Unforgivable

by Megan Hart

  He’d regretted it, though. Worse than the hangover the next day. Mick had wished he’d been bold enough to at least say hello. After everything they’d been to each other, surely it had been a mistake to let a chance to talk to her escape him.

  He’d make up for it tonight, he decided as he pushed open the French doors and headed for the garden. Cookie had told him Alice was down there—“Not,” she said, “that I’m telling you to go down there to see her, or anything. But in case you maybe wanted to say hello before everyone else gets here.”

  It was exactly what he wanted. That first greeting between them, after so much time and all that had happened, shouldn’t be in front of a crowd, where both of them would have to pretend they were happy to see each other. Unless they actually were. He thought he was going to be very happy to see Alice again, but there was always the chance she didn’t feel that way, even if she had agreed to come despite knowing he’d be here.

  What would she see when she looked at him? The idiot boy he’d been, or the man he’d worked hard to become? Maybe a little of both, Mick hoped as he paused at the bottom of the stairs to look at the wineglass on the railing, imprinted with the faint smudge of lipstick. For a moment he stupidly almost lifted it to his mouth. To put his lips where hers had been, a pale substitute for a kiss.

  He was so fucked.

  It was very likely Alice was going to eat him alive. Chew him up, spit out the bones. And he’d deserve it, wouldn’t he? For a moment, he thought of turning back. Being a coward, the way he’d been so many years ago. But no. He was here. So was she. The time had come to stop running away from the past.

  Alice to Mick

  In the beginning, there was always that awkward moment when we first saw each other after being apart. We might’ve spent hours talking on the phone, hours, even, in bed together. But those beginning months, every time in those first few moments, I couldn’t bring myself to look at you. My eyes would skate away, and heat would flood me—even though at the same time, I was usually trying hard not to shake. You’d lean to kiss me, and I would fight and sometimes fail to keep myself from turning my head so your lips would land on my cheek and not my mouth. Because I wanted you too much, you see. When you kissed me hello or good-bye or any time in between, the lightest brush of lip on lip, a casual embrace, I wanted to open for you. Let you sink deep inside. It was all I could do not to leap into your arms, suffocate you with my desire. I was afraid to show you how much I wanted you, because somehow I thought that would make it more real.

  And in the end, all I did was waste all those first times when I could’ve been looking at you.

  —Alice to Mick

  Chapter 3

  Flowers whispered in the breeze, and Alice paused for a moment to contemplate which she wanted to kill. The pink roses were gorgeous, soft and velvety petals with bright green leaves. The red blooms, on the other hand, would blend better with the wildflowers she’d already gathered in her basket. What Cookie needed in her garden was purple roses, Alice thought, stroking one flower while she shifted the basket over her arm. Did such a thing even exist?

  “Alice.”

  She didn’t move. Didn’t turn. Didn’t blink or gasp or sigh, though every muscle in her body tensed at the sound of her name. She knew that voice at once, though it had been so, so long since she’d heard it any place but in dreams.

  “Cookie told me you were here.”

  Of course he’d found her on purpose. Of course, she thought with a small and throbbing thump-thump of her heart that she could not pretend she didn’t feel. Lifting her chin, putting on a smile, Alice turned.

  “Mick.” Alice smiled, one hand reaching for his automatically. Out of politeness, she told herself. Not because she wanted to touch him.

  He surprised her when instead of taking it to shake, he drew her close for a hug. Nothing too unusual in that—their group had always been affectionate embracers, hugging on greetings and good-byes and randomly in between. She’d already been squeezed and cuddled a dozen times today by Bernie and Cookie alone, and would expect more to come from the other guests as they arrived. Still, when Mick’s body pressed to hers, Alice found herself melting into his touch as though the years had never passed and nothing bad had ever happened to them.

  It lasted a few seconds, just long enough for her to feel the softness of his breath against her ear and the light press of his fingertips at the small of her back before they were both breaking apart from each other. She with a small, hitching breath. Mick with an embarrassed cough.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. “You look . . . good.”

  Her brows went up. “That’s the best you can do after all this time?”

  It had been a gamble, guessing he’d respond the way he would’ve back then, but he must not have changed all that much because Mick laughed and took a step back to very clearly look her up and down before letting his gaze settle on hers.

  “You look,” he said, “fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “Better,” Alice told him. “Much better.”

  Silence, a beat of it, then another. But not awkward. They’d had their share of those uncomfortable silences toward the end, struggling to find words that weren’t angry or frustrated or disappointed. It wasn’t like that now. More like they didn’t have to say a word, she thought, and forced herself not to look away from him.

  He’d hardly changed.

  “You too,” she added.

  “Flowers?”

  Alice gestured. “Yeah. Cookie asked me to get some. I can’t decide between the red and the pink.”

  “Red.”

  She gave him a half smile. “You think so?”

  “You think pink roses are a waste.”

  There it was, then. Proof he hadn’t forgotten her. Hadn’t unknown her. For a stupid second tears threatened, burning, and Alice blinked them away.

  “These are pretty, though,” she said.

  Mick shook his head, moving closer to push aside the pink flowers and reveal the red bush planted next to it. “You’re a red-rose kind of girl, Alice. Always were. Ouch, shit.”

  The thorns had pricked him, bringing blood. Mick stuck his thumb in his mouth with a wince. Alice couldn’t hold back a laugh at his expression.

  “That’s why you should always wear gloves when you handle roses. They bite.” She held up the shears. “Let me.”

  Two, three snips and she’d added a half dozen long stems of crimson-topped green to her basket. He’d been right, of course. The red ones blended perfectly with the other flowers, and though she might have grown less vehement about her feelings over the years about the usefulness of pale pink roses, she would never like them as much as red.

  “Alice! Mick!” The shout turned both of them toward the house, where Dayna was waving at them from the deck. Mick raised a hand. Alice, after a moment, did, too. Dayna cupped her hands around her mouth to shout again. “Dinner’s almost ready! And I can’t wait to see both of you! Get your asses up here!”

  Alice gave him a look. “We’d better do what she says. You know she’ll come down and drag us up by our ears if we don’t.”

  “Can I get that for you?” Mick reached for the basket.

  He didn’t need to carry it for her, but she let him take it if only to feel the brush of his fingertips on her arm. She was still a little tipsy, though now it was hard to tell if it were still from the wine or Mick’s proximity. He took her elbow when her toe caught on a tuft of tough grass that threatened to trip her.

  “Careful,” Mick murmured, and held onto her for a few seconds longer than was necessary to help keep her from falling.

  When had she ever been careful when it came to him? There was no such thing, Alice thought, and that was what finally pushed her to put some distance between them. She had to get her head on straight. Just because they weren’t at each other’s throats didn’t mean he was anything more than a stranger to her, really, after all this time. No matter what they’d been to each other before, befor
e was not now.

  Dayna had come down the stairs from the deck to greet them, and they were all caught up in the frenzy of greeting. Hugging, kissing, squealing, and in the midst of it, Mick slipped away to take the flowers inside.

  “So,” Dayna said, linking her arm through Alice’s as they both went up the stairs, Alice pausing to snag her glass from the railing. “It’s been forever since I’ve seen you. You look great. Your hair’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s been like, six months,” Alice said. “I saw you at Jay’s just after Christmas.”

  Dayna laughed. “Feels like forever. C’mon. Bernie’s got something cooking that smells so good I want to die for it. And I think I heard Jay pulling in just before I came out to get you guys. Paul will be late. He always is.”

  “The old gang, back together,” Bernie said a few minutes later as Alice and Dayna returned to the now-crowded kitchen. He held a bottle of wine aloft. “Get pouring, everyone!”

  Things got down to business. The party had started. Glasses were filled. Hors d’oeuvres consumed.

  And through all of it, the noise and clamor and hilarity, Alice felt the weight of Mick’s gaze on her, heavy as stone and hot as lava. She didn’t allow herself more than a glance or two at him, though. More than that and she’d have been the one staring, and how hungry would her gaze have been?

  He circled her, though. Oh, sure, he talked to Paul and Dayna and Jay, to Bernie and Cookie. But he circled back to Alice, standing close enough that his shoulder brushed hers just often enough not to be coincidence. And finally, at last, she couldn’t feign any longer that she didn’t know he wanted to talk to her and only her. She closed her eyes for a moment, battling with herself. She could walk away. She should.

  “Hi,” she said, turning toward him.

  He had a beer in one hand. She a glass of wine. They stood in the same room they’d been in together many times, surrounded by the friends they’d both known forever. If she closed her eyes for a second, she might’ve been able to convince herself nothing at all had ever changed.

  Other than everything.

  There were conversations you could fall into naturally after having not seen someone for years. Job, kids, spouse? Alice didn’t ask any of those questions. Neither did Mick.

  He asked her if she’d read that book. Seen that movie. Had she tried that restaurant?

  Yes, no, yes.

  “And you,” she said, when they’d all moved to the table and she had a plate of Bernie’s amazing pasta in front of her. “Have you been watching that show about zombie housewives?”

  He had.

  She smiled at him. He smiled, too. But then, even if it might’ve seemed for a moment or two that they were the only ones in the room, the truth was they were not alone. Bernie came to the table bearing a platter of grilled vegetables, and everyone oohed and ahhed, and Dayna raised her glass in a toast.

  “To Bernie and Cookie, two people who really got it right.”

  They had. Alice watched them kiss, the light of love in their eyes undimmed even after twenty years. She wasn’t the only one moved; Dayna had spoken with tears in her eyes and Jay snuffled audibly. She was glad she’d come, Alice thought without looking at Mick. Because this wasn’t about her and Mick and the mess they’d made of things in the past. This weekend was about her friends.

  Dinner, as always at Bernie’s house, was delicious and decadent. Sitting across from Mick, Alice did her best to keep her attention on the conversations going on all around her, but it kept getting snagged by him. A word here or there. The way he shifted in his seat to reach for more salad, and she couldn’t stop herself from admiring how broad his shoulders were in the blue button-down shirt.

  She excused herself from the table. Thoroughly buzzed from a fourth glass of wine and the way Mick’s foot had nudged her ankle too many times to be an accident, Alice shook her head in silent laughter as she made her way down the long corridor to the powder room. Light from the kitchen filtered in, but the hall itself was mostly dark. She put out a hand to guide her. Her fingertips skipped along the rough textured paint and brushed the rows of framed pictures on the wall.

  Years of parties had been captured, imprisoned in cages of glass and wood. Captioned with the dates and Cookie’s wry humor—“St. Pat’s, the year we got more snow than a leprechaun has gold!” Alice was in many of these photos, her hair and clothes changing over the years more than she hoped her face had.

  He was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom. She knew the shape of him immediately, although the way the shadows fell, he might’ve been anyone. He didn’t move when she took a step toward him, but he spoke.

  “Hi,” Mick said.

  “Hi.”

  Did he reach for her, or did she take that last step to put herself up close, pressed along his body? It didn’t matter. In the time it took for her heart to beat once, twice, three times, Alice was in Mick’s arms.

  The kiss fumbled at first. Faces turned the wrong way, teeth nudging the inside of her lip hard enough to sting, their noses bumping. An elbow in his side. He stepped on her foot. She pulled away, trying to breathe without gasping, and failing. Her fingers curled in the front of his shirt, and she tried to push him away but could not. She shouldn’t be doing this. This was not the place, and this was most definitely not the man. Her fingertips stroked the back of his neck beneath the feathery edges of his hair, worn so much shorter than he had back in their days.

  It was too late to run. His mouth found hers with better skill the second time. Tongues stroked. They breathed together. It was exactly the same as it had always been, yet infinitely, vastly different.

  Alice broke the kiss again, this time to look into his eyes. She let her fingertips trace the lines of his brows, then down the bristles on his jaw and finally to stroke a tender, inquisitive touch along his lower lip. His mouth parted when she did that. His eyes grew heavy lidded. Against her belly, the press of his cock grew hot and thick.

  “What are we doing?” she whispered.

  Any second, someone else would come stumbling down the dark hallway on the way to the bathroom and bump into them. Or worse, be smart enough to turn on the light switch at the other end of the hall and shove them into eye-stabbing brightness so they’d have to spin apart and fake an innocence nobody would be likely to believe.

  “I’m kissing you.”

  He did it again. A little harder this time, urging her to sigh. His hand slipped into her hair, tangling his fingers and tugging tight while the other one slid farther down to cup her ass and pull her against him.

  Ten years was long enough to change many things. Regimes could rise and fall. Movies could become media franchises. Cities could be built. People could change.

  But this kiss didn’t feel like ten years had passed. Yes, there were differences in the way he moved and touched her, in how he used his tongue. In the way he murmured into her mouth, her name at first and then, “I didn’t forget how good you taste, oh shit, Alice, you taste so good.” But it was all still Mick as she remembered him.

  Breathing hard, Alice broke the kiss once more, this time to step back and put a hand on his chest to keep him from grabbing her immediately close. “Mick.”

  “Alice.” His voice, rough and low and full of longing.

  “What are we doing?” she asked him again.

  He straightened. He took her hands, linking their fingers, pushing their palms together. “Whatever we want.”

  Mick to Alice

  I never met a woman who made me feel the way you did. You could turn me upside down in a second with a laugh. Turn me inside out when you said my name, all sweet and soft, on the edge of a gasp or a moan. Nobody else ever made me want to punch a wall or break a glass. My dad always told me a man who shows his anger with his fists isn’t much of a man, but damn, Alice, you had this way of making me lose my mind. You’d say you were being honest, and I guess you were, but your every word could be as barbed as an arrow, as honed and sharp as a sword
, and you ran me through with them. You left me to bleed. And you didn’t seem to take any joy in it, but you sure did manage to do it over and over and over again.

  —Mick to Alice, unsent

  Chapter 4

  Mick could still taste her, even with the after-dinner coffee and chocolate mousse cake trying to replace her flavor. Kissing Alice had been like falling onto a soft bed after a week of camping on rocky ground. Like coming home.

  Too bad they’d been interrupted by Paul. Or maybe it was for the best, Mick thought, watching her across the table as she sampled another of Bernie’s desserts. The sight of her tongue licking along the tines of the fork sent an uncomfortable tingle straight to his crotch. The make out session had already left him with a semi-hard-on, and it was taking its good damn time in going away.

  He caught her eye. Alice gave him a wicked, slow grin and took another long swipe of chocolate from the fork. She knew exactly what she was doing, the same way she always had. Time hadn’t changed her very much at all, at least not in the obvious ways the years had affected most everyone else gathered around the table.

  “Okay, teams,” Cookie announced. “I put everyone’s names into this hat, and you pull out the name of your partner. And I have prizes, of course!”

  There’d always been prizes at Bernie and Cookie’s parties, to go along with the board game marathons that inevitably ending up spiraling into good-natured chaos the more alcohol was consumed and the later the hours went. Tonight, Mick was awarded a hat shaped like a hotdog for his winning round at Balderdash. Alice, wearing a pair of sunglasses with a mustache attached, stood to pose for a picture with him, taken by Bernie. Then a selfie with her phone, their heads pressed together, both of them laughing like idiots.