The Love Coupon

by Ainslie Paton

  “I have a coupon that says that doesn’t have to be the case.”

  “Oh, Tom, we’re all out of coupons.”

  “The one I made for you doesn’t have any glitter.” He took his phone out of his pocket and sent her a text with an attachment. “I didn’t have the time to go old-school. It’s an electronic coupon.”

  Her phone chimed, but she didn’t move to look at it. “I can’t play this game. It’s not fun.”

  “It’s not a game, Flick. I love you. I want to be where you are.”

  “You’d leave Rendel? Everything you worked for there, your apartment? Your life?”

  No answer was stronger than the simplest one, or left less room for argument. “Yes.”

  She slapped her hands on her thighs. “And what? Follow me with no job and no prospects and no fixed place to live? It’s reckless. You’d hate it. You’d get tired of me. It would be a disaster and you don’t believe in happy endings.”

  “I changed my mind. I believe they exist. I want to have a happy ending with you. I love you. I’ll work all the rest out. We’ll work the rest out.”

  “No. You don’t mean that. It’s just an emotional response. Brain chemicals unbalanced, hormones out of whack. We had an amazing time together. Really freaking good, but it was a distraction and it’s over. We both know a long-distance thing would be painful. It would drift and we’d end up worse off, disliking each other. I’m leaving. You’re staying. It’s best. That’s all there is to it.”

  Not the best. A sad imitation, a shadow, a ghost of the life they could have. “I’m offering to go with you.”

  She looked away. “Thanks, but that doesn’t work for me.”

  He’d taught her to distrust his commitment. He’d used pie and sex and coupon excuses, rationalized their love like it was a variable element in a business plan. No refunds. No exchanges. Nontransferable. Jesus Christ, it was all meaningless without her. She was wild to him, fearless, and he needed that, but he had no way to convince her she needed him too.

  “You should go, Tom. You’ll be late.”

  Too late to save his own life. Numb, he reached for her and she came easily into his arms, wrapped around him, stopped his heart from exploding and held him together. He didn’t kiss her because that would cut too deep, but when she didn’t pull away first, he knew what it cost her from the way her body shook, and he let her go.

  He stumbled past rows of seating, around groups of passengers and their carry-on luggage, only peripherally conscious of them. The coupon he’d made in the back of the cab, in one of those graphics programs on his phone, used a picture of a mountain track. It was summer and the colors deep and lush, the track well-worn and winding, going off into an unimaginable distance.

  Over it he’d written, This coupon entitles us to be together. Time, place, manner of your choice. One night or every night. No limits. No expiration. I love you and the only ambition I have is to be wherever you are. Redeemable forever.

  He’d call it back if he could. It would only make her sad.

  When someone yanked on his arm, he stopped moving. “Excuse me.” He must’ve bumped into them. “I’m sorry.”

  “Tom.” Not someone. “There’s no fine print.” Flick still gripped his arm. “That’s too risky.”

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  “You don’t do spontaneous things like this. You’ll regret it.”

  “I spent three months doing spontaneous things with you. Never regretted a moment, except the times I made you feel like you hadn’t become everything to me.”

  “You spent thirty-one years being methodical and strategic and disciplined and cautious.”

  He groaned. “God, I was a bore. How did anyone put up with me?”

  “What if I want to redeem this coupon now?”

  He almost lost his footing. Patted the backpack resting on his hip. “I get on the shuttle with you.”

  “And then what?” Her attitude was somewhere between severely pissed off and what’s going on here.

  “Look for a job. Help you look for a place to live, maybe one we can share.”

  “Just like that you’d leave Rendel?”

  “I already left Rendel. I resigned before I left home. I booked the shuttle ticket from the cab. Asked Wren to come around and empty the fridge. See, there was a reason for not having pets, and owning a condo I’ll make money on. Told Beau he should give Wren the MD job. She’ll eat it for breakfast and still be hungry.”

  Flick choked on a breath intake. “You quit.” Her hand going to her throat.

  “I didn’t think of it as quitting so much as going after the life I want.”

  She palmed her forehead. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Only if you don’t redeem my coupon.”

  “You’ll get tired of me. I’m best consumed in small doses.”

  “I will never get tired of you. I want to sign up for an overdose.”

  “I’m messy. I’m not ever going to be tidy. You don’t believe in marriage, and we don’t know if we want kids and relationships have broken up for lesser things than that, and you want to throw your whole life over for me.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve already thrown my life over for you and it feels amazing.”

  She looked down at their feet. “You quit. I’m just. This is.” When she lifted her chin, he saw all the indecision and uncertainty in her. “It’s too much, Tom. Smart people don’t make decisions like this. I don’t make decisions like this. You don’t make decisions like this. You plot and scheme and wait. There are no guarantees for us.”

  Flick Dalgetty was made of ants and bees, fear-inducing roller-coaster bends, and gravity-defying Gravitron revolutions. She was the spun sugar of fun-fair cotton candy, and right now standing in front of him, she was made of disappointment and doubt and it was killing him.

  “The decision I made was not to let you go. If you agree, it’s the best investment I could ever make.” If she didn’t—if she didn’t...

  She glared at him. “You based it on a coupon.”

  “A love coupon. One of a kind.”

  “What have I done to you?” She took hold of his arms and tried to shake him.

  “Made me fall in love.” He took her hand in his. “Made me want to do anything to stay that way.”

  “You get points for coming after me. And the toothbrush opener was inspired, but we’re not talking about something temporary here. If you get on the plane with me, we’re doing the rest together. I’m helping you decide on a job, what to do with your condo, and you’re helping me learn to sleep through the night, be disciplined with my family and being my person, my one who sticks with me no matter what.”

  It was a good plan. The best he’d ever heard. “I like the idea of that. Come on, Flick.” He put his hand to her ribs, over her tattoo. “You make it happen. Redeem me. We can spend the rest of our lives working out the fine print.”

  He wasn’t ready for her to jump, he would never be entirely ready for the centrifugal force of her, and that was part of what he loved. She crashed into him, but he caught her. “Is that yes?”

  She took his breath away with her kiss. “Yes. Yes. I redeem you, Tom O’Connell, and you redeem me.”

  They made a spectacle of themselves, making out in the middle of Terminal Two.

  They’d make their guarantees, one argument, one comfort meal, one playlist, one promise, one secret, one sleepy cuddle, one bubble bath, one sexy challenge, one trouncing, one improbable crowd-sourced Kama Sutra position, one commitment, one love coupon at a time.

  And if he planned it right, they’d do it for the rest of their lives.

  * * * * *

  The Thirty Coupons

  Bowling

  Hike

  Bubble bath

  Head

 
Dress Me for Work

  Breakfast Out

  Movie of Your Choice

  Favorite Takeout

  Dress Me for Bed

  Binge-Watch Show of Your Choice

  Dinner Out

  Cook for You

  Make a Playlist for You

  Play a Game

  Dirty Talk

  Kama Sutra Position of Your Choice

  Dinner with Friends

  Buy Me Lingerie

  I Tell You a Secret

  Your Sex Fantasy

  Breakfast in Bed

  Picnic

  Sixty-Nine

  Quickie

  Massage

  Servant for a Day

  Tie Me Up for Sex

  Tear My Clothes Off Before You Fuck Me

  Afternoon Delight

  Activity of Your Choice

  Thirty Coupons Playlist

  Stevie Wonder: “Superstition”

  Pink Floyd: “Wish You Were Here”

  Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”

  Oasis: “Slide Away”

  Miles Davis: “So What”

  Pixies: “Where Is My Mind?”

  The Velvet Underground: “Heroin”

  David Bowie: “Absolute Beginners”

  David Bowie: “Heroes”

  David Bowie: “Space Oddity”

  Freddie Mercury: “Exercises in Free Love”

  Freddie Mercury: “Foolin’ Around”

  Freddie Mercury: “Living On My Own”

  Roy Orbison: “I Drove All Night”

  Roy Orbison: “She’s a Mystery to Me”

  Roy Orbison: “Crying”

  Roy Orbison: “Only the Lonely”

  Roy Orbison: “In Dreams”

  Three Days Grace: “I Hate Everything About You”

  Thirty Seconds to Mars: “The Kill”

  Evanescence: “Bring Me to Life”

  Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

  Machine Gun Kelly with Hailee Steinfeld: “At My Best”

  Bruce Springsteen: “Glory Days”

  The Rolling Stones: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

  HAIM: “Right Now”

  OneRepublic: “No Vacancy”

  The Chainsmokers and Coldplay: “Something Just Like This”

  Shawn Mendes: “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”

  Pharrell Williams: “Happy”

  Prince: “Cream”

  Madonna: “Justify My Love”

  George Michael: “I Want Your Sex”

  Usher: “Trading Places”

  Miley Cyrus: “Adore You”

  Ariana Grande: “Dangerous Woman”

  Beyoncé featuring Jay Z: “Drunk in Love”

  Sia: “We Can Hurt Together”

  To purchase and read more emotional contemporary romances by Ainslie Paton, please visit Ainslie’s website at www.ainsliepaton.com.au.

  Now Available from Carina Press and Ainslie Paton

  Can you fall in love in thirty-six questions?

  Read on for an excerpt from THE LOVE EXPERIMENT, from Ainslie Paton’s STUBBORN HEARTS series

  Chapter One

  Derelie Honeywell heard the word cutback and felt her organs flip inside out and shrivel.

  What exactly was a cutback? Back home it was what people did with out-of-control weeds. Was it worse coffee in the break room? Could that be a thing? Longer hours for less pay? Was that even possible? Freaking hell. Getting this job had been hard enough, and now it was going to be that much harder to keep it.

  It didn’t help that the word cutback came from the mouth of the paper’s biggest bastard. Phil Madden was one of the reasons life in the big city of Chicago was more scary than windy. His once-upon-a-time offensive-tackle massiveness was one factor. But it was the reality that as editor-in-chief of the Courier, and Derelie’s ultimate boss, he muscled over anything that opposed his vision for the paper that made him truly formidable.

  Phil got what Phil wanted or you got a different job somewhere else. He was a bastard amongst bastards in an industry that proudly measured that kind of thing.

  Less than a year into her new job, Derelie was quietly terrified of him.

  She must’ve made a sound because her cube mate Eunice elbowed her and she scored a glance from her section editor. “Don’t look so scared,” Shona whispered. “Every year around now we get the cutback talk.”

  “You’re not a real reporter till you’ve survived a cutback,” Eunice muttered.

  Apart from Yogaboy with his man-bun and his perfect lotus position and his effortless vinyasa, there wasn’t anything a whole lot more that interested Derelie than surviving a cutback and keeping her job. Said job allowed her to pay the rent on the shoebox she lived in, eat something green regularly, make long calls home, get her teeth straightened and update her wardrobe. But she appreciated Shona’s attempt at reassurance.

  If there was such a thing as tenure at a newspaper, Shona had it. She was rumored to be doing it with Phil. And since Shona had Tinker Bell proportions to go with her pixie cut, that took some thinking about.

  Best not to.

  “What does cutback mean exactly?” she whispered back.

  Shona used a cupped hand to cover her response, as Phil kept talking. “Hard to tell what it means now. We once had potted plants and a dry-cleaning service, and we used to report on foreign and national news. Now we only cover the state. I remember when we used to have a book reviewer, and a film critic. There were always free books and tickets to shows being handed out. We used to have more editors and photographers too.” Shona sighed. “All of that went in cutbacks.”

  That was not reassuring. Derelie covered lifestyle for the web edition of the paper, which was where any story that didn’t belong anywhere else went. Her last story was on the rise of athletic wear as everyday fashion. The one before that was on the benefits of standing desks. Not exactly breaking news.

  “Remember, you were hired for the online edition and we all know that’s the future of the newsroom,” said Shona.

  At twenty-eight, with only a slightly shop-soiled degree, another six months of wearing her invisible braces, enough student and credit card debt to qualify for a personal World Bank assistance loan, and the unrequited love of Yogaboy, being considered the future of the newsroom was more of a threat than a reassurance.

  This job was her career break, a way to cement her skills base and make a name for herself. She’d do whatever she needed to grip on to it with all ten fingers, all ten toes, and her near-perfect bite, because she wasn’t going back to small-town butt-fuck nowhere until she’d made something more impressive of herself in the city than a decent sun salute and straight teeth.

  From the front of the room across the tops of the rabbit warren of cubicles, Phil said, “There’ll be a tightening of costs, an increase in the number of syndicated stories and a reduction in the number of pages going to print.”

  Management speak for “things aren’t getting any easier.”

  “Much thinner and the paper will disappear up our asses,” said Dante Spinoza, another beefy bastard who wrote for the sports pages.

  “More complaints and I’ll have you disappeared up your own ass,” Phil fired back.

  Derelie’s shriveled insides tightened further at that. It was management speak for “if you know what’s good for you, shut the hell up.”

  The only person that didn’t apply to was Jackson Haley. Another of the scary bastards. Haley, who was billed as the Heartbeat of the City and the Defender of the People, was a multi-award-winning investigative reporter who had his own daily column. His dinkus—which was a thumbnail of his smarmy handsome face—was always part of the masthead on the first page of the
paper where he broke the latest big scandal.

  He was courted by cops and CEOs, who wanted to be on his good side, and hated by the people and organizations he exposed for unsavory practices. He was well connected and unafraid, despite the fact he’d had death threats, and gossip had it someone once totaled his car with a baseball bat. He was a newsroom legend. He sold papers. He was the only man in the room who could out-bastard Phil without raising a sweat.

  Jackson Haley didn’t determine whether Derelie kept her job or not; they’d never even bumped elbows in the break room, but he was still terrifying in that “I’m utterly fascinated by you, but please don’t notice me” way.

  Derelie noticed Jackson Haley, though. She couldn’t help it. He had lookability. A kind of Old Hollywood glamour with his sweep of dark hair and hard blue eyes that even bracketed behind tortoiseshell-framed glasses were instruments of interrogation. He showed up to work in good suits with starchy white shirts worn without a tie, when most of the other men wore chinos and short-sleeved, soft-collared polo shirts. He shined his shoes and they never had rubber soles. It was as if he was single-handedly trying to bring back the golden age of newspapers, before there was the internet and breaking news sometimes came in one-hundred-and-forty-character tweets.

  That made him seem like some Clark Kent wannabe.

  Clark Kent was a nice guy. Jackson Haley, who everyone called Haley, was a sharp-tongued steamroller, an avenging, all-seeing drone in human form. He’d stalk about the bullpen where the business writers sat with his coat off and his cuffs rolled back, a hands-free earpiece constantly connecting him to whatever secret source his stories came from.

  He drank coffee by the gallon and smoked in the alleyway outside the office. She’d never seen him eat. She had seen him bruised, which proved he was no Superman. He never tried to hide the occasional black eye, reddened jaw, or hitch to his stride. Story had it, he boxed in one of those “guys who need to beat other up other guys to feel like real men” clubs.

  Cut Jackson Haley and he bled the alphabet. He was journalism royalty. His grandfather was a famous war correspondent and a former editor of the paper.