by Lili Valente
And I know he likes me. A lot.
But only as a friend…
So maybe it’s just…me? Maybe I have no sex vibe?
OMG, I can’t believe I just texted that. Delete it and forget it. Or if you can’t delete and forget, at least please refrain from teasing me. I can’t handle that on top of the Mr. Unattainable brush off.
This is why we should have stuck with notes in the hole! I would never have written something like that and put it in the hole.
Why didn’t I respect the hole?!
Curve: Lol. Relax, psycho. I’m not going to tease you.
You definitely have a sex vibe. You’re a little feral sometimes, but totally pounceable, and I hear some guys like the wild-girl-who-needs-to-be-tamed thing.
Panties: Thank you. And I think he would like it. If he gave it a try.
Curve: Great. Then assuming your guy is open to what you’ve got to offer, you just need to figure out what’s holding him back, the way I did with Gail.
So I’m going to share my magic trick, but you have to swear never to tell anyone. Dasher oath of honor, spit in your beer and hope to die.
Panties: spitting emoji beer emoji skull and crossbones emoji Done.
Curve: Okay, so…I call her sweetheart.
Panties: Excuse me?
Curve: I call her sweetheart. And ‘sweets’ sometimes, when the moment is right. She likes the mushy stuff, so I supply the mushy stuff. I think she likes that I’m willing to let the way I feel about her show.
You know?
Hello?
Panties…
Are you still there?
If you tell me you’re leaning over the toilet because my sweetness made you barf, I will never share anything private with you ever again. Ever. So choose your next words carefully, kid…
Panties: I’m still here. Sorry. My roommate came in with her Bang-O-The-Month, and I had to move down to the study lounge.
So you call her pet names? That’s it?
You whipped out a sweetheart or two, and she fell into your manly arms?
Curve: No. I don’t just whip them out. I mean them.
She is a sweetheart, and I care about her, and I’m happy to do what it takes to make her feel special.
Panties: That’s…really sweet.
So I guess you’re a sweetheart, too.
The sweetest sweetheart ever, sweetie sweets.
Curve: Stop.
Panties: But I’m serious, sweets. You take the cake. You’re so sweet the cake knows it’s going to taste sour by comparison so it just gives up and lets you take it.
Done. Mic drop. Cake out.
Curve: That’s it. You just got taken off the No Bullshit list.
Now you only get surface conversation and insults. And I’m going to put forward a motion to have your Dasher name changed to Farts with Wolves.
Panties: NO! I’m sorry. I really am. I just couldn’t help myself. You know I couldn’t. It was too perfect a set up.
But I’m truly grateful for the advice and happy for you and Gail. You two are going to have amazingly gorgeous babies and make the world a better place. Or at least a prettier one.
Please forgive me?
Curve: beady eye emoji
Panties: Please. I swear I’m sorry, and I promise I’ll take the sweetheart stuff to the grave.
Curve: You’d better. Or I will find a way to make you pay, feral squirrel.
Panties: Got it. My lips are sealed.
But for what it’s worth, if you were my man, I’d rather be called feral squirrel than sweetheart. It shows some originality, you know?
And it doesn’t make me want to barf. So, that’s a plus.
Curve: I’ll keep that in mind for the day I realize I’ve been secretly carrying a torch for your polka-dot-pantied ass.
Panties: You do that, Curve. You do that.
And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll have come around to a similar realization.
Curve: One can only hope…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cat and I face each other down across the island in her kitchen, which is large by city standards, as is the rest of her apartment, making me think she must do pretty well for herself, whatever kind of lawyer she is.
I’m not surprised, of course. It was clear from the moment I met her that Red could do anything she set her mind to.
Which is probably why this Nico thing is so hard for her. She’s the kind of person who is used to calling the shots and solving her own problems. For her to have hired someone to help her out of a mess, any mess, is completely out of character. She’s in unfamiliar territory, something I should have remembered before I lost my temper and control of my mouth.
“You ready?” I ask, doing my best to forget that I was talking dirty to her less than ten minutes ago.
But my cock doesn’t want to forget. It doesn’t give a shit how unprofessional it is to be coming on to my client. It just wants to get Cat naked and make up for turning her down all those years ago.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Her tongue slips out to wet her bottom lip, and I pretend I’m not thinking about biting it.
There are six shots of tequila and two beers in frosted glasses lined up between us and judging by the intense expression on Cat’s face she’s ready to open the confessional.
“You remember how this works, right?” She brings her hand to her mouth and licks the back of it, holding my gaze as she reaches for the saltshaker. “After each confession, we drink. And everything we say from the time we open Religious Advice until the final words of the ceremony is top secret, never to be repeated to another living soul.”
I nod. “I open this confessional in the name of the fox, the hound, and the brew that never lets them down. Let the truth be spilled, but never the beer. Hoo ha, hoo ha ha.”
“Hoo ha, hoo ha ha,” she echoes, reaching for her beer.
I reach for mine and we tilt our frosted mugs back. I take several deep pulls, until the cold starts to make my head ache, before dropping my half-empty glass back to the marble counter. Neither of us has eaten anything since the bag of pretzels we snagged on the way between trains earlier, and drinking on an empty stomach is never a wise idea. But a buzz sounds good right now. I need something to take the edge off, to make me forget that I’m breaking all the rules and risking my life for a woman who drives me crazy.
Apparently Cat feels the same way. By the time she emerges from her beer with a deep breath, only a couple inches of amber liquid remain at the bottom of her glass. “Remember that last night, before you left for Japan?”
“I remember,” I say, grateful for the buzz I can feel creeping in to dull the sharp edges of her words. If we’re going to talk about that night in the woods, I’m going to need all three shots of tequila and then some.
She swipes a hand across her upper lip before bracing both palms on the counter. “After you left to go put out the bonfire, I went for a walk around the lake with the joint you left behind. I smoked the entire thing. All by myself.”
“Probably not the best idea. It was your first time, right?”
She nods. “Yes, and it was a completely shitty idea. I ended up wandering around the student union, high as a kite, shouting quotes from The Art of War at the owl statues on top of the building. I was caught by a city cop doing his campus rounds and spent the night in the drunk tank, crying my eyes out because it felt like my intestines were trying to crawl out of my throat.”
I wince. “That wasn’t good pot. I’m sorry your first experience sucked so hard.”
“It really did suck hard. It sucked so hard I thought I was going to die. And if I’d known your real name, I would have given you up to the po po in a heartbeat. Because by two in the morning I was so high I was seeing gremlins on the ceiling and convinced you were trying to kill me.” She reaches for the first shot of tequila. “Forgive me, friend, for I have sinned.”
Following her lead—and the rules of our bastardized religious ceremony—I reac
h for my own shot. “I absolve you in the name of the fox and the hound and the brew that never lets them down.”
We lick the salt from our hands, pound our shot, and reach for the tray of lime slices at the same time, our fingers brushing. Cat flinches away, watching as I pop my lime between my lips before reaching for hers.
“Anything to say?” she asks, sucking the wedge.
“Nope. Just that I’m sorry, and I’m sure that wasn’t a great way to end your sophomore year.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She shakes her head loosely, her body language already more relaxed than I’ve seen it all day. I don’t know if the confession or the alcohol is responsible, but it’s good to see her shoulders drop away from her ears. “And it only got worse from there. My dad found out—because of course he did; he always knew exactly what I was up to, especially when I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing it—and he acted like I’d murdered a flock of baby sheep for fun.”
I snort, but Cat doesn’t crack a smile.
“I had enough money saved to pay for my own rehabilitation class to get back in good graces with the school,” she continues, “but Dad knew arrest for pot possession could keep me from getting into the FBI training academy. That had always been his dream, not mine, but he mourned the death of my career as a federal agent hard enough for the both of us.”
“Sorry again. Truly. I feel you.” I consider telling her that I know all about killing your father’s dreams, but this isn’t my confession.
“He never forgave me,” she continues. “Not even on his deathbed. His last words to me were a depressing plea for me not to fuck my life up anymore than I had already.”
I curse, and she finally smiles, though it’s more rueful than amused.
“Not to fuck up any more than I had already,” she repeats softly. “Even though I hadn’t taken a single step from the straight and narrow for eleven years. Not one single step. I never even lied about my weight on my driver’s license.” She laughs. “But one mistake was all it took to make me a fuck-up for life. At least as far as Dad was concerned.”
I reach for the second shot, but she holds out a hand. “Sorry, that wasn’t my second confession. That was just additional information, stuff I left out of the story this afternoon when I told you things didn’t end well with Dad.”
I nod. “You left out the fact that it was my fault your relationship with your father was destroyed forever.”
She shakes her head, sending her silky hair sliding around her shoulders. I have the sudden, powerful urge to drive my hand into all the red and let it slip through my fingers. I know it will feel like silk, but more alive, an entity with a will of its own that wants to touch and be touched.
Touch would be a lot less painful than hearing how one stupid night when we were practically kids wrecked her life for over a decade.
“No, it wasn’t your fault,” she says. “It was Dad’s fault, but all the shit with him complicated the way I felt about you for a while.”
“You were angry,” I supply.
She skims her fingertips through the salt spilled on the counter. “I was. That’s why I didn’t email, even though we said we were going to keep in touch.” She tips her head toward her shoulder with a lopsided grin. “Well, that and the fact that you never emailed. Or messaged. Or anything else. That was kind of a clue, you know, and I’m good with clues.”
“At first I didn’t have internet access. And by the time I did…” I shrug, not wanting to say more, but feeling like I owe her the truth, especially while we’re under Religious Advice. “I thought a clean break would be for the best. For both of us. By that point, I’d had some time to think about things and felt like maybe I’d sent you some…conflicting signals over the years.”
A huff of laughter escapes her lips. “You think? With all the flirty notes and texts and staring at my ass like it was your job every time we ran?”
I fight a smile. “Yeah, well, your ass was—and is—a hard thing to look away from. I’m only mortal.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, you definitely sent conflicting signals, and a clean break probably was for the best.” Her smile fades as she reaches out to spin her next shot in a slow circle on the counter. “But it was also weird. And sad. You were such a big part of my life, and then suddenly you were gone. Like you’d never really been there to begin with.”
“I was there,” I say, feeling like shit. “But I was also twenty-two and full of myself and dying to get out in the world and do things.”
She spins the glass faster. “And I was just another girl.”
“No. You weren’t.” I want to reach out and take her hand, to still her fingers and thread them through mine, but I haven’t earned the right to touch her like that. Not in private, when it would mean something more than a show put on to make another man jealous.
“You were just…complicated, and I wanted simple. I needed it,” I continue in a firmer voice, as her lips twist in a knowing smirk. “Things weren’t great with me and my dad at that point, either. He was really fucking disappointed in me, and every time I called to check in, he let me know it. So I stopped calling him or anyone else. I tossed my cell and travelled around Asia studying with artists I respected, and by the time I came back home, college seemed like another world. One I remembered with a smile, but…”
I chew my bottom lip, hunting for the right words. “By that time I’d learned to give fewer fucks about everything, and that meant not wallowing in regret over shit I couldn’t change.”
“So you regretted how things ended?” Her fingers pause in their relentless spinning.
“I did.” I lay my hands on the counter near hers, almost close enough to touch. “I should have called. Or texted. Or at least written an email to let you know that my decision that night truly had nothing to do with you. It was all me.”
She laughs, a breezy giggle that surprises me after the heavy tone of the conversation so far. “Well, shit. That sucks, Aidan. I’m glad you didn’t call, then.”
“Thanks,” I say, scratching my beard.
“Seriously, that’s the worst. The one time a guy said that to me, I almost punched him in the face. I settled for dumping a glass of wine in his lap and telling him my decision to do so had everything to do with him.”
I shrug. “Then I guess it all worked out for the best.”
“I guess it did.” She lifts her chin, meeting my cool gaze with an even cooler one. “But I’m going to make my second confession anyway. There was never any Mr. Unattainable. Well, there was, but he wasn’t a friend from boarding school. He was you. You were my Archie of the Covenant.” She presses her lips together, turning her laughter into a wry hum. “I had it so bad for you, dude. So, so bad. It was fucking ridiculous.”
“Why was it—”
“Forgive me, friend, for I have sinned.” She plucks her shot from the counter, holding it between us.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I say, my gut twisting. I feel bad for my part in leading her on when we were younger, but that’s not why I feel like I swallowed a pound of buckshot. There’s something more, something that lingers in the air between us as she brings the glass to her lips, something that reminds me of good food going to waste and kids being diagnosed with cancer.
“Say your part,” she says in a husky voice. “And drink.”
I take my glass, meeting her gaze over the rim. “I absolve you in the name of the fox and the hound and the brew that never lets them down.” We drink, neither of us looking away, even when we set the glasses down hard on the counter.
This time, we don’t reach for a lime.
“Seriously, Red, I’m not as dumb as I look. After the stuff in the woods, I figured out that you’d had a thing for me. Though, yes, I should have caught on a lot sooner.”
“You should have.” Her smile is hard, heavy. “You were a dumb boy, but I was dumb, too. I should have given up and dated someone who was interested instead of carrying a torch for yo
u for two years.”
She rolls her neck, a sensuous movement that’s so sexy all I can think about is how much I want my lips on her throat, feeling the pulse of her blood beneath her pale skin. But between the fucked-up past and the fucked-up present, this island between us might as well be an ocean.
“But I’m still glad I confessed.” She brushes her hair over her shoulder with a graceful flick of her wrist. “That’s information I wanted to be sure you had in your possession before you started talking to me about my panties again.”
Fuck.
Fuck me. Fuck me somewhere it hurts without lube.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I know it’s not enough. “I’m an asshole. I didn’t even think about—”
“No you’re not an asshole. You were right.” She blinks, her green eyes clear and focused. “My panties were wet,” she says in a voice that goes straight to my dick, sending my flagging erection surging back to life. “One kiss and I was ready to go at it against my ex-boyfriend’s limo.”
“Cat…” Her name is a warning, though I don’t know if the warning is meant for her or me or both of us.
Or what I’m going to do if she ignores it.
“I wanted you to fuck me as much as I ever did,” she continues, bracing her palms on the counter. She leans forward, granting me a view down the front of her dress and a glimpse of creamy lace against creamier skin, sending my blood pressure skyrocketing. “Maybe more. You were always good with your hands and your mouth, but you’re even better now. You make me feel like I’m on fire. All over. In the best way.”
I clench my jaw and fight the urge to sweep my hand across the counter and send the glasses shattering to the floor as I drag Cat across the marble and take her right here on the kitchen island.
“So yes, Aidan, I was wet this morning.” The gleam in her eyes is diabolical, making me suspect she might be deliberately trying to give me a heart attack. “And I was wet when you were talking dirty to me a few minutes ago. And I could be wet again in a hot second if you said you wanted to take your next shot off my tits and fuck me on the floor.”
I fist my hands so tight my knuckles ache. Sweat breaks out between my shoulder blades and a vein in my neck starts to throb. I am so fucking close to losing control, but I force my hands to remain on the counter.
