Love In Translation

Seven

F letch pushed Rheo’s hair off her forehead, unable to wrench his eyes off her. Rheo was why his blood was hot, why his heart flip-flopped around his chest. Blue eyes and thick hair, mystery and marvel, secrets and shadows. And right now, she was the air he needed to breathe, the thump of his heart, the sigh of his soul.

Fletch touched her delicate jawline with his fingers, marveling at her scented smooth skin. He rested a thumb in the middle of her bottom lip, waiting to taste her because when he did, he’d devour her.

Lust, shocking and bright, powered through him, and he swayed, momentarily dizzy. He didn’t want to start because one kiss would bring him closer to an end.

He didn’t want this to end.

Yes, he wanted her, and he’d thought about this moment more often than was healthy. He wanted her when she made him smile—she had an extensive vocabulary of curses in six languages, and he was pretty sure he heard a Russian phrase the other day when she was arguing with her computer. When she sat on the step leading up to the kitchen door every morning, soaking in the sun as she slowly sipped an enormous mug of coffee.

She didn’t need to fill every moment with inane conversation, and at night, he loved stepping into the bathroom after her, savoring the steamy scents he only caught hints of during the day.

Fletch shook his head, irritated by his flight of fancy. He was a practical guy. As Rheo said, this was about sex. One night, some mutual pleasure. It had nothing to do with magic or moonbeams or fantasies.

He didn’t believe in forever.

But he still didn’t want to start...

Rheo pressed her lips against his, cool and smooth. She looped her arms around his neck, and her fantastic breasts, high and round, pushed into his pecs. Her scent, full of floral notes, filled his nose, and her hair fell over his hands as they rested on her back. He wouldn’t, couldn’t let go.

Relinquishing his self-control would be like riding a rocket, surfing a storm wave. Wildfire scary.

“Fletch.”

It was just his name, murmured against his mouth, but it was also a key to a lock. Nobody before had said his name the way she did, coated with need and a hint of What was happening here?

“C’est dingue!”

There it was; the foreign phrase he’d been expecting. French? He had no idea what it meant, but it sounded sexy, and since her hands were streaking up his back, he presumed it was something complimentary.

Gripping the back of her head with his hand, he put his lips to hers, needing to explore the shape of her mouth, the contours of her lips. His hand skimmed up the back of her thigh, sliding under the denim to skim the curve of the butt he eyed any chance he got. He pressed the pad of his thumb to the middle of her bottom lip—the lip that got a little pouty when she didn’t get her way—and when her mouth opened to release a pleasure-filled gasp, he slipped inside, his tongue curling around hers. Pleasure rose and fell, built and built, as he changed angles...

She tasted of spice and sweetness, of sin and sex. And with every swipe of his tongue, he hardened, his cock straining against his zipper. He ached to have her. But not in a race-to-have-an-orgasm way; he wanted to see her skin flush with pleasure, to watch her blue eyes cloud with lust. He wanted to know whether they’d lighten or deepen when she came.

Kissing Rheo was like riding a fast-moving river, negotiating one thrilling rapid after another. A swoop of his stomach, a kick of his heart, a fall, lost in the white water of her kiss, finding air. Wild, wet, thrilling.

Rheo’s hands, elegant and clever, skated over his rib cage and tugged his shirt to find his bare skin. Her nails scraped his flat nipple, causing it to pebble. Rheo ripped his button-down shirt apart, and buttons flew, the material fraying. He didn’t give a shit. He liked that she was as desperate for him as he was for her. Dropping his hands from her body, he allowed her to push the shirt off his shoulders, and didn’t care when it fell to the floor in a tangled heap.

Fletch kissed his way down her throat, across her collarbone, and pulled her vest and bra strap down her tanned arm. He sucked the top of her breast, rubbed his chin over the lacy cup of her bra, grazing it with his teeth. When she whimpered, he sucked her nipple, fabric and all, into his mouth. Rheo shuddered, and his name was both a curse and a prayer on her lips.

“Miss your mouth,” Rheo muttered.

Fletch took her lips and fed her long, slow kisses. Kisses with no beginning and no end. Rheo’s hands skimmed across his body, eager to discover the next bit of skin, the next bump in his spine. She pushed her palm down the back of his pants held up by a thin leather belt, growling when she couldn’t cup his ass.

Fletch lifted his head to smile at her. “If you want my clothes off, honey, just ask,” he teased.

Rheo astounded him by reaching for the button on his jeans. “I’m more of a take-what-I-want type of girl.”

There was a hint of bravado in her voice, some hesitancy in her eyes. Maybe she was projecting confidence she wasn’t feeling.

“If that’s okay with you?”

“Very.”

His zipper came apart and her hot hand held him in a tight grip. Pleasure shot into his balls, up his spine.

She moved her hand, rolling it up and down, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Oh, hell yeah, so fucking okay.” He was impressed he managed those few words.

Rheo’s thumb brushed the tip of his cock and delicious shudders skittered over his skin.

“I think we need to get a little more naked,” she murmured.

Fletch watched as she stripped for him. Her movements were economical, efficient, but still fucking sexy. The moisture in his mouth disappeared as he took in her curves and her amazing skin. He hooked his thumbs under the thin cord of her sunshine yellow panties and pulled them down her thighs. Now deliciously naked, he pulled her to stand between his thighs, his hand sliding from collarbone to knee. So soft, so silky. Placing his mouth on her sternum, he inhaled her. His head swam.

She was heaven—soft, feminine, exquisite.

But she could also be hell if he wasn’t careful.

Fletch hooked his hands around the back of Rheo’s thighs and moved his mouth to her pussy. When he licked once, she gave a muted scream, and he did it again, twisting his tongue around her clit. He looked up as Rheo rocked her hips, demanding more. He licked and sucked, pushed his tongue and his fingers up her slick, wet channel.

Years ago, a lover told him she thought oral sex was more intimate than normal sex, that it required more trust. He never understood her reasoning, but he thought she might be onto something. Rheo was completely submissive to him, to his lips, fingers, and tongue.

She writhed and rocked, her soft panting music to his ears. He worked his finger and his mouth in and over her folds, sucked her clit, and relished her incoherent moaning. Inside her, he tapped his fingers against her inner wall, sucked her hard, and felt her come, waves of pleasure hitting his fingers, his tongue, and his lips.

Fletch pulled away from her, enjoying her side-swiped expression and shaking body. He’d done that. He’d made her come. Hard. His arm around the back of her legs held her upright and her body flushed pink with pleasure.

When their eyes collided, he clocked her What the hell just happened? expression and gently laid her on the bed. He leaned over her and waved his hand in front of her face.

“Rheo? Are you okay?” he gently asked, sliding his thumb over her bottom lip. His cock was so hard, he was desperate to be inside her, but he needed to check where she was at. “Rheo, talk to me.”

Her unfocused eyes met his. “That was so good. So, so, amazingly good. Do it again.”

He grinned. “Glad you enjoyed it. And in a minute.”

She waved at his cock. “I didn’t do much...sorry.”

“You didn’t need to. I loved every second of making you come.”

Rheo tapped his hip with the tips of her fingers. “Okay then. Thanks. Going to take a nap, then a shower.”

For just a moment, he thought she was serious. But then he noticed the quick lift of her lips, the naughty glint in her eyes before she closed them. Right, two could play that game.

He lowered his head, smiled against her mouth, and dragged his finger through her wet folds, flicking her clit. She lifted her hips, groaned, and sighed.

When her eyes opened, when they met his, she wasn’t teasing anymore. “More.”

“More?” he repeated, lifting an eyebrow, his finger on the inside of her thigh.

“I need you to fuck me, Fletch.”

“I need to fuck you more.”

He moved so the head of his cock probed her folds and her heat.

Wrapping his hand around his dick, he stroked the tip over her clit, and her eyes widened. She was close, silently begging to come again.

Fletch fumbled for a condom in his bedside drawer, and with Rheo between his knees, pulled the latex from its cover. Rheo’s hand, soft and silky, joined his and he gritted his teeth to keep from exploding in her hot palm.

With the condom on, Fletch slid his hands under her butt, scooted back, and swiped his tongue against her clit. She shuddered, so he did it again. Then, in a swift movement, he replaced his mouth with his cock. He fed her a hot open-mouth kiss—nothing felt better than being inside Rheo.

Warmth. Wet, hot woman.

He held still, wanting to enjoy the moment, but Rheo jerked up, slamming his balls against her. He gritted his teeth—he was so damn close, and then she milked him, her channel gripping him tight, her body trembling under his. Unable to hold back, he slammed into her, then again, and as his balls contracted, as he exploded, she came again, a warm, wet flood against his tip.

Then, because this was Rheo, he came, just a little, again.

Fletch buried his face in her neck, and somewhere, in the minuscule part of his brain still functioning, he quietly admitted sex so profound, so earth-shatteringly good had to have its roots in something deeper than attraction.

The thought scared the shit out of him.

Convinced Fletch was asleep, Rheo slipped out of his bed and walked over to the L-shaped window seat in the corner of the room built to take advantage of the magnificent view. Pulling on one of Fletch’s T-shirts—the neck fell halfway down her left shoulder and the hem hit her knees—she sat on the window seat and leaned back.

A full moon turned the garden ghostly in its silver light—and turned the trees the deep green of Fletch’s eyes when he was turned on or laughing. Slinky gray skimmed the forest, the surface of the lake, and the slopes of the mountain. It was sometime after midnight, and she was physically exhausted. Rolling around in bed with Fletch had expended more of her energy than she’d expected, but her mind was in a spin cycle. Sleep was a long way off.

She’d had sex with Fletch...fantastic, hot, sexy sex. And, somehow, strangely, deeper than she’d expected it to be.

She’d thought they’d connect on a purely physical basis, Tab A would slip in Slot B, but the past few hours had proven it to be more complicated than that. Fletcher was a tender but fierce lover, someone who refused to allow her to skate along on the surface. He’d demanded her full involvement in their pleasure, mental and physical, and he’d claimed, and received, every bit of her focus.

She’d never experienced such intense sex before. No man had turned her inside out the way Fletcher did. She covered her face, blushing at the thought of him between her legs, knowing every inch of the most private parts of her. He’d run his fingers down her butt, flirted with her butthole, skated through her grooves and channels. Good at his job as he was, there wasn’t a part of her left unexplored.

She felt sexually wrung out, but relaxed. Both on a high and chilled to the max.

Her disparate feelings, the intensity of what happened between them, how at ease he made her feel about her body—they all added layers of complication she didn’t want or need.

She’d loved it, loved being with him, loved every minute of how he made her feel. For the first time, she felt as if the combined power of all her female ancestors flowed through her veins. She’d made him grunt, moan, and shout with satisfaction. With her hands and lips, teeth and tongue, she’d brought him to his sexual knees, and she hadn’t believed that was possible.

With Fletch, she felt more like a woman than ever before.

More her. More Rheo.

You haven’t had sex for a while. You’ve never had exceptional sex, and you’re overreacting, making more of it than you should.

Overreacting and second-guessing herself were her superpowers.

Rheo gently banged her head against the wall behind her and scowled at the silver-gray moon.

She was terrified that sleeping with Fletch was the last entry on her list named Bad Ideas. They were the definition of opposites attracting. All they could ever be was a fire that burned hot and quick and died out as fast.

She’d told herself he was trouble, but she’d opted to stay at the Pink House even after she learned Fletcher was renting it. She should’ve taken his arrival as a sign to confess her secrets to her family. But instead of biting the bullet, she’d stuck around, hoping for a miracle.

Miracles don’t spontaneously happen, dummkopf !

Anyway, she didn’t deserve a miracle—all her problems were self-inflicted. Unused to navigating big bumps in her normally smooth life, from the day of the hot-mic incident, she’d overreacted and made things worse. Instead of throwing up her hands and admitting she’d screwed up, she’d indulged in mental self-flagellation and punished herself by making more mistakes, each worse than the last.

And she couldn’t forget the part pride played. In her family, she was the one who didn’t make mistakes, or at least not big ones. She was the stable, serious individual who could be relied on to make the correct decision at the correct time in the correct way. Because her life was normally smooth sailing, and she’d looked down on her parents and cousin for their fly-by-night lifestyle. As a result, karma was now snacking on her ass.

Moonbeams hit her legs and feet and, despite having just shared the most intimate act two people could, loneliness swamped her. Paddy was her sounding board, her source of clear and concise advice, but because she’d shut Paddy out of her life, she couldn’t cry on her shoulder.

And, God, what was she going to do about her job? Her online translating sessions were going a little better—bad was now meh —but she wasn’t up to the standard the UN required. If she couldn’t do her job, what would she do? How would she live, keep her apartment and her lifestyle?

And, a bigger question, who would she be?

She’d spent most of her life designing adult Rheo, and she couldn’t redraw the map now. How would she explain to Paddy that she’d fucked up on a cosmic scale? Paddy wasn’t easily impressed, and Rheo craved her approval. She’d had so little encouragement and understanding from her parents as a child that she valued Paddy’s validation, hard as it was to earn. She probably put too much emphasis on it, but needing Paddy’s approval was part of her DNA.

She couldn’t keep focusing on the past. Rheo needed to turn her attention to the future. How could she improve her skills and, more importantly, get her confidence back? She hadn’t lost her ability to communicate; she was simply terrified to get anything wrong. Unfortunately, confidence wasn’t a switch you could flip, a tap easily opened.

She used to be good at her job, but her battered self-worth made her agonize over word choices, and she put too much emphasis on getting it right.

Something hard nudged her shoulder. She looked up to see Fletch, dressed only in low-riding sweatpants, holding wineglasses. He’d tapped her shoulder with a bottle of red wine. She hadn’t heard him leaving the bed or the room.

“Do you want a glass?” he asked, sitting opposite her.

Rheo nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she told him as he poured red wine into a huge goblet.

“Your thoughts are unbelievably loud, Rheo.” Fletcher passed her a glass. After tipping wine into his glass, he placed the bottle on the floor. He leaned back against the opposite wall, bending his long legs. He gestured to the moonlight-soaked vista beyond the window.

“That’s one hell of a view,” he quietly stated. “I forgot it was a full moon. If I’d remembered, I would’ve gone for a hike. There’s nothing quite like walking in a forest in the moonlight.”

She darted a glance at him. “I never pegged you for a romantic, Wright.”

“I’m not, and I always prefer to do any night walks alone. They’re good for thinking. You should try it sometime. You might find some answers out there.”

Not even a burning desire to sort her life out would convince her to go into the woods at night. Even in the moonlight.

“Or you can talk to me,” Fletch suggested. “Because, God knows, you need to talk to someone. You remind me of a corked bottle about to blow.”

“Charming,” Rheo muttered, but she couldn’t argue the point.

Rheo took a few sips of her wine and rested the foot of the glass on her thigh. She might as well tell him some of it. She couldn’t go into all the details—too embarrassing—but she could tell him enough for him to get a general idea.

“I messed up at work, then I messed up again. And again. It... I spiraled out of control. I was offered—no, it was strongly suggested I take a sabbatical. I sublet my Brooklyn apartment and came here, where nobody would look for me.”

Fletch didn’t speak for a long time. “So, why doesn’t anyone in your family know you are here?”

He was asking her to wade into deeper waters. “Because I’m not the type who messes up at work, who has meltdowns. I’m the sensible Whitlock, the stable Whitlock, the one who doesn’t find herself in hard-to-navigate situations.”

“As your cousin does,” Fletch murmured.

“I’ve never been detained by border police, deported from countries, been kidnapped in Colombia, nor have I spent time in a Thai jail.”

Fletch’s smile was full of affection. “Carrie never managed to get a handle on her paperwork. I don’t know why not, because she’s not a dumb girl,” he explained. “She was deported from one country for not having the correct work permits, and she was briefly detained by a couple of kids in Bogotá pretending to be a bigger deal than they were. She spent the day with them teaching them how to play poker. Her stint in a Bangkok jail was a case of mistaken identity. She plays up her bad-girl antics on social media because they get more clicks and a bigger reaction, Rheo.”

Oh. “Then why didn’t she tell me the truth?”

“Did you ask her what happened? And would you believe her if she told you the truth? Carrie once told me you like believing the worst about her, and she didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Oh God, there was enough truth in his words for them to sting.

She did like believing that Carrie was a screwup and that she, in having a stable job and a career, was the better of the two cousins. She had her shit together; Carrie didn’t.

God! She was so arrogant and patronizing!

Rheo stared at her feet, knowing she couldn’t examine her feelings toward her cousin right now. She had no wish to take herself apart and examine her ugly interior, because God knew what else she would find. More things she didn’t like about herself?

Luckily, Fletch changed the subject. “What do you think your biggest problem is, Rheo? Right now?”

That wasn’t a hard question to answer. “Work. My career.”

“Okay. Why?”

“After a couple of stressful weeks, I was translating for a very important trade deal when I lost my words,” she explained.

He swung his legs off the seat and rested his forearms on his knees, his glass of wine dangling from his fingers. “You lost your train of thought?”

She wished. “No. I lost my words. I stood there and I couldn’t speak, not in Spanish or Italian or French or German.”

“Ah... shit .”

“I asked to be excused and they sent in another translator. My boss referred me to a psychologist, who diagnosed severe burnout and work-related stress. They recommended a four-to six-month break.”

“So where are your words?” he asked, his eyes on her face, looking into her. “Have they come back?”

Rheo rocked her hand from side to side. “Sort of. I mean, I can speak the languages again, but I’m not understanding as quickly as I need to. I’m second-guessing myself, and I have no confidence in what I’m doing. I’m not nearly ready to go back to work, and if that doesn’t change soon, I won’t have a job at all.”

Fletch had furrows in his hair from her fingers, and his bare chest glinted with silver moonbeams. “What’s stopping you from getting back to the level you were at?” he softly demanded.

“I’m scared I’ll make a fool of myself. I’m scared to fail. I’m scared I won’t be as good as I was.”

“That’s a lot of scared, Rheo,” Fletch said. He poured more wine into their glasses before sitting with his back to the view. “Fear can be a great motivator, but you have to keep control of it. A little can go a long way, and too much can be destructive.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Rheo said.

His smile seemed strained. “I do. Fear is the one thing I can talk about with great authority. I’ve lived with it and danced with it. We’re old acquaintances.”

Rheo moved from her seat to sit cross-legged next to him, her knee resting on his thigh. “Will you tell me, Fletch?”

Maybe if she looked at the emotion through his eyes, she would see it differently, learn how to work with it or cage it.

She placed her hand on his thigh and bit her bottom lip. “It’s fine if you don’t want to talk. You don’t have to, obviously. I just thought it might help me make sense of my situation.”

Fletch took a huge swallow of wine and bent to place his glass on the floor next to his feet. “Since you have little interest in outdoor activities and less, I presume, in explorers, I need to ask whether you heard about the earthquake and avalanche in Nepal in 2015?”

She didn’t live under a rock, she told him. “An avalanche annihilated the base camp at Everest, right?”

“Parts of it,” Fletch agreed. “I was in base camp at the time, preparing to summit Everest.”

Holy shit. Rheo stared at him, her eyes wide. She recalled the news footage of the flattened tents, the ice-covered faces of the survivors, and the shock and desperation in their eyes. Given half a chance, her parents and Carrie could’ve been there—all three had expressed a burning desire to hike into base camp, soak up the atmosphere, and walk a little of the path that took climbers to the top of the world.

“I’m not going to describe the noise, loud and terrifying, or the screams. I briefly thought my life was over, and I’d die at the bottom of the mountain I’d come to conquer. We caught the outer edges of the avalanche, and one of the tents belonging to my team was obliterated.”

She needed to ask. “Did you lose anyone?”

He shook his head. “No, but some of my team were injured. A broken leg, a concussion, cuts, and stitches. When the worst of it was over, those of us who could walk and function helped out. We wrapped up the dead, carried the living to medical tents, and coordinated food and shelter. There was a lot to do.”

“I can imagine,” Rheo murmured. Such a lie. She couldn’t begin to.

“We were stuck there for some time, and when there was nothing more we could do, we hiked out. It took us a couple of weeks to walk back to Kathmandu, and we passed through decimated villages. Kathmandu was unrecognizable. There’s something about a natural disaster that shakes you to your core.”

Rheo rested her forehead against the muscled ball of his shoulder.

“On the plane flying out, I didn’t think I could go back. And I didn’t, until last year.”

“Why did you go back?”

He took some time to answer. “I made a few promises to myself as a teenager. One of them was to climb Everest, preferably without supplemental oxygen. After the avalanche, I couldn’t face going back, but I knew I would betray my younger self if I didn’t.”

Rheo watched his face in the dim light, as the moon had disappeared behind the one cloud in the sky. His expression was remote, and she knew talking about his Nepalese experience wasn’t easy. And God, she loved him for doing it, for trying to explain his experiences with fear so she could deal with hers.

“We raised more money—it costs a fucking fortune to climb the peak—and we went back last year. My Nepalese Sherpa kept asking me if I was in the right frame of mind and whether this was something I wanted to do. He was a wise old guy and knew I wasn’t fully committed mentally.”

“Were you scared?” Rheo asked.

“No. I was fucking terrified ,” Fletch admitted, his eyes clashing with hers. “I didn’t want to be there. I was on constant high alert for any rumblings suggesting an avalanche was coming down the peak. I was a basket case. In hindsight, I think I was suffering from a little PTSD.”

“I would be surprised if you weren’t,” Rheo commented.

“I hid it well,” Fletch continued. “Only my Sherpa knew anything was wrong. One day, on the Khumbu Icefall, I fell apart. The icefall is, believe it or not, one of the most hellish and dangerous places on the mountain. Many people have lost their lives there. You have to cross these incredibly deep crevasses, and while you are clipped into a fixed rope, it’s not for the fainthearted. I started to cross a ladder, got halfway across, and froze. I simply couldn’t move.” He smiled softly. “I suppose it would be similar to what happened to you when your words disappeared.”

“Yeah, much the same,” Rheo responded, before fiercely adding, “except my life wasn’t in danger!”

His smile broadened just a fraction. “I was roped up. But on that ladder, I had to decide whether my Everest dream started or ended there, whether I’d let fear win and go home. So I started talking to it, treating it like it was someone on the trip with me. I told Fear he could hang around, but he had to shut the fuck up. He was only allowed to talk when he had something important to say. He wasn’t allowed to keep muttering in my ear, pointing out every perceivable danger. He was there with my permission, and I was tired of his shit.”

Rheo cocked her head, listening carefully.

“Sounds weird, right?” Fletch asked her.

She shook her head. “Did it work?” she asked. Stupid question; she knew he’d stood at the top of the world.

“Yeah. I reached the summit four weeks later.”

“It took you four weeks to walk up one mountain?” she asked, horrified. “God, why would anyone want to do that?”

He laughed. “No, we go up the mountain to higher camps, then come down again, partly to stock the camps, mostly to acclimatize. We spent weeks on the mountain before I made the final push,” Fletch explained.

“And Fear, did he shut up?”

“Mostly,” Fletch replied, his tone low. “He’d start at three in the morning when the wind howled and the mountain creaked. He grumbled a lot, but I never allowed his voice to become loud enough to drown out my desire, my need, to conquer that fucking peak.”

He hadn’t loved it. He’d climbed Everest because he had to, because he’d regret it if he didn’t.

“Would you go back?” she asked, but suspected she already knew the answer.

“To Base Camp?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I will. Not for a long time anyway. There are other mountains to climb, other peaks to be scaled.”

Rheo placed her cheek against his shoulder and sighed. “My losing-my-words-trouble seems so small compared to yours,” she said, linking her fingers in his.

Fletch turned and placed his hand on the side of her face, lifting her chin so their eyes met and held. “You can’t compare fears or pain or lives, Rheo. Just because I had a panic attack on Everest and you had one in a meeting room of the UN building doesn’t make mine better than yours. They both affected us in different ways. One wasn’t more impactful than the other. If anything, I think yours had more impact. It forced you into a different life and you ended up here.”

“Because I ran away,” she muttered.

“Or maybe you retreated to gather your strength and regroup.”

Fletch was being kind, nicer than she expected him to be.

Rheo did feel her battle with fear was more of a gentle hike than a scramble up a dangerous-as-hell mountain. But if he could face his fears on an icefall in some far-off country, why couldn’t she face hers here, in the Pink House? If he could make his fingers move and his legs work to cross crevasses on rickety ladders, why couldn’t she find a little confidence to believe in herself and what she did?

She wanted to, she did, she just didn’t know how. But she had to. Somehow.

Fletch kissed her temple before dropping his head to kiss her mouth. “Come back to bed, sweetheart. Let me love the worry out of your mind.”

“Can you replace it with a solid dose of courage, and a backbone while you’re at it?” Rheo asked as she followed him back to bed.

He smiled, his thumb tracing the outline of her lower lip then placing a hand on her chest, just above her heart. “It’s in there somewhere, Rheo. You’ve misplaced it, not lost it.”

As Fletch pulled his T-shirt off her body and stepped out of his sweatpants, she desperately hoped he was right.