I crave him in the quietest ways and the loudest ones, in flashes of memory that refuse to stay.His mouth at my ear.His hands braced on either side of me, caging me in without touching, letting the anticipation do all the damage.
Our nights together help, but keeping my hands to myself during daylight hours has been its own kind of discipline.We’re like two teenagers sneaking around behind Meri’s back, and I’d find it funnier if it weren’t also the most alive I’ve felt in years.
Just yesterday, he came home to find me alone in the house, and the moment the front door clicked shut behind him, his hand snagged my wrist, tugging me, my name rough and low in his mouth.My back met the wall, and his body was there immediately, heat and want pressing in with a patience that didn’t last long.
His mouth found mine, both of us starving, both of us finally done pretending otherwise.I kissed him back with everything I’d been sitting on all day, my fingers curling into the belt loop of his jeans and dragging him closer, closer, until there was nowhere left to go.His thigh slid between mine, my breath fractured, my pulse scattered everywhere at once.
We didn’t talk.There was no time for it and no interest in it either.Just mouths and hands and the sound I made when he dragged his lips down my jaw, when his forehead dropped to mine like he was trying to memorize me with his whole body.
Then a car door slammed outside, cleaving through the moment like a gunshot, and we sprang apart with ragged breath and too much reality rushing in all at once.
A low, protesting groan—the kind a floorboard makes when someone’s walking— smashes clean through the memory.I pause, coffee cup halfway to my mouth, and then another sound follows, sharper, heavier.
Someone is in this house.
I set the mug down and leave the laptop where it is, moving for the stairs.Halfway up, my pulse trips and doubles because those sounds are coming from my room.
At the landing, my bedroom door stands wide open, unlike how it was when I left this morning.I reach for the candlestick on the small hallway table and step into the doorway.
The room has been turned inside out.My toiletries are scattered across the bed like toppled Jenga pieces, moisturizer abandoned by the pillow, powders cracked open on the floor, brushes tangled in a blanket.Clothes spill from the dresser in uneven piles, some of them mine, some of them not.
A backpack gapes on the floor like a mouth that hasn’t eaten enough, and Erica crouches near the nightstand, rifling through a canvas tote I recognize from the grocery store.Receipts flutter, and a paperback hits the floor with a flat, heavy slap.
The smell hits next, stale smoke, sweat, something chemical that makes my throat burn.She stands, hair limp, skin stretched too tight over her cheekbones.Her eyes snap to me, feral and furious, not because she’s been caught, but because she’s run out of time.
“Fuck.”She shoves a drawer closed.
I stay by the door, pulse climbing.
“No cash, and who doesn’t have drugs?”She huffs out a disappointed laugh.“Figures.You’re rich, so where’s all your money, Miss California?”
My heart hammers painfully in my chest, though I force a bored expression.She’s done her homework.“What do you need?”
Her gaze flicks to the door, then back, pupils blown, but there’s a sharpness there too.Calculation riding shotgun with panic.
“Who says I need anything.”She leans back against the dresser and crosses her arms over her chest.“You journalists, always so sure you’ve got the story.”
My hands curl at my sides, nails pressing into my palms.“Then tell me the story.”
She halts, like I’ve knocked her clean off whatever script she walked in here with.Her movements are jerky and uncontained, her whole body vibrating at a frequency just slightly too high.
I take a cautious step closer, palms open, careful not to corner her.“How can I help?”
Her mouth twists with irritation, hot and quick, and then, just as abruptly, something shifts in her expression.“If you’re writing about Maddox, you should interview me.”
I nod, not about to argue the point.She’s already in the piece—a line or two, the way anyone from his youth might be—but this story was never about her, and I would never write about her that way.
Exploit her circumstances, her unraveling, for the sake of a more compelling narrative.Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Maddox and Meri and this entire town would never forgive me for it.More importantly, I wouldn’t forgive myself.
She tilts her head and studies me the way someone does when prey has become more interesting than expected.“What’s in it for me?”
“Pardon?”
She scoffs, shifting her weight.“Why should I talk to you?You just want to hear how amazing Mad is, and I’m sure you already know plenty.”Her gaze drops the length of me, then lifts again, cruel and deliberate.“You two are fucking.I can smell him on you.”
The words land exactly as she intends.My body reacts before my face does, spine straightening, breath pulled in and locked down.I tamp down any emotion because, if she’s hunting for confirmation, she isn’t going to get it from me.
“You’d talk to me because you want to.”