper, pens, note cards. Set me loose in an office-supply store and I can spend more hours and money than most women can drop on shoes. I love the way good ink smells on expensive paper. I love the way a heavy, linen note card feels in my fingers. Most of all, I love the way a blank sheet of paper looks when it’s waiting to be written on. Anything can happen in those moments before you put pen to paper.

The best part about the Speckled Toad is that Miriam sells her paper by the sheet as well as by the package and the ream. My collection of papers includes some of creamy linen with watermarks, some handmade from flower pulp, some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I have pens of every color and weight, most of them inexpensive but with something—the ink or the color—that appealed to me. I’ve collected my paper and my pens for years from antique shops, close-out bins, thrift shops. Discovering the Speckled Toad was like finding my own personal nirvana.

I always intend to use what I buy for something important. Worthwhile. Love letters written with a pen that curves into my palm just so and tied with crimson ribbon, sealed with scarlet wax. I buy them, I love them, but I hardly ever write on them. Even anonymous love letters need a recipient…and I didn’t have a lover.

Then again, who writes anymore? Cell phones, instant messaging and the Internet have made letter writing obsolete, or nearly so. There’s something powerful, though, about a handwritten note. Something personal and aching to be profound. Something more than a half-scribbled grocery list or a scrawled signature on a premade greeting card. Something I would probably never write, I thought as I ran my fingers over the silken edge of a pad of Victorian-embossed writing paper.

“Hey, Paige. How’s it going?” Miriam’s grandson Ari shifted the packages in his arms to the floor behind the counter, then disappeared and popped back up like a jack-in-the-box.

“Ari, dear. I have another delivery for you.” Miriam appeared from the curtained doorway behind the front counter and looked over her half-glasses at him. “Right away. Don’t take two hours like you did the last time.”

He rolled his eyes but took the envelope from her and kissed her cheek. “Yes, Bubbe.”

“Good boy. Now, Paige. What can I do for you today?” Miriam watched him go with a fond smile before turning to me. She was impeccably made up as usual, not a hair out of place or a smudge to her lipstick. Miriam is a true grande dame, at least seventy, and with a style few women can pull off at any age.

“I need a gift for my father’s wife.”

“Ah.” Miriam inclined her head delicately to the left. “I’m sure you’ll find the perfect gift. But if you need any help, let me know.”

“Thanks.” I’d been in often enough for her to know I liked to wander and browse.

After twenty minutes in which I’d caressed and perused the new shipment of fine writing papers and expensive pens I couldn’t afford no matter how much I desperately wanted one, Kira found me in the back room.

“Okay, Indiana Jones, what are you looking for? The Lost Ark?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.” I gave her a look.

Kira rolled her eyes. “Oh, let’s just go to the mall. You know Stella won’t care what you give her.”

“But I care.” I couldn’t explain how important it was to…well, not impress Stella. I could never impress her. To not disappoint her. To not prove her right about me. That was all I wanted to do. To not prove her right.

“You’re so stubborn sometimes.”

“It’s called determination,” I murmured as I looked one last time at the shelf in front of me.

“It’s called stubborn as hell and refusing to admit it. I’ll be outside.”

I barely glanced up as she left. I’d known Kira’s attention span wouldn’t make her the best companion for this trip, but I’d put off buying Stella’s gift for too long. I hadn’t seen much of Kira since I’d moved away from our hometown to Harrisburg. Actually, I hadn’t seen much of her even before that. When she’d called to see if I wanted to get together I hadn’t been able to think of a reason to say no that wouldn’t make me sound like a total douche. She’d be content outside smoking a cigarette or two, so I turned my attention back to the search, determined to find just the right thing.

Over the years I’d discovered it wasn’t necessarily the gift itself that won Stella’s approval, but something even less tangible than the price. My father gave her everything she wanted, and what she didn’t get from him she bought for herself, so buying her something she wanted or needed was impossible. Gretchen and Steve, my dad’s kids with his first wife, Tara, took the lazy route of having their kids make her something like a finger-painted card. Stella’s own two boys were still young enough not to care. My half siblings got off the gift-giving hook with their haphazard efforts when I’d be held to a higher standard.

There is always something to be gained from being held to the higher standard.

Now I looked, hard, thinking about what would be just right. Don’t get me wrong. She’s not a bad person, my father’s wife. She never went out of her way to make me part of their family the way she had with Gretchen and Steven, and I surely didn’t rank as high in her sight as her sons Jeremy and Tyler. But my half siblings had all lived with my dad. I never had.

Then I saw it. The perfect gift. I took the box from the shelf and opened the top. Inside, nestled on deep blue tissue paper, lay a package of pale blue note cards. In the lower right corner of each glittered a stylized S surrounded by a design of subtly sparkling stars. The envelopes had the same starry design, the paper woven with silver threads to make it shine. A pen rested inside the box, too. I took it out. It was too light and the tiny tassel at the end made it too casual, but this wasn’t for me. It was the perfect pen for salon-manicured fingers writing thank-you cards in which all the i’s were dotted by tiny hearts. It was the perfect pen for Stella.

“Ah, so you found something.” Miriam took the box from me and carefully peeled away the price sticker from beneath. “Very nice choice. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“I hope so.” I thought she would, too, but didn’t want to jinx myself.

“You always know exactly what someone needs, don’t you?” Miriam smiled as she slipped the box into a pretty bag and added a ribbon, no extra charge.

I laughed. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“You do,” she said firmly. “I remember my customers, you know. I pay attention. There are many who come in here looking for something and don’t find it. You always do.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing,” I told her, paying for the cards with a pair of crisp bills fresh out of the ATM.

Miriam gave me a look over her glasses. “Isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer. How does anyone know if they know what they’re doing is right? Until it’s too late to change things, anyway.

“Sometimes, Paige, we think we know very well what someone wants, or needs. But then—” she sighed, holding out a package of pretty stationery in a box with a clear plastic lid “—we discover we are wrong. I’d put this aside for one of my regular customers, but he didn’t care for it, after all.”

“Too bad. I’m sure someone else will.” I wasn’t surprised a man didn’t want the paper. Embossed with gilt-edged flowers, it seemed a little too feminine for a dude.

Miriam’s gaze sharpened. “You, perhaps?”

I waved the flowered paper aside and shoved my hands in my back pockets as I looked around the shop. “Not really my style.”

She laughed and set the box aside. She’d painted her nails scarlet to match her lipstick. I hoped when I was her age I’d be half as stylish. Hell. I hoped to be half as stylish tomorrow.

“Now, how about something for yourself? I have some new notebooks right here. Suede finish. Gilt-edged pages. Tied closed with a ribbon,” she wheedled, pointing to the end-cap display. “Come and see.”

I groaned good-naturedly. “You’re heartless, you know that? You know all you have to do is show me…oh. Ohhh.”

“Pretty, yes?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t looking at notebooks, but at a red, lacquered box with a ribbon-hinged lid. A purple-and-blue dragonfly design etched the polished wood. “What’s this?”

I stroked the smooth lid and opened it. Inside, nestled on black satin, rested a small clay dish, a small container of red ink and a set of wood-handled brushes.

“Oh, that’s a calligraphy set.” Miriam came around the counter to look at it with me. “Chinese. But this one is special. It comes with paper and a set of pens, not just brushes and ink.”

She showed me by lifting the box’s bottom to reveal a sheaf of paper crisscrossed with a crimson ribbon and a set of brassnibbed pens in a red satin bag with a drawstring.

“It’s gorgeous.” I took my hands away, though I wanted to touch the pens, the ink, the paper.

“Just what you need, yes?” Miriam went around the counter to sit on her stool. “Perfect for you.”

I checked the price and closed the box’s lid firmly. “Yes. But not today.”

“No?” Miriam tutted. “Why is it you know so well what everyone else needs, but not yourself? Such a shame, Paige. You should buy it.”

I could pay my cell phone bill for the price of that box. I shook my head, then cocked it to look at her. “Why are you so convinced I know what everyone else needs? That’s a pretty broad statement.”

Miriam tore the wrapper off a package of mints and put one into her mouth. She sucked gently for a moment before answering. “You’ve been a good customer. I’ve seen you buy gifts, and sometimes things for yourself. I like to think I know people. What they need and like. Why do you think I have such atrocities on my shelves? Because people want them.”

I followed her gaze to the shelf holding more porcelain clowns. “Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it.”

“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should deny yourself the pleasure,” Miriam said serenely. “Buy yourself that box. You deserve it.”

“I have nothing to write with it!”

“Letters to a sweetheart,” she suggested.

“I don’t have a sweetheart.” I shook my head again. “Sorry, Miriam. Can’t do it now. Maybe some other time.”

She sighed. “Fine, fine. Deny yourself the pleasure of something pretty. You think that’s what you need?”

“I think I need to pay my bills before I can buy luxuries, that’s what I think.”

“Ah. Sensible.” She inclined her head. “Practical. Not very romantic. That’s you.”

“You can tell all that from the kind of paper I buy?” I put my hands on my hips to stare at her. “C’mon.”

Miriam shrugged, and it was easy to see how she must have been as a young woman. Stubborn, graceful, beautiful. “I can tell it by the paper you don’t buy. When you’re an old lady, you’ll be wise like me, too.”

“I hope so.” I laughed.

“I hope you’ll come back and buy yourself that box. It’s meant for you, Paige.”

“I’ll definitely think about it. Okay? Is that good enough?”

“If you buy the paper,” Miriam told me, “I guarantee you’ll find something worth writing in it.”

Chapter 02

Shall we begin?

This is your first list.

You will follow each instruction perfectly. There is no margin for error. The penalty for failure is dismissal.

Your reward will be my attention and command.

You will write a list of ten. Five flaws. Five strengths.

Deliver them promptly to the address below.

The square envelope in my hand bore the faint ridges of really expensive paper and no glue on the flap, like the reply envelope included with an invitation. I turned the heavy, cream-colored card that had been inside it over and over in my fingers. It felt like high-grade linen. Also expensive. I fingered the slightly rough edge along one side. Custom cut, maybe, from a larger sheet. Not quite heavy enough to be a note card, but too thick to use in a computer printer.

I lifted the envelope to my face and sniffed it. A faint, musky perfume clung to the paper, which was smooth but also porous. I couldn’t identify the scent, but it mingled with the aroma of expensive ink and new paper until my head wanted to spin.

I touched the black, looping letters. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the letter bore no signature. Each word had been formed carefully, each letter precisely drawn, without the careless loops, ticks and whorls that marked most people’s writing. This looked practiced and efficient. Faceless.

The paper listed a post-office box at one of the local branch offices, and that was it. Since moving into Riverview Manor five months ago, I’d received a few advertising circulars, requests for charitable donations addressed to two different former tenants and way too many bills. I hadn’t had any personal mail at all. I turned the card over again, listening to the soft sigh of the paper on my skin. It didn’t have a name or address on the front. Only a number, scrawled in the same languid hand as the note. I looked closer, seeing what in my haste I hadn’t noticed before.

114

That explained it, then. This note wasn’t for me at all. The ink had smeared a little, turning the one into a passable version of a four, if you weren’t paying close attention. Someone had stuffed this into my mailbox, 414, by mistake.

At least it wasn’t another baby shower or wedding invitation from “friends” I hadn’t seen in the past few years. I wasn’t a fan of being put on a loot-gathering mailing list just because once upon a time we’d been in a math class together.

“What’s that?” Kira had come up behind me in a cloud of cigarette odor and now dug her chin into my shoulder.

I don’t know why I didn’t want to show her, but I closed the card and slipped it back into the envelope, then found the right mailbox and shoved it through the slot. I peeked into the glass window and saw it resting inside the metal cave, slim and single and alone.

“Nothing. It wasn’t for me.”

“C’mon then, whore. Let’s get upstairs. We have a threesome with Jose, Jack and Jim.” She held up the clanking paper grocery sack containing the bottles.

Every woman should have a slutty friend. The one who makes her feel better about herself. Because no matter how drunk she got the night before, or how many guys she made out with at that party, or how short her skirt is, that slutty friend will always have been…well…sluttier.

Kira and I had traded that role back and forth over the years, a fact I would never be proud of but couldn’t hide. “It’s not even eight o’clock. Things don’t start jumping until at least eleven.”

“Which is why I stopped at the liquor store.” She looked around the lobby and raised both eyebrows. “Wow. Nice.”

I looked, too. I always did, even though I’d memorized nearly every tile in the floor. “Thanks. C’mon, let’s grab the elevator.”

She had to have been as equally impressed with my apartment, but she didn’t say so. She swept through it, opening cupboard doors and looking in my medicine cabinet, and when it came time to eat the subs we’d bought for dinner she made a show of setting my scarred kitchen table with real plates instead of paper. But she didn’t tell me it was nice.

It was almost like old times as we giggled over our food and watched reality TV at the same time. I hadn’t forgotten what a bizarre and hilarious sense of humor Kira had, but it had been a long time since I laughed so hard my stomach clenched into knots. I was suddenly glad I’d invited her over. There’s something nice about being with someone who already knows all your faults and likes you anyway…or at least doesn’t like you any less because of them.

She had a new boyfriend. Tony something-or-other, I didn’t recognize the name. Kira had never mentioned him in her text messages or occasional e-mails to me, but the way she dropped it casually into our conversation now meant she wanted me to ask about him.

“How long have you been going out?” I leveled a shot of Cuervo and studied it, not sure I wanted to take it. Once upon a time I’d been able to toss them back without fear of the consequences, but I hadn’t done much drinking lately. I pushed it toward her, instead.

Kira drank back the shot with a practiced gulp. “Since just after you moved. A long time.”

I didn’t feel as if it had been that long, but anything longer than three months was a record of sorts with her. “Good for you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Whatever. He’s good in bed and buys me shit. And he has a fucking awesome car. He’s got a job. He’s not a loser.”

“All good things.” I had slightly higher standards, or at least now I did, but I smiled at her description of him and wrapped up the papers from our food.

Kira got up to help me. “Yeah. I guess so. He’s a good guy.”

Which said more than anything else she had. I shot her a look. Times did change, I reminded myself. So did people.

When it came time to get ready to go out, though, the Kira I knew faked a gag. “Gawd, don’t wear that.”

I looked down at my low-rise jeans. They were boot cut. I had boots. I even had a cute cap-sleeved T-shirt. The hours of working out I’d been putting in lately were paying off. “What’s wrong with what I have on?”

Kira swung open my closet door and rummaged around inside. “Don’t you have anything…better?”

High school was a long time ago, I wanted to say, but looking at her short denim skirt and tight, belly-baring blouse, I figured my comment would be lost. I shrugged, instead.

“I know you have hotter clothes than that.” Kira reappeared from my closet with a handful of shirts and skirts I remembered buying but hadn’t worn in a long time. She tossed the clothes onto my bed, where they spread out in a month’s worth of outfits.

I picked up a silky tank top in a pretty shade of lavender and a stretchy black skirt. I held them up to myself in front of my full-length mirror. Then I put them back on the bed.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll wear what I’ve got on. It’s comfortable.”

Kira shook her head. “Oh, ew. Paige, c’mon.”

“Ew?” I looked at myself again. The jeans clung to my hips and ass just right, and my T-shirt emphasized how flat my stomach was becoming. I thought I looked pretty damn good. “What’s ew?”

“It’s just, you know…” Kira trailed off and pushed her way next to me to hog the reflection. “You gotta show off a little bit.”

I looked her over. Even in my stack-heeled boots, I stood a few inches shorter. She’d grown her natural red hair into long layers that fell halfway down her back. She never tanned, so her dark eyeliner looked extrablack and the fuck-me red lipstick even redder.

I looked in the mirror again, turning my chin to one side, then the other, to catch my profile. My hair’s blond. And it’s natural. My eyes are blue, but dark, almost navy. I look a lot like my dad, which is one reason, maybe, why he never bothered denying I was his.

“I think I look fine,” I told her, but the faint sound of longing slithered into my voice.

I spent my clothes budget on simple, brand-name pieces I picked up off-season or in discount stores. I’d spent the past few years building my wardrobe. Clothes for work and casual wear that looked expensive enough to pass as classy. I paired them with shoes I couldn’t always afford. I wasn’t going to be Clarice Starling, giving away my background with my good bag and my cheap shoes.

I looked again at my reflection and thought of the whisper of satin on my skin. Going without a bra, how my nipples would push at the fabric and force a man’s eyes straight to my breasts. Every man’s eyes.

I picked up the tank top again and held it up. I smoothed the fabric over my stomach. Kira gave me an approving nod and slung an arm around my shoulders and bumped me with her hip. “C’mon. You know you want to.”

I did want to. I wanted to go out and get shit-hammered drunk and dance and smoke and rub up on half a dozen boys. I wanted to feel a hot, hard body against mine and look for lust in a pair of eyes I didn’t know.

I wanted not to worry about proving anyone right about me.

I pulled my tank top over my head and after a second’s hesitation, unhooked my bra. The satin tank top slithered over my head and fell to my hips. My breasts swayed under the smooth fabric. My nipples tightened at once, and I shivered.

“Let me get you some makeup,” Kira said.

She lugged her huge purse over to me and pulled out pots and tubes and brushes and glitter. I love glitter. I hadn’t worn glitter in forever, either. No place for it here, in my new life.

“I’ll do it.” I wouldn’t dream of sharing makeup that had been on her face. No telling what germs could be passed on that way. I waved her away and went into my bathroom, where I rummaged beneath my sink.

I pulled out my own box of tricks and treats. Lipsticks in berry shades, eye shadows in rainbow hues. Lots and lots of half-used black-eyeliner sticks and a few bottles of liquid eyeliner. I shook one, thinking it must have dried up after all these years, but when I unscrewed the cap with its built-in brush, the makeup inside was still smooth.

I painted a mask. It looked just like me, only brighter. Bolder. More. Once, I’d worn this face every day. Once, it had been the only one I had.

My makeup finished, I squeezed into the tight black skirt. I left my legs bare. I’d be chilly on the walk from the parking garage to the bar, but hot enough inside once I started dancing. From my closet I pulled out a truly fucking fabulous pair of pumps.

Kira had been bent over her phone, fingers stabbing out messages, but her eyes widened and she reached for the shoes. “Oh, wow. Steve Madden!”

“First pair I ever bought.” I stroked the smooth black patent leather. Four-inch heels. Most men couldn’t have told the difference between a Steve Madden shoe and a Payless pump, but they looked twice when I wore them. Sometimes more than twice.

I slipped into the shoes and stood, adjusting to the way my center of balance shifted. My mother had taught me the art of how to walk in heels this high. I used to raid her closet as a kid and parade around the house in her shoes.

I smoothed the silky shirt over my belly and hips and turned around to look at myself one last time in the mirror. “Ready to go?”

“I guess so,” Kira said sullenly. “Except now you look awesome and I look like shit.”

“You look hot,” I promised. What were friends for?

She was convinced, more because she wanted to believe it than because I’d tried hard. “Okay, let’s go get shit-hammered!”

I saw him again, that dark-haired man. This time, he was coming in as I was going out. We passed each other not so much like two ships, as much as one ship passing while the other crashes into an iceberg. I couldn’t be offended that his gaze slid over and past me, taking in the short skirt and high heels without a second look. He had his head down and was talking urgently into his cell phone. He didn’t have attention to spare me. And it wasn’t his fault I was trying so hard to pretend I wasn’t looking back at him that I ran into the edge of the door frame hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax.” Kira smirked. She hadn’t even noticed it was the man from earlier that day. “Nice to see you can hold your tequila.”

I shrugged off the sting in my shoulder and didn’t reply. His sleeve had brushed my bare arm as he passed, and the hairs on it all the way up to the back of my neck had stood at that brief, simple touch. A slow, tumbling roll of sensation centered in my belly.

He lived in my building.

Chapter 03

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I saw a lot of River-view Manor tenants at Miriam’s shop, and in the Morning-star Mocha, the coffee shop at the end of our block. I ran into them in the post office and parking garage and at the grocery store, too. Harrisburg’s a small city.

Even so, I couldn’t shake the memory of those dark eyes, that thick, dark hair. The brush of a shirtsleeve on my bare skin. Fuck. I was horny, no two ways around it, and no wonder. It had been ages since I’d had sex with anyone but myself.

We had our choice of places downtown, but I wanted to go to the Pharmacy. We took a cab since I wouldn’t drive after drinking, and the walk that was fine on a Sunday afternoon in sweatpants would be too long to make at night in heels…and shit-hammered.

The bar was packed, even for a Friday night. We pushed through the crowd toward the bar, Kira leading. She stopped abruptly and I ran into her. Someone ran into me. Someone also grabbed my ass, but when I turned to see who it was and possibly haul off and smack the shit out of them, all I could see was an ocean of possible culprits.

“Hey, Jack,” Kira said, and I turned.

Shit. Jack had been the love of Kira’s life our senior year, when he transferred in from another school. She’d plotted and schemed for months to get him to ask her to the prom, determined to get in his pants. It hadn’t worked, so far as I knew. I only knew that once Kira had keyed one of his girlfriends’ cars.

Kira didn’t know Jack and I had fucked each other senseless for about two months straight a few years ago. I doubt either of us even cared anymore. But Kira would have, so I tried to pull her away before things could get ugly.

Besides, he wasn’t alone. The woman with him had a beer and she tipped it to her mouth, eyeing us with a smile. I yanked Kira’s elbow to pull her away.

“Ow,” she said when the crowd closed behind us, cutting off the view of him. “What did you do that for?”

“Don’t cause trouble,” I told her. “C’mon. Drinks.”

“I wasn’t going to cause trouble.” She frowned and tossed her hair, not caring she’d whacked some dude across the face with it. He looked pissed. Not the way I wanted to start the night.

“There will be other guys here,” I told her.

Kira just sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I know that.”

The Pharmacy was almost always a total sausage party—three guys for every girl, easy, and all of them horny and looking to hook up. Chivalry had nothing to do with them pulling out their wallets and plying us with booze. It was all about getting laid.

“Oh, look,” Kira said from beside me. “Talk about trouble.”

She was right. Trouble with a capital T. I stood taller in my sexy shoes and lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. “Hello, Austin.”

Once upon a time, Austin and I had fucked like tigers. I was willing to bet he still had the scars. I did.

“Paige.” His hair was longer, but he had the same grin, the one that parted thighs like the Red Sea. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

Austin wore a blue-striped shirt and faded jeans that hugged his ass just right and hung down, ragged, at the hems. Jeans like that should be outlawed on men like Austin. His buddy, some guy I didn’t know, wore an almost identical shirt, but with brown stripes. He didn’t look half as good.

Behind me, Kira dug her fingernails into the skin of my elbow. It stung, and I shook her off. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good.” His eyes shifted to Kira and back to me. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Haven’t been home,” I said, though home to me now was an apartment on Front Street, not a trailer or a rented house in Lebanon.

“Yeah. I know. Hey, Kira. I made it.”

My insides froze. I glared at her, but Kira gave me her best dumb look. “What?”

She’d told him we’d be here. I knew it. I could see it on both their faces, their conspiracy, and I wondered how he’d convinced her to tell him. I thought about walking out, and the only reason I didn’t was because he was looking at me. Not her.

Kira saw it, too, and she gave me a narrow-eyed glare. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have set this up purely to see the throw down between me and Austin, but I wasn’t going to do it. I was past those days. She rallied when Austin’s friend gave her a grin. It helped that he was cute. Not as cute as Austin, but then really, who was? Who had ever been?

“What’re you drinking?” Austin was already pulling out his wallet to pay.

I wasn’t going to turn down a free drink, not even from him. “Margarita.”

“I’ll take a Slow, Comfortable Screw.” Kira made sure to lean in close so he could hear her. Her lips brushed his ear.

Austin leaned away a little, not enough that Kira would notice. But I did. He introduced us both to his friend, Ethan, who managed to tear his gaze away from Kira’s tits long enough to nod toward me without a trace of recognition. Well, what had I expected him to do? Say, “Oh, so this is Paige?”

“So what are you up to now?” Austin asked me as Kira and Ethan eyed each other.

“I work for Kelly Printing.” The last time we spoke I’d still been finishing the degree I’d started when we were together and taking care of some rich couple’s kids. I didn’t ask him what he was doing, not for work and not here in Harrisburg. I didn’t want him to think I cared.

“What about your mom?” Austin moved closer, his arm on the bar. “She still working for Hershey? I haven’t been to the shop for a while.”

My mom owns a tiny sandwich shop she inherited from her dad when I was in high school. I’d worked in that shop almost my entire life, running errands as a kid then graduating to making subs and running the cash register. Now I only helped if she had a big order to fill and deliver, or a party to cater.

“She still has it. She was working for Hershey but got laid off.”

Austin nodded. “I’m working for McClaron and Sons.”

I had no idea who or what McClaron and Sons was, but the fact he was working for someone other than his dad surprised me into a reply. “What about your dad?”

Austin shrugged, then grimaced, and only because I’d once known him so well it had been like knowing myself did I catch his hesitation. “It was time I got out of that job.”

“But you’re doing the same thing, right? Construction?” Kira popped into the conversation and drew both our attentions.

“Yeah, and some other stuff,” Austin said, but didn’t elaborate.

Interesting. Austin had worked for his dad’s business the way I’d worked for my mom’s—summers and after school since he’d been old enough to carry a hammer. It had always been the assumption that he’d take over the business when his dad retired, and become a full partner some time before that. I’d figured he already was.

“What about you?” Kira sipped her drink, eyes on Ethan. For someone with a boyfriend, she certainly seemed interested in him, but then Kira was just one of those girls.

You know. The slutty ones.

“I’m a mechanic,” he said. “For Hershey.”

“Oh, that’s a good job!” Kira sidled in between Austin and Ethan.

“It is a good job,” Ethan agreed and drank from his cup while his eyes wandered everywhere on Kira’s body but her face.

It was so easy, really. They wanted to seduce us. We wanted to be seduced, for a few hours anyway. I knew what we looked like to them. Two girls in slinky outfits, sucking back drink after drink and letting the crowd push us closer and closer. There’s no such thing as social distance in bars. The music makes conversation impossible unless you lean across to shout in someone’s ear. The crush of people means you have to fight for your own small space, and sharing it doesn’t seem so bad after a drink or four.

When Austin’s hand ended up on my ass, I didn’t even blink. It felt good there. Heavy, warm. He had strong fingers to go along with those biceps. He smelled good. Drakkar Noir. Despite myself and everything that had happened with us before, I’d missed him.

Austin said into my ear, “Wanna dance?”

Our bodies had always worked just right together, whether we were dancing or fucking. I was ready for both. Leaving Ethan and Kira, he took my hand and pulled me up the stairs to the third floor, where the songs ran into one another without stopping and all sounded the same. We found a spot in the middle and started dancing.

The booze had made me soft and melty, but the music wasn’t. I wanted to slow dance. Austin wanted to grind. We compromised with a little hip action that brought us groin to groin, but when he tried to flip me around and get up on me in the back end, I pushed away with a smile.

“You don’t answer my messages,” Austin said.

It was easy to pretend I didn’t hear him with the music so loud. I smiled and shook my head. He took me by the arm, up high in the soft part that bruises easily. His fingers closed all the way around it.

He moved in to brush his lips against my ear. “I’ve really missed you.”

I inched away from him, but Austin grabbed my wrist just as a bazillion watts of supernova bright light lit the entire dance floor. Austin still looked good. I must not have looked like Frankenstein, because he reached to brush my hair from my forehead. He smiled again as the lights went down and the beat of the music started its rapid thump-thumping, the same as my heart.

It was different when he kissed me. I felt different. His mouth opened and I let him inside me. His tongue stroked mine as his hand came up to curl in my hair. He didn’t pull it, though my body tensed in anticipation.

Austin nuzzled at my earlobe. “You still taste the same.”

Fortunately, I remembered the reasons I’d broken off our relationship. Unfortunately, I still remembered all the reasons we’d ever hooked up. When Austin ran a fingertip down my bare arm along the sensitive inside flesh to press his fingertip just over the pulse at my wrist, I knew he felt the way my heart sped up at his touch. Time hadn’t changed that. Maybe it never would.

Maybe that was okay.

“Come home with me,” Austin said.

“It’s too far.” Forty minutes I’d have driven in a heartbeat back in the day, just to get in his pants. It wasn’t too far. Just too long.

“Paige,” Austin said with a grin like a shark. “I moved to Lemoyne.”

Just across the river. Fifteen minutes, tops, if you drove really slow or got stuck in traffic. The world fell out from under my fuck-me pumps, but Austin was there to catch me. The crowd moved and danced around us, but we stayed still. I looked deep into his blue, blue eyes, made bluer by the strobe lights.

“What the fuck,” I said evenly, “did you do that for?”

“New job,” he reminded. “Remember?”

I tried to recall if he’d said where McClaron and Sons was, and couldn’t. He should’ve told me, I thought, and hated myself for being irrationally angry. I tugged my arm from his grip. “I have to go check on Kira.”

“She’s fine. She’s with Ethan.”

I tried to level him with a glare, but I’d never been able to level Austin. He’d laid me out cold a thousand times with a look, but though I’d practiced and perfected my steely-eyed look of cold disdain, it slid off him like oil. I bit my lower lip and lifted my chin.

“If he’s anything like you, I’d better make sure she’s okay.”

“Paige.” Austin’s hand snagged my wrist. Pulled me close. “If she’s anything like you, she can handle him.”

The night it ended between us, we’d fucked up against the wall of our shitty, third-floor apartment on Cumberland Street in Lebanon. The red-blue lights of a cop car outside on the street had painted the ceiling and wall over our heads. He’d torn away my panties, tossed them to the side, used his body to pin mine to the wall while his hands held my ass.

I bore the marks of that last encounter on my back for a few weeks where a nail from a fallen picture had gouged me. I hadn’t noticed the pain or the blood while we were going at it. I never had found my panties.

It had ended but wasn’t over. The plain truth is, with a few drinks in me there was little chance of my resisting Austin. Not drunk. Not sober, either. Why else had I moved so far away?

“Hell, no,” Kira said when I found her downstairs and brought up the subject. She shook her head and looked over my shoulder to where I was sure Austin was watching. “You told me to never, never, never let you fuck him again!”

I made myself stare at her, not look back at him. “I know. But that was before.”

“Before what?” Kira’s lip curled.

“Before you thought it would be fun to invite him out with us. I haven’t talked to him in months. Since before I moved here. But now here he is.”

“And looking utterly fuckable.” Kira didn’t lose the sneer, but her gaze flickered back and forth to my face and over my shoulder. “You know, Paige, I’ve known him as long as you have. He moved up here, wanted to know where the good places to go were. I told him we were coming here. I didn’t know you were going to go home with him. I thought you were over him.”

“I am over him!” I looked over my shoulder and caught his gaze, then turned away with hot cheeks and fast-beating heart.

“Whatever.”

“I’ll give you my key.” I looked back at Austin, now bent in conversation with Ethan.

“Fuck, no. I’ll get Tony to come pick me up!” Kira shook her head and stumbled a little bit.

I reached to steady her and she clutched at my hand. “Will he come for you?”

“He will if I fucking tell him to.” Kira straightened, then swiped at her hair.

“I’ll wait with you until he comes.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Kira said, then slung her arm around my shoulder. “Paige. Don’t forget what happened.”

As if I ever could. “I’ll be fine!”

“Don’t let your pussy get you into trouble,” she continued, warning me off what she’d fallen prey to many times herself. “He made you cry.”

“Yeah.” I let Austin’s gaze catch mine when it turned toward me and didn’t look away. “Well, he won’t make me cry anymore.”

“He’ll always make you cry,” Kira said. “But go. Whatever. He’s got a magic cock. I get it.”

Remembering the times she’d left me stranded so she could go home with someone she met in a bar, I didn’t feel nearly as bad as she wanted me to. “I’ll wait until Tony gets here.”

I could do that, at least.

Going to Austin’s place was one thing, driving with him another. I wasn’t going to get in the car with him after he’d been drinking, for one, and for another, I wasn’t going to be stuck at his house without knowing for sure I’d be able to get home.

He grinned when I went over to him, but I fended off his kiss. “I have to wait for Kira to get picked up. I’ll meet you there.”

Austin pulled me close and nuzzled my neck exactly how he knew I liked it best. “Just come with me.”

“No.” I pushed him slightly away. Drunker, I’d have given in. More sober, I’m sure I’d have gone home alone. Stuck in this midway point where I wanted to taste him again and knowing lust is never as pretty the morning after, I shook my head. “I’ll meet you there. Give me the address.”

Maybe things were different, after all.

Austin kissed me again, harder, and this time I let him. He knew just how to do it, where to put his hands and his tongue and how to bump me with his groin to make my breath catch in my throat. My nipples throbbed, poking the silk of my shirt.

“Don’t take too long.” He stepped back, steady on his feet and not slurring his words. He reached as I turned and at the last moment, captured my wrist with his fingers. I let him tug me closer. “You’re not going to bail on me, are you? Like last time?”

Last time I hadn’t had Kira to remind me that I’d vowed never to go to bed with Austin again. Not that it was stopping me. Last time I’d called him just after two in the morning and told him I wanted to come over, but when I hung up the phone, good reason had won over the desire for his hands on me. That had been months ago, before I moved here.

“Are you still angry about that?”

“I wasn’t mad. Just disappointed. Do it again, I’ll be mad.” He grinned and dipped his head to kiss me but stopped short of my lips, just brushing them. “And disappointed.”

His blue eyes bore deep into mine, and for half a minute nothing else mattered. I felt Kira at my elbow, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I looked right into Austin’s eyes when I replied. “You won’t be.”

He let me go with another kiss and a nuzzle that sent shivers marching along every nerve. I found Kira waiting for me by the door. Oblivious to the crowd buffeting her, she held her place instead of stepping aside until I showed up to pull her by the elbow onto the sidewalk.

“You sure you’ll be all right?” The chilly night air had done a pretty good job of sobering me up, but I wasn’t reconsidering my rendezvous with Austin. At least not yet.

Kira nodded. “Fine.”

She didn’t look fine, she looked pissed off. I glanced out onto the street. Lots of cops. No cabs. I’d only turned away for a few seconds, but when I turned back to face her, Kira’s expression had turned stormy.

“You asshole!” She took a couple of steps forward, her heel catching on a crack in the sidewalk, and stumbled.

Jack.

With an inward sigh, I went after her. Jack was with the same woman from earlier and he did his best to ignore Kira. I saw him give his date a pained glance she answered with a shrug, and they started walking.

“Hey, Jack! Jackass! Don’t you walk away from me!”

“C’mon, Kira, don’t.” I didn’t blame him for ignoring her. I was a little less pleased he was also actively ignoring me, even though I knew it was really for the best, all around. “He’s not worth it!”

“Fuck you, Jack!” Kira couldn’t let it go, apparently.

Jack grimaced and pulled his cap from his back pocket. He put it on, but didn’t look at her. We hadn’t gone more than another few steps down the sidewalk when Kira launched herself at his back.

Jack stumbled forward as she slammed into him, her legs and arms flying. She didn’t actually manage to hit him more than once or twice, but the spectators leaped out of the way of her drunken tornado performance. She was shrieking insults, mostly stupid and incoherent ones.

Jack gave me an angry look that pissed me off. It wasn’t like I’d told Kira he and I had hooked up or anything. Her issues with him were his own problem and had nothing to do with me. He pushed her off him firmly and grabbed her arm at the same time so she wouldn’t fall. She kept trying to hit him and missing.

“Stop it,” Jack told her and gave her arm a little shake before letting her go. When she flew at him again she managed to knock his cap off. I stepped forward, wishing I’d gone with Austin and left Kira to her theatrics alone. This was a scene I really didn’t want to see.

“I hope your Prince Albert fucking rips out and you have to piss through three holes!” Kira screamed.

“Kira, c’mon.” I reached for her.

Kira allowed herself to be led away, still shouting insults. By the time we got to the parking garage the crowd had thinned and we had a better shot at hailing a cab. I rubbed my bare arms and shivered, but Kira had anger as her cloak and she danced back and forth on the nubbly pavement, waving her hands and muttering curses.

“He’s not worth it,” I repeated. “Jesus, Kira. What’s wrong with you?”

“He’s a jackass,” she said sullenly. Her makeup had smeared, her hair tangled. She needed to be in bed.

Fuck. I wanted to be in bed, and not alone. Yet here I was, instead, babysitting her while she had a tantrum about some guy she’d had a crush on a million years ago but had never even dated.

I didn’t correct her, even though I didn’t agree. “You’re drunk. Call Tony. Go home.”

She sniffed and crossed her arms. “Oh, you don’t care! You’re going to screw Austin. What difference does it make to you if my heart is broken?”

I laughed and knew I’d made a mistake by the way her brows pulled low over her smeared eyes. “Your heart’s not broken. You didn’t even go out with him. He doesn’t even have the Prince Albert anymore.”

She glared at me. I thought suddenly she was maybe way less wasted than I’d thought. “Did you fuck Jack?”

“It was ages ago.”

“You fucked Jack?” Kira’s fist clenched at her sides, then opened as her shoulders slumped. “I thought you were my friend!”

“Kira, it was years ago, and you weren’t—”

“That doesn’t matter!” she cried, and I knew she was right. “You knew how I felt about him! I loved him!”

I’d never loved him. At least there was that. “I’m sorry.”

Kira whipped her phone from her purse and stabbed the buttons with her fingernail. She turned her back to me. I should’ve counted myself lucky she didn’t try to punch me in the face the way she’d done Jack. As it was, I was cold and my stomach had begun to churn.

“Your sorry is shit.” Kira spoke into the phone next. “It’s me. Come pick me up. Yeah, I know what time it is. I’ll be waiting at Tom’s Diner on Second Street. Harrisburg, you ’tard.”

She hung up and stalked off down the sidewalk without looking back.

“Kira!” She flipped me the bird without even pausing. There was no way I was going to run after her, not in my four-inch fuck-me pumps. I managed a hobble, though. “Kira, c’mon. Wait.”

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” she said, and the quiet affront in her tone was worse than an insult or a punch. “God, Paige. Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should, you know? This isn’t high school anymore.”

I stopped trying to follow her. “No shit, really? And calling out some dude on the street when he’s with another girl, that’s not straight out of high school?”

“That’s different!”

“How is it different?”

“You knew how I felt about Jack!” Kira shouted.

We’d have attracted more attention if it wasn’t Friday night just after the bars all closed, but as it was we were just two more drunk sluts fighting over a guy. In high school I’d have shouted back at her, maybe even done a little hair pulling.

But as we’d already established, we weren’t in high school anymore.

I trapped my tongue between my teeth to stop myself from shouting back, but even then my voice came out clipped and sharp. “I said I was sorry. You weren’t with him. You never even dated him. And you weren’t even speaking to me at the time.”

She faltered for a moment, her lashes batting and her mouth working as though she meant to say something really awful but could only come up with “…Yeah, well. You shouldn’t have.”

I didn’t point out the number of boys I’d liked that Kira had fucked, or tried to fuck, or lied about fucking just to needle me. I said nothing, just stared, and she at last had the grace to cut her gaze from mine. She shrugged instead of speaking.

If you’re lucky, the friends you make when you’re sixteen stay with you for the rest of your life. If you’re smart, you know when it’s time to let them go. I stopped walking. I watched her walk toward the diner, where drunk and hungry people would order eggs and stiff the waitress and steal the silverware. I let her go there, even though she’d been drinking and she needed a ride home and I couldn’t be sure the person she’d called would come to get her.

Yeah. Some friend.

Chapter 04

“I’m really glad you came,” Austin said this as soon as he opened the door.

I said nothing.

He closed it behind me as I moved past him and into his living room. I recognized the chair and the couch. It had been mine, once. The chair had been his and he’d been welcome to it, but I’d paid for that couch.

The couch didn’t matter.

“You want something to drink?”

I turned to look at him, this boy grown into a man. “No. I didn’t come here to drink.”

Austin smiled. “So, what did you come here for?”

I pulled him forward by his belt. Two steps. He didn’t stumble, but he did put his hands on my upper arms. I must have caught him by surprise. I looked up, up into his face. But when he bent to kiss me, I turned my head.

“Let me guess,” he said into my ear. “You didn’t come here for kissing?”

“You can kiss me.” I took his hand off my arm and put it between my legs. “Here.”

I looked at him, then, and his expression gratified me immensely. His fingers curled experimentally against me and pushed at the soft cloth of my skirt.

Austin blinked, slowly. His smile didn’t fade so much as leak away. “Paige?”

“We both know what I came here for.” I curled my fingers around his wrist and moved his hand down to the hem of my skirt, then up again to replace his palm against my panties. “Let’s not pretend anything else.”

I thought, for one brief, strange second, he was going to turn me down. The heat of his hand seeped through my panties, but the flash of ice in his eyes left me cold. Suddenly I had no trouble remembering why I’d left him.

He didn’t let me pull away. “Fine. I’m not pretending.”

“Good.”

“Good,” he said. His fingers slipped inside my panties and found me already wet. Again, his gaze flickered. “Fuck, Paige.”

“Yes, please,” I said.

He’d always been bigger than me, but in the years since we’d broken up he’d gone from a bulky football player’s build to the harder, leaner muscled frame of a man who made his living working with tools. He might have quit the construction job with his dad’s company, but whatever he was doing kept him in tight, hard shape.

At first I thought he might not kiss me. We’d done it before, fucked without kissing each other on the mouth. We’d fucked angry, rough. We’d done it tender-soft, too, and sweet.

So when Austin pulled me closer and brushed his lips across mine, I was already tense and waiting. He kissed me softly and pulled away. He looked into my eyes.

“I was sure you’d bail on me.”

I frowned, not wanting to talk, and when I opened my mouth he took my words away with another kiss and the restless stroking of his hands. I’m not ashamed to admit I stretched under his touch, so familiar no matter how long it had been. We kissed for a long time, all the way up the stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. I kissed him with my eyes closed, trusting him to lead me so I wouldn’t stumble. We kissed the way we always had, but it was different, too. We stopped just inside his bedroom door and pulled apart, both of us breathing fast and hard. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone had seen me the way he did.

I was made of feathers when he lifted me, but I became flesh when he laid me down.

It was a new bed, new sheets. The smell of fabric softener was the same, and my heart seized, going still before it lurched to life again. His mouth ate my gasp. He swallowed my breath.

I’d worn clothes he could ruin without me caring, but Austin didn’t tear or rip anything from me. Kneeling between my legs, staring at me on his pillow, he only put his hand on my belly. The muscles jumped.

When he smiled I almost couldn’t remember what it had been like not to love him, but I forced myself to. This was not going to be anything but what I’d intended it to be. I spread my legs a little as I inched the skirt up over my thighs.

Austin put his hands to the hem of my shirt and lifted it to run his fingers over the swell of my breasts. He looked me over as if he’d never seen me before, like he hadn’t once spent long hours cataloging every inch of my skin.

I liked the way it felt when he looked at me.

When his gaze met mine, we both smiled, which was a relief. There had been a moment at first when I thought this might turn awkward. Either sentimental or angry. We’d fucked a few times after I left him, and it hadn’t always been a good choice.

It probably wasn’t a good choice now, but when he ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, and a finger underneath the elastic of my panties, I stopped worrying about it. I arched into his touch, my eyes closing in anticipation. He slid a finger along my clit, then another down to press gently at my opening. That’s when he stopped.

I looked at him. “Austin?”

He opened his pretty mouth, but all that came out was a hiss of air as he pushed inside me. I groaned as he crooked his finger against my sweet spot. He used his thumb on my clitoris at the same time, the familiar double whammy that had always worked for me.

“You like that?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I like that.”

He hooked his other hand into my silk panties and eased them down one side at a time as he kept up the in-out stroking. His eyes left my face to watch the motion of his hand, and I was glad. I didn’t want to watch him watching me.

He stopped only for a few seconds, long enough to pull his shirt over his head. I used the time to pull down the side zip of my skirt, and he helped me off with that, too. My shirt went next. We moved together, coordinated, until I lay naked on his bed.

“Take off your pants.”

I returned his hard stare. We’d never spoken much during sex. Now we were practically reciting the Declaration of Independence. I toyed with my nipples, teasing him as he unbuttoned and unzipped. He wasn’t wearing the loose boxer shorts I’d expected, but tight boy shorts cut high on his thigh.

“Nice underwear,” I told him.

The old Austin smirk came back, and he stripped them off quickly before getting back on his knees again. His cock stirred, half-hard but rising, on his thigh. “Thanks.”

“Did you put those on just for me?” I got up on my elbows to look at him.

Austin just raised a brow. “What if I did?”

It wasn’t the smart-ass answer I expected, and consequently, I had no answer.

“Paige.” His hand went stroke, stroke, stroke, and I was hypnotized. “Open your legs.”

I did, because I wanted him there. I thought he’d use his hand, but Austin got on his belly on the bed, instead. He wriggled up between my legs before I knew it, his breath hot on my inner thighs and finally, at last, my cunt.

I cried out when he kissed me there, but stifled it with my fist. When he licked me, I drew in a breath that tasted of my own skin. It had been a long time since a man had gone down on me…since the last time I’d been with him, as a matter of fact.

His lips worked my rigid clit as he pushed a finger, then two, then three, inside me. Rough but not harsh. He found my G-spot and I convulsed around his fingers. Pleasure took my voice away.

I pushed my hips upward in lieu of command, and he fucked me with his mouth and hands until I gasped and trembled. Shaking, I looked down at him, nestled between my legs. Passion had hazed my vision, but everything became crystalline when he paused to look up at me.

“Don’t come yet.” Austin’s voice had grown impossibly deeper over the years. Now it went lower still. His breath drifted over my hot, wet flesh and the motion of his lips tantalized me mercilessly.

He moved up my body and captured my wrists with his hands as he pushed mine over my head. My fingers curled around the wooden spindles as I stared him in the eyes. I wasn’t the same girl he hadn’t taken to the prom, and I wasn’t the same girl he’d married. I was a different woman now. But I held the headboard anyway, watching him as he fumbled in his nightstand for the package of condoms and slid one on.

When he moved back over me, one hand on his cock to guide it inside me, I tensed. My eyes closed as he filled me. When he moved, I moved with him. It was easy to remember how.

He fucked into me slowly, then faster. He pushed up onto his hands to drive his cock deeper, and I took the pain of his thrusts and turned it into pleasure. My hands gripped the wood. His eyes never left mine, not even when he slid a hand between us to stroke my clit in time to his thrusts.

“Now,” he grunted from between clenched teeth, “you can come.”

I hadn’t been waiting for his permission, but my body took it anyway.

“Say my name.” His fingers left me and he pushed his face into the side of my neck. “Say it, Paige.”

I tipped into the swirling oblivion of orgasm, and I gave him what he wanted with his name, if he could decipher it from the moan. But I also let go of the headboard. My nails raked his back as I came again, as hard the second time as the first. Harder, maybe, because I was bringing blood and he cried out as he pumped inside me as he came, too.

Austin shuddered. His arms slid beneath me, clutching me tight. He burrowed his face harder into my skin. And he just held me that way for what seemed like a very long time.

I had to unwrap my legs from around his waist after a few minutes to ease the cramp in my hips, but I didn’t unwind my arms from around his back. His weight on me was more comforting than claustrophobic. When he finally pushed himself off me, he only rolled to the side with one arm and leg thrown over my body.

Now he would sleep, I thought.

But he didn’t. Austin moved to get rid of the rubber in a nearby garbage can, then slipped right back to where he’d been. His hand moved lazily up and down my body in smooth, flat strokes.

“Paige.”

“Yes,” I said after a second.

“I thought you liked it when I was a little rough.” His hand centered over my contented cunt, his fingers dipping into my well.

I wasn’t squeamish about post-fucking cuddles or anything leading up to a potential round two, but when Austin stroked my pussy, I put a hand over his to stop the motion. “Is that why you did it?”

He didn’t look at me. His breath puffed hot on my shoulder and he kissed me. His lips pressed my skin. His fingertip settled on my clit and circled lightly. I’d had two orgasms and my body wasn’t ready for another, or so I thought. As his hand moved, tension stirred inside me.

“Is it?” I drew in a breath but kept my voice even. “Austin?”

“Well, shit, Paige. Yeah. Of course.” He sounded insulted.

I put my hand over his again, though what he was doing was starting to work. “Look at me.”

He did. I hadn’t noticed the shadows under his eyes before. Faintly blue, they made him look older. Well, he was. We both were.

“I thought you liked it rough, that’s all.”

“Did it look like I wasn’t enjoying myself?” I didn’t want to defend my orgasms to him. I didn’t want to think he’d done something for my sake that he hadn’t wanted to do for his own.

Pushing him off me, I got out of bed and gathered my clothes. I dialed the cab company and arranged for a ride home. Austin watched me without pulling up the sheets or making a move toward his own clothes. When I looked at him, his expression had gone inscrutable. That was as familiar as everything else had been, and I figured whatever glitch in his operating system had made him ask me those questions had been fixed.

“Why did you come over here?” he asked, loud in the quiet. “Really?”

I stepped into my panties and pulled them up, then zipped my skirt, too. “I came over here to do just what we just did.”

“Just to fuck me?”

“Yes, Austin,” I told him. “What else did you think I wanted?”

“Nothing.” He rolled to grab the remote from the nightstand and I discreetly ogled his ass and the sweet backs of his thighs—places I’d bite, if I had more time. “Forget I asked.”

“Are you getting pissy with me?” I straightened my shirt and ran my fingers through my hair to shake it into some semblance of order. “No, you are not. Are you? Seriously?”

“No.” Austin, his jaw set, kept his gaze on the television. He punched the buttons of the remote so fast I knew he couldn’t possibly be able to see more than a second or two of each program before moving on.

“Because I’ll tell you what, if you’re going to give me an attitude every time I come over here to fuck you, I’m not going to bother anymore.” I stepped into my shoes. “That cake is baked.”

Now he looked at me. “Huh?”

“That cake,” I said carefully, “is baked. Done. Over. Finished.”

“Iced?” One corner of his lips turned up, but only a little.

He was maybe the only person who’d ever really “gotten” me. It was why we fought so hard and fucked so good. He knew every button to push.

“Yeah. Iced.”

He shrugged, looking back at the television, but his mouth still quirked. “If you say so.”

“Austin.” I waited until he looked at me. “Don’t make me regret this, okay? You know what this is.”

He shrugged again, the brief glint of a smile fading. His finger stabbed the remote as he cycled through all bazillion cable stations. I thought about kissing him before I left. I even took a few steps toward the bed, but when he turned to look right at me, I stopped.

“I’ll let myself out. No, no, don’t bother getting out of bed,” I said, though he hadn’t done so much as shift. “I’ll do it.”

I was already out the door and into the hall and at the head of the stairs when he called after me.

“That’s not all it is!”

I stopped, my hand on the newel post of his stairs. There were half a dozen retorts, but none of them made it past my tongue. At the bottom, the smooth banister shoved a splinter into my palm and I muttered a curse as I plucked it free. That would teach me, I thought as I let myself out of his house and onto the street, where the cab was already waiting.

Chapter 05

Daylight teased the sky by the time I made it home. I paid the cabdriver and ignored the way he ogled my thighs when I stepped onto the curb. I didn’t want to be sorry I’d gone to bed with Austin even though I’d said I wouldn’t. The sex had been too good, as good as it can be only with someone who already knows you, but I’d started a new life, with a new job and a new apartment, in a new city. I wanted new habits, too, and Austin was definitely not one of those.

I wanted a man who’d gone to college. Who had a career, not a job. One who owned a car and paid bills on time and wore clothes that matched. A professional man, not one who smoked and drank and cheated, or one who’d run up the credit card and skipped out into the night without leaving a note. Not one who wrecked my car because he didn’t have one of his own.

I wanted a man, not a boy in a man-suit.

You’re unfair to me, Austin had accused me more than once. I’m not like those guys.

Those guys. The men my mother dated. No, he wasn’t like those guys. At least not mostly. But I’d always been waiting for him to turn into one. Maybe he was right and I’d been unfair, but he’d done his share of shitty things even when he knew they’d hurt me. Hell. I’d done the same.

My heels sounded very loud on the marble tile as I passed the front desk, empty at this hour. I’d occupied the elevator alone, dressed to kill, more times than I could count on both hands. Tonight, because I knew I looked ridden hard and put away wet, a hand shoved its way through the doors just before they closed, and I had to share it.

“Thanks,” said that man I’d seen before. “I’m too tired for the stairs.”

He slouched, eyes half lidded, in the corner opposite and just behind mine. His shoulders lifted with a sigh that became a yawn, prompting one from me I hid behind my hand. He looked at me with a half smile. Conscious of the fact I was sure my lipstick was smeared and my eyeliner smudged, I smiled back. We both turned to face the front, but I felt the weight of his gaze on me, could see him looking from the corner of my eye. Unlike before, this time he wasn’t too distracted to notice me. When I turned my face, just slightly, he was studiously watching the blinking white numbers showing the elevator’s progress.

I had to bite my lower lip against a smile. He was seriously eye-fucking me. Who doesn’t get off on being noticed?

It took a very long time, it seemed, to reach the first floor. He moved past me without touching me, but my skin prickled as though he had. He stepped out of the elevator and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d seen him twice now. Three times? It must have been the charm, because unlike all the others, this time he was the one who looked back.

“I missed you.”

I’m already diving into Austin’s arms when he says it. A week was too long to be away from him. His parents had taken him from me, stolen him to go to visit family for a funeral. At nineteen, he’s plenty old enough to stay by himself, but they’d insisted he go along to pay his respects. I think it’s more like they don’t want us fucking our way through every room in the house while they’re away, but I can’t blame them. They’d have been right. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going along, even if they had invited me, but a week is an eternity in the summer when the only thing I have to look forward to is long hours with Austin’s mouth on mine.

His arms slip around me, hold me tight, and his hands run down my back to grip my ass. Nobody’s watching, and would I care if they were? I’m just so frigging glad he’s home, it’s worth the risk of parental discovery to have him squeezing me. His cock nudges my belly.

He really did miss me.

“I brought you something.”

“What?” I already have my hands out, expecting a snow globe, a T-shirt. A magnet, maybe. Something he picked up in the Pennsylvania Turnpike gift shop.

Austin hands me a small box with a lid. Inside it is a package of paper, not note cards but stationery. I lift a page and hold it to the light. It’s soft on my fingertips and has a faint design of flowers pressed into the paper. I give him a look.

How did he know?

“It reminded me of you.” Austin gives an awkward shrug, as if his admission embarrasses him. “You like that sort of thing.”

I do. Tablets and note cards and pretty papers. I always have, but this is the first time someone’s ever noticed or given me something as pretty as this. “I love it.”

“When’s your mom getting home?”

My mom’s been working weird shifts at the Hershey plant since she got pregnant. Because it’s summer, her brother Lane is home from college and taking over the shop, and I’ve been putting in more than my share of hours there, too. I haven’t seen her much. I’m not sure if she’s avoiding me, but I know I’m trying not to hang around her too much. She’s only got another month or so before she pops, and I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going to happen then.

“Late.” I snuggle closer, my knee going between his and my cheek fitting just right into the place over his heart.

Austin pushes me so he can grin down into my face. “Good.”

The apartment isn’t big enough to make the chase much of an effort, but we manage to work up a sweat as I dodge his grip and duck behind the big wooden rocking chair to keep out of his grasping hands. Not that I don’t want to be caught. Just that it’s fun to make him catch me.

When he does, his mouth slants over mine, his tongue probing deep inside. He’s got me so hot already. Hot for him. His hand goes straight between my legs, no fooling around now, and he cups my pussy through my thin cotton shorts.

The rocking chair, set in motion by our mock struggle, bumps my ass as we kiss. I grab the back of it to still it, then push Austin from my mouth and shuck out of my shorts. I’m wearing the tiny bikini panties he likes, but those go, too.

I lift my T-shirt up over my breasts, no bra covering them, and settle into the chair. I spread my legs. He’s watching, jaw slack and eyes gleaming. He doesn’t move.

He’s eaten me out before, though I’ve never asked him to. It’s always just…happened. But it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past week, his mouth and tongue and fingers fucking me until I come. Every night while he was gone I’d lie in bed, eyes wide open to the dark, and imagine him there with me. I’d pretend my fingers were his tongue, flicking my clit or sliding inside me, but it was never the same.

My friend Kira says her boyfriend won’t go down on her. Not ever. He’s all about the blow jobs but refuses to dine at the Y. He’s a pussy about eating pussy. I’d break up with a guy who expected me to suck cock but wouldn’t return the favor, but Kira says she’s in love. I think she just doesn’t know what love is.

Austin’s friends, the guys from the football team and the men he works with at his dad’s construction company, would probably say they don’t go down on their girlfriends, either. I wonder how many are telling the truth? I wonder if Austin tells them about me, if men talk about their sex lives in the same detail I do with my friends. I wonder if he’d admit he makes me come with his face between my legs, or if he’d deny it.

“Austin.” My voice is low and slow, almost not mine. His gaze jerks up. I put my hands on my inner thighs and open myself wider to his sight. “Use your mouth on me.”

He’s already on his knees before I finish. I gasp when his hot, wet mouth finds my skin. When his tongue strokes over my clit, I grip the arms of the chair and toss back my head, my back arching. It feels so good it almost hurts. The chair rocks me into his mouth again and again as he licks and kisses and sucks. When he puts a finger inside me, then two, I come hard with a strangled shout.

I look down at him. He’s smiling, full of himself. I touch his hair and want to tell him how much I love him, but something about the way he’s looking at me makes me suddenly shy. I want to close my legs, but his head is resting on my thigh and I can’t without pushing him away.

“What?” I sound nervous, because I am. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Austin kisses my thigh.

I push him onto his back on the floor and straddle his legs until I can get his belt open and his pants down. His cock springs free, nice and thick. I take it in my hand and stroke. He’s already got a little pre-come dripping, and I lean forward to taste him.

“Fuck!” His hips jerk and his hand tangles in my hair. “Paige, God.”

“What?” I want to put him inside me, but we don’t have any condoms handy and there’s no way I’ll go bareback.

“Nobody…”

I frown and sit back on my heels, my grip tightening on his prick. “Nobody what?”

What the hell did he get up to while he was away?

“Nobody does this like you,” Austin says.

He thinks he’s giving me a compliment, but I let him go and grab up my shorts. I make sure to grab my panties, too. Don’t want to leave them on the floor for my mom to find. “Nobody, who?”

“Huh?” He lifts his head to stare, then sits when he sees my expression. “What’s the matter?”

I stab the air with my finger. My throat is tight when I swallow, and I blink away the burn of tears. “Nobody does what like me? Suck cock? Nobody, who? Who else is sucking your dick, Austin?”

“Nobody,” he says and must realize how it sounds, because he scrambles to his feet to come after me when I stalk down the hall to my tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment. “That’s not what I meant, baby.”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me.” I grab my robe from the hook on the door so I don’t have to try to get into my clothes while we fight.

His hands come down on my shoulders and turn me, reluctantly, to face him. “I just meant that the other guys, they tell me their girls don’t do the stuff you do.”

I guess that answers my question about if they talk about sex. I don’t smile, don’t lift a brow, just keep my face stony. Austin pushes my hair off my shoulders.

“That’s all I meant. That nobody…that you’re so great.”

“Great at sucking cock?” I frown, even though I’m glad to know he thinks so.

“And other things.” He teases me back toward the bed and I let him until we’re both lying on top of the quilt my grandma made me.

Austin strokes down my body and kisses me. When his hand finds my pussy again, I know I’m wet from earlier. His fingers slide against me. His breath is hot on my neck as he pants. His thumb presses my clit and his fingers move inside, then out. Against my thigh, his cock presses hot and hard. He moves his mouth to my nipple and sucks gently, and though I came just a little while ago, desire gathers in my belly again.

“I missed you,” he says again.

“Did you?”

Austin nods against my neck. It seems stupid to be angry with him now, or to worry about if he cheated on me while he was gone. I know he did, once or twice, when we were in high school. Hell. I cheated on him, too, if you want to count the times he thought we were on and I thought we were off and vice versa. But not since graduating, not since we both got full-time jobs and a full-time relationship.

He fumbles for the rubbers I keep in the box in my nightstand and puts one on. I could help him, but I’d rather watch just now. He rolls it on over his cock, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip in concentration. Then he moves up my body and centers himself before pushing inside me.

I groan; I can’t help it. I fucking love this, the sex. His weight. His prick so hard and thick and long inside me, so long it hurts sometimes when he fucks me, but I like that, too. He’s got muscles in his arms from all the heavy lifting and I grab one as he thrusts inside me.

I lift my hips to meet him and his belly presses my clit every time we move together. Orgasm doesn’t build, it tears me down. I’m coming again when he starts to move harder and faster, and I know Austin’s coming, too.

It doesn’t always happen that way, that we finish together, so it’s sort of magical and leaves me sleepy and contented and cuddly, after. He loops an arm around me when he’s thrown away the condom. We lay on my bed, spooning, and his breath ruffles my hair.

“Paige,”Austin says. “I want to ask you something important.”

And then we’re on the ocean, in a boat that’s going down.

As the cold, dark sea closed over my head, the sound of the alarm bells ripped into my ears. I took a deep breath, even though I was underwater. I kicked, the tight clutch of the waves around my ankles becoming the tangled grasp of sheets around my feet as I opened my eyes and fumbled, without seeing, for the phone.

“What?” At this hour I couldn’t be expected to be polite, could I?

“Paige?”

I blinked, not wanting to look at my bedside clock’s numbers. It was way too fucking early to be up. “Arty. What’s the matter? Where’s Mama?”

“Mama’s still sleeping. And Leo’s at work,” he added, though I hadn’t asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Make yourself some cereal.” I stifled a yawn and pondered giving in to a hangover that wouldn’t have bothered me with just a few more hours’ sleep.

“There isn’t any.”

“No Cheerios? No Raisin Bran?”

My little brother, the only other sibling I’d ever actually lived with, made a familiar noise of disgust. “I don’t like those kind.”

“Then I guess you must not be that hungry.” I was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to fix toast. “Arty, it’s too early to call me. What did I tell you about that?”

“Can’t you come over and make me some pancakes?” His little-boy voice sounded very far away. I pictured him in his Spider-Man pajamas, bare feet swinging because his legs weren’t long enough to reach the floor. “Please?”

Maybe if I kept my eyes closed I’d fall back to sleep. I snuggled deeper under my soft blankets. “Buddy, I don’t live there anymore. I told you that. I told you I couldn’t just come over whenever you called.”

Silence.

“But I miss you,” Arthur said in a tiny voice.

I sighed. “I miss you, too, buddy. How about I come down and take you to the movies sometime soon?”

“When?” At nearly seven, the kid had been reading since he was four and could tell time on an analogue clock, a skill that sometimes stumped me. There wasn’t much that slipped past him. “Today?”

“Not today, no. Maybe later this week.”

“When? When?”

I couldn’t think straight and just tossed out a day. “Wednesday?”

“Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That’s a week!”

He sounded so dismayed I hated to laugh. Laughing, in fact, hurt my head. “Not quite. Five days.”

“That’s too long!” Arthur’s voice pitched high enough to drill my tender ears.

“You’ve got gymnastics on Tuesday, and Monday I’ve got an appointment in the evening. Sorry, buddy. You have to wait until Wednesday. Besides,” I said, offering an incentive against despair, “the new Power Heroes movie comes out on Wednesday. How about that?”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, only resigned. “But I’m hungry now, Paige.”

“Cereal. Or have a snack from the drawer.”

“Mama says no snacks from the drawer until after breakfast.”

“Aren’t there any cereal bars in the drawer?” I bit back another yawn. If I didn’t get back to sleep in the next ten minutes I was not going to be a happy camper.

“Yesss…” Even Arthur knew where I was going with this, but he sounded like it might be too good to be true.

“Have one of those. They’re cereal, right?”

“Can I tell Mama you said it was okay?”

“Sure.” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d holler at me for giving the kid permission to do something she’d have refused. On the other hand, this was the woman who’d allowed me to go to school in a pair of hand-me-down, slip-on Candie’s shoes in the sixth grade and bought me my first package of rubbers in the tenth. She was a different sort of mother to Arthur than she’d been to me. “Now let me go back to sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, Paige.”

“Bye.”

“I love you,” my little brother said before I could hang up.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said it, but suddenly the memory of how he’d smelled as a baby washed over me with enough force to push my eyelids open like snapped-open blinds. How his hair had been so soft against my lips when I kissed his little baby head, and how the heavy weight of him had filled my arms and lap. How I used to hold him while I watched hour after hour of bad TV, just because he was so small and sweet. Just because he loved me.

“I love you, too, buddy. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

He had a seven-year-old’s social graces and didn’t say goodbye again, just hung up. I put the phone back in the cradle of its receiver and my head back in the cradle of my pillow, but sleep had vanished and there was no getting it back.

With a groan, I looked at the clock. Almost eight. And I’d gone to sleep, what, just before six this morning? God. I was so going to pay that kid back one day, maybe when he was a teenager and prone to sleeping as late as he could…yeah. I’d wake him up.

Unfortunately, my revenge was far-flung and I was still awake. I stretched and sat up, waiting for the rush and boil of acid stomach or the pound of a headache, but aside from a gnawing hunger, I felt all right. At least until I heard the muted beep from my cell phone, which I’d left abandoned in my sparkly purse under the pile of my discarded clothes. I had to dig past my Steve Madden pumps to reach it.

Five missed calls.

Five? Crap. I thumbed the keypad to check out the numbers. I had voice mails, too, though without dialing in I couldn’t tell how many. Kira had called me around 4:00 a.m. but hadn’t left a message. That could be good or bad, depending. One was an old call from my mother I hadn’t deleted. The other three were from Austin.

Triple crap.

The voice mails were from him, too, half an hour apart. The first two were brief “when are you going to get here?” messages. The last one had come in around six-fifteen, after I’d already gone to bed. It turned the corners of my mouth down.

“Look, I know I’ve been an asshole to you in the past.” Then fifteen seconds of awkward silence, punctuated only by the soft in-out of his breathing. “I’m sorry. I just…I was a fuckwad, and I’m sorry. Call me, okay? Please.”

A few more seconds of silence and he added, “Please.”

Is there anything more simultaneously pathetic and arousing than a pleading man?

I couldn’t bring myself to delete that message. I thought I might want to listen to it a couple-twenty more times. I thought I might want to get that statement, “Sorry, I’m a fuckwad.—Austin Miller” embroidered on a tea towel and wipe my hands with it.

It was the only time Austin had ever apologized to me for anything he’d ever done. I wasn’t sure it meant anything now. Not after all this time had passed.

I didn’t delete the message, but I didn’t call him back, either. Instead, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom where I peed for what felt like an hour and brushed my teeth and pulled my hair on top of my head in a messy ponytail.

I wanted to go back to sleep, but I knew better than to expect to be able to. I was up for the day now. My stomach rumbled and I took my last two slices of wheat bread from the fridge, where I kept it to prevent mold, and popped them into my toaster oven. I needed to hit the grocery store in the worst way, though the state of my finances meant it would be another week of on-sale tuna and ramen noodles rather than steak and lobster. Ah, well. There was nothing new about that. I’d grown up thinking Kraft shells and cheese was gourmet fare.

While my toast browned, I sifted through the pile of junk mail I’d brought in the night before. I tossed aside a few catalogs addressed to the former tenant. I thought of the note I’d had yesterday, the beautiful paper and the words written in that fine hand. What had it said to do? Make a list of flaws and strengths? I thought of it as I ate my toast dry because I had no butter or jam.

You will write a list of ten. Five flaws. Five strengths. Deliver them promptly…

From the junk drawer next to my fridge I pulled a yellow legal pad and a stub of a pencil with a point rubbed to softness by the creation of many lists. Chore lists, mostly, or grocery. I’d never used it to detail my flaws and strengths.

I tapped the pencil against my lips as I thought.

Proud

Stubborn

Independent

Smart

Curious

Determined

Conscientious

That was it. As far as lists went, it didn’t feel complete, but I couldn’t think of more than that. So much for the ten, I thought as I put away the pen and paper.

And the real question was, which had I written? Flaws or strengths? Couldn’t they sometimes be both?

I looked again at the tablet on the table. It had made me think hard about myself, though it hadn’t been meant for me. I hoped the person it was meant for had better luck.

Chapter 06

I finished my shopping just before noon. I had only two small bags of groceries, the bare minimum to get me through until payday. I’d left a few bucks in my wallet on purpose, though, for one reason. I didn’t need a large coffee with extra cream and a gooey cinnamon bun, but I wanted them.

Located in the building adjoining Riverview Manor, the Morningstar Mocha teemed with people out for a caffeine fix. A few joggers, bundled against the cold, filled travel mugs at the small stand in the corner holding the sweetener packets and jugs of milk and bins of creamer containers. And in the corner, my corner, the seat I took because it was in the smallest table and I was usually alone, sat my elevator eye-fucking buddy, Mr. Mystery.

Was it synchronicity? Or serendipity? His wasn’t the only familiar face there. I spied a few people from my building, one or two I recognized as Mocha regulars, and of course I knew the girl behind the counter. Her name was Brandy, and you couldn’t miss her. She chewed gum like cud.

I deliberately tried not to stare at him while I ordered my coffee and bun, but he was still there by the time they arrived. Still there when I’d dumped my mug full of sugar and cream. He wore a white, long-sleeved shirt beneath a black concert T-shirt and worn jeans that suited him nicely. His hair looked as if he’d run a hand through it a few times or just rolled out of bed. He had a large mug in front of him, still steaming, and a plate with the remains of a bagel slathered with cream cheese and lox. He was staring out the glass onto the street, empty but for the occasional weekend-traffic car cruising slowly past. In front of him sat a pad of legal-size paper, white not yellow, and in his left hand he held a thick-barreled pen. A worn leather bag rested at his feet as faithful as a hound.

The lighting inside the Mocha was golden and indirect, but late-winter bright sunshine shafted through the plate-glass window and across his face. I wanted to stare and drink in the fine-featured grace of him. The casual beauty. The crooked twist of his mouth as he bit down on his lip in concentration, the furrow of his brow. The way his hand curled around the pen caressing the paper.

Fortunately for me, he was still staring out the window, absently doodling, when two people in matching tracksuits slammed into me and knocked my coffee and cinnamon bun all over a couple, who looked as if they hadn’t yet gone to bed, sitting at the table in front of me.

The fitness twins were very kind. They bought me new coffee and pastry and replaced the party-kids’ bagels, soaked through by my spilled drink. They did it all with a fanfare that smacked a bit of “look at me, what a good person I am,” but they did it. I didn’t dare look at the man by the window until all the fuss and feathers had died down. When I did, finally, my fresh mug was burning my palm and my eyes had blurred from the dip in my blood sugar. I didn’t want to shove the entire bun into my mouth, but a dainty nibble wasn’t going to get the goods down my throat and into my stomach fast enough.

He glanced over at me as I was licking icing off my mouth. He smiled. I paused, coffee halfway to my mouth, and smiled back.

I thought for sure he’d say hello, but maybe without the allure of my fuck-me pumps all he could manage was the grin. Maybe he didn’t recognize me as the woman from the elevator. Or more likely, he didn’t care.

He got up, papers and pen already tucked away in his bag, garbage cleared from the table. He slung his arms into a plaid flannel shirt I hadn’t noticed hanging on the back of his chair and eased the strap of his leather bag over one shoulder. He left the Morningstar Mocha without a backward glance, which allowed me to stare after him without fear of being caught.

He’d left a crumpled discard to the window side of his chair, on the floor. With a quick glance around the now-empty coffee shop to see if anyone would notice me being a total snoop, I vacated my seat and took the one he’d just left. It couldn’t have been warm from his ass, or at least I shouldn’t have been able to feel it if it was, but I imagined heat. I knew I shouldn’t pick up the paper, or smooth it out in front of me. I knew, especially, that I shouldn’t read it.

But I did, anyway.

I didn’t learn the secrets of the universe. I didn’t even find out his name. He’d mostly been scribbling and doodling, with a few chicken-scratch phrases I could read but didn’t understand here and there on the paper. Looking over it, I should’ve felt dirty. I only felt disappointed. But what had I expected, a hand-written autobiography listing his education, career and medical history?

Still, I smoothed out the creases as I finished my breakfast and folded the paper in half. Then half again. And again, until finally I’d turned a legal-size sheet of paper into a palmful of secrets. It wasn’t any of my business. I had no right to keep it. It weighed there as heavily as a handful of lead, and yet I couldn’t manage to toss it into the trash.

I did wish, though, that I’d lingered over the coffee. River-view Manor doesn’t have a doorman, and the front-desk staff was there to accept packages and take care of problems, not keep anyone from entering the building. The building had security cameras in the elevators and on every floor, but no real means of keeping anyone out who wanted to be in.

Part of me wasn’t surprised when I turned the corner of the hall to see Austin waiting for me in front of my door. Another part wanted to turn and run away. I lifted my chin instead, wishing again I’d at least bothered to wear makeup, though honestly he’d seen me look way worse.

“What are you doing here?” I bent to put my bags down so I could pull my key from my purse. When I stood, Austin’s eyes were on my face, not my ass. Now, that surprised me.

“You didn’t answer my calls.”

I fit the key into the lock, but didn’t turn it right away. “I meant, what are you doing here?”

“I called your mom.”

I unlocked and opened my door and pushed it, but didn’t go through. I turned to look at him. My irritation must have been clear on my face, because he held up his hands right away as though I meant to punch him. “My mother told you where I lived?”

“Your mom always liked me.”

I blew a sigh that fluttered the fringe of my bangs off my forehead and then pushed through the door. I left it open behind me, as much of an invitation as I could bear to give. He followed and shut the door. Softly, with a click, not a slam.

I put my bags in the kitchen and kicked off my shoes. Austin stood still and watched me without making any move to sit. He looked around the apartment with interest, then shoved his hands deep into his pockets and rocked on his heels while I took my time unpacking and putting away my groceries.

“Can I sit down?” he asked finally, when I’d made it clear I wasn’t going to offer.

“Do you have to ask?” I kept my back turned as I sifted through the change from my wallet. I found a Wheatie penny and set it aside to put in my collection, then washed my hands thoroughly with soap and hot water. Money is one of the filthiest things a person can touch.

When I turned to look at him, he was still standing. We stared at each other across the expanse of my unimmense living room until I nodded. He sat the way he always had, legs sprawled, taking up as much space as he could.

I took my time cleaning the kitchen, wiping the counters and scrubbing the sink with bleach-infused powder. I even emptied the garbage pail and took the trash out to the chute at the end of the hall. I expected Austin to be restless or irritated by the time I came back, but he’d found a copy of a Robert Heinlein novel inside the pile of books and magazines thrown into the straw basket next to the couch and was flipping through it.

“It doesn’t have any pictures,” I said from the doorway.

Austin put the book on the coffee table. “This is nice.”

He hadn’t risen to the bait, though I’d made a point of pushing one of his buttons. “The book?”

“The coffee table,” he said, still not rising.

“It was Stella’s.”

Austin nodded, like that made sense. “Glad I didn’t put my feet up on it.”

It took me an actual five seconds before I realized he was trying to tease me without pissing me off. He was actually just…kidding. I knew how to handle him trying to seduce me or piss me off. I didn’t know how to take that.

“I miss you,” Austin said.

The words were hard to hear, and I don’t mean because he spoke too low, or mumbled. They were hard for me to listen to because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want him to miss me.

I sat across from him, instead. The recliner’s springs sometimes poked through the faded material, though I’d tossed a fleece throw over it. One did now, and I winced as I shifted.

“I do,” he said, as though my expression had been in response to his statement and not a coil of wire in my butt.

“Austin.” Nothing else would come out.

He shrugged. I hadn’t fallen in love with him because of his way with words. Back then it hadn’t mattered if he spoke more with his hands than his mouth. Back then we’d both been young and dumb.

“You look good, Paige. This place,” he gestured, “it’s nice.”

“Thanks.”

His hair used to be bleached almost white by the sun, and he wore it so short I could see his scalp. When I ran my fingers through it, my nails scraped skin. Now it fell forward over his ears and forehead and was the color of wheat in a field, waiting to be cut. His eyes, moving over my face, made me think he was waiting to be cut, too.

I almost couldn’t do it. I mean, the night before I’d let him put his tongue down my throat and his hands all over me. When the warmth of him wafted over me, I wanted to close my eyes at how familiar it was. How easy it would have been to take him by the hand and lead him to my bedroom.

I kept my eyes open, a lesson I’d been taught a long time ago but had taken me a long time to learn. “I don’t miss you, Austin. Last night was a mistake.”

“C’mon, Paige. Don’t say that. We were always good together.”

“We haven’t been together for a long time,” I said, not quite as evenly as I wanted.

“It’s not just the sex.” Austin leaned forward, too, his hands on the knees of his dirty denim jeans. A white spot had worn through just below his kneecap, not quite a hole, but on its way to becoming one. “I didn’t just mean that. I can get laid anytime I want.”

“I’m sure you can.” I got up, my arms folded across my chest.

He got up, too. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

I wasn’t going to bend. Not over the chair, not over the bed, and not over this. “It doesn’t matter how you meant it. I think you should go.”

“Same old Paige,” he said with a shake of his hair. “Still hard as nails, huh? Hard as a rock. Can’t ever give me a break.”

“You don’t need a break from me. Besides, you can just get laid whenever you want. Look, Austin,” I said when it looked as though he meant to speak. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“Why not?”

I studied him deliberately until I couldn’t hold in the sigh any longer and it seeped out of me like air from a nail-punched tire. “You know why not. Because fucking doesn’t solve every problem. And we had a lot of problems.”

He crossed his arms and looked stormy. I didn’t point out the arguments we’d had about money, about religion, about monogamy. I didn’t remind him of the nights he’d gone out for a few beers with friends and had come home smelling of perfume and guilt, or that it didn’t matter whether he had or hadn’t fucked anyone else, it was that he was content to choose a night with his buddies over staying home with me. I didn’t bring up the times I’d said I was studying for school when I was really someplace else, with someone else.

“I just want you to be happy, Austin.” I meant it.

He leaned back and frowned more fiercely. “You want me to be happy so you can feel better about yourself, that’s all. So you don’t feel so bad about what happened.”

The truth of that stung me like a wasp, smooth-stingered and able to jab more than once. “I think you should go.”

Damn him, he didn’t. He moved closer and cupped my elbows in his palms so I had to uncross my arms to push him away or let him snuggle up close. I put my hands on his chest, but didn’t push. His muscles beneath the tight T-shirt were hard and firm. He leaned, and I didn’t pull away. If he’d kissed me, I’d have been lost, but if he’d ever thought he knew me, he proved himself wrong again. He didn’t kiss me. He spoke, instead.

“I’m your husband.”

I pushed my arms straight. His hands slid from my elbows along my arms and fell away at my wrists. I stepped back, my hand against his chest preventing him from following unless he pushed me, too. Austin looked for a second as if he meant to try it, but didn’t.

“I have a folder full of paperwork that says otherwise,” I told him.

“Okay, so not officially. But you can’t tell me—”

“I can tell you anything I want, so long as it’s true,” I shot back.

“Can you tell me it’s true that you don’t miss me, too? Not even a little?”

“I miss fucking you,” I said flatly. “The rest of it? Not so much.”

Austin grinned and spread his fingers. “It’s a start, right? I’ll call you.”

“I won’t answer.”

“I’ll call again.”

I pointed at the door, and he went. I waited until it closed behind him before I gave in to the urge to sigh. What is it about bad boys that make them so, so good?

I’ve known him since kindergarten. Austin. In my elementary-school class photos, more times than not, his freckled face is beaming from the row behind me. In one, we stand beside each other, our grins showing the same missing teeth.

In high school, we had nothing in common. Austin was a jock. I was a gothpunk girl with multiple piercings and a tattoo of a dragonfly on my back. We shared college-level classes and the same lunch period. I knew who he was because of his prowess on the football field. If he knew me it was maybe because I was one of the girls every boy knew, or maybe just because we’d been in the same school since we were five. We didn’t say hi when we passed in the halls, but he was never mean to me the way some of the boys could be. Austin never called me names or made crude invitations.

In the fall of our senior year, Austin went down under a pile of boys pumped up with testosterone and fury. We won the homecoming game, but instead of riding in Chrissy Fisher’s dad’s 1966 Impala convertible, Austin took a redlights-flashing ambulance to the Hershey Medical Center.

He recovered, nothing miraculous about it. His body, bones broken and skin torn, healed. Nobody ever said he’d never play football again. Austin simply never did.

Nor basketball, either, and in the spring, not baseball. By then his chances of going to anything other than community college had vanished along with the scholarship offers, but if he ever cared he wasn’t getting a full ride to Penn State, he never said so to me.

And by then, he would have. By the time our senior year ended, Austin told me everything.

We were an odd couple, but nobody shunned us for it. I didn’t hear whispers in the halls. No jealous cheerleaders tried to pull out my dyed-black hair, and no slick rich jocks tried to convince him he was better off without me. We didn’t go to the prom, but only because we decided to stay home and watch soft porn and fuck, instead.

When I told my mom we were going to get married, she hugged me and wept. Her belly poked between us—she was pregnant with Arthur, then. If she suspected I wanted to marry Austin as much so I could move out of the house as for passion, she didn’t say anything.

When we told his parents, his dad said nothing and his mother’s eyes dropped to my waistband. She didn’t ask me if I was pregnant, and she must have been surprised as the months of our marriage passed and my belly stayed flat, but no matter how she might have felt about the prospect of me as a daughter-in-law, the idea of a bastard grandchild must’ve been worse.

I wore a thrift-store wedding dress and Austin wore a suit of his dad’s we’d paid the dry cleaner to take in. In pictures, my thick black eyeliner and my spiked black hair make me look pale, wan. Tired. Scared, even.

The truth is, I was happy.

We both were, I like to think. At least at first. Austin went to work for his dad’s construction business, and I kept up work at my mom’s shop. My granddad had died and it was hers, full-time, and now that she had Arty, she couldn’t spend as much time with it, so I managed the shop.

We were happy.

And then, we weren’t.

Chapter 07

When I was younger, the prospect of Sunday dinner at my dad’s had so excited me or stressed me out I’d vomit. Never at my father’s house—even when I was little I knew Stella wouldn’t approve of a puking kid. I didn’t puke anymore, but I’d never managed to get rid of the knots in my stomach, either.

I popped an antacid tablet now as I sat in my not-expensive-enough-to-be-impressive car in their half-circle driveway of stamped concrete. This was the fourth new house my father’d had in the past seventeen years of life with his second family. Before that he’d lived in a stately Georgian-style half mansion with his first family. He’d never lived with my mother.

Birth-order studies claim that an age difference of six or more years between siblings complicates the normal oldest, middle and youngest personality traits by also making each child an only. That’s why, though I have five half siblings and an uncle who’s more like a brother, I’m an only child. I’ve tried identifying with being the middle kid—but what it comes down to, in the end, is I’m not.

The door opened and Jeremy and Tyler ran out. They both favor my dad, too. All of us look more like siblings than we were raised to be. I was fourteen when Jeremy was born, sixteen for Tyler. They’re more like nephews or cousins than brothers. I’m not sure what they think of me, just that they’re always glad to see me and aside from the fact they’re spoiled brats who could use a good spanking now and then, I’m usually glad to see them, too.

“Hey, Paige.” Jeremy at twelve no longer ran to clutch at my legs. He settled for a half wave with limp fingers.

Tyler, ten, was nearly as tall as me but squeezed me anyway. “Paige, c’mon, we’re going to play Pictionary. Grandma and Grandpa are here already. So’s Nanny and Poppa.”

“And Gretchen and Steve, too, I see.” I pointed to the two minivans that belonged to my dad’s kids with his first wife.

“Everyone’s here,” Jeremy said somewhat sourly, and I gave him a glance. He’d always been a pretty upbeat kid. Today he scowled, blond eyebrows pinching tight over the smaller version of our father’s nose.

I leaned back into my car to grab the gift, then locked my car. It was unlikely anything would happen to it parked in my dad’s driveway, but it was habit. “Come. Let’s go in.”

I slung an arm around Tyler’s neck and listened to him babble on about school, soccer, the new game system he’d found under the Christmas tree. He had never known Santa to disappoint him. I’d stopped trying not to be envious of that, even though I no longer believed in Santa Claus.

Inside, Jeremy slunk to a chair in the corner and sat with crossed arms, the scowl still in place. Tyler abandoned me to round up pens for the game. That left me to the socially torturous task of making nice with Stella’s parents, Nanny and Poppa.

Like their daughter, they weren’t bad people. They’d never gone out of their way to be cruel. I wasn’t Cinderella. And I understood, now, what it must have been like to try to find a place in their hearts for their new son-in-law’s children, and how awkward it must have felt. A hastily wrapped Jumbo Book of Puzzles and a prewrapped box of knit mittens would always fall short in comparison to exquisitely wrapped packages in shiny foil paper with matching bows, the contents new clothes or toys. I understood. Spending Christmas at my dad’s had been last minute, haphazardly planned and rare. At least Nanny and Poppa had made an effort.

It seemed easier for them now that I was a grown-up, though it was more difficult for me. As a kid it had never occurred to me they wouldn’t like me. Now I was convinced they didn’t.

“Hello, Paige,” George, also known as Poppa, said. “How nice of you to come.”

He meant well, but the unspoken insinuation of surprise made me bite my tongue against the shout of “Of course I came! She’s my father’s wife!”

But, like Stella herself, I could never hope to impress them. I just wanted not to prove them right. So instead of shouting, I smiled.

“How are you?” I couldn’t call him George, Mr. Smith sounded absurd, and I would never call him Poppa.

I’d been asking out of politeness, but he told me exactly how he was. For fifteen minutes. And I listened, nodding and murmuring in appropriate places, as though I cared. I didn’t know half the people he mentioned, but he acted as if he thought I should. He never asked me about myself, which was fine, because then I didn’t have to answer.

Finally, the game of Pictionary got under way. Gretchen’s husband, Peter, begged off, volunteering to take care of Hunter, their three-year-old son. Steve and his vastly pregnant wife, Kelly, played, though, as did my dad and Stella, all the grandparents and Tyler. And me. Jeremy had disappeared. We split into teams, boys against girls.

“I’ll sit out,” I said when we’d counted up the teams to find the girls’ side had an extra player.

“Oh, no, Paige, are you sure?” Stella protested, but not too hard. She liked things even and square.

“Sure. Not a problem. I’ll go check on dinner, if you want.”

Okay, so maybe I’d cast myself in the Cinderella role. Just a little. But it was a relief to get into the kitchen and set out platters of vegetables and dip, cheese and crackers. Decorative breads and soft cheeses with pretty spreaders that matched the platter. Stella loved to have parties.

I found the cold-cut platters in the garage fridge and brought them into the kitchen to put them out on the table, which was serving as a buffet. I startled Jeremy when I came back in, and he whirled, can of soda in hand, from the open fridge.

From the living room, the sound of laughter wafted. I set the platter of meat on the table. Jeremy and I stared each other down.

“You’re not supposed to be drinking that before dinner,” I told him.

“I know.” His chin lifted. He hadn’t yet cracked the top.

“I’m not going to tell you on you, kiddo.” I turned to the table and took off the platter’s plastic lid so I could get rid of the fake greenery around the edges. I knew how to make things pretty.

“Don’t call me kiddo,” he said.

I expected him to slink away with his stolen prize, but he didn’t. When I turned to look at him, he was still playing with the can, shifting it from one hand to the other.

“Something up?” I moved past him to the big, mostly empty pantry, to pull out the fancy plastic plates and plastic-ware, the matching napkins.

“No.” Jeremy shrugged and disappeared up the back stairs.

After that, the party really started.

It was easier for me with more people there. Stella’s friends knew who I was, of course, and avoided talking to me so they didn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of how to address their friend’s husband’s illegitimate daughter. My dad’s friends knew me, too, but had fewer inhibitions for some reason. Maybe because I’d known them longer, or because they had no conflict of loyalty. Some of them didn’t like Stella much, and maybe that was part of it, too.

Of my father’s other kids, I saw very little. Gretchen, Steve and I had never been close, even though it wasn’t my mother who’d finally won our dad away from their mom. Of course, their spouses weren’t sure what to make of me, either, and it was easier for us to be superficially polite without trying to get to know each other. Their children were and would be my nieces and nephews, but I doubted they’d ever think of me as an aunt.

“Paige DeMarco, how the hell are you?” Denny’s one of my dad’s oldest friends. Fishing and drinking buddies, they’d known each other since high school. He’d known my mom, too.

“Hey, Denny. Long time no see.”

“Yeah, and you a big-city girl now, too. How’s it going?” Denny gave me a one-armed hug.

“It’s going great.” It wasn’t an entire lie. Most of my life was going great.

“Yeah?” He tossed back the dregs of his iced tea. I guessed he was hankering for a beer, but Stella wasn’t serving booze. Not that I blamed her. Alcohol always made a different kind of party. “Where you living at? Your dad said someplace along the river?”

“Riverview Manor.”

There was no denying the pride swelling inside me at Denny’s impressed whistle. “Nice digs. And your job? You’re not still working with your mom, are you?”

“I help out once in a while, if she’s got a big job.”

Denny grimaced at his empty cup, but didn’t move to pour more. “What’s she up to? She still with the same guy?”

Questions my dad never asked. I was the only part of my mother my dad needed to know about. He’d never said as much, but I knew it.

“Leo? Yes.”

“And that kid, how old’s he now?”

“Arty’s seven.” I had to laugh for a second. “Wow. Yeah. He just turned seven.”

“You tell her I said hi, okay?”

“Sure.”

We chatted for a while after that. The party got louder. Stella reigned over it like a queen, even if she was claiming to still be only twenty-nine. When it came time to open the gifts, I thought about slipping out, but forced myself to stay.

Stella sat in the big rocking chair in the living room, her presents arranged at her feet and her closest girlfriend beside her getting ready to write down the name of every gift and its giver. Stella opened gift cards, packages of bath salts, certificates for spa treatments. Sweaters. Slippers. A new silk robe someone had brought from a trip to Japan. She oohed and aahed over each gift appropriately.

By the time she got to mine, my stomach had begun to eat itself. The harsh sting of acid rose in my throat, burning. My heart thudded sickly. I had to turn away to pop another couple antacids and sip from a glass of ginger ale, even though I knew the soda would ruin the effects of the medicine.

It’s silly to hold on to the past, but we all do it. I was almost ten the first year I’d been invited to Stella’s birthday party. The paint had been barely dry in their new house. Gretchen and Steven were living one week with their mother and one week with my dad and Stella. I, of course, lived full-time with my mom and saw my dad on an occasional weekend or holiday, a practice he’d only started after leaving his first wife.

I’d picked out Stella’s present myself that year, using my allowance to pay for it. I’d bought her a silky red tank top with a lacy hem. It was the sort of shirt my mom would’ve loved and wore often, and she said nothing when she helped me fold it and wrap it in some pretty paper that had come free in the mail to solicit money for a charity.

I’d been so proud of that present. I’d been sure Stella, who wasn’t nearly as pretty as my mom but who tried hard, anyway, would open it and put it on right away. Then she’d smile at me, and my dad would smile at me, and we’d all be happy.

Instead, she’d opened the box and pulled out the shirt. Her gaze had gone immediately to my father’s, but men don’t know anything about fashion beyond what they like and what they don’t. She didn’t put it on. She fingered the red satiny fabric and peeked at the label, her eyes going a little wider at what she saw. Then she put the shirt back in the box with a thank-you even a nine-year-old could tell was forced. I never saw her wear it, but I did find it in the garage a few years later, in the box of rags my dad used for cleaning his cars.

I wasn’t nine years old any longer. I wasn’t even a teen in too-thick eyeliner and a too-short skirt. I’d learned how to dress and how to speak, but part of me would always be my mother’s daughter, at least in Stella’s eyes.

“Oh, Paige, what a thoughtful gift.” Stella lifted out the box of paper and opened it to pull out the pen. She wiggled it so the tiny tassel danced. “Very pretty. Thank you.”

I let out a long, silent sigh. “You’re welcome.”

“Where do you find such pretty things?” Stella continued. She turned to face her audience. “Paige always finds the prettiest things.”

That was it. Bells didn’t ring, little birdies didn’t fly around on rainbow glitter wings. She’d said thank-you, and I thought she meant it. That was all.

I still managed to slip away before the party was over. My dad caught me at the door. He insisted on hugging me.

“Thanks for coming.” I’m sure he meant it, too.

I doubt there’s anyone who does not have a complicated relationship with his or her parents, so I’m not saying I’m special or anything. Considering the circumstances of my birth, I’m lucky to have any sort of relationship with my dad. For the most part, at least, it’s an honest relationship. Except of course when honesty is too painful.

“Of course I’d come,” I told him. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Of course you would,” my dad said. “Well, I’m glad you did. How’s the new place?”

“It’s great.” With his arm still around me, I wanted to squirm away. “It’s a very nice place.”

“And the new job?”

The job I’d had for almost six months didn’t feel so new anymore. “It’s great, too. I like my boss a lot.”

“Good. You’re up on Union Deposit Road, right?”

“Progress,” I told him. “Just off Progress.”

“Oh, right. Well, hey, maybe I should swing by some day and take you to lunch at the Cracker Barrel, what do you say?”

“Sure, Dad.” I smiled, not expecting him to ever follow through. “Just call me.”

He kissed my cheek and hugged me again, making a show of making me his daughter. It was nice, in that way we both knew was shallow but served its purpose.

The moment I got in my car and the door to the house shut, my every muscle relaxed. I blew out another series of long, slow breaths and lifted my arms to let my pits air out. I’d be sore tomorrow in places I hadn’t realized I’d clenched. I was already getting a headache. I’d made it through another big family event without anything going wrong.

Chapter 08

Some consider the body a temple. As such, it must be cared for appropriately so it may be used in the manner for which it was meant.

Beginning tomorrow, you will eat oatmeal for breakfast. Sweeten it however you like.

Today, you will consume three fewer cups of coffee, replacing them with water.

Today, you will extend your regular workout by fifteen minutes.

Today, you will focus a conscious effort on your cigarette smoking. You may smoke one cigarette only once every two hours. You will do nothing else while you smoke it. You will concentrate on my instructions. You will think of the word discipline each and every time you light up.

Finally, you will record your efforts in your journal and describe your thoughts and feelings in detail, particularly your thoughts on what “discipline” means to you.

“Do this in memory of me, and go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” I murmured, mocking. “Wow.”

The second note had been nestled amongst a scant handful of bills and charity requests, and it had slipped into my hand as though it had been written just for me. I hadn’t meant to open it, but something about the smooth, sleek paper and lack of glue on the flap had been too tempting to pass up. Hey, it had been delivered to me, hadn’t it? Even though the number on the front still said 114, not 414, and even though I knew better, I’d read it anyway.

I still had no clue what the hell it was, or meant. I turned it over and over in my hands, then read it again. I closed the card and stared at it, but I couldn’t decipher its meaning.

Unless it had none. Maybe it was some sort of crazy new diet or self-help plan. I’d heard of a new plan that hooked members up with mentors. Sort of like a 12-step program for food addicts, it was supposed to help to have a buddy. It was the only scenario I came up with, but it didn’t feel right.

I lifted the card again, looking closer for clues. I caressed the paper. It had the same rough edge, like someone had cut one large sheet of paper into smaller sizes. No signature, and delivered twice in a row to the wrong person. Some buddy.

I kept the card safely in my hand. My fingers curved around it and my thumb caressed the thick paper. I looked at it again, the single sentence.

Discipline?

I still didn’t get it. I tucked the card back into its envelope, restraining myself from sniffing the ink. I wasn’t the only person standing at the mailboxes, and I didn’t want to attract that sort of attention. I found the mailbox for 114 and studied it, too. The brass numbers were stylishly weathered but not worn. There wasn’t really any mistaking a one for a four or vice versa, even if the number on the card itself were smudged.

“Excuse me.” The woman next to me gave me a smile meant to look apologetic but only looked annoyed. “I need to get to my box.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I folded closed the note and tucked it quickly into the slot for 114, wondering if by some luck it belonged to her.

She used her key to open a different box, though, and pulled out a thick sheaf of mail. Then she bent and looked through the hole to the office behind it, but the mail carrier had already moved down the row to the end. She straightened as she closed and locked her box, then riffled through her mail with a disgusted sniff.

“Nothing ever comes when it’s supposed to.” She didn’t say it to me, but I nodded anyway.

“I wish my bills wouldn’t come.”

She turned and gave me an up-and-down look as her mouth twitched into a grimace masquerading as another smile. Her gaze took in my coat, the same cut and color as hers but not as nice, my legs, clad in nude hose, and finally settled on my shoes. They were the only part of me that seemed worth her approval, but she raised a brow anyway and just tossed off a fake little laugh as she stuffed her mail into her Kate Spade bag and turned on her matching pumps.

Bitch.

Oh, I knew what discipline meant to me, all right. Discipline was what kept me from popping her in the back of the head with the heel of my barely-passing-inspection shoes. It’s what kept my chin high and my mouth fixed in a pleasant smile instead of turning down at the corners so the tears would stay burning behind my eyes instead of slipping out.

Discipline, or maybe it was pride. Or stubbornness. Whatever it was, I had enough to spare.

I waited until she’d gone before I crossed the lobby and pushed through the revolving door. Outside, gray and overcast skies echoed my mood, and the breeze brought the scent of cigarettes to me. I looked automatically, wondering if I’d see someone pondering discipline.

“Ari,” I said, surprised. “Hi.”

Miriam’s grandson tossed his butt into the sand-filled can and shrugged his coat higher around his neck. “Hey, Paige.”

“I didn’t know you lived here.”

He grinned. “I don’t. Just dropped off something for my grandma, you know?”

I didn’t know, but I nodded. “Tell her I said hello.”

“Stop by the shop and tell her yourself,” he suggested with a sweetly dipping smile.

It was nice to be flirted with, albeit without much heat. “I’ll do that. Have a good day.”

“You, too.”

I looked back as I crossed the alley to the parking garage, and Ari was still looking. Maybe there was a little heat, after all. And what woman didn’t like to be appreciated? I had a much bigger smile on my face than I had before, and it lasted me all the way to work.

I wasn’t even close to being late, but I might as well have been because by the time I got to my desk, my boss had already piled a stack of files on it. It could have been worse. He could have been standing over my desk with the empty coffeepot in his hand. He did that, sometimes, though I knew he was as capable of making coffee as I am. More, maybe, since he inhaled the high-octane stuff like it was air and I limited myself to a mug once or twice a day.

Spying the empty Starbucks cup in the trash, I knew he’d already had his first dose of the day. I was safe a little bit longer. I could get the files ordered and put away without him breathing down my neck. I decided to put the coffee on anyway, though, just in case. There were many days I could predict my boss’s every move, from the midmorning break when the bagel man came around, to his post-lunch trip to the bathroom.

Today wasn’t one of those days.

“Paige. Listen. I need you to get those files taken care of, okay?”

I turned from the small bar sink, where I’d been filling the coffeepot with water. “Right, Paul. Of course.”

Amazing how someone with only a community-college education could still deduce simple things.

“Good.” Paul nodded and smoothed his tie between his thumb and forefinger while he watched me fiddle with the coffeemaker.

I hadn’t yet figured out if Paul hovered because he expected me to screw up, or if he hoped I would. Either way, it didn’t bother me the way it would have some of the other personal assistants on the floor. Brenda, for example, liked to brag how her boss, Rhonda, spent most of her time traveling and she barely had to deal with her. She also liked to brag that she’d worked for Kelly Printing longer than that Jenny-come-lately Rhonda anyways, and knew what she was doing, so why should she have to run everything by someone else when she could get her work done faster and better without interference?

I never told Brenda I found Paul’s constant supervision more comforting than annoying. After all, if he never allowed me the autonomy to make decisions, I couldn’t exactly be held accountable for anything that went wrong. Right? Even when Paul did his share of traveling, he never left without making me a sheaf of notes and lists…lists.

I thought of the cards I’d found. Two, now. Two misdelivered notes with explicit, mysterious (to me) instructions. I could still feel the sleek paper under my fingertips. I regretted not taking the time to smell the ink.

With the coffee set to brewing, I turned to face Paul. “Anything else?”

“Not right now, thanks.” Paul smiled and disappeared back into his inner sanctum, leaving me with the cheery burble of the coffeepot and a bunch of files to herd.

This is what I knew about Paul Johnson, my boss. He had a chubby, pretty wife named Melissa who sometimes forgot to pick up his dry cleaning on time and two teenagers too busy with wholesome activities like sports and youth group to get into trouble. I knew that because I’d seen their photos and overheard his telephone conversations. He had an older brother, the unfortunately named Peter Johnson, with whom he played golf several times a year but not often enough to be good. I knew that because he’d asked me to make a reservation for him at one of the local golf courses and to call his brother to confirm the date. The request was slightly out of the realm of my professional duties, but I’d done it anyway. I also knew Paul was forty-seven years old, had earned his MBA from Wharton, attended church on Sundays with his family and drove a black, but not brand-new, Mercedes Benz.

Those were things I knew.

This is what I thought about Paul Johnson, my boss. He wasn’t a tyrant. Just precise. He held himself to the same level of perfection he expected from an assistant, and I appreciated that. He could be funny, though not often, and usually unexpectedly. He gave every project his full attention and effort because it pained him to do anything less. I understood and appreciated that, too.

I’d worked for him for almost six months. He’d told me to call him Paul, not Mr. Johnson, but we weren’t anything like friends. That was okay with me. I didn’t want my boss to be my chum.

Though sometimes it felt as if all I did was make coffee and file, my job did actually have more responsibility. I had documents to proof and send, invoices to fill out and appointments to book. I did all this to leave Paul free to do whatever it was that he did all day long in his lush, swanky office. If hard pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone what, exactly, that was. I didn’t hate or love my job, but it sure as hell beat working at a sub shop or being an au pair, which was what I’d done while looking for a job that would use my freshly minted degree in business administration. If I never slung another plate of hash or wiped another ass I’d be happy for a good long time.

There was another advantage to having a boss who needed everything just so. He was willing to do what it took to make sure he got what he wanted, whether it was leaving me a three-page e-mail of the week’s work, or taking five thorough minutes to describe to me exactly what he wanted me to get him for lunch. Also, if he sent me out to get him some lunch, he usually treated me.

Today it was a pastrami sandwich on rye from Mrs. Deli. Mustard, no mayo. No tomatoes, no onion. Lettuce on the side. Potato salad and an extralarge iced tea with real sugar, not what he called cancer in a packet.

I met Brenda in the hall on my way back. She took one look at the bulging paper sack from Mrs. Deli and sniffed hungrily. She held a small, boxed salad I recognized as coming from the same guy who sold bagels in the morning. I’d had one of those salads once, when I’d forgotten my lunch and had been so desperate for food I’d been willing to use my laundry quarters.

“Gawd, Paige,” Brenda said. “Lucky. I wish my boss would send me out for lunch. Heck, I’d like to just get out of this place for an hour.”

Officially, we got an hour for lunch, but since our building was located in a business complex on the outskirts of the city, by the time you drove to anyplace decent for lunch, you’d barely have enough time to eat and come back. Rhonda might not hover over Brenda, but she was a stickler about office hours and break time. Everything has a trade-off.

“Let me just drop this off with Paul and I’ll be right down.”

Brenda looked at the box of sadness in her hand. “Yeah, okay. I’ve only got about forty minutes left, though.”

“I’ll hurry.”

Paul’s door was half-closed when I rapped on the door frame. At the muffled noise, I pushed it all the way open. He sat at his desk, staring at his computer monitor. The screen had dissolved into a rapidly changing pattern of expanding pipe-work, his screen saver, and I wondered how long he’d been sitting there.

“Paul?”

“Paige. Come in.” He gestured and swiveled in his chair.

Careful not to spill or drip anything, I pulled his lunch from the bag one item at a time. It felt like a ritual, passing lunch instead of a torch. Paul settled each item onto his blotter. Sandwich at six, potato salad at nine, plastic fork and napkin at three. His drink went to noon, and he looked up at me.

“Thank you, Paige.”

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