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  Mick, breathing hard, a little wild-eyed, ran a hand through his hair and whirled on her. “Then what the hell is going on with you?”

  “You. You’re what’s going on with me.” The words popped out of her before she could stop them, but once they were out, she didn’t even want to take them back.

  Mick visibly deflated. “. . . What? What are you talking about?”

  “This isn’t working, Mick.”

  There. She’d said it. Out loud, to him, no taking it back. Just as she’d hopped on a train months ago at Bernie’s house, now Alice was once more taking a ride. Only this time it was no slow-moving locomotive but the bullet train, no stops. Only one destination.

  End of the line.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Alice swallowed hard and shook her head. “Some things just don’t work. Us. This. Second chances. Things don’t change—”

  “Everything’s changed.” He threw out his hands, then curled them into helpless fists. “I answer your calls and your texts. I’m there for you when you need me, I would never leave you sitting the way I did that other time. And I never blamed you for hating me over that, Alice, believe me, I know what an asshole I was, but even murder has a statute of limitations. How much more do I have to prove to you that things are different?”

  “But they’re not,” Alice said, voice hard. “Not really.”

  “How can you say that? I’ve done everything for you. Everything.” To her horror, his breath hitched. Mick sank into a kitchen chair and put his head in his hands for a second before giving her a look of naked confusion. “What more do you need from me?”

  She blinked at him, not sure if she should be furious or desperate or numb. “What do you mean, everything?”

  “I try to take care of you,” Mick said in a low voice. “The best way I can. Obviously, it’s not enough for you, and if that’s the case, I don’t know what more I can do.”

  She thought of coffee made the way she liked it. Of the closet door he’d fixed. Faucet he’d repaired. Tires, rotated. Alice forced away a sob, thinking of the myriad ways Mick had taken care of her. Of all the things he’d done . . . but all the things he’d never said.

  Before she could say anything, Mick stood. “I showed up at your door and told you that I love you and I want to be with you, that I’d do anything to prove it—”

  Finally, at this, she lost it. “Love me? You showed up at my door, all right, but you didn’t say you loved me. You said you wanted me. ‘I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman, Alice.’ That’s what you said. And whenever I asked you about us, you said . . . you said it was fun. Over and over again, just fun.” Her breath hitched and choked. “So you’re going to blame me for thinking that meant you just wanted to fuck me?”

  “I love you!” Mick’s shout echoed through the kitchen. He took a step toward her, eyes blazing, fists clenched. “I might only have said I wanted you, but I meant I love you!”

  “On some level, right?” Alice sneered. Furious. Broken yet again by his words. She put the glass carefully in the sink even though she wanted very much to shatter it on the floor at his feet. To cut him the way he’d cut her.

  “No, Alice. Not on some level. I love you.” Mick shook his head and stepped closer to take her by the upper arms.

  No longer shouting. No longer furious. Mick looked broken, too, and though she did not want to soften toward him, she did.

  “Then you should have told me that in the first place, instead of assuming I knew.” Her voice cracked, thick with tears.

  Mick winced. “I thought I did. I mean, I thought everything I did was enough so that you’d know.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. I don’t read minds.” Still angry, but now also aching, Alice shrugged out of his grasp. The sink behind her was too close for her to back up a step, so she went still, instead.

  “I’m sorry.” He didn’t touch her, but the way he moved told her that he wanted to.

  Alice looked him in the eyes. “You never said it. You never even wrote it. You said you wanted me, and I figured that would be enough. I figured it would be whatever it was. Just fun, the way you told me before. And I hoped . , , I mean, I wished, I wanted, but I couldn’t let myself believe it, Mick. I didn’t want to end up where I was ten years ago, curled up in a ball on the floor of my shower and sobbing my eyes out every night for the sake of wanting you. It was agony then, and it would be even more so, now.”

  “I never want to hurt you,” Mick told her. “Ever. I’m so sorry, Alice.”

  Hesitantly, he pulled her close until her cheek rested on his chest. Beneath her cheek, his heart thumped in the swift but steady rhythm that had become so agonizingly familiar to her all over again. And though she didn’t want to, Alice gave in to the comfort of Mick’s touch. His warmth. The slow stroke of his hand down her back. And finally, his kiss.

  “I love you,” Mick said against her mouth. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it before. I’m sorry I made you think it wasn’t real, or it was only fun, or whatever it was. I’m an asshole. Forgive me.”

  She pushed away to look him in the eyes. “I love you, too.”

  “Forgive me,” he asked again.

  Did she have a choice? This man had been in her heart for a decade. He’d drained her dry, but he’d filled her up, too. She could live without him, if she had to, but there was no doubt in Alice’s mind that without her Mick, her life was an infinitely darker place.

  “Kiss me,” she told him. “And take me upstairs. And love me, Mick.”

  “I do,” he told her. “I might not always say it in the way you want me to, Alice, but I promise you, I’ll always mean it.”

  And that was enough, she thought as the press of his lips on hers took her breath away once more, the way it always did. Always would. Finally, this love was enough.

  Playlist

  I could write without music, but I’m so glad I don’t have to. Below is a partial playlist of the songs I listened to while writing Perfectly Reckless. Please support the artists by purchasing their music.

  * * *

  What Am I To You? — Norah Jones

  If You Want Me — One Less Reason

  From Can to Can’t — Corey Taylor, Dave Grohl, Rick Nielsen & Scott Reeder

  Last Love Song — ZZ Ward

  Bet U Wish U Had Me Back — Halestorm

  Pardon Me — Staind

  Mercy — Brett Young

  Without Me — Halsey

  Watch — Billie Eilish

  Hurt the One You Love

  excerpt

  She had no idea how stuff like that party worked, Simone would be the first to admit. Political wheelings and dealings. Currying favor. But one thing she did know was how to talk to people like they were important when they weren't, and like they were no big deal when they were. It had been her experience that a lot of people who were used to being ass-kissed kind of liked it when someone didn't treat them like they were made of spun sugar, ready to melt if you blew on them.

  "How come you hate parties?" she said in the cab Elliott had flagged for them. He'd said nothing to her in the past ten minutes while they waited for the ride.

  "Who says I hate parties?"

  "Barry."

  Elliott looked at her, finally. "Barry talks too much. I don't hate parties. I mostly just get bored, that's all. Everyone trying to impress everyone else. Like your friend from Louisiana."

  "I just met the guy tonight. He's hardly a friend."

  "He invited you to his party next time he's in town," Elliott said darkly.

  She let her hand rest on his knee, squeezing gently. "He invited both of us. Don't worry. I'll go with you. Even if you are sort of an intolerable date."

  Beneath her hand, the muscles went tight, bunching. He didn't take her hand and throw it off him, but there was no doubt from the look on his face that he was considering it. She took it away. She didn't need to chase.

  They said nothing else after that. When they pul
led up in front of her building, she squeezed his knee again. "Walk me upstairs."

  Elliott sighed, but didn't protest. Simone couldn't stop herself from smiling, not that she let him see her, as she led him to the elevator. She was giving him a hard time about being a pain in the ass, which was true. He totally was. But she'd been on worse dates, with bigger assholes than Elliott Anderson, and the fact was that his terse attitude intrigued her more than it made her mad. Oh, yeah, he'd been a little brusque tonight. Impolite, though immediately recognizing it when she'd pointed it out. Acknowledging it, if not contritely at least sincerely. She was having a helluva time figuring him out.

  She liked that.

  Maybe that made her kind of sick, but that wasn't anything she didn't already know about herself. She'd always been drawn to arrogant men, the ones who thought they knew best. Those were the ones who could give her what she craved. The problem with men like that was they were also the ones who felt like they had the right to tell her what to do.

  Elliott was different. She'd known that for a while, watching him bring the parade of blondes into his office. Fucking them on his desk, sometimes without so much as a kiss beforehand. The way his hands always found their way into their hair, pulling. The roughness with which he handled them. But she'd watched him do other things in that office, too, things that had told her a lot more about his personality even than the way he fucked.

  She'd seen him clean his desk phone with an antiseptic wipe and eat Chinese food from a container with chopsticks he pulled from a wooden case out of his desk drawer. She'd watched him bent over his computer, scowling, and she'd watched him with his cell phone pressed to his ear, face alight with laughter. She'd seen him working and playing. It was kind of creepy, actually, how much she knew about him from watching him after hours. What would happen if he knew everything she knew about him, she thought as she pushed the fourth-floor button and watched him lean against the interior elevator railing across from her.

  "I'm at the end of the hall."

  "Of course you are," Elliott said in a half-weary voice, though he followed her. "I guess you expect me to make sure you get inside okay, too."

  "Yes." Simone bit back another smile.

  "Do you want me to go inside with you?" He asked as she fit her key into the lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. "Make sure there's no serial killer lurking behind the shower curtain, that sort of thing?"

  He might be a pain in the ass, but that dry sense of humor was the cherry on top of the panty-dampening cake. Simone turned to face him as he came through the doorway behind her. She tossed her keys into the small bowl on the table by the door.

  "I don't have a shower curtain. But tell you what," she said, "since you came all this way, you could kiss me good night."

  He'd been looking around her apartment when she said that, blatantly assessing everything from her couch to the art on her walls, and at this, his head swung slowly toward her. "Kiss. You?"

  "It might surprise you to realize this," Simone said, annoyed and amused and also a little aroused, "but I don't usually have to even ask."

  "No. I don't suppose you do."

  The way he said it gave her a little shiver from the base of her neck all the way down her spine, where it lodged. Simone didn't move closer to him. He didn't move closer to her.

  For a long few seconds she thought he wasn't actually going to kiss her, and she would have to make the first move, because there was no way in hell she was going to let him out of here without at least tasting his mouth, just once. But then she didn't have to worry, because Elliott reached for her, his fingers brushing her sleeve, then closing on her wrist.

  It still ached a little from his earlier grip. More a memory of the small pain he'd inflicted than any real discomfort, but her heart skipped a beat anyway. Her nipples tightened. The shiver that had traveled down her spine now spread outward, turning electric, sending heat through her belly and between her legs.

  "Come here," Elliott said.

  It was never the commands that got her hot, but the promise of what might happen should she disobey. Frankly, Simone could take or leave being bossed around. Mostly leave it. But the threat of discipline, of punishment, of pain . . . that set her on fire. She let him pull her closer, step by step, as though she were hesitant when they both knew she was anything but.

  In the last moment, Elliott snapped her against him in a swift movement that made her stumble, but his grip on her wrist kept her from falling. She put both hands flat on his chest. In these heels she still wasn't quite tall enough to look him in the eye, but she didn't have to crane her neck to get her mouth close to his. Elliott's free hand slipped behind her neck to cup the base of her skull, and everything inside her went liquid. Melting. She gave him her mouth, but he didn't take it.

  His fingers tightened in her hair. She'd worn her hair short forever, finding it more flattering and easier to take care of, but one thing she missed about having long hair was having it pulled. Somehow, Elliott had found the perfect way to tug it, short or not. The brief pain in her scalp went right between her legs. Electric.

  Her lips parted. She murmured his name. He pulled her closer, his other hand leaving her wrist to cup her ass and grind her against him.

  Finally, his lips brushed hers. Soft, soft, barely a kiss at all. More like the shadow of a kiss. A murmur. At least until she opened her mouth, giving him her tongue.

  At the touch of it, Elliott groaned. His grip tightened in her hair and on her ass. Pinching. He ground his mouth on her. His cock rose between them, the heat and solid length of it on her belly sending another series of shivers through her.

  A moan slipped out of her. Another when his fingers dug deep into her flesh and his tongue stroked hers. At the nip of his teeth on the corner of her mouth, Simone cried out.

  Elliott moved back from her, blinking. If he'd let her go, she surely would've fallen, but he still held her tight enough to keep her steady. At least for a few seconds, and then his grip loosened.

  "That was lovely," Simone said, a little dazed. "Do it again."

  * * *

  Perfectly Reckless

  Excerpt

  “It shouldn’t matter when I fell in love with you. Or how. All that matters is that I did.” Even as Maura spoke, she knew her words wouldn’t matter. She could see it in the cut of Ian’s gaze from hers, the way he covered his mouth with his palm, the fingers curving over his cheek toward his ear. She knew nothing she said would make a difference, but she said it all anyway. “I am crazy in love with you, Ian. I didn’t look for it, but there it is. And I don’t regret it. Not a single second.”

  Maura paused, leaning forward across the table, smiling and hoping to urge him to return it. “Well. This part’s not so great. But all the rest…”

  He didn’t smile, but he did look at her. At least he gave her that. “Maybe you shouldn’t set yourself up to get disappointed.”

  Maura flinched, helpless against that blunt sting. Frowning, she warmed her hands on the mug of coffee that Ian had pushed toward her earlier. Sweet and black, exactly how she liked it. Because he knew just how much sugar she wanted, Maura thought. Because he knew everything about her.

  There were plenty of words to give him, but if Ian knew her so well, Maura also understood him inside and out. He wasn’t going to listen to her, no matter how pretty she made the words, how compelling her argument. She let her silence speak for her instead, and it stretched on and on until finally, Ian met her gaze.

  “I can’t seem to give you what you want,” Ian said.

  At that typical male bullshit excuse, that final slice that severed the already fragile thread of her patience with him, Maura stood. “Have you ever even asked me what I want?”

  He had no answer for that.

  She watched him struggle to find one for a few seconds before she leaned toward him again, both hands flat on the table. “No. Of course you haven’t. You just assume you know. It’s not that you can’t give me what
I want, Ian. It’s that you don’t want to give me anything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “No. You’re not. You’re scared. There’s a difference.”

  That made him angry. “You’re the one who always told me it wasn’t going to last. This is not an exit, remember that?”

  She remembered, all right. “I was wrong. I was scared, too.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  “I’m terrified,” she told him in a low voice. “But at least I’m willing to try. Can’t you even give me that, Ian? Can’t you even try?”

  She’d always been able to read his expressions, but now whatever went on behind his eyes was masked with a blankness no less impenetrable because she knew he was forcing it. Ian turned his mug in his hands, around and around and around. This was not the man who’d once made her come in the backseat of his car without ever taking off her clothes. This was someone else. A stranger, and though her heart cracked, it didn’t quite break.

  “I think we shouldn’t see each other again,” he said.

  No. That was not what she’d come here for today. Not the reason she’d lined her eyes and mouth and scented her skin and curled her hair. She’d known the conversation was going to be uncomfortable and probably fraught with emotion. She hadn’t been certain of the outcome, not exactly, but not seeing him again could not be it. Never that.

  “How can you say that?” She asked him. “After everything, that’s your answer?”

  He looked at her. “You need time, Maura.”

  “Time. I took my time. It’s been months, Ian. I waited until everything was official before I called you. I did that so there wouldn’t be any reason to hold us back.” She shook her head, trying to keep her voice from shaking.