Copyright © 2015 Molly O’Keefe

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:

E-book formatting by Jessica Lewis

http://authorslifesaver.com

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation with the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Table of Contents

About The Heart of It

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

About Molly O’Keefe

Also by Molly O’Keefe

Everything I Left Unsaid

Dear Reader

The Heart of It was originally published in the SUMMER RAIN Anthology that came out in June 2014. All the proceeds from that anthology (and its companion piece WINTER RAIN) go directly to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network). The anthology is filled with amazing stories by a group of extremely talented authors across all kinds of genres and I was absolutely humbled to be a part of it. If you enjoy this short, please consider purchasing the anthology in support of an amazing cause.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23133038-summer-rain?from_search=true&search_version=service

My gratitude goes out to Jessica Lewis at Author’s Lifesaver – who is in fact a lifesaver. And Amber at Book Beautiful who does such amazing covers. Sarah Frantz who edited this story with such care and Audra North who was the brain and beating heart behind it all. Thank you.

About The Heart of It

Gabe seems outwardly successful and content, but inwardly, he struggles to banish the lingering demons of his childhood. Elena is a survivor herself and knows that the smart move is to walk away from Gabe. But his pain and his hope are too compelling to resist.

Are these two wounded people brave enough to find love together?

Dear Reader,

What a privilege it has been to be a part of this anthology with so many great authors in support of RAINN.

I wanted to explore the difference between what we are able to pin down and intellectualize, and what can only be felt and experienced, so I wrote about man who had been sexually abused as a child and whose parents supported him and found him counseling and who has, seemingly, gone on to be successful and happy. Despite his best efforts, however, he continues to feel the repercussions of that abuse. In reaching out to a surprising and resilient call girl for help, he forges one of the most honest relationships in his life.

I hope you enjoy Gabe and Elena.

– Molly O’Keefe

Chapter One

She was there.

At the bar wearing a dress the color of a bruise’s dark heart. Her brown hair caught the candlelight as she tilted her head to check her watch.

Is she early? Or am I late? Gabe wondered and stepped out of the shadowy elevators into the top-floor bar at the Thompson Hotel.

It was Tuesday night and raining, so the bar was empty. When he walked in, brushing the rain out of his hair and off the shoulders of his jacket, she glanced up. Of course, everyone in the bar glanced up, which he was used to. People noticed men who were six feet, six inches tall and built—as his mother said—like a barn door.

But Gabe really only cared about her.

Her eyes touched him—his shoulders, his wet red hair, his face—and then she went back to her glass of wine, taking a sip with careful nonchalance, as if being sure not to notice him. He wasn’t great at social cues, spent far too much time alone, but that posture he understood: pretending not to notice while actually noticing with every fiber of his being. That was his official language.

She’d told him they should act like they didn't know each other. Wipe the slate clean. That had been easy to agree to. He liked a clean slate.

He took the stool on the other side of the corner, a few seats away from her.

“What can I get you?” The bartender asked, slipping a napkin on the bar.

“Moosehead in a bottle.” He took off his coat and set it over the stool next to him. He unwound his scarf and set it on top of his coat. Carefully. Neatly. His awareness of her just a few feet away made all these things he did seem conspicuous and deliberate.

Don’t pay any attention to me. He mocked his own seriousness. I’m just pretending you’re not there.

“Would you like a menu?” The bartender asked.

“Sure.”

He was starved. The game had gone into overtime, and there hadn’t been enough guys so he’d never subbed out. Which was okay with him—he played the top-tier Tuesday night hockey beer league for the workout, so he could skate hard enough to empty his head. That was easiest to do when he didn’t get off the ice.

There were a million other places for a post-game drink and burger, but he liked this top-floor bar. His Canadian publisher had thrown a party for him here once, with signature drinks and a piano player. Very swanky. Too swanky, really. But he’d loved the view. The perspective of being above the city when he spent all his hours down in one of the chambers of its concrete heart.

He glanced backwards over his shoulder, taking her in with a sweeping glance that pretended to look outside through the walls of windows.

“Not much of a view tonight.” Her voice was nice. Soft and low and sweet. He heard just that little bit of an accent and wondered—as always—which part of Quebec she came from.

“Not unless you like watching the storms,” he said. The sky was dark, but he could see the storm blowing in from the west, rolling across the front of Toronto, the CN Tower about to be obscured. Rain lashed the windows. It was grey and dark and cold and about to get a little violent.

He was glad to be inside.

“I never thought of it like that,” she said. “I suppose lightning would be pretty awesome up here.”

“If you like that sort of thing.”

The bartender set down his beer, and he grabbed it with both hands like a lifeline.

“Do you?” Her merry eyes gave the impression they were talking about something other than storms. “Like that sort of thing?”

“I grew up in the prairies.” He was surprised to hear the truth coming out of his mouth. “Storm watching was top-shelf entertainment. My whole family would stand on the porch to see those summer fronts roll in and turn the world a kind of greenish purple.”

“Sounds a little scary,” She watched him through her lashes, her lips curled in a teasing smile. “And boring, if watching storms is considered a good time.”

He laughed and nodded. “Boring yes. Scary . . . only if the sirens went off. If they didn’t, we’d sit there and watch the wind kick up so fast and so hard it laid all the wheat flat.” He took a sip of his beer just to shut himself up. He drained half the bottle and almost immediately wanted a dozen more.

He set the beer down.

“I always wondered what do the animals do in those storms?” Her skin was the color of the harvest moon, or the inside of a shell, something white and creamy and perfect. “All the outside cats and stray dogs. Where do they go?”

“We had a dog once, Queenie. She was too stupid to climb under the porch and instead stood in the yard barking at the wind like it was breaking into our house.”

“What happened to her?”

How strange to be talking about Queenie when he hadn’t thought about her in years.

“She came back after every storm, limping and a little more crazy. She still barked at the wind, which probably just confirms that old dog new tricks thing.”

“Only if the old dog is crazy.”

In the silence after their polite laughter, he realized in a great hot rush how he was sitting there, all sprawled out, taking up too much real estate. Despite having lived in it for twenty-four years, his body could still surprise him with its size. His giant hands, his too long legs. He tried to tuck himself under the bar, but felt stupid.

The first trickle of panic slid down his spine. The rain had given him something to talk about. Lame as that was, he could always say something about the weather. And nerves had pushed him right into that stuff about his family, but they’d exhausted that, and now he sat there, nursing a beer, considering an overpriced burger, because he was rich now and had no idea what else to spend his money on but ice time and better burgers.

All of this was brain-buzzing nonsense while he was torn in two between wanting to grab his coat and go home, maybe hit a drive-thru on his way, or slide across the bar stools to get closer to the woman in the purple dress.

“My name is Elena,” she said.

“Mike.”

She blinked before she smiled. What had he told her last time? Something stupid about baseball.

“Nice to meet you, Mike. Are you staying here? At the hotel?” “I am. I’m in town seeing clients.”

“What do you do?” She was following his lead, pretending because it was so much easier than the truth.

“I’m a lawyer.” The father in his new book was a lawyer. A good guy, trying to understand his kid, trying to do right by doing all the wrong things. Gabe still hadn’t quite figured out how that was going to work for a kid who fought crime in the Underworld, but the puzzle was still new, and he was thinking that maybe the dad would get kidnapped and held for ransom? Forcing the kid into his gumshoe roll? That could work.

“Family law,” he said when he realized he’d been quiet too long. “Messy divorce case.”

Should the dad be divorced or widowed?

She made a noncommittal hum in her throat and picked up her glass, taking another sip, and he pushed away all thoughts of work, those daydream wormholes that could suck him in for hours.

“And you?” he asked. “Are you staying here?”

She nodded.

“Business?” The green glass of the bottle glowed in his hands, painfully conspicuous. As if it were important. The light from the bar made all the drinks seem slightly more weighty than they actually were. Her white wine looked like liquid gold.

“Yes.” Her smile was really beautiful. She had this girl-next-door thing going for her, combined with that Quebec chill, wrapped up in that purply-blue dress—it was powerful. She was powerful.

“You’re French?” he asked. “I’m guessing by the accent.”

“I grew up in a small town outside of Montreal.”

“And what did you do there? While I was watching storms?”

“Disappointing my parents, mostly.” Her smile, dry as a bone, could not quite cover all the pain the memory clearly caused her. And he realized, as he created this shell of lies around himself, that she was either an incredible actress or telling the truth. Or some slight version of it. And he was suddenly wanted to ask this lovely creature how she’d disappointed her parents.

“Parents are tricky things,” he said, instead of asking.

“Agreed.” She reached over and tipped her glass against his beer bottle. “Though I guess since I’m on the other side of it now, I can safely say kids are pretty tricky too.”

“You have kids?” He tried not to sound surprised and relieved. Kids he could talk about. Kids he loved to talk about.

“One. A son. He’s nine.”

He leapt onto the topic with gratitude. “Is he a sports guy, video gamer, or reader?”

“Sort of a video-gamer-reader hybrid,” she laughed. “He’s very serious. I joke that he’s a little old man in a little boy’s body. I worry sometimes that he’s too serious. That he doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“Video games and books are fun.”

“Was that who you were?” She tipped her wine glass towards him. “A gamer-slash-reader?”

“No. Not as a kid. As a kid I was hockey. One hundred percent hockey. It wasn’t until I was older that I found books.”

Her brown eyes watched him with a kind of intention he found awkward. Too much talking about himself. Too many doors opened he liked to have shut.

“What’s he reading?” he asked, shifting the conversation toward the familiar. He could talk kids’ books, especially middle-grade books for boys, for years. He gave her some recommendations based on what books she told him her son had already read and went so far as to write them down for her.

“Thank you.” She tucked the slip of paper into the small black purse next to her now empty wine glass. “You know a lot about what kids read.”

Ah right, how to explain how a lawyer knows about middle-grade books for boys. Or maybe . . . maybe it was time to stop pretending.

“Would you like another Pinot?” the bartender asked Elena, but before she could answer, Gabe jumped in.

“Have another,” he said. “On me.” He didn’t want to stop pretending. He didn’t want the next step, if it meant letting go of this quiet comfort.

She smiled at him—full force—and he knew in a heartbeat that she wasn’t an actress. Her name was Elena, she did have a son and had grown up in Quebec with disapproving parents. He was a bag of lies and half-truths and she was without counterfeit. There could have been a hundred women sitting at this bar and he would have only seen her and the brilliant hard truth of her.

“Why not,” she said, and the bartender took her glass away, only to come back with a full one.

“It looks like you’re drinking gold.” He pointed to the glass.

She lifted it and gave the stupid thing he’d said consideration. “It does, doesn’t it?”

“What were you as a kid?”

“I don’t think the same classifications work for girls.”

“No? What are the girl classifications?”

She shook her head, and he wondered if he was making her uncomfortable. If this was yet another one of those topics one didn’t broach in flirtatious bar banter.

“My sister was a brain,” she said. “That’s where my son must get it. She was the smartest kid in school. She’s a genetics professor in Norway, now.”

“Norway?”

“I know, right? Who goes to Norway?”

“So your sister was smart and you were . . . ? Athletic? Artistic?”

“Reckless,” she said. “And angry.”

Outside a streak of lightning broke through the storm clouds and thunder rattled the window. Elena jumped, sloshing wine on the bar. Her hand flew to her throat, in such an old-fashioned gesture, he was charmed.

She laughed, the skin at her neck and chest going red. “Sorry, that scared me.”

“Like I said, a good spot to watch storms.” He grabbed a few napkins and helped her blot up the spilled wine. When she moved her hand he saw the gold locket around her neck. “Is that real? Your locket?”

“It is. It was my grandmother’s.”

“You have a picture of your son in there?”

“No, it’s me as a kid. I should probably change it, seems weird to have a picture of myself in there, but it was the way she wore it every day for years.”

“May I?” he asked and she switched to a stool closer to him, and he did the same on his side, and now they sat nearly next to each other at the corner. Under the bar, his knee bumped into hers, and he jerked his legs away electrified.

She popped open the locket and tilted her head back to give him room to see. When he leaned forward, he could smell her skin and the perfume she wore, something light and floral. Warm.

“I like the pigtails.” He glanced up from the picture to grin at her.

“And the missing tooth?” She laughed, her eyes on the rafters. “It’s got to be one of the worst pictures ever taken. I have no idea why she picked this one.”

He knew. Anyone who loved this girl would pick this picture because the little girl was smiling with all her might. She beamed. She radiated. She was joy personified.

The anger she mentioned feeling, it must have happened later. After the picture.

You’re lovely, he wanted to say. Just lovely.

“My mom did the same thing to me,” he said, again for some reason the truth finding its way to his lips. “To all of us—”

“All of us?”

“I have four brothers and a sister. I was the youngest of six.”

“Six!”

“Right.” Now he felt himself blushing. “That’s the other thing to do, I guess.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him and the combination of all of her parts, her warm smell, her wide smile, the shine in her hair, her body in that dress—she really was too much. Too much for a man like him. A twenty-four-year-old guy with all the wrong experience.

“What was the picture?” Her palm stroked his hand, a glancing touch he felt down through his guts.

Pictures?

“All of us in stupid Christmas sweaters.” Why were they talking about Christmas sweaters of all fucking things?

“Are you close? The six of you?”

“Very. You? With your sister?”

The conversation was drifting away from him. He wanted to touch her hand or to have her touch his again. Have her hand sweep over his arm, his shoulder, down his back the tense and shaking muscles of his back. To his waist. His legs. Between them.

God, yes. Between them.

“I haven’t spoken to her in ten years.”

“Wait . . . what?”

She slipped her hand into his, curled the back of it against his palm like some warm trusting thing, and his body exploded into physical life. He felt his blood vessels, the blood thudding through them, the twitch of his hamstrings. The ache of his lungs. He felt all of it. All of himself. In the presence of her.

“Mike?”

He lifted his eyes to hers, a starving man, helpless under her brown gaze. No doubt he was revealing all of his desire. No doubt he was practically drooling.

Mike. Right. That’s me.

Before he could say anything she leaned forward and short-circuited his brain with the warmth of her cheek inches from his. “Would you like to go downstairs?” she whispered in his ear. “To my room?”

Speechless. Shaking. He nodded, once. A quick jerk.

Yes, yes please God, yes.

The heat of his desire, the way it bordered on desperation, terrified him. Panicked him.

And that horrific miasma of fear and desire, that was where the snarling monsters of his past lived. It was the ugly stew they called home.

Last year he’d gone to this counselor to try and get help with his drinking. Well, with the drinking and the sex. And the counselor told him that the drinking gave him distance when it came to sex, and that if he wanted to have sex without getting hammered, he’d have to come up with his own way of distancing himself. Of disengaging from the fear and then managing the desire.

So what he tried to do was make a nice cold hard slice between his body and his mind. He wasn’t very good at holding onto the distance, but for the moment, it allowed him to sit back, pull his wallet out, and throw a fifty dollar bill on the bar.

They stood together, and he grabbed his coat, the scarf he’d felt so stupid about.

Was that a half hour ago? Less. How had this happened? How could she seem so casual when he felt like a giant giraffe, all knees and elbows and an awkward raging hard-on that he covered with his jacket folded over his arms.

She led him out of the bar, and before he could stop them, his eyes traced the round edges of her ass, the curve—top and bottom hugged so perfectly by that dress.

I want her, he thought. I want her so bad.

And then: Please let that be enough.

The elevator hallway was dark, and she stood next to him, right next to him. Against him. He felt her breast against his arm, her hip against his, and sweat gathered at his neck. The gold doors reflected their images. Him so tall and big, huge really. Muscle and height and a flop of red-gold hair still damp from the rain.

She looked like the twilight sky. Dark dress, light skin, that fall of mink brown hair down her back. Everyone was shorter than him, but she was tiny. He could pick her up if he wanted. Imagined her with her legs around his waist, his hands under her hips.

The doors swished open, and they stepped into the dimly lit elevator. As the doors closed she moved against him, a slow turn; her ass, her hip, and then the soft rise of her belly against his body was torture and pleasure combined.

“You didn’t ask if I was married,” she whispered, her hand against the tight muscles of his stomach.

“I don’t care,” he whispered back, his fingers finding the ends of her hair. He knew the answer, of course—or thought he did, considering the nature of their relationship—but this script was exciting. So exciting. She stepped backwards against the mirrored wall and the railing and pulled him against her.

The distance between his brain and his body threatened to close and let in the ghosts, but he thought of hockey, of work, the problem he was working on in the third chapter. Was the dad divorced? Did it matter if the boy had a mom?

Their lips never touched, he simply breathed her in, tasting her—the wine she’d had to drink, the sweetness of her beneath that. His cock throbbed hard against her belly. She pushed against him, perched on her high heels, pushed against the wall, her skirt revealed more of her long legs. He wanted to step back and look at her. Take her in with his eyes so he could imagine her later. But touching was what he was here to do. He was supposed to touch.

Be active, not passive. Another tool his counselor had given him.

Fumbling, his fingers found the smooth muscle of her thigh and when the door binged open, he walked backwards, pulling her into the hallway. “What’s your room number?” he asked against her mouth.

Her eyelids fluttered. “Three . . . three sixteen.”

They ran into the wall, knocking a picture sideways. He let go of her hips to catch the picture and felt her hands come up to cup his cheeks, pulling him down from his great giraffe height. And then her lips were pressed softly against his. A whisper, a tremor, a ghost of a kiss, really.

Shaken, he pulled away from her touch. “Room, Elena . . .”

“Go right. Third door down.” She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, used her teeth, and he stepped back. Stepped away because all of this felt good and was so exciting. Elena was so exciting. But he felt like he was watching it. Not living it. And despite wanting this, wanting her, so bad he could taste it, he was aware of how close he was to that awful no-man’s-land between what his body wanted and what his head was terrified of.

He could split his mind from his body, but he could never manage the distance.

Maybe he needed more beers. A dozen more beers. A few shots. That was the only way this ever got done, with him blitzed out of his head. What did it matter if he was hammered?

But it did matter. It mattered so much it ate away at him, drove him to these impossible lengths.

Maybe if he’d had just ten more minutes on the ice, rendering his body lived in and useful, something he controlled. His brain an empty and whole vessel. Something, anything so he could be in control of the split, keep his brain and his body in the right spot. Enough that he wasn’t in ruins, enough that he was still here. Now. With her.

He took her by the hand and led her to the correct door where she slid a key card into the slot and stepped backwards against the door, opening it with her body, her fingers still laced with his.

The invitation on her face was as old as Eve. As potent as original sin.

Please. It was a final thought before stepping into the room. Please let this work.

The room was dark, plush. Like walking into a secret.

The door closed behind him and he leaned back against it. A few steps away, she dropped her purse on the floor and began to kick off her shoes.

“Leave them on,” he told her, and she smiled, a lock of hair caught against her lip. Obscuring her eyes.

Her hands pulled the straps of her dress off her shoulders, and he was breathless at every inch revealed: her shoulders, the beautiful rise and fall of her clavicle, and there, the slope of her breast, the black lace edge of her bra. The top of her dress fell away revealing her bra without any straps, her lean muscled stomach.

She pushed the sleeves off her arms and then hooked her thumbs in the slouched fabric gathered at her waist ready to push it over her hips.

“Turn around.” His voice was nearly a growl and he couldn’t move off the door. Couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch and burn.

Oh God, her smile as she turned could have brought him to his knees, if he weren’t glued to the door.

She bent, pushing the dress over her hips and letting it fall to the floor, revealing black lace panties, pale skin, and the most beautiful ass he’d ever seen.

Legs and lace and skin and perfection. That was her. That was all he saw.

And then she crossed the deep divide and three carpeted feet between them and pressed all that perfection up against him, running her hands under his shirt, over the muscles that twitched in a terrible fight-or-flight instinct.

He liked it better when she was over there, away from him. Sexy and real, but distant. So he could watch and appreciate and sex was sort of a perfect, abstract thing.

That’s what the alcohol used to do. Why he needed it.

When she touched him, it all became very real.

Sweat broke out on his neck, trickled in cold icy drops down his spine.

“Take this off,” She tugged on the hem of his T-shirt, and he nodded lifting his arms like a child so she could pull it off.

She had to know he was sweating. Like really sweating; it ran down his sides from his armpits, foul and slick. No doubt she could also feel him shaking, every muscle flexed and contracted, straining to keep him here.

“Hey,” she murmured. Her fingers traced his bones and muscles, skating across his abs, up to his chest. She brushed her palms against the hair there as if she was petting him, and he closed his eyes, pressing his head hard against the door. “It’s okay.”

It’s okay, Gabe. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.

There was some animal in the room making low, pained noises. Horrible noises.

“Shhh,” she said, her hand slipping from his chest down to his jeans where his cock, so fucking hard it hurt, pulsed against her touch. “You’re so hard.” She undid his belt before he fully realized what was happening, and then her fingers were against his skin. His dick in her hand. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

It feels good, Gabey. It can’t be bad if it feels good. I just want to make you feel good. See?

Elena pushed his jeans down and bent, breathing over his hard flesh and he knew what would happen next.

Do you know what this is called? A blow job. I’m gonna suck your dick—

Gabe wrenched away from the door, from her, pulling up his pants, tripping over his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said. With wildly shaking hands he tucked his now flaccid dick back in his underwear. It took him three times to zip up his pants. “I’m sorry, Elena.”

Her dress made a purple-blue puddle on the floor, and he picked it up, too ashamed and broken to look her in the eye as he handed it to her. “You can keep the room for the night,” he said. “And the money, of course.” The dress was pulled from his fingers, and he turned in a circle looking for his shirt, found it draped over the foot of the bed, and quickly put it on. And then because he still felt naked, he grabbed his jacket. The scarf.

To his surprise when he turned for the door, ready to get the hell out of here, she was still standing there, the dress clasped to her chest, her head bent, the dark hair a curtain he couldn’t see through.

“Elena? Please let me go.”

Chapter Two

The fuck, Elena? Get out of the way and let the poor man go.

But she couldn’t. Her feet were nailed to the floor by the scent of his fear, the power of his desperation.

And because it had been four damn weeks of this. All this bravery and all this fear.

He’s a fucked up person in a world of fucked up people. Do not get all hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold over this.

But he was just so damn sweet. And sad.

“Please,” he breathed. “Let’s just forget this.”

Oh, fat chance, buddy.

Without looking at him, and without moving away from the door, either, she stepped into her dress, slipped the straps over her shoulders. She turned, presenting her back, and she could imagine how she looked, with the gaping split of the purple dress, through which he could see the black satin and lace of her underwear, the curve of her spine to the top of her ass. She knew how she looked, the seductive picture she made for him. It was a tool of the trade. A job requirement and she only felt a little bad using it on him.

“Zip me back up, would you?” she asked.

He was big, this man with four different names. He was tall and wide and strong. He had big hands and big feet, long legs that he never seemed to know what to do with. A giant cock he really didn’t know what to do with.

But he was astoundingly gentle. Devastatingly careful.

When he zipped up her dress, he didn’t touch her—it was just his fingers on the small metal tab of the zipper and his breath warm against her spine.

“There,” he said and stepped away, taking all his heat with him.

She sighed and faced him. He was young, younger than her thirty. Something about him seemed perpetually young. A frozen boy, like in his book.

What would he do if I told him I knew who he was? Not just his name, but who he was. The service of course gave her his name—Gabe Peterson—which could have been a lie, but on their second failed date she’d recognized him from the back of one of her son’s favorite books.

The Gabe Peterson. He’d written two books that had become uber-popular. The second one, Frozen Boy, was being made into a movie.

“I’m going to have a drink,” she said. “From the minibar. Would you like one?”

He shook his head.

“You sure?”

He vibrated discomfort. “I’m sure.”

“If I step away from this door, you’ll vanish, won’t you?” she asked.

“I’ll leave. Yes.”

She kicked off her shoes and slid down the door to the floor, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Would you mind getting me that drink?”

He gaped at her. “You know, I could just move you.”

“But you won’t.” Her smile was flat. This man wouldn’t touch her, not unless he really had to. In their four disastrous dates, he’d barely ever touched her. Once her breasts, over the dress she’d worn on the first date. Her leg on the second. He’d grabbed her ass on the third, like really grabbed it, nearly knocking her onto the bed. That had been exciting. Very exciting until he stepped back, apologized, and vanished.

Over the last month, she’d spent far too much time not only thinking about him, but trying to discern why she wanted him. Authentically wanted him. When he’d shoved her up against the hallway wall a few minutes ago, she’d gotten wet. Slippery. An instantaneous visceral reaction. And she’d lost her focus for a moment.

For years she’d been able to pick her own dates. She’d had loving and kind relationships with men that had lasted months. She’d been the pampered mistress for an aging diamond importer for nearly a decade. She didn’t fuck anyone she didn’t want to fuck.

But the way she was interested in Gabe . . . she hadn’t felt that in a very long time. Part of it was his looks. His body. He was attractive on every metric. And part of it, she had to admit, was the mystery of him. She’d spent days wondering what kind of lie he’d tell her the next time they met.

Lawyer. Once he’d been a tailor. Another time a baseball referee. It had been hard to keep a straight face during that.

But if she was honest with herself, something she tried very hard to be, she was here right now because of his pain. Because he seemed very alone inside of it. And she knew down to her bones how that felt.

He came back with a mini bottle of wine and a wine glass from the tray on the table by the window.

“Thank you,” she said, cracking open the small bottle and pouring it into the glass. “You sure you don’t want something?”

“I’d like to leave.”

She met his gaze, blue and serious.

“I know,” she said, and set the empty bottle next to her shoes. And you can, as soon as you move me.

She took a deep sip of her wine and sighed. “I’ve never lied to you. These dates we’ve had. I’ve always told you the truth. My name is Elena. I grew up outside Montreal. I have a son. I moved in with my grandmother when I was twelve, she died when I was sixteen. My mother is dead, my sister lives in Norway, and I haven’t spoken to her in ten years. All of that’s true.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes cagey.

“So, do you think I could call you Gabe?”

He jerked backwards with surprise. “How—”

“The service tells me your name. If you didn’t want me to know it, you should have lied.”

“Oh.” His blush, right to the very tips of his ears, it was adorable on a man his size. “I didn’t even think about it.”

“And my son loves your books, and you have a very nice picture on the back of them.”

“Right.” His laughter was rusty, and she could tell he was embarrassed having lied to her. Over and over again. “I’ve never been recognized quite like this.”

“I can imagine. But, I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about? I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement. If I talk about my clients, it’s serious trouble.”

But he must have known that. It must have been part of the reason he’d contacted the incredibly expensive, incredibly private escort service she worked for.

“That’s not why I lied,” he said, leaning against the half wall between the small foyer and the bedroom area. “And yes . . . you can call me Gabe.”

“Gabe, will you please sit down? Looking up at you is making my neck hurt.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I would like to leave.”

“Then feel free to pick me up and move me out of the way.”

“Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just take the money?”

“Because I don’t want the money. Look at you, Gabe. You’re so clearly a good guy. A nice guy. I just . . . I just want to talk to you.”

For a long moment his eyes met hers, the longest moment of eye contact they’d ever shared, and he gave no indication he was going to trust her. Or could trust her. Which she understood, all too well.

Just as she decided to let him off the hook and was shifting to stand, he turned and sat abruptly, leaned his back against the half wall, making sure his long legs were to the side of hers. Not touching her. Not even close. Despite having spent thousands for the right.

Well, she thought, stunned by his acquiescence. You kept him here. Now what are you going to do with him?

“I thought meeting in the bar might help,” she said. “A little social foreplay before coming to the room.”

“It did.” What a sweet liar he was. How ingrained his politeness. “It was nice.”

“That thing about your dog, was that true?”

His nod was stiff, as stiff as the way he sat.

“You sure you don’t want a drink? Because this might be easier if you were a little loose?”

“By this you mean sex?”

“I mean talking.”

“I’m afraid that’s never very easy.” His smile was a flash in the shadows, quick and embarrassed and gone.

“Then a few drinks might help with the sex, too.”

“I’ve had more than enough drunk sex. I’m trying to do it sober.”

Hmmm . . . curiouser and curiouser.

“Are you gay? Is that what this is about? Because there are male versions of me—”

In one quick, nearly violent rush, he got to his feet, and an old alarm screamed in her head. She’d thought this guy was tame, but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe she was a reckless idiot poking sticks at a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

She scrambled to her feet as fast as she could.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, easing along the wall away from the door.

He stared at her in horror. “I won’t . . . I won’t hurt you.”

“Of course not.” She smiled, because that’s what the assholes said before in fact hurting her. How heavily ironic that just as she was making changes to get out of the life, this would come back around.

God, it was so long ago this fear, she’d nearly forgotten it altogether except for the odd echo in nightmares.

“Elena . . .” He held his hands up as if to show her he had no weapons, and while that was all well and good, his giant calloused hands were weapons.

“I’m sorry I said anything.” The doorway was free and clear now, and she was crammed into the corner, having tipped over the empty wine bottle.

He would leave, and she would calm herself down, feeling slightly ridiculous, and then go home to her son, where she would lay awake in fear of the old nightmares. And then if he wanted another date, she’d say no.

Because she could. Because she didn’t have to be scared anymore. Because those years were long behind her, and she’d worked hard, made all the right decisions.

She’d been smart.

Or , piped up the part of her frozen as the perpetually terrified sixteen year old choosing to live on the streets rather than live with her dad, instead of leaving, Gabe could knock you around a little.

She reached for the doorknob, thinking she needed to get out now, screw her shoes, screw her purse.

And then to her jaw-dropping surprise, he sat back down, his eyes wide.

“I swear to God you are safe.” He put his hand to his chest as if her doubt and fear hurt him. “I just don’t know how to talk about this.”

Her heart pounded hard in her temple, and she took a bunch of deep breaths.

Of course he wasn’t going to hurt her. Because she was not a desperate sixteen year old with no money and no choices.

And he was a carefully vetted client of a global, exclusive escort service.

“I’m not gay,” he said right to her, as if trying to convince her to stay with his honesty, which frankly was an effective tool. “I tried this . . . with a guy. It didn’t work.”

Stay or go. Stay. Go.

Four weeks of this with Gabe. Of feeling his desire and then his fear and then finally this resigned pain. He walked away from her every week like a man carrying a burden he had long grown used to.

And her son loved this guy’s books.

“Didn’t work like we don’t work?” Her interest re-engaged, she slowly sat back down, not in front of the door anymore, but to the side of it. The exit—for both of them—available.

“Didn’t work like I never got hard.” He plucked at the knee of his jeans, pulling it up to a point right over the joint. “I wasn’t turned on. At all.”

He was turned on with her. Each time he’d walked in this door with her he’d been as hard as a baseball bat. Until things started to get serious.

“Is it me?” she asked. “I’m older than you—”

“It’s not your age.”

“You sure? Because I’m thirty—”

“I want you,” he said, quickly, emphatically. His eyes a searing period on that statement. “I can’t imagine wanting anyone more than I want you.”

Well. Desire was kind of part of the business, but that was . . . well, that was nice. “Then we have a bit of a quandary, don’t we?”

“Did you really think I’d hurt you?”

“I go into dark rooms with men I don’t know,” she said. “There’s always that possibility.”

“But the service I called, it’s so upscale—”

“Rich men like to hit women, too.”

His eyes flared and his lips tightened. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“It doesn’t stop me from being sorry you have any kind of experience with something like that.”

She shrugged. His defense meant nothing, but it didn’t stop her from being slightly pleased, if for no other reason than it seemed to prove her suspicions about Gabe. He was a good guy.

“I didn’t always work for Denise.” Talking about her history with a client was hardly acceptable, but by just sitting there, his eyes wide, his big hands folded in his lap, he pulled the words right out of her. “My grandmother died when I was sixteen, and I lived on the streets for a while rather than go back and live with my dad.”

His honesty was contagious.

Gabe’s gaze was heavy on her skin, like he was trying to find a way in. She could imagine the questions he was thinking, the ones he was dying to ask. And she didn’t want to talk about it. Her past—which she’d long ago come to terms with—didn’t belong in this room. It was already pretty crowded with his past.

“So, what are we doing here?” She watched him over the rim of her glass. “You’re not gay, you want me, and you’re not a virgin.”

The shower in the room next door turned on, a hum through the walls that did nothing to shatter his intense silence.

“You know.” He looked towards her, but not at her. A careful distinction.

Of course she knew. The scars were clear to someone who knew what to look for.

Stop, she told herself. These are not your demons. If he wants to carry this burden, that’s his business.

But somehow she couldn’t believe that. He’d paid big money four times to not have sex with her because of these demons. He wanted this gone. He’d come here to lose this burden.

“Who hurt you, Gabe?”

“He didn’t actually hurt me,” he said. “I mean he did. He fucked me up pretty good. But he didn’t . . . physically hurt me.”

Oh, you are so hurt you don’t even know it.

“Who?”

“Hockey coach.”

Anger spiked in her brain. The fucking animals that preyed on the kids who loved them—there was a special place in hell for those assholes.

Her father, at least, had never given the impression he loved her. And he hadn’t fucked with her sexually, which was a weird kind of blessing. Beat the crap out of her and her sister on a regular basis, but hadn’t come sneaking into their room at night.

“A Canadian cliché, huh?” His brave attempt at a joke broke her heart.

“It’s never a cliché when it’s you. How long did the abuse last?”

“It started when I was twelve, ended when I was fifteen.”

“Gabe. I’m so sorry.”

“He didn’t rape me or make me touch him. He just . . . ” He rubbed at his forehead with the back of his hand. “He just liked to . . . ah . . . touch me.”

Oh, to be so young and have all that pleasure turned to something dark and scary before he had any idea what it was. What any of it meant.

“I think . . . I think I will have a drink.” His long body got up off the floor, and in his absence she realized she’d been holding her breath. Slightly dizzy, she pressed her head back against the door, trying to get her bearings. He came back with a beer and sat back down in his spot.

When she was little, after Mom had died and before her sister ran away, she and her sister had built a clubhouse in the back of the apartment building, between the dumpsters and the lilac bushes. It had been small and dark and close and most importantly safe, and that’s where they’d told each other their secrets.

It had been the one place where the lies they lived every day couldn’t go.

I fell down the stairs.

I got hit by a ball.

I don’t know how that bruise happened.

This foyer with Gabe was like that.

“Did you tell?”

“Other kids came forward first, then I did. There were six of us altogether that he was still abusing. Another four from before us. Coach went to jail, killed himself within the year.”

“And the rest of the guys?”

“We all came from different towns, and the team broke up, was reorganized to another town, and I never went back. Two of the guys are in the NHL.”

“No shit?”

He nodded. “I never played again. Not at that level. Took years before I could go into an arena again.”

“Did your folks know?”

“Mom suspected once my friends started coming forward. She convinced me to talk. My parents were so good about it. They got me into counseling right away. We all went to counseling for years. All eight of us. It was hardest on my dad, I think—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gabe,” she snapped, outraged in some ways by his kindness. From their narrow and strange acquaintance, she could see how he would be the last guy forward, the one most afraid of rocking the boat. Thinking perhaps of what would happen to the coach, instead of thinking about what had been done to him. “It was hardest on you.”

He glanced away as if unsure. Or uncomfortable. And she knew she was right about him.

“Either way. The nightmares stopped before high school graduation. I even had a girlfriend in college, I just always had to be wasted to have sex. And I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to need a crutch.”

“Are you pissed?”

“Pissed?” He said it like it hadn’t occurred to him to still be mad. That was what counseling did, convinced the wounded and victimized to put away all their anger, to forgive because that was the only way to move on. To heal.

But sometimes there was no healing. There was no moving on. There was just figuring out how to live with the nightmares.

“Pissed about what happened?”

For a second she saw it in him, the sharp edge of his anger, something he couldn’t always control. But then he shrugged, shrugged like they were talking about his damn dog again.

“Of course I was. But it was years ago, and like I said, he didn’t hurt me.” His focus had sharpened, his blush was not in his cheeks but in his neck, that bottle strangled in his hand.

“That’s bullshit, Gabe. And you know it.”

“It could have been worse.” He bit out the words, obviously trying so hard to swallow down the emotions he didn’t want to have.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” She tilted her head, wondering if he was trying to convince her or himself of this crap. “Is that the bright side? It could have been more awful?”

“There has to be a bright side.”

“Really?” She was mildly entertained by the idea.

“Otherwise what’s the point?”

“Of what?”

“Of anything,” he snapped, throwing his hands up. “Of living? Of waking up every day?”

“I sort of think survival is the point, but maybe that’s just me.” She sounded more bitter than she’d intended.

“Your son, isn’t he a bright side?”

The brightest. More bright and more perfect than anything she’d ever hoped for. But they weren’t talking about Simon.

“Then why are you here?” Across the narrow distance of the foyer and the chasm of their world views, she was still interested in him. She waited for his blue eyes to meet hers. They really were lovely. He was lovely. Full of hope and pain in equal amounts.

So brave, she thought.

So irresistible.

“This has been great, Elena, but—” he stood and set his beer down on the TV table “—I think I should leave.”

She stepped in front of the door again.

He turned around and saw her. “Really?”

“Why are you here?”

He took the three steps between them like Christopher Columbus charging off his boat to claim the New World. His hands grabbed her upper arms, his thumbs slipping under the straps of her dress. Instead of pushing her sideways, he lifted her up slightly so she was on her tiptoes and she had to put her hands against his chest for balance.

Considering it was her last shot she made it a good one, her fingertips finding his hard nipples under the fine weave of his shirt. She raked her thumbs across them, and he hissed.

“Why do you care?” His eyes narrowed, full of a barely leashed anger so different in him it was lethal. Exciting. She leaned in closer, breathing him in, sweat and soap and the tiny tang of beer.

“Because you paid good money to fuck me, Gabe.”

Air shuddered out of his lungs. His grip on her arms was at once too hard and too soft. He was a man on the edge of a terrible cliff.

Enticing him to jump, she leaned closer, rubbing her belly against that baseball bat in his pants. His excitement was a loaded proposition.

“Stop being so nice.” Her voice had a sharp taunting edge. Her fingernails pushed harder into his skin. Against her stomach, he got impossibly harder.

He pushed her back against the door, not rough, but not gentle either.

“You can do better than that,” she purred, goading him.

His hand dropped to the hem of her dress and pulled it clumsily up her legs, over her hips, to her waist. With both of his giant hands he grabbed her ass, his fingertips slipping just under the lace and satin edge of her panties, into the humidity between her legs.

His palms were rough, hard and greedy—rubbing, stroking, and grabbing. Lifting her higher only to let her go and then do it again. His fingers teasing the slit between her legs—intentionally or not, the result was the same. Every grab she got hotter and wetter.

His eyes were locked on hers, and the intimacy was terrible. Awful. She closed her eyes and put her head against the door, arching hard into him.

“Come on,” she whispered, challenging him to do more. Touch more of her. Have more of her.

But she didn’t move her hands, didn’t reach for him. Didn’t touch his belt. Nothing.

“Turn around,” he said, and when she didn’t move fast enough, he turned her himself, pressing her to the door with his body. His mouth rested, open and damp, against the back of her neck. Not a kiss. She could feel him, torn in two by his head and his body, so she took matters into her own hands and shimmied out of her underwear, her hips nudging him.

“Oh god,” he sighed, and his fingers left her waist. She heard the clank of his belt, the metallic rip of his zipper.

“Condom.”

“I . . . I got it.”

It was a blur, the condom tearing open, the wall of heat at her back, the harsh saw of his breathing. And then the nudge of his penis against the entrance to her body, and she tilted her hips to receive him. Wide and thick, a hot heavy intruder, he slipped in.

Surrendering, she closed her eyes, a gasp escaping her throat.

His groan was equal parts torture and ecstasy, and his arms curled around her, clumsy and strong, his hands clutching at her, grabbing her dress, part of her breast.

It was awkward. Messy. His thrusts were more power than finesse. He was undone against her, inside of her, and she’d never in all her life been part of something so awful and wonderful at once.

So human.

Shaken, her eyes stung with sudden unlikely tears.

“Elena.” Her name was wrenched from his body, a terrible plea, and all she could give him was more. More of herself. She helped him, took over the stroking, taking him from root to tip over and over again. “God, yes. Yes. Elena!”

He squeezed her in his arms, in his hands, against his body. So tight she could feel his heart beating against her back. Coming, he jerked and jerked against her.

“Yes,” he whispered when the storm of his orgasm had passed. “Yes. Thank you. Thank you.”

One breath. Another. A third, and she felt him shift to let her go, the careful easing away, and she wasn’t ready.

Desire, thick and smoky, infused her. She ached where he’d filled her. Ached for more.

For more of this messy awkward fuck against a door in a hotel room.

More of him and all his contradictions and burdens.

And she clutched at his arms wrapped around her waist.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” he whispered, so still against her. She could sense all the nuances of his worry. The many layers of hurt to which he was accustomed.

“No.” Her voice was thin and cracked, so she shook her head to reinforce it. “You didn’t hurt me. Not at all.” In fact, she was still humming inside.

It was obvious when she turned around that he was still sort of stunned. And worried. And embarrassed by all of it. He ran a hand through his coppery bright hair, flashed her a brief but wide smile.

“That . . . Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She licked her lips surprised by the power of this need. “But are you going to leave me like this?”

Wide, worried eyes met hers. “Like what?”

“I want more,” she whispered, arching her hips off the wall. “Make me come, Gabe.”

She expected panic or some kind of reservation, but he fell to his knees in front of her, and he grabbed her hips, pulling her toward his mouth. Whatever oral technique he might lack, he made up for with enthusiasm. His wide palms cradling her, holding her against his lips and tongue and teeth. All of which he used on her. Sucking her clit into his mouth, holding it there for the lightning strike of his tongue.

“Oh, God,” she muttered, surprised by him. Delighted in him. His fingers ran along the dark seam of her ass until he found the entrance of her body, where he slowly eased one broad long finger inside of her. And then another.

Her hands fell to his head, his pretty hair clutched in her fingers, holding him there with force. Grinding herself against him, until she felt the sharp edge of his teeth, until his fingers were slippery where they were fucking her.

“There,” she cried, the tension coiling tighter and tighter and tighter until she couldn’t breathe and didn’t want to unless she came. And then relief, ecstatic and explosive, rolled through her. “Oh God, there. Don’t stop.”

Slowly, realizing she might actually be hurting him, she let go of his hair, and he fell away from her, landing on his butt on the carpet in front of her.

Her chest heaving, she looked at him, at his slippery shiny face, his wide pleasure-dazed eyes. His erection straining out of his unzipped pants.

“Christ, you’re hot,” she muttered, and his smile, shy and pleased all at once, just destroyed her, and she fell on him, pushing him onto his back so she could lie her body down over him.

And kiss him.

He kissed her like he performed oral sex, with force and enthusiasm and his whole damn mouth. Between his mouth and his body, it was good. It was unbearably good.

It felt safe. Safe in all its variations.

And she placed high value on safe. Since her mother died, safe had been every day’s goal. She slipped a hand between their bodies to grasp at his cock, but the second her hand touched him, he stilled, nearly flinching away from her. Immediately she pulled her hand away, her lips a breath from his. Touching but not kissing.

The moment was suddenly poised on the edge of a knife.

“Maybe . . . don’t,” he whispered

“Okay.”

Don’t touch him. She understood. And she went back to kissing him and getting devoured in turn. She braced her hands against the floor by his ears while his hands slid up her thighs, back to her ass.

She swayed her hips, smiling into his mouth. “You have a thing for my butt.”

“It’s . . . it’s really nice.”

Laughter spilled out over their kiss. “Thank you.”

She’d been on the receiving end of some high-end seductions in her life. Roses, champagne, massages, diamonds. Private dinners made by celebrity chefs. But she’d never been quite this . . . consumed. The kissing, his hands, the heat of his big body beneath her, it was all-consuming.

“Fuck me again.” She licked the words into his mouth, and she felt his reaction ripple out from his hands over her body.

He rolled to his side, and she grabbed his shoulders like he was a boat she was going to fall out of. Laughter again, and she was suffused with fondness for him. He pulled another condom out of his back pocket.

“How many of those have you got in there?”

“Like, five.”

“I admire your spirit.”

She wanted to take the condom out of his trembling fingers, but instead she shifted off his hips, letting him roll the condom over his cock.

“C’mere,” he murmured, one hand on her waist, the other pushing his dick up, and after some fumbling he was inside of her, his hands squeezing her waist hard enough to leave marks.

His eyes were squeezed shut, and she wanted to tell him to open them, to look at her, but instead she closed her own, rocking against him.

Chapter Three

She came out of the bathroom wearing her dress, which seemed like she might be leaving. But she didn’t put on her shoes, which kind of seemed like she might stay. And Gabe was back to not knowing what to do with his hands.

“I don’t know how this works,” he blurted.

She lifted an eyebrow.

“I’d like you to stay.”

“You paid—”

He lifted his hand. “You can go if you’d like. Keep the money. But tonight was kind of a big deal for me. With you. I mean. The sex. And I ah . . . I ordered some room service, like a ton of it.” At this point, his hand gestures were so over the top a plane might land in the hotel room. “A little bit of everything.”

Her glance at her watch was brief, painfully casual, and he felt the time and money exchange like a monster in the room trying to twist all the goodwill and camaraderie into something uncomfortable and deviant.

It was hard work trying to stay loose on his best days. After sloppy, wonderful sex with an escort he was impossibly infatuated with, it was a lost cause.

“A little bit of everything sounds good.” Her smile tipped the scales back towards camaraderie, made him settle back into his body with a thump. She sat down at the chair behind the small desk.

“You want a bottle of water?” He didn’t walk so much as stumble and fall across the room to the mini fridge. He felt . . . hollowed out. But in a good way.

“Sure.”

Delighted by this, by her having a drink, by the way she had her feet up on the foot of the bed, he grabbed the small bottle of water from the lower shelf, twisted off the lid, and handed her that and a glass. She ignored the glass and drank from the bottle.

He got himself a bottle, too, and lifted it in a toast. She smiled and did the same.

“So.” There was no place else to sit except on the still-perfectly-made bed, so he sat with his back against the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. “What made you move to Toronto?”

She laughed. “I’m Canadian. At some point plenty of us come to Toronto. Why did you come here?”

“It rains too much in Vancouver, and it was as far away from that arena as I could get.”

He dared her with his honesty, with the way he wouldn’t break eye contact, to let go of some of her secrets. To trust him like he’d trusted her.

She spun her bottle slowly in her hand.

“My son’s father’s business was in Toronto.” She spun her bottle slowly in her hand. “I came here with him.”

“What was his business?”

“Diamond importing.”

Gabe chocked on his water which Elena seemed to enjoy.

“I was with him for threeyears. Until just after Simon was born.”

“Why did you break up?”

Elena’s shrug, that half turn away—he had no idea what it meant.

“Is that an answer?”

“You are pesky.”

“You are secretive.”

She lifted one shoulder in a delicate, mysterious shrug. “The answer is not a secret. It’s just ugly. Marcus was not interested in a baby. He had plenty of sons with his wife. And he was less interested in a baby who was very ill, who took all of the attention and energy he was paying me for.”

“Your son was ill?”

“Very.” Oh, that expression he could read. Those white lips, the hard eyes. They said, I will not say any more about this.

“So, he just walked away? From his sick son?” This seemed like some other world. A soap opera script.

“He gave us some money. Let me keep my jewelry. He was more generous than most.” She lifted her bottle to her lips and then set it down. “How did you get into writing?”

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“Desperately.”

That made him laugh. “This isn’t how most of your dates go? Clumsy awful sex against a door followed by an interview about your past?”

“The sex was not clumsy or awful.” He felt himself blushing. “And most of the men I’m with, talking is what they want to do. Though it’s usually about them.”

“We’ve done plenty of that tonight.” The sticky awkwardness, the terrible way he lived between past and present, in and out of his body, half in reality and half in fantasy—it all fell over him again. And suddenly, sharply, he wanted to be back in his apartment. Back with his crime-solving boy and his earnest father and the world Gabe controlled. Where he applied the equation of page count and subplot to the pain he manufactured so that everything, no matter how awful, came to a happy ending.

There were no such guarantees in real life.

No such guarantees in this room.

“Why haven’t you talked to your sister in ten years?” he asked, surprising himself with the question. When he’d opened his mouth he’d intended to tell her she could leave if she wanted. That he wouldn’t be calling her again.

“She lives in Norway.”

“There are these inventions called phones.”

Her lips twisted in what could not completely be called a smile. “She sends me a card every Christmas and another on Simon’s birthday. She keeps me informed.”

“But you haven’t talked to her.”

“Why the fuck does it matter to you?” she snapped, as if her patience had just expired.

“Why did it matter to you if I left this room earlier?”

She stared at him, giving him nothing.

Once when he was a kid, in the coldest winter he remembered, Ginny, the sister he’d spent all his days with, had dared him to walk out onto the frozen lake. But Dad had drilled it into them from practically the minute they’d been born that no matter what, they were not to go onto that lake without him in the winter.

“It’s deep,” he’d said. “And there’s a spring, it makes it unpredictable.”

But Ginny had dared him. She’d dared him and dared him, and he’d gone out onto that lake, until he heard the deep cracks, the echoing booms of ice breaking far below his feet.

He felt that way right now. To the bone, he felt that way. Adrift on a frozen, unpredictable lake cracking apart around him, but compelled to keep going.

“There are infinitely better ways we could be spending this time.” Her smile was practiced, that dip in her shoulder, both intended to seduce him. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t tempted. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to slip that dress back off her body. But it was a small want, a minor desire compared to how he wanted to know her. Slip off her secrets. Find, if he could, if she’d let him, the small terrible engine at the heart of her.

He pulled the corner edge of the label off the bottle. “Why don’t you talk to her?”

“Because all we do is remind each other of bad things. What is the point?”

“The good things, I imagine.”

“Is this more of your silver linings bullshit?”

“I thought I would never play hockey again,” he said. “And I’m not sure if I can explain to you how much I loved it, how much it made up who I thought I was. But after the trial, the team moved on, and every time I walked into an arena, I would throw up.” He eased more and more of the label from the bottle, like it was surgery. Like it needed all of his attention. “So I stopped walking into them. I gave away all my stuff and just stopped. But I dreamt about hockey. The sound of the ice under my skates. The way my arms felt after hitting a slap shot. Even the smell of my gear.”

“My sister and I . . . It’s not the same thing.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not.” He looked up from his label surgery. “I’m talking about a sport with no ability to love me as much as I loved it. You’re talking about a person you grew up with. A person you probably loved a great deal and who I imagine loved you back. And continues to love you enough to send you cards twice a year knowing you won’t write her back. It’s not the same thing at all.”

She set the water bottle down on the table and pressed her hands against her knees. “I’m really glad that you feel so good about tonight. I’m glad that you were able to have sex without being drunk. Much to my surprise, I feel honored in a way to have done this with you. But your little psychological breakthrough does not give you license to pick apart my life. You don’t know me, Gabe. Not at all. And frankly, you’re forgetting who I am and what I do for a living.”

“I’m not judging you—”

She laughed and stood, and he felt in a heartbeat how stupid he’d been. How foolish. How pompous. He was a simple knot compared to her complexity.

“I’m not here for you to judge,” she said, slipping her feet into her shoes. “I don’t give a fuck what you think. I am here to make you feel good. To make you feel wanted. That’s what your money buys. It doesn’t buy my past. Or my secrets. You want a girlfriend? Go upstairs and find one.”

“I don’t want a girlfriend. I want . . . fuck, Elena.” He scrambled off the bed. “I want you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, pulling a hair tie out of her purse and sweeping her hair up into it. And then, to his astonishment, she slipped on a pair of glasses.

Glasses.

It was like watching Wonder Woman turn back into Diana Prince.

“Close your mouth, Gabe. You look like a fool.”

He felt like one. He felt young and stupid and ruined by her.

But Christ, he couldn’t stop.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

She stepped towards the door, and he got in front of it.

“You know it’s not the same when you do it,” she said, cold and hard. “I can’t pick you up and move you.”

Sick, he stepped aside.

When she reached for the doorknob, ready to walk out without looking back, he touched her wrist. Just the tips of his fingers against her skin and then gone. That was all. But she stopped.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. She was lying.

“I really like you.”

“I like you too, Gabe. You’re a good guy.”

“Can I . . . see you again?” He was asking about twenty different things. Was that special to you at all? Did that mean anything? I’d like to see you, know you, talk to you, do you want any of that with me? He thought the answer might be yes, otherwise why had she made him stay when she could have taken the money and let him go?

Or maybe he was just being a fool.

“Of course, honey,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, and he felt his body lean into the gesture, like a controlled slide into the boards. “Just call the service.”

Chapter Four

Elena gave Maggie the babysitter money for a cab ride home and turned off all the lights as she headed upstairs to bed. She checked on Simon, a small lump under his duvet. He slept like a seed, all curled in on himself, nose pressed to knees.

When she ran a hand over his hair, he sighed, a soft sleeping-boy sigh.

She washed her face and took off her dress, slipping into her nightgown, all while pretending she wasn’t going to do it. But when the busy work of ending the day was over, she stopped lying to herself and pulled the box out from under her bed.

Every letter and card Lisa had sent over the years. It used to just be Christmas cards, but in a moment of hormonal weakness Elena had sent Lisa a note telling her she was an aunt.

After that, the cards came twice a year. Christmas and Simon’s birthday. Never her birthday, as if Lisa knew that would be too much. A step over some arbitrary betrayed-sister line that would result in all the cards being sent back, unopened. Lisa knew her that well. Still.

She found the last one, from Simon’s eighth birthday, and ran a finger over the familiar handwriting.

I miss you so much. Call. Please call. Or write. Email me. Anything.

Beneath the words were a phone number and an email address.

Not tonight, she thought.

She was done with tonight. Done.

Tonight had seen too much bravery.

But maybe . . . maybe later. Maybe in a few days when she felt less . . . thin. Less vulnerable. She’d attempt to call. Or email first. That seemed best.

But not tonight.

Tonight would be put away until it was forgotten.

One Week Later

Gabe didn’t think she’d come. He wasn’t stupid. But it didn’t stop him from looking up every single time the elevator doors opened and someone stepped out of the dark hallway into the brighter light of the bar.

“You waiting for someone?” The bartender asked, sliding a his burger in front of Gabe.

“Yes,” he said.

Two months later

Elena was studying with her son. Well, she was studying. He was reading the last book on the list Gabe had given her two months ago. Almost all of those books had been the beginning of a series and now Simon’s mission in life was begging to go to the library.

But there were worse things than having a brilliant son who couldn’t get enough of reading.

Everything has a bright side.

Had she known that all along? Or was she just now seeing it?

They sat together on the couch, the Christmas tree blinking in random sections in front of them, the winter world outside their window. She had her commercial real estate test after Christmas, the final exam before officially becoming a real estate agent.

“Mom,” Simon said.

“Hmmm?” She ruffled his hair with her fingers, still trying to memorize the formula for the land transfer tax.

“Your phone.”

She glanced down at her cell on the arm of the couch. It was on silent, but Simon must have heard the buzz of it against the furniture.

“You can hear that? Maybe you need to turn down the hearing aids.”

“Maybe you need to get some.”

She laughed as she pulled herself off the couch and away from Simon and answered her phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Elena.” It was Denise’s assistant, Paige. “Sorry to bother you, I know you told Denise that you were slowly terminating all your clients, but you didn’t leave any instructions for Gabe Peterson. He just called for another date.”

“No,” she said, the word blasting through her lips from the bottom of her stomach.

“Reschedule or terminate?”

Despite hoping she’d forget the night, forget Gabe altogether, she’d missed him. The first few Tuesdays without him had seemed empty, and thoughts of him kept surprising her, like turning a corner and running right into his long body and the way he tried to take up less space.

As if she’d morphed into some kind of love-sick teenager, she’d gone into Simon’s room and looked at the photos on the back of Gabe’s books. Those blue eyes. That grin. So goofy. But earnest, too. This was a man who took silly things seriously.

A few weeks ago Simon had asked her to read Frozen Boy to him again, and every night she’d read for a half hour and then had to hide in the bathroom to cry.

The Frozen Boy was Gabe. The whole book was Gabe and it was so damn beautiful.

“Terminate.”

“Okay,” Paige said. “That’s the last of your outstanding clients. You’re done. Is that what you want, Elena?”

She’d done the math. Her savings would last for a few months until hopefully she started selling some houses. If they were careful and Simon stayed healthy, her savings could stretch for a year.

“It is. It’s what I want.”

She hung up and went back to sit with her son on the couch.

This is what brave feels like.

Isn’t it?

“Is Maggie coming to babysit?” Simon asked, blinking up at herhim through his thick glasses.

“Nope,” she said, and sat back down with him on the couch, pulling the small weight of him against her side so she could kiss his head, rest her hand over his chest to feel the pound of his heart.

It was the same as hers.

“Mom,” he groaned, straining away from her.

She let him go, of course she did. It was what she knew how to do.

Two weeks later

It was dark in the house. She’d even turned off the Christmas tree lights. All the wrapped and ribboned boxes waiting for Simon in the morning were, at the moment, simply shadow.

Lisa’s card had come this morning and it sat on her lap, a thousand pounds of card stock, glitter, and Norwegian Christmas cheer. And years. It was heavy and thick and awful with years.

Between one breath and the next she did it. She pressed Send on her phone and after a few clicks and buzzes it began to ring.

Once.

Twice.

She thought of the lilac bushes. Of the way her sister used to comb her hair. The stories she’d told as they walked home from school, stories about puffin birds and lemurs with ringed tails. She remembered the birthday party at that awful girl’s house when they’d both, separately of each other, stole just one of the girl’s seven thousand Barbie shoes, only to get home and realize they’d stolen the matching pair.

The phone rang a third time.

A fourth.

It wasn’t just fear and Dad beating them up that had bound them together. Or their mother dying. Or Lisa running away and Elena going to their grandma’s.

There were good things. There were. Gabe was right.

There were thousands of them.

Lisa had run away because that was what she’d thought she had to do. What was the point of being so angry at a fourteen-year-old girl who’d been brutalized by a man who was supposed to love her?

Who am I to judge her anymore?

“Hullo?”

Adrenaline flooded her. “Hello? Is . . . oh. Oh, God, it’s late there, isn’t it? Early? I didn’t think . . . ”

“Who is this?” Lisa asked.

Elena pressed her knuckles against her lips until the sting of it brought her back to herself.

“Lisa?” she breathed.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh please . . . please . . .”

“It’s Elena.”

Three months later

Tuesday, after hockey, Gabe walked into what looked like a party at the rooftop bar at the Thompson Hotel. A big party. The place was packed.

He found an empty stool on the far side of the bar, next to a woman in a sleek business suit, talking on her phone.

The blonde glanced up at him as he approached.

“Is this taken?” he mouthed, pointing at the stool.

She smiled and shook her head. “Go ahead.”

He sat and ordered his Moosehead and burger just as the woman beside him got off her phone.

“It’s busy tonight,” she said after a moment.

“That’s weird for a Tuesday,” he said.

“I think it’s a birthday party.”

“Yeah?” He took a look at all the people on the far side of the room. They were all dressed exceedingly well for a Tuesday night.

“That’s the birthday girl.” She pointed to a woman who was in an old-school flapper dress. “I think it’s a themed thing.”

“Ah . . . ” Now it made sense. “Like an old Hollywood thing?”

“Maybe. I was thinking Great Gatsby.”

He caught sight of a guy in a grey pin-striped suit with a pink shirt. “You might be right.”

“Well,” she laughed. “Considering my last themed birthday was a Strawberry Shortcake fiasco in the first grade, I’m not sure you can count on my authority.”

“Fiasco?”

“Unknown to my mother, one of the girls had a really bad strawberry allergy. We ended up in the hospital.”

He laughed. “Fiasco is right.”

“I’m Jennifer.” She held out her hand. She was pretty, her face open and friendly, and he felt himself relaxing around her.

“Gabe.” He shook her hand. It was the first time he’d touched a woman since Elena and the thought seemed ludicrous. Months since he’d touched a woman? Even casually? How was that possible? What kind of cave did a man have to live in to achieve that amount of detachment? “I take it you’re not here for the party?”

“No. I’m here on business for the week. I live in Ottawa.”

The bartender delivered Gabe’s beer and turned to Jennifer. “Another?” he asked, pointing to her empty glass.

“Hmmm.” Her sound was of indecision.

“Stay,” he said, following some fledgling impulse. “I mean . . . if you can.”

The brief eye contact they shared seemed like some kind of contract.

I’ll stay if you do.

I’m here if you’re here.

This drink will lead to another and then . . .

He felt some old part of himself seize in terror, and out of habit formed in the last months of Tuesdays he looked up at the entrance to the bar, hoping she’d be there. To save him from this.

But she wasn’t.

She never was.

And it was time to move on.

“Why not? I’ll have another.”

One year later

The line was out the door. There were at least ten kids and their parents standing with umbrellas and coat collars turned up against the rain.

The staff at Pages Bookstore was good and they kept things moving fast, but they were all sharing wide-eyed, holy shit looks with each other.

The turn-out for the Toronto signing of his new book When You’re Dead, You’re Dead was better than anyone expected. The bookstore was almost out of stock, and when he signed and sold the last book, he wondered if they would have a twelve-year-old- boy riot on their hands.

But Gabe kept signing and smiling and signing and answering the same question over and over again. “There will be a sequel,” he said for the hundredth time. “You’ll have to read it to find out if Henry saves his dad.”

Finally, everyone was inside the bookstore. No more kids standing in the rain and Gabe was relieved.

“His dad is going to die, isn’t he?” That was a variation on the question, and the boy who asked it slid a copy of the book with a red sticker in the corner which meant he’d brought it with him. The boy blinked big brown eyes behind thick glasses. “You can tell me.”

Gabe laughed. “I can?”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“Why do you think he’s going to die?”

“Because parents always die in these books. Teaches the kids lessons.”

“That’s a terrible lesson.”

“Tell me about it,” the boy said drolly, and Gabe laughed.

“Well, I’ll tell you this . . . ” He leaned forward, and the boy tilted his ear towards Gabe’s mouth, revealing a behind-the-ear hearing aid.

Gabe whispered. “I’m not sure what happens, yet.”

“Not sure?” “Not sure.”

The boy nodded. “Fair enough.”

“What’s your name?” He flipped through the book to find the title page where he usually put his signature.

“Oh, it’s for my mom. I’m going to surprise her.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “What’s her name?”

“Elena.”

He dropped the pen. Coincidence. It had to be coincidence. Statistically, there was just so little chance. But his heart was pounding hard in his face.

“Is she here?” he asked.

“Yeah!” The boy was thrilled to be asked. As if Gabe had asked to see one of his treasures. “She’s over there.”

He pointed towards the wall of moms who were lining the non-fiction section, and there she was. Not even hiding. If he’d turned his head to the left he would have seen her all along.

Elena.

She wore jeans and a red sweater. Glasses.

A small smile.

The last year and a half collapsed in upon itself, a black hole of time, and it was now, and it was also every single moment they spent in that hotel room. And every single moment in that hotel bar he’d been wishing for her. And even the moments when he’d stopped.

All of it. At the same time.

It crushed him with longing.

He leaned towards the rather harried Pages manager who’d been sitting with him, supplying his books. “I . . . ah . . . I need a minute.”

“Are you kidding?”

“One minute. I swear.”

She nearly growled at him, but he leapt up from behind the table and smiled at the boy. “Introduce me.”

“For real?” he gasped with wide-eyed wonder.

“For real.”

* * *

Gabe was standing up. Following Simon.

To her.

Oh my God, she thought, embarrassed and strangely thrilled. The mothers beside her shifted and murmured.

Coming to the signing had felt brave. Despite the time that had passed, she was not here lightly. Had considered, in cowardice, having Maggie bring Simon.

But she’d wanted to see Gabe. See that he wasn’t something she’d imagined.

See that he was doing all right and maybe . . . maybe show him that she was doing all right, too. That that night had been important for the both of them.

Watching Gabe today at the reading and after, taking his time to answer all the kids’ questions with honesty and respect, it had been surreal.

And beautiful.

He was beautiful. Inside and out.

I missed you, she thought. I missed you more than I thought possible.

It was amazing in the last year and a half how much she’d thought about him. And it wasn’t just after reading his books to Simon. But also after talking to her sister every week. When she’d sold that house to the family with five boys, all avid hockey players. When Simon had been so sick with the bronchial infection three months ago and she’d wished for a hug. Someone’s strong shoulders on which to rest her head.

And those times, at night, with her fingers on her own skin. Her mind on him.

“Hey Mom!” Simon said as he and Gabe approached. “This is Gabe. Gabe, this is my mom.”

“What are you doing?” She glanced sideways at everyone in the store watching them with avid eyes.

“I just wanted to say hello.”

She blinked and laughed, embarrassed and alight. “Hello.”

“This is your son?”

“This is Simon.” She ran her hand over his son’s head, and he only barely scowled at her.

“It’s good to see you,” Gabe said. “Really. Just . . . so . . . good.”

“Gabe, there are hundreds of people here waiting for you to get back to that table.”

He glanced back at the table. The line.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, scratching at his neck. “I just . . . I wanted to . . . say hi. I missed you.”

She took a shuddering breath through her fracturing body. She’d imagined him moved on. Looking at this crowd here, his obvious and exciting success, she’d imagined him miles out in the distance. Far away from her and that night.

“I don’t know why I said that.” His ears were blushing.

“Gabe,” the manager said, coming up alongside him. “We really need you to get back to the table.”

“Of course. Sorry.” He gave her a nod, quickly signed Simon’s book and handed it to her, which she took with limp strange hands, and then he turned and walked away.

But watching him, she thought of the lilac bush club house and the hushed foyer of the hotel room. She thought of her son’s breathing once the infection had cleared up.

She thought of safety and had a sense of herself waiting. Waiting a long time for him.

Brave. This is brave.

“Are you busy after?” she blurted, and he turned to face her. Handsome and earnest and young and old. A survivor with all these beautiful dreams left inside of him. “I mean, after this signing.” She shook her head, embarrassed. “I’m sure you are. Of course you are . . . I don’t—”

“I’m not busy. Not after.” It looked like he was fighting his smile, like he didn’t want to seem too eager, and she recognized that feeling because it was the one filling her. “Would you guys like to get a burger with me?”

“Say yes!” Simon cried. “Oh my God, Mom, say yes!”

She could not help beaming up at Gabe. Smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Her chest hurt.

“We’ll wait,” she said. “I’d be happy to wait for you.”

About Molly O’Keefe

Molly O'Keefe is a RITA Award winning author who writes sexy and compelling contemporary romance for Harlequin and Bantam Dell. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two kids and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

Also by Molly O’Keefe

Coming This Summer

Never Been Kissed (Book 2 of The Boys of Bishop)

Between The Sheets (Book 3 of The Boys of Bishop)

Wild Child (Book 1 of The Boys of Bishop)

The Crooked Creek Series:

Can’t Buy Me Love

Can’t Hurry Love

Crazy Thing Called Love

All I Want For Christmas is You

From Harlequin:

Unexpected Family

His Wife For One Night

The Scandal and Carter O'Neill

Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption

The Temptation of Savannah O’Neill

The Christmas Eve Promise

The Story Between Them

The Son Between Them

Worth Fighting For

A Man Worth Keeping

Baby Makes Three

A Valentine For Rebecca

Undercover Protector

His Best Friend’s Baby

Family At Stake

Dishing It Out

Pencil Him In

Cooking Up Trouble

Kiss The Cook

Too Many Cooks

Hey! If you’re reading this – it means you got to the end of The Heart of It! I hope you enjoyed it. If you feel inclined please leave a review – good, bad or otherwise – they are all appreciated.

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Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peak at EVERYTHING I LEFT UNSAID….

I didn’t think answering someone else’s cellphone would change my life. But the stranger with the low, deep voice on the other end of the line tempted me, awakened my body, set me on fire. He was looking for someone else. Instead he found me.

And I found a hot, secret world where I felt alive for the first time.

His name was Dylan, and, strangely, he made me feel safe. Desired. Compelled. Every dark thing he asked me to do, I did. Without question. I longed to meet him, but we were both keeping secrets. And mine were dangerous. If I took the first step, if I got closer to Dylan—emotionally, physically—then I wouldn’t be hiding anymore. I would be exposed, with nothing left to surrender but the truth. And my truth could hurt us both.

Amazon/Kindle http://amzn.to/1hnBBkP

Annie

Escape smelled like a thick layer of Febreze over stale cigarette smoke.

I dropped my duffle bag on the patch of linoleum in front of the trailer’s stove and closed the thin metal door behind me. It didn’t latch the first time and I had to slam it.

The whole trailer shook.

I’ll need better locks.

Not that locks had kept me safe before. Locks and sitting very still and being very small had not kept me safe at all.

Everyone minds their own here. They all keep to themselves. That’s what Kevin, the park manager, had said when I put down my cash for the trailer. It’s safe and it’s quiet and we don’t truck with no nonsense.

Safe, quiet, and no nonsense made this little scrap of swamp a perfect place to end my week of helter-skelter traveling. Doubling back, buying a ticket west only to go east. Buses. Trains.

Out in front of my trailer, there was a used car—a POS Toyota with bad brakes and a broken radio. I bought it in Virginia, from a high school football player with dreams the crappy car could not hold, and drove north before heading south again.

But I had to stop somewhere. I couldn’t drive forever.

So, seven days, hundreds of miles to here. To this place that didn’t even show up on a state map of North Carolina.

“Home sweet home,” I sighed, putting my hands on my hips and surveying my new kingdom.

Kevin called it a trailer, but really it was an old RV that had rolled to a stop at the Flowered Manor Trailer Park and Camp Ground and refused to keep going. Someone had taken off the wheels and put the RV up on blocks and maybe that same someone had carefully, lovingly planted the morning glory vines to hide those cement blocks.

The flowers were a nice touch, admirable really in their delusional quality, but didn’t much hide the fact that it was an RV.

A crappy one. In a crappy trailer park so off the beaten path it was practically impossible to find.

Perfect. So, so perfect.

My deep breath shuddered through me and I allowed some of the fear I lived with to lift away, like crows startled from a winter field. Usually I gathered the fear back because fear kept me safe.

Fear was familiar.

But in this crazy little trailer, there was no need.

We don’t truck with no nonsense.

Good, I thought, smiling for the first time in a long time. Bravado making me giddy. Neither do I.

I also didn’t truck with the smell of this place.

It was two steps from the kitchen to the dining area and I leaned over the Formica table and beige banquette seating to pull back the curtains and yank open the windows. A fetid breeze blew through, slipping across my neck and down the collar of my white cotton shirt.

I closed my eyes because I was tired down to my bones and . . . it felt good. The breeze, on my skin . . . it just felt good. Different.

And these days I was in the business of different.

My entire life I’d had long hair against my neck or pulled back in a ponytail so heavy it made my head hurt. My hair was naturally red and curly and thick. So thick.

Suffocatingly thick.

Mom used to say it was the prettiest thing about me. Which is one of those kinds of compliments that isn’t really a compliment at all, because it leaves so much room for awful to grow up around it. But it was the nicest thing she said about me, so I took it to heart, because she was my mom.

Chopping it off had been a weird relief. Not just from headaches and the heat, but this new butchered hair allowed me to feel the breeze like I never had before. The sun against the nape of my neck was a revelation.

When the wind blew, my short hair lifted and the feeling rippled down my back, like a domino fall of nerveendings.

I liked it. A lot.

The quiet was broken by the distant, muffled sound of a phone ringing.

It wasn’t mine. I’d left my cell in the bottom of a trash can in the Tulsa bus station. The other trailers were close, but not so close that I’d be able to hear a cell phone ringing in a purse. And that’s what it sounded like.

The counters of my small kitchen were empty. The driver and front-seat-passenger captain seats that had been turned to create a little sitting area were both bare.

There were no purses left forgotten by the previous tenant.

I glanced down at the fabric of the bench seats that made up the banquettes.

Am I really thinking about putting my hand in there? It looked clean enough, for all its shabbiness, but still . . . disgusting things fell between seat cushions. It was a fact.

The phone rang again and with it the instinct to answer a ringing phone kicked in, and I shoved my hand down into the crease between the top and bottom cushions and then wedged it along sideways, running into nothing, not even cracker crumbs or the odd toy car, until I hit the plastic case of a phone. I pulled it out and glanced at its face.

Dylan.

Accept. Decline.

With a small brush of my thumb, I touched accept.

So small a thing. Really. In the crazy mix of drastic shit I’d been doing this week—answering that phone seemed like nothing.

Just goes to show, I guess.

“Hello?”

“Jesus, Megan, where the hell have you been?” a guy said, his voice not angry so much as exasperated. Relieved, almost.

“I’m sorry.” I wedged my hand back into the cushions to see if anything else had slid in there. Money. Money would be nice. “This isn’t Megan.”

Ah ha! I pulled out three quarters and a nickel.

The guy sighed. The kind of sigh I was terribly used to. The put-out sigh. The angry sigh. The this is your fault sigh.

And I had this visceral reaction, screwed into the marrow of my bones over the last five years, to do everything in my power and some things incredibly outside of my power to appease the anger behind that sigh. To make it all okay.

But those days were officially over.

Sorry, Dylan. No one sighs like that at me. Not anymore. Not ever.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and lifted my thumb to turn it off, but his voice stopped me just before I disconnected the call.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I got no reason to treat you like that. Is Megan there?”

“No.” Okay, I was pulled back in by an apology. Because apologies were nice and they were rare. And this guy sounded sincerely worried. Megan might be his wife. Or girlfriend. His daughter. “She moved out a few days ago. She must have left the phone behind.”

His chuckle was deep and very masculine, and it made me think that I haven’t heard many guys laughing in my life. And that was too bad. It was a nice sound.

And there was something wry in his tone, something that indicated that chuckle wasn’t at all directed at me, but instead perhaps at the universe, which had turned on him with this Megan woman leaving.

“She must have,” he agreed. “Have you moved into the trailer?”

My protective instincts were new and fragile but they were working, and they rose on shaky legs to stop the unthinking answer that came to my lips.

I don’t know this man. I don’t know him at all.

“Just cleaning it,” I said. “I don’t live here.”

“I hope that’s not as bad a job as it sounds.”

“No. It’s fine. Megan must have kept it real clean.” I rolled my eyes at myself.

“What’s your name?”

Again, those protective instincts did their job.

This is a man, I thought, a little ridiculously. Not a boy. Not a guy. But a man. His voice had a low quality, a rumble and a rasp, like maybe he hadn’t done a lot of talking today. Or maybe he didn’t talk much at all. Or he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day—which shouldn’t sound so good. But it did. He had an accent—something Southern. And despite his apologies he sounded . . . rough.

Something weird was happening to my heartbeat.

“You know mine,” he said.

I nearly closed my eyes as that dark tone sent chills across my back like a cool breeze.

“Dylan,” I said. “It said your name on the phone.”

“Right. Well, I guess you don’t have to—”

“Layla.” The name came out of nowhere. Layla was my cousin, a wild girl I’d only met once but a name I’d heard over and over again in Mom’s warnings and stories of forbearance. “You don’t want to end up like Layla, do you?”

Which was hilarious, because last I’d heard Layla was an extremely popular makeup artist in Hollywood and happy.

So, Mom’s horror stories had worked and no, I didn’t end up at all like Layla.

But in this new life . . . maybe I’d endeavor to be more like Layla.

Layla had been bold. And confident. Embarrassingly sexy to utterly staid and uptight me. Annie McKay.

“Are you okay?” Dylan asked, pulling me away from thoughts of my cousin.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“People don’t end up in the Flowered Manor Trailer Park and Camp Ground because everything’s going great in their lives.”

“Ha! Tell me about it,” I laughed. The relief of sitting still, letting go of some of that fear I lived with, and the . . . weirdness of this call made me giddy. I felt like a stone kicked downhill. Rolling faster and faster toward something.

This run-down trailer park seemed to have the market cornered on last-ditch efforts. Everything and everyone from Kevin to the morning glories out front seemed to be holding on with a white-knuckled intensity.

“You know the brochure did promise modern amenities, but I haven’t caught sight of the spa,” I joked. “And weedy watering holes don’t count.”

There was silence after my words. And I knew silence as well as I knew sighs. The variations, the cold undertones. The hot overtones.

The razor-edged silence that came before You got a smart mouth, girl.

The heavy echoing silence that came before a backhand.

Stupid joke. It was a stupid joke. I am made of stupid jokes.

“You just can’t trust advertising anymore, can you?” he asked.

“Especially when it’s on a bathroom wall in a truck stop.”

We both laughed, and this was officially more fun than I’d had in years.

“Are you safe?” he asked.

The question with its implied concern bit into me, sweeping away my laughter like someone taking his arm over a dinner table, sending plates crashing to the floor. Tears burned in my eyes.

No one had worried about me. Not in a very long time.

“Layla?”

“Yes.” My voice was gruff and thick. “I’m safe.”

“You sure?”

I got the sense that if I told him no, that I felt threatened or scared, he would do something about it. Arrive at that metal door to help me.

The temptation to trust him was not insignificant.

But that was not the point of having run so far.

I collapsed onto the seat, taking in my new home in all its glory. The fake wood cupboards of the kitchen, the narrow hallway with its curtain divider between the bedroom and this main area. I saw the edge of the bathroom’s accordion door.

Mine, I thought, and something wild and bitter rose in my chest.

“I am.” I was safe. Hundreds and hundreds of miles from my old life. “I really am.”

“Good,” Dylan said as if he knew what I wasn’t saying. And hell, maybe he did. Maybe the story of Annie McKay was a familiar one at the Flowered Manor.

“Do you know where Megan went?” I asked. “I’ll mail her phone.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not her phone; it’s mine. She worked for me.”

“Can I mail you the phone?”

His silence seemed loaded, but not dangerous. “Are you always this nice?”

I laughed, because this was nothing compared to the bending over backward to accommodate people I’d done my past. I’d been able to fold myself up into nothing.

But this man’s concern made me grateful.

“It’s your phone, isn’t it? Only seems right to get it back to you.”

“Most people don’t go out of their way for a stranger.”

“Would it make you feel better if you told me something about yourself?”

I’d said it flippantly, but the silence that followed my words was oddly heavy, as if I’d opened a door he hadn’t expected.

“I’ll tell you why Megan had the phone.”

There was something in his tone, the sudden lack of laughter, a new element of seriousness, that made me sit up straight.

This is when you hang up, I thought, sensing that we’d slipped past banalities. I was not in the practice of talking on the phone to strange men.

Hoyt would — The sudden thought of him and what he would and wouldn’t do about my behavior—like a cancer in this new Febreze-scented world of mine—galvanized me, sent new steel running down my back.

I’m not Annie. I’m Layla. And fuck Hoyt.

“Why?” I asked, noting there was a change in my voice, too. As if there were a sort of intimacy between me and this stranger who asked about my safety in a lifetime of people not caring.

“There’s a trailer, two away from you. To the north. You can see it out your window.”

I twisted and pushed aside the curtain on the north-facing window.

“Did you look?”

“I did.”

I heard him breathe into the phone and something electric pulsed over me. An animal instinct made all the hair on my neck stand up.

“An old man lives in that trailer,” he said. “Megan kept an eye on him for me.”

“Is he sick?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Does he need help of some kind?”

Again that rumbly dark laugh, again that weird reaction of my heart. “No. He doesn’t. In fact, I made it real clear to Megan that she shouldn’t get to know him at all.”

“So, she just spied on him?”

“She did. And I paid her well to do it.”

“Did she do anything else for you?” I asked. It hardly seemed a job a person could get paid for.

In his silence I realized what he might be thinking, and I felt blood pound through my body in horrified embarrassment.

“What are you asking me, Layla?”

Oh, his voice was suddenly thick with intimacy and now I could not pretend otherwise. Somehow this had gotten sexual. It was the Layla thing that had started it and it was a stupid thing to start. I did not play this kind of game. Didn’t understand it. Was completely embarrassed by it.

Suddenly restless, I stood up. My skin felt far too keenly the rub of my clothes against it.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just seems like something a person should do without being paid.”

“Are you offering to look in on him for me?”

“Sure.” I picked up my bag and walked down the hallway to the tiny bedroom in the back. The double bed was stripped. A stack of clean sheets sat at the end of the faded flowered mattress.

“That easy?”

“That easy.”

“When’s the last time you said no to someone?” he asked.

“Why does it matter?”

“I have a sense, Layla, that you give away your yeses without thinking.”

Oh, he was right. So damn right.

“And you want my no’s?”

“I want something you don’t give away.”

My knees buckled and I leaned back against the wood-paneled wall, feeling light-headed. How . . . how did we get here? What has happened to me?

“Tell me no, Layla,” he murmured.

No was dangerous in my old life. A red flag in front of a murderous bull.

I wasn’t brave enough.

“No.” It was barely a whisper. A breath. A rebellion that screamed through me. It was like Les Misérables in my chest cavity.

“Do you remember my name?”

Inherently, somehow I knew what he was asking. Say my name.

“No, Dylan.”

The sound he made—half sigh, half groan—was easily the most erotic sound I’d ever heard, and suddenly there was no more wondering, no more innuendo. He wasn’t asking what I was wearing, but the effect was the same. The intent was the same.

This is . . . oh my God, this is phone sex. I’m having phone sex with a stranger in a shitty trailer in the middle of nowhere!

I pulled myself away from the wall. My hands in fists.

“Don’t call me again.” My voice sounded firmer than I’d expected. Firmer than I’d sounded my entire life, and I was proud of myself.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Promise.” Why I expected him to keep that promise I had no idea, but having acted so stupid I felt the need to at least attempt smart behavior. God, that lie about cleaning the trailer was so see-through. He knew where I lived. He could find me in the middle of the night, break through those flimsy locks— “I promise. You’re safe. Goodbye, Layla.” And he hung up.

I hung up a moment later, staring down at the phone as if I’d never seen its kind before.

It’s just a phone, I thought, despite its near pulsing heat in my hand. Its strange alive-ness. It echoed in me, a foreign nature that was not entirely my own. Something hot-blooded and impulsive.

Don’t be stupid. Or stop being stupid. Or . . . something.

I walked back into the kitchen. Turned off the phone and threw it up in a high cupboard. A phone would be a handy thing to have in case of an emergency and when he stopped paying for the service, I’d find a way to get my own.

My hands were shaking. My whole body quaked like an aspen leaf. I stepped sideways into the tiny bathroom and turned on the faucets. Cold water blasted out, ricocheted off the sink, and sprayed across my body, soaking through my white cotton blouse.

I sucked in a shocked breath.

“Damn it,” I muttered and cranked the water back off.

I pressed cold hands to my eyes and cheeks and then opened my eyes to stare right at the woman in the mirror. My shirt, thanks to the water, was see-through, and I could see the pink of my flesh beneath it. A white bra. My nipples . . . there. Painfully, obviously, there.

Slowly I unwound the sheer, floral scarf from around my neck.

The bruises under my chin and at the sides of my neck were turning yellow at the center. Green at the edges.

The one at the corner of my mouth was still dark and ugly and red.

This is my body. Those are my bruises.

The hands shaking on the sink, those are mine, too.

Those words I said to that man.

Dylan.

Those were mine. My words.

This is me.

I took a deep breath, feeling overwhelmed by the empty space around me, usually filled in with so much fear. Without that fear, without the rules—said and unsaid, implicit and explicit—I felt undone. Unmade. As if I’d been pruned, allowing— God, please, please allow—new growth.

My hair, the thick, pretty red curls replaced by a lopsided cut I’d given myself and then dyed black in the Tulsa bus station, made me unrecognizable to myself.

“So,” I said out loud to the reflection in the mirror. That stranger staring back at me. “Who are you?”