Tom swayed on his feet, his breathing heavy, his mouth was a severe line, his brows drawn. Under them his eyes were mirrors, reflecting nothing but the city behind her. “Did I ever tell you I was scared of heights? Scared of going too fast, of being out of control.”
He’d never mentioned it. But speed, a car crash killed his mom. In one way, they were close enough to live each other’s hopes and in another they were still strangers. She rolled the back of her head side to side on the cool glass.
“I got over it. And then you happened. Brought it all back.”
“I’m sorry.” Did he hear? It was a terrible stillborn whisper and it barely made it across her lips.
“Made me want to ride the wildest roller coaster. Hold on to you, feel the terror and laugh at it.” He took a step forward, put both hands to her hips, fingers spread to tilt her pelvis. “You are my roller coaster.”
Her shoulders were against the glass, her hips in Tom’s hands, her heart hung up on anticipation and the raw, hard look on his face. He bent his head and brushed his nose over her cheek, his mouth looking for hers, his hands traveling up her body, snagging at the silk as they moved.
He kissed her as he curled his fingers under the edge of slip and ripped it away from her body. She knew it would happen and still she gasped aloud, jerked into his hands. He stepped back, and the silk fell at her feet, a tactic well used, a pretty casualty of their ugly game.
Tom made love to her against the glass, holding her legs around his hips, pressing her back into the wall, both of them selfishly chasing the pleasure high. Sharp kisses that caught and held and went soft. Firm grasps that would bruise Flick, slides of her nails that scored him. Lovely trophies of this final skirmish, long enough avoided. The crash of expectations, the climax of ambition, the tears and sighs and cries of love they’d practiced on each other and knew well how to use to wound and heal.
It wouldn’t be the last time they fucked, but it was the first time they did it with a shared sense of the end. There was no open-ended question now. She would leave like she’d planned. He would stay like he’d always intended.
That was the thing about love and life—there were never any guarantees. You took what you were given. You worked out the best deal you could, and if you looked over your shoulder hoping for something better, you screwed with the value of what you already had.
Tom held her in his arms till his legs shook. She clung to him until her arms gave out. They came apart with the care and tenderness Flick had feared but now, after the storm had passed, revered for the way it comforted her.
It wasn’t till much later when she woke in bed in Tom’s arms that she realized they hadn’t eaten, but she had no intention of letting hunger drive her from the bed. There’d be time for dark wanderings and bad-habit snacking and not being able to stay asleep.
Their second-to-last day unfurled slowly and with unexpected ease. Breakfast on the balcony and a grocery run, hand in hand, both of them doing professional-level “we’re fine” acts.
Tom repacked her two suitcases, taking everything out and putting it all back in again, and made everything fit, and Flick managed not to find it sad but helpful and invaluable and quintessentially Tom that she didn’t have to sit on her cases to close them.
It wasn’t till she got an unexpected text—not from Jeannie, who’d kept her in touch, but from Drew—that her emotions got the better of her.
I keep shocking everyone by staying alive. Who knew I’d have such great sticking power? Must’ve learned it from you. Might even be rocking hair for the Christmas newsletter. Go surprise the world, Flicker. You make it happen. Be happy. I love you.
Tom was there to hold her together when the universe tilted again and she felt like she might fall off. He planned hours of good, distracting TV and evil, excellent snacks, and a second-to-last coupon of afternoon delight that was slow and careful and blissfully satisfying.
Wearing his shirt and lying across him, she played the final coupon through her fingers, getting glitter in the hair on his chest. At the beginning of the month, she’d written Activity of Your Choice on it in bright blue marker. She remembered writing it, at the kitchen counter, half drunk on the big idea and having fun with the glue and glitter. Very nearly threw this one out because it was so vague, and the Tom of a month ago had needed firm direction. Now she was pleased she’d kept it because she trusted he’d make good use of it.
“What is the activity of your choice on your thirty-first birthday, Mr. O’Connell?”
“A Gravitron ride with you.”
“A what?”
He tugged on a strand of her hair. “Spending the day with you.”
He made it sound simple.
He made it amazing. Waffles he brought her in bed, an easy hike in a lovely shady park, a bubble bath they soaked in till the water turned cool, followed by a candlelit dinner he cooked. Fried chicken and peach pie. The very first meal he’d made for her. The fact that he was a sentimental goof caught her completely by surprise.
“What? It’s good birthday food,” he said.
He knew what.
Good food, cooked by a good man. A worthy man. Her good man, her one, who she wouldn’t get to keep.
Try as she might, not everything happened because she said so.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tom planned to take Flick out for breakfast. She didn’t need to be at the airport until midday. They’d eat, he’d walk her back to the condo, he’d kiss her goodbye as fiercely as he knew how without wrecking her, without tearing his own insides out. He’d bring her bags down to the foyer, book her a cab and leave her to wait upstairs while he went to work, where the staff would be assembled and the announcement of his promotion would take place. There’d be birthday cake to add to the occasion.
It would take the international Rendel network about fifteen minutes to hear the news. He’d get a call from Josh in sixteen. He’d make his own announcement of Wren’s promotion into his old role before lunch. And hopefully that’d distract her enough not to ask about Flick.
And Flick would be in Washington in her extended-stay apartment before the end of the day.
Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable plan.
And the circumstances were fucked.
Flick was leaving, and she was always going to. He was staying because this was where he needed to be. Wanted to be. She was meant to be a temporary backup financial plan, not a life lesson. They’d be friends. They’d be lovers again. It was hard to fathom why it hurt as much as it did to spend those last coupons with her, have her to himself for his birthday and serve her fried chicken and pie and fall asleep with her one last time.
After the mess of Friday night, the mad emotional wrench of it, they’d had the weekend to get used to saying goodbye, but last night he’d had trouble sleeping, lain awake, running over the plans for the morning in his head needlessly; they weren’t complicated. At least Flick stayed in bed and he got to hear her purr. It wasn’t erotic so much as dear to him.
She wasn’t in bed when he woke with the alarm. The space beside him was cool and there was no audio of water running in the bathroom. She didn’t answer when he called out. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but her watch was on the floor by the sectional. Her door key pass was on the hall table. He backtracked to check her room, a bad feeling swirling in his stomach when he knocked, got no response and pushed the door open.
No Flick, and her suitcases were gone.
She was gone.
He sat on her unmade bed and tried to take it in. She’d skipped out without waking him. That had to have taken considerable effort. There wasn’t much Flick did quietly. She’d told him being quiet her first week here had nearly killed her.
The T-shirt she’d worn to hike in was on the floor. He bent to scoop it up and saw the edge of something under the bed, a pair of heeled shoes. In her lit
tle bathroom, she’d left a hair fork and a wet toothbrush, and she’d written on the mirror in neutral-tone lipstick: We’ll always have coupons.
The words smudged when he put his finger to them; they’d be a pain to clean off. The shirt smelled like Flick. He brought it to his face and breathed her scent in. Why didn’t she wake him? She’d slunk around deliberately, taking off hours too early, and now he had to box these things up to send on to her. He was irrationally annoyed by that, given how she’d done him a favor. He had a busy morning and this took some pressure off.
He went to the kitchen, eyes scanning surfaces; there was a chance she’d left a note and covered it in glitter and he’d missed it. He came up blank and it was so damn quiet, he didn’t like how that made him feel, a kind of nauseous ache that started in his gut and invaded his chest, that lasted through his shower and made him not want to eat.
It wasn’t like he wouldn’t see her again. Get to hold her live-wire body, chase his lips across her skin and worry about what she’d get up to next. But this morning he didn’t get to watch her dress, zip her up, make her breakfast, or wish her a safe trip. Her days would go on without him now, a new city, a new job, new challenges he wasn’t any part of, sadness he wouldn’t be there to help her through.
And his would go on without her.
Fuck.
But that was the plan. She’d tried to shake him from it, and it was dishonest to say he hadn’t thought about following her. He’d had the conversation about other cities with Denise Revero. But it was idle curiosity, not a real proposition. This was where he’d put down roots. This was where his best prospects were, his strongest associations and attachments. This was where he lived and worked, and Flick was just passing through.
The problem was she was a mountain he wanted to climb, a splinter under his skin, buried so deep he’d never dig her out. Never wanted to.
The thought made his hand shake and he slopped coffee all over the counter. He had to sit because he’d aged a hundred years since he’d woken to find her gone and his bones didn’t want to cooperate and hold him upright. Lord. He’d let her go. Let her think she wasn’t worth more than everything else in his life, than a job, than a condo with a city view and furniture he’d paid too much for.
She wouldn’t make a specific plan to meet up again, kept it vague. Now he knew for sure she had no intention of it.
The sun slanting into the room highlighted the smudges they’d left on the glass Friday night. They’d torn each other up; his resistance, her defiance. Her essential truth and his convenient reticence. His handprint from when he braced himself over her. Flick’s shoulders, from where she’d balanced as he’d lifted her legs off the floor. He could see where she’d spread her fingers when he’d spun her to face the glass, and the mark of his forearm where he’d needed leverage. The whole window was filthy with their heat and the slick of their skin, the juice of their lovemaking.
He’d known it was there and hadn’t wanted to clean it off.
He wanted to frame it now. It was the ghost of them. All he had left but for a scattering of glitter in the rug and random left-behind items that Flick could live without.
Lift, hold and drop.
Jesus Christ. What had he done?
There were words in his head from the song that was playing, when he’d come home Friday night and seen Flick’s anger, the lashing-out that covered her despair. Sia. A song about a man who lived by rigid rules and a woman who insisted she had his back and they could make it together. It’d brought out his own wretchedness when all he should’ve felt was triumph.
He’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Instead of living the life he wanted, he’d planned to make do.
He’d treated Felicity Dalgetty like a work problem, a difficult client. Told her there was no upside, that he had no confidence in their future. He let her think his decision was final, that the disappointment was their timing. And she’d warned him she couldn’t do half measures. He was a fool a million times over. Made it all about him when it was all about her and how she’d made it crazy-good to stray outside the lines and fit so well inside the ones he needed drawn. Made him want to cook duck and binge-watch and bubble-bath. Fuck in a lingerie love hotel and get humiliated at the bowling alley. Hold her hand on a hike, and his breath at the sensation of being inside her.
She was his comfort food and his starry night and his afternoon delight. She was his ambition and he had to make her understand that.
There was still time. He made two no-nonsense calls. Got dressed. Packed a bag. Called a cab and went to find her and fix this, working his phone the whole way, the Shawn Mendes song from Flick’s gift playlist in his head the whole way to O’Hare, because there was nothing, least of all his own curmudgeonly ways, holding him back.
She could be anywhere at O’Hare while she waited. If she didn’t answer her phone, he’d pull the place apart departure lounge by food vendor until he found her.
“Don’t be mad with me,” she said when she answered.
He could hardly speak for the relief of hearing her voice. “I’m not mad.”
“I couldn’t do goodbye. I thought it would be easier to just go.” He couldn’t hear anything to help identify where she was, and she didn’t know he wasn’t calling from home.
“You left some things behind.” The man who loved her, couldn’t imagine not looping the loop with her, having the gravity-defying buzz, flashing lights and music of her in his arms for the rest of his life.
“My watch.”
“Navy shoes, pink T-shirt.” He scanned the concourse of Terminal Two, where her Delta shuttle would depart, kept moving. She’d be somewhere there was coffee, which meant one of the two Starbucks.
“Where did you find—it doesn’t matter, Tom, I can deal.”
“I can bring the stuff you left to you.”
“Or I can visit and pick it up. It’s not important.”
Got her. The Starbucks outside gate E1A. “Yeah, Flick, it is. You were never going to visit.”
There was a pause; it felt like years. “I didn’t want to be a distraction all over again.”
“That’s not how it was.” But it was how he’d made her feel.
“Look, I should go. I, ah, forgot to charge my phone and I—” Her voice cracked. “Tom, I’ll call you when I arrive, okay? I’ll call you.”
“Flick.”
She disconnected, and he watched her shoulders heave and her head drop into her hands.
This might fuck up, but it was the only plan he had.
“Flick!” She spun in her chair toward the sound of his voice, hand to her mouth when she sighted him. He took the half-dozen steps he needed to get to her, slipped into the seat beside her and held up her toothbrush. “Thought you might need this.”
She took it out of his hand. “Miraculously, they sell these in Washington.” She looked at the toothbrush and not at him, and the ribs that guarded his heart creaked at the weight he was asking them to bear.
“But this one looked special. The right kind of shaggy.”
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Thought you might need me.” I’m the right kind of in love with you.
“You have important things to do today.” She shoved the toothbrush in her purse. “Hey, what are you wearing? No suit.”
“Thought it was important to come with you.”
Her body jerked so hard, she knocked her knee against the edge of the table. “No.”
Oh fuck. “I made a mistake letting you think you weren’t the most vital thing in my life.”
She pushed away from the table and stood. “This is why I left early.” She picked up her carry-on bag and her purse. He dared not try to take them from her. “Goodbyes are too hard.”
She walked out. No other choice—he followed her to a row of empty
seats, facing out toward the runway.
“I don’t need an escort,” she snapped when he caught up. “You need to be at work.”
“I need to be with you.”
“If you think it’s cool to make me cry in a crappy airport terminal lounge, you suck.”
Oh God, he needed to touch her. His heart was thudding painfully against his ribs. “I don’t want to make you cry.”
“So go.”
“I want to be with you, all the times you need to cry and all the times you don’t.” Unlimited possibilities.
She closed her eyes. They were both thinking of Drew.
“No.” A violent shake of her head. “You want to be MD of Rendel and I want that for you. I’ll never forgive you if you miss your own promotion announcement.”
He put his hand out to cup her face, waiting for her to stop him. She dropped her chin but let him step in, bring their bodies together, take her other hand and lower his face to the top of her head, breathe the life he wanted and he was done waiting for.
She squeezed his hand tight. “I hate you for doing this. I was ready. I’d said goodbye.”
“I hate me too. I’m not ready. I will never be ready.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She pulled away and let his hand go. “You hate change. You think I’m some wild out-there thing and I’m not, I’m not. I wear suits the same as you do. We work in the same industry, we get paid for the same kind of job. I just seem wild to you because you’re this calm, steady, focused, organized, dependable rock.”
“Not so steady without you.” Not so rocklike, or focused, and rapidly reorganizing.
“We’re moving in opposite directions and we always were and that’s life.” She folded her arms, shifted her weight to her back foot. A symbolic distancing. “You don’t get everything you want.”
They did the same kind of work. They sold ideas. The hardest person to sell to was someone who did the selling. Someone who loved you without equivocation, who you’d hurt with your fear and reticence. Hurting yourself.
The Love Coupon Page 28
