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Megan Hart
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MILLS & BOON

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

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

Chapter 01

Sometimes, you look back.

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

“Want me to wait?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I need a gift for my father’s wife.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re so stubborn sometimes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty, yes?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have nothing to write with it!”

“Letters to a sweetheart,” she suggested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I hope so.” I laughed.

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

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

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

Chapter 02

Shall we begin?

This is your first list.

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

Your reward will be my attention and command.

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

Deliver them promptly to the address below.

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

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

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

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

114

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

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

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

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

“Nothing. It wasn’t for me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He lived in my building.

Chapter 03

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

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

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

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

“Hey, Jack,” Kira said, and I turned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah. I know. Hey, Kira. I made it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know. The slutty ones.

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

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

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

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

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

Austin said into my ear, “Wanna dance?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe that was okay.

“Come home with me,” Austin said.

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

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

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

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

“New job,” he reminded. “Remember?”

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

“She’s fine. She’s with Ethan.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Before what?” Kira’s lip curled.

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

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

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

“Whatever.”

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

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

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

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

“I’ll wait with you until he comes.”

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

As if I ever could. “I’ll be fine!”

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

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

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

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

I could do that, at least.

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

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

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

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

Maybe things were different, after all.

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

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

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

“Are you still angry about that?”

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

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

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

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

Kira nodded. “Fine.”

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

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

Jack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kira, c’mon.” I reached for her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It was ages ago.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s different!”

“How is it different?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Some friend.