by Cole McCade
Taking a sharp breath, she pulled back from him and forced a smile. “What’d you get?”
“Lemongrass tuna skewers in peanut sauce.”
He passed her one of the trays, and she opened it to peek inside. The savory scent of grilled tuna cubes speared on bamboo skewers hit her like an assault on her hungry, roiling stomach. As they cut across the current of the crowd to a sidewalk bench, she fished one out and took a nibble. The rich peanut sauce nearly exploded on her tongue. “I feel like we should be eating at the Ritz, dressed like this. Not a sidewalk food cart.”
He laughed and sank down onto the bench, prying his tray open. “Tomorrow it’ll be gyros in the park. We have a stereotype to defy.”
“Dumbass.” She pointed her skewer at him and settled on the bench at his side. The concrete seat nearly froze her bottom, icy cold soaking up through her coat and slacks, but he was more than warm enough to drive the chill away. They sat arm to arm, and she had to stop herself from leaning into him. “You really are. I can’t believe you, emailing me when I’m trying to work.”
“Would you rather I showed up and dragged you off in front of everyone?”
“Point taken.” She savored a few more bites. “Evan Even Stevens, though? Seriously? That’s such a dorky email address.”
“You haven’t heard the saying? You know, Even Stevens. Being fair, objective, and impartial about things.”
“But your last name isn’t even Stevens.”
“That’s not the point.” He glanced down, gaze raking over her. “I thought I told you to wear the green.”
“Which is exactly why I’m not.”
“Would you believe me if I said I knew you’d do that?”
She rolled her eyes and elbowed him. “Nice try, Machiavelli. Stop talking and eat. I’m ravenous.”
But his gaze lingered on her, his smile melting away, his eyes scorching. He traced a precise path over her with lingering looks, as if marking a roadmap he had every intention of following. Her lips. Her throat. The curve of her body, the length of her thighs—until by the time his gaze rose to hers she could almost feel his mouth, his touch, branding her with a ghostly manifestation of his desire. “So am I,” he rumbled, every soft sound pulling on her strings and tugging at something deep and hot inside her.
She lowered her eyes, forcing her attention back to her food and away from the way he fucking smoldered like he’d melt the snow from the streets. She wasn’t letting those looks get under her skin, damn it. And she told herself for the millionth time: he wasn’t coming home with her again.
* * *
He came home with her again.
She wasn’t even sure how it happened. One moment he was lurking to kidnap her outside the office building and drag her to a little Thai restaurant tucked in a back alley. The next he was crushing her against the wall of the alley while she kissed the taste of red curry coconut sauce from his lips, the spice and fire of it burning her mouth, the wild hot headiness of him burning her. His hands slid under her camisole, imprinting his granite-rough touch on her skin, and she gasped “Yes” before he even had to ask.
Secret, teasing kisses on the subway turned into a hot, urgent crash of mouth to mouth in the foyer of her apartment building; into grasping hands dragging each other up the stairs; into clothing torn away and left in a trail on her floor, and then into the warm soft plushness of the bed yielding under their weight as he tumbled her down and enveloped her in the heat of his body. He was like magma, this simmering, explosive, molten inferno caged inside stone skin, and he dragged her into his heat until she breathed sparks and bled fire.
Over and over he took her, filling the safe private space of her little apartment with the sounds of them, with the quiet swift rush of their breaths and the mingled rhythm of their voices that blended into counterpoint until she couldn’t hear herself without hearing him. Winter’s chill fled from their mounting heat, and sweat rolled over their skin in trickling, licking tongues, slicked under her touch as she clutched at him and tangled her legs with his and pulled him deeper, deeper, ever deeper. He pushed her limits. He pushed her, took her where she’d never go on her own, challenged her and met her every challenge in return until they drove each other to a wild and precarious edge.
And when she fell…when she fell, as her vision misted strange and a tempest poured through her…she wondered how she’d let him get in so deep, so fast, as if the harsh scrape of her anger had sanded away all their rough edges to let him fit into the quiet spaces of her life, filling them up as if he’d been made for them.
Spaces he would only leave empty when he packed up and moved on.
And as he sank against her, as their heavy breaths began to settle in lazy tandem, as he gathered her close in his arms and pressed his lips into her hair…Zero told herself it didn’t matter.
Who’s the liar this time? A nasty little voice mocked.
She closed her eyes and held him tight, and when he whispered her name in the dark she couldn’t say anything at all.
* * *
He was gone again when she woke the next morning. And the next, when she somehow found herself bringing him home again. They’d curled up on the couch with Chinese takeout and talked about the office and watched The Walking Dead, with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist. He couldn’t watch the zombies and eat at the same time, couldn’t even stand to look at the screen, and she laughed and hugged his arm and told herself it shouldn’t be this easy. This fun. This comfortable. This sweet, until it wasn’t sweet at all when he lifted her into his lap and parted her thighs around his hips and drew her down on him until she rode the swell and rush and sigh of need with a sensuality that felt as if it would eat her alive, sweeping over her in a firestorm and reducing her to nothing but cinders.
“I feel like I tripped and fell down the rabbit hole,” she murmured as she tucked her head under his jaw and let herself melt into the slow, deep burn she loved to savor, with their bodies still locked together and that deep sore pull warming her from the inside. The silver-flicker light of the television flashed over them, strobing in the darkened living room. “One minute I’m screaming at you and telling you to go to hell, the next you’re just…here, and I’m okay with that.”
“Life just happens that way sometimes.” His voice rumbled in her ear, intimate and close. He smoothed his hands over her back, firm and slow, as if his touch could hold her together. “We’ve done everything else backwards. Is it really so surprising we’d get all our fighting out of the way before anything else?”
Zero closed her eyes. She didn’t understand the hot hard hurting feeling digging into her chest. “Out of the way of what?” she whispered, but he said nothing. “Of what, Evan?”
“I don’t know,” he said, voice thick, and gathered her into his arms to carry her to bed.
* * *
It is what it is, Zero told herself over a morning mocha latte that was already starting to feel like a routine. For the third morning in a row he’d left a latte, a lemon bar, and another note.
You’re lucky it wasn’t noodles in red sauce. Never watching TV with you again.
See you at work. Try not to be so distractingly sexy.
-E
Why was he so stupid? And when had it started to be so cute? Zero smiled to herself and tucked the note atop the stack of the previous two days’ notes. This would probably be the last one. He’d walked into her life on Monday, and somehow she’d tumbled right through a tumultuous week straight into Friday. He hadn’t said when his flight was leaving, but management had been pretty clear. Best behavior for a week. He was gone from the office after today, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask if he was sticking around for the weekend. Like she’d said before…it was what it was. She’d remember him for a few nights after, miss the sex, and then they’d both go on with their lives, doing whatever it was they were meant to do with or without each other.
Yep. This is me being practical. Adult. Not acting like a
special snowflake teenager who falls for the first guy to act like a dick and then kiss her until the world turns sideways.
Maybe she was the stupid one here.
She breathed in the steam rising from her coffee, and doggedly ignored the pang below her ribs. She should get dressed. Go to work. And pretend she didn’t notice when he cruised past, lethal and arrogant and handsome in those suits that still looked so very wrong on him, when every night he reminded her what an animal he was. But as she glanced over the apartment, over her little space that had started to pick up traces of him—from the notes on the kitchen counter to the leather jacket on the hook and the boxer-briefs draped over the hamper—her gaze fell on the plushies lined up on the windowsill, nestled among the candles where she’d left them after rescuing them from exile in the bottom of her bag. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and tilted her head, frowning, before her frown melted into a smile.
Maybe she could afford to be a few minutes late.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EVAN LINGERED OUTSIDE THE OFFICE, watching the snow fall in the deepening night and asking himself what the hell he thought he was doing. Zero had texted him telling him she’d be working a little late. He should have gone back to his hotel. Hell, even gone back to her place and waited for her there.
Instead here he was, hanging on like a little lost puppy, just waiting to lick her hand and beg for another scrap of the affection that had become his drug from the first time she’d smiled at him like she might actually, honestly be able to like him.
He would be the first to admit he’d royally fucked himself. After the past few days he didn’t know how he’d go back to jetting from city to city, contract to contract, living life out of empty hotel rooms and salving the ache with equally empty flings. The very idea left him restless and homesick for a place that wasn’t even home.
God, if he kept going like this he was going to end up playing sleepy suburbanite desk jockey. With a minivan.
The glass doors of the building slid open and Zero stepped out, her pretty heeled knee-high boots clattering softly, her town coat bundled over a soft knit turtleneck, clinging skirt, and tights. She looked so different from the scruffy little punk he’d seen that night in the bar. Still beautiful, still that same wild light and wicked intelligence in those dark blue eyes, but he found himself missing her colors and her brightness.
“Hey,” she said, tugging on her gloves and looking up at him with a smile. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose pinkened rapidly in the deepening evening cold. “Sorry I took so long.”
“Putting in overtime?”
“Making up for coming in late.”
“What was that about? I thought you were doing the apple-polisher thing.”
She shrugged. “Had something else to do this morning. One sec.”
With a quick smile she dug into her satchel, rummaging around inside until she extracted something small and pale: a stitched cotton doll, no larger than his palm. A soft felt plush with pale green skin, wearing a suit made of ragged, torn scraps of dark blue fabric. The doll had green button eyes and a painted-on skullcap of hair the same dark brown as its crooked beard. Stitched Xs made up a smile—a smile smeared in red paint. Little red splotches of painted-on blood and bruises and dirt dotted the doll, along with tiny cross-hatched scar marks. Evan stared at the macabre, bizarrely cute little thing.
“What is this? Is this…?”
“Zombie Evan.” Zero grinned sheepishly and wiggled it a bit, hopping it around in a little dance and chirping in a high, squeaky falsetto. “‘I’m thinkin’ ‘bout her, thinkin’ bout me, thinkin’ ‘bout us, what we gonna be…’” Her grin widened, bright with pure devilry, as she offered him the doll. “See? He sings. Your favorite musical.”
“It’s a movie,” he growled. His brows knit as he turned the little thing over. Had she made this? “Is this your way of reminding me you’re still thinking about killing me?”
“No. Well, maybe.” She bit her lip and fidgeted with her gloves, tugging the fingertips. “Look, I can’t afford to buy you nice things or take you out to fancy dinners or anything like that. But you gave me something nice. And I don’t just mean the clothes, okay? So…” Her mouth twisted up as she looked fixedly at the wall. “I wanted to give you something back.”
“So you gave me a toy.”
Her shoulders went rigid. “Look, throw it away if it’s that stupid.”
“It’s not. It’s not stupid at all.”
Evan shook his head and caught her hand, pulling her closer. He couldn’t stand having her so far away, stiff and waiting for him to hurt her again when all he wanted was to hold her. God, she was the quirkiest, strangest little thing, yet he wouldn’t have her any other way. He could picture her sitting on the barstool at her counter, bent over the little doll with a paintbrush, making herself late for work just because she’d wanted to make him smile. Heat flushed down his neck, as if trying to crawl its way down to meet with the ache in his gut.
“This is the difference between you and me,” he said. “When I want to fix something or give something to someone, I throw money at them. Cold, impersonal money. You—you put yourself into it. You make it real. Warm. Personal. And maybe a little weird.” With a smile, he tapped the doll to the tip of her nose. “It’s like you bring that feeling of home wherever you touch.”
She stared up at him, her eyes wide and confused. “Home?”
“Yeah.” Words caught in his throat, but he made himself say them. He’d likely never have another chance, after tomorrow. “Every time I come back to you, you make me feel like home. Even when you’re ready to claw my eyes out.” Chuckling, he looked down at the grisly little toy in his hand. “I’ll just have to take Zombie Evan with me everywhere. Take photos with it like people do with those garden gnomes. Just to give those hotel rooms that personal touch of home.”
With a shy little laugh, she pushed him gently. “And that stylish hint of the undead.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, when it wasn’t really what he wanted to say. Not when a thousand other words built up inside him, and even if he’d never have the chance to say them again he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he didn’t want the damned doll for his constant companion. He wanted her. He wanted to take photos with her and drag her around the country just so they could come back to the quiet relief and comfort of home—her home, her cozy little wood-toned apartment that always smelled of the smoke of green apple incense and always seemed just large enough for the two of them. Together.
But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t do that, and Zombie Evan was just another reminder that he’d be leaving tomorrow, with nothing to remember her by but this little scrap of cloth and the taste of her kiss.
Zero looked down, scuffing the toe of her boot against the sidewalk. “You’re staring at me.”
“Was I?” Evan shook himself, smiled, and tucked the plushie into the pocket of his coat for safekeeping. “Dress code check. You passed.”
“Funny.”
“I try.” He offered his arm. “You want to go catch a movie or something?”
“Sure.” She slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Zombie flick?”
“Not on your life.”
She laughed and leaned against him. And when he closed his eyes…when he closed his eyes he could almost pretend that this was his life, this moment just another captured from millions just like it, instead of a single cutaway scene in an endless film reel of days empty of warmth, of meaning, of her.
* * *
A dozen holiday family films, an award-winning cop drama, more romantic comedies than he could shake a stick at, and he’d let her talk him into a horror movie. A gory horror movie. Evan was starting to wonder if he’d ever eat anything red again.
He was also starting to wonder if he should sleep with one eye open, and check her apartment for anything larger than a penknife.
They strolled down the sidewalk toward
the transit center, hand in hand, quiet amidst the bustle and flow of the city street. New York never ceased to amaze him: lit up bright even near midnight, restless life awake and moving, swift and unstoppable. He’d been to a hundred cities and never seen anything like it.
Which only made this moment of stillness all the more rare and precious, that he could find such comfortable silence with her in the midst of this riot of noise.
Zero drifted to a halt and tilted her head back, looking up at the sky. Snowflakes swirled down to speckle on her lashes; she half-closed her eyes. “It’s snowing again.”
He bumped her arm with his. “Tends to happen in winter.”
“Smartass.” She chuckled, leaning into him in that way that made his heart skip and tightened the pit of his stomach with that unsettling longing he couldn’t seem to shake. “I like the first few moments when it snows. Here you never get to see just clean white snow piled up for long. People walk all over it and get it dirty and grind it into slush. The street sweepers shove it aside and salt it. But for a few minutes when it first starts, it’s just white and clean and quiet.”
“And cold.”
Bright laughter lit her face. “And cold,” she said, then gave him a little push, heading down the street again.
Once more silence fell between them. Yet it was a silence he could not endure, for it only made the thing inside him that much louder. The words he wanted to say, but couldn’t. What was the point? What could he possibly hope to offer her, except a few cold and sterile nights when work happened to bring him to the New York area? He couldn’t even ask her to wait for him, when he didn’t know what he’d be asking her to wait for.
He licked his lips and glanced at her, then away, then back again. God damn it, when had he turned into such a chickenshit?
“You’re staring at me again,” she murmured, a sly little smile tugging at her lips.
“Was I? Damn. Caught me again.” He let out a nervous little laugh, then cleared his throat when his voice cracked. “Um. I guess I was just thinking.”
