Before
BEFORE
We have sex three more times.
It’s different than I imagined. I expected tenderness. Long, searching looks and Michael whispering into my ear. I expected slow, sliding lovemaking that intensifies over hours.
But when he and I collide, it’s primal. Raw. All his contrasts—the fierce gentleness, the soft hands and hard kisses—disappear, giving way to some driving force neither of us can fight. We crash together, burn each other up, then come apart and do it all over again.
The building doesn’t quite shake to pieces, but almost, and Michael makes good on his promise. He fucks me like I’ve never been fucked before, until my neck can no longer hold up my head and I transform into a satisfied puddle on the mattress.
In the middle of the night, we finally pause long enough for me to ask, “What happened today?”
Michael lies with his head propped against the black leather headboard, his face luminous in the city light. One hand splays against his chest while the white top sheet tangles around his waist. He’s silent for so long that I roll onto my side and prop my cheek on one hand, though that simple act saps the last of my reserves.
“Michael?”
He seems to weigh something. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s me.”
“What happened today? When you disappeared?”
His jaw works as he grapples with some private decision.
Seconds tick by, and my stomach tightens. Whatever it is, I’m clearly not going to like it. I’m busy gearing up for something truly horrific when he says, “I got arrested.”
I pause. “You... what ?”
“Yeah. I spent the day in jail. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Confusion drags my lips downward. “But...arrested? For what?”
“Sheer stupidity, mostly.” He sighs. “I was on the sidewalk this morning when some guy started yelling at this woman for taking his parking space. I mean, genuinely screaming at her. Got out of his car and everything. She was terrified, so I cut in, and before I knew it, he and I were swinging at each other. Someone called the cops, but the other guy insisted I’d started it, so we both got hauled off to jail. Then, when I got out, I didn’t get my things back like I was supposed to. They kept my phone, my keys, my jacket, everything. I had to walk all the way here in the rain.”
I gather enough energy to sit up. Michael’s gaze flickers to my bare breasts, but I haul the sheet up, intent on clearing the air before we inevitably succumb to round five.
“Your necklace.” I point to his bare chest. I should’ve noticed before, but I was...distracted. “It’s gone.”
He misses a beat, then glances down. “Oh. Yeah. They took it when they processed me. And I was so desperate to get home that I didn’t argue when they didn’t give it back.”
For some reason, that infuriates me more than my own mental anguish. I loved the way that twisted-silver chain accentuated the angles of his chest. “That’s bullshit. You should go down there first thing in the morning and—”
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’d rather just replace everything than tempt fate.”
I blow out a breath. “Okay. Well, I guess you have a point.”
He gives me a wan smile. And then I remember.
“What was your big secret, then?”
His smile falters. “My secret?”
“Yeah. The thing you wanted to tell me before we had sex.”
Another silence unfurls as he searches my face.
My heart lurches. Maybe he hasn’t been entirely up front with me, but he’s never looked... cagey like this. Never purposely lied. But I have the unsettling sense that he wants to right now. That he’s actively considering it.
I poke his muscled side. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
He breaks from my gaze to look out the windows. “Yeah. It’s just...humiliating. Like most secrets.”
“Humiliating? Come on. You’re talking to the same girl who said you could go broke, gain a hundred pounds, and lose your home, and she’d love you just the same.”
He refocuses on me with intensity, as if seeing me anew. “That’s quite a statement.”
“It is,” I murmur, holding his eyes. “And I meant it. I still do.”
He chews on his hesitation a moment longer. Finally, he clears his throat. “Okay then, here goes. I’m an alcoholic. There. Now you know.”
“Wait, what? No, you’re not.” The wheels in my mind grind. To be fair, Michael does like his Scotch and his wine. But I’ve only seen him tipsy enough to find everything hilarious, not to regret anything the next day. “You never have more than a couple drinks.”
He makes a throaty sound. “When I say ‘alcoholic,’ I don’t necessarily mean I drink too much. I mean I want to. I crave it. All the time.”
“Oh. Okay.” I pretend to understand, though in reality, I feel adrift. The sex we just had transformed me, but now this whole conversation feels off-kilter, as if something has knocked him for a loop. Something more than just a day spent in jail.
But I want to support him. And I’m burning with my own big decision. Maybe that will wield enough power to get us back on track. “We’ll pour all our alcohol down the drain, then. I won’t drink anymore, either, if that’ll help. Booze isn’t nearly as important to me as you are. Nothing is. Not even Greece.”
He stills, as if already knowing what I’ll say next.
“I finally decided, while you were gone.” I swallow. “I’m not going. I’d rather stay with you. For today. And the today after that. And the today after that, too.”
The darkness obscures his expression. “But...”
When he doesn’t continue, I breathe, “What?”
“I thought this was it,” he says. “I know you missed your flight today, but I figured we’d get you to the airport tomorrow.”
A shiver rips through me. I roll atop him in a straddle, taking his face in my hands. “Is that what you want?” My shadow looms across him, hiding his face.
“I...”
I hold my breath for what feels like an eternity. The same helpless finality that paralyzed me earlier, when his phone wouldn’t connect, comes rushing back.
“I should ,” he says.
“You shouldn’t.” My voice hitches. “I mean, I get that you think us being together will stop me from living. But it won’t. Because this, right here, with you—it’s the most alive I’ve ever been. There might’ve been a hole in me when we met, but you’ve filled it. And now that I know about this alcohol thing, I can do the same for you. Compared to that, Greece means nothing. I’d rather be here. With you. For you.”
His fingers come up to knead my bare thighs. I fold forward onto his chest, seeking the reassurance of his heartbeat.
“You’d do that?” he murmurs. “Just...change your plans? After I told you I have an addiction?”
“Of course.” In an attempt to cross the unfamiliar distance, I invoke the same words he used at the observatory. “I’m desperately in love with you, after all. Addiction or no.”
His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. God , please say something .
When he doesn’t, I rush to fill the quiet. “You’ve taken better care of me this past month than anyone else ever has. I want to stay, not just as your girlfriend, but as an accountability partner.”
“Like an angel sitting on my shoulder?” he muses.
“Yes. Exactly. An angel.” My fingertips graze his side through the sheet. “Who also happens to love having mind-blowing sex with you.”
He’s thinking. I can almost hear the tick of calculation echoing in his rib cage.
“Well, when you put it like that,” he finally says, “it would probably be stupid of me to say no.”
Tension bleeds out of me. I squeeze him tight. “Incredibly.”
His arms snake around me, subduing my doubts. I know he wants me here; I felt it that night on the couch. He might have forced himself to say otherwise, but the intensity of his longing nearly overpowered me then.
Now guilt must plague him, hence his reserve. But maybe framing it this way will make it easier for him. I’m not staying because he’s asked me to. It’s because I love him, because we need each other. Because what we have far outweighs some harebrained jaunt across the sea.
“That’s incredibly generous of you,” he says.
I tilt my head up. The planes of his face gleam in the sodium light, although the illumination doesn’t brighten his eyes the way it usually does.
“I try.” I press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. My desire for more sex has fled. I just want to put this bizarre day behind us, wake up tomorrow, and go back to normal. I want Michael to turn those open-ocean eyes on me again, the ones so clear and deep I can see all the way to the bottom.
I want the shadows in his face to go away and never return.
He seems to sense as much, because he eases me off and pillows my head on his chest. His fingers run along the curve of my shoulder in the silent dark. As his touch grows sluggish, I catch hold of a nagging whisper in the back of my mind.
“Don’t you get a phone call?”
He jerks, his chest muscles jumping beneath my cheek, telling me he was almost asleep. “What?”
“Don’t they let you make a phone call, from jail? Why didn’t you call me?”
His fingers tighten around my shoulder. “I didn’t know your number by heart. The only one I could remember was...my brother’s.”
“Oh. So... Oh. ” Lightning flashes inside my head. Michael talked to his brother. The one who still blames him for Lily’s death.
God, no wonder he’s acting so strangely—all this remoteness is his reaction to Grayson, not me. “Did he have to come bail you out?”
He stiffens. “Yeah.”
“You saw him, then? In person?”
“Yeah.”
All at once, I forgive him everything. I sling one arm around his taut waist and tuck myself close. Once Michael recovers from the shock of seeing the sibling who despises him, everything will be fine. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.”
“It was. But then I came home, and you were waiting, and...I think maybe this is exactly what I need. That you staying will make the difference for me.”
The vulnerability underpinning those words breathes new life into me. “It will,” I whisper. “And for me, too.”
Just before I drift off, he says, “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this in so long. I figured I never would.”
I’m too far gone to ask what he means.
In the morning, Michael outsleeps me for the very first time—evidence of just how much yesterday cost him.
It feels strange, waking up beside him. I didn’t even realize how much I’d come to relish the steaming coffee on the nightstand until it wasn’t there.
But Michael deserves a reset, so I survey his peaceful face and the arm flung up beside his head—does he always sleep like that?—then decide to tend to him the way he so unfailingly tends to me.
I sneak into the kitchen and load the French press. While the coffee brews, I rifle through the cupboards in search of alcohol to pour out. Nothing. A quick peek into the recycling bin reveals three already-empty bottles.
I give them a poke. Huh. Michael must have dumped them yesterday, before he went out.
With a shrug, I locate his latest book and carry it to the bedroom along with his mug. It’s Wednesday, and while he took a vacation day yesterday, he’s scheduled to go back to work this morning. Still, he can probably squeeze in his fifty pages before leaving.
When I set his dual sustenance on the nightstand, he cracks open an eye. I pause, searching for...I don’t know, exactly. Whatever went missing yesterday.
He smiles. Not with his usual wattage, but close. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“If it isn’t my live-in guardian angel,” he says. “Come here.”
The moment we touch, a spark flares and burns its way down to my center. Within minutes, we’re locked together, sweating, writhing, colliding. Sounds emerge from my mouth I’ve never made before. The rest of the world falls away.
There’s Michael, and there’s me, and then, with him buried in me, there isn’t even that anymore, just us together, a single entity that blazes with such ferocity that all else ceases to exist.
Afterward, Michael sits up and rolls his shoulders, his golden hair all askew. He looks sated, like a man made new by the act of losing himself. “I think I’ll work from home today.”
“Really? I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Not usually. But they won’t mind if it’s just this once.” He reaches for his coffee, then grimaces on the first sip. He tries to mask the reaction, but I’m too focused on him to miss it.
“What?” I say from my tangled nest of sheets. “Don’t you like it with sugar?”
“Not this much. But it’s okay, I’ll make another one. And can I use your phone? I’ll replace mine this afternoon, but I need to let work know I won’t be in.”
I unlock my cell and hand it over before he totes my too-sweet offering to the kitchen. I overhear a brief conversation explaining he’ll be available by email today. He putters around for a bit, then he’s back, tossing my phone onto the mattress and sipping from a fresh mug.
He’s stark naked, but I don’t look down. I search his face, soaking in every flicker of those dark gold eyelashes.
My stomach sinks. Yesterday’s distance is diminished, but still there. Some part of him has pulled back just enough to brush with outstretched fingertips, but not fold within my grasp.
Jesus , I think, catching myself. How unforgivably selfish to dwell on myself when this must be a thousand times harder for him. A woman once died because of him, and his relationship with his brother has fallen apart because of it. Now the reminder has left fresh, shadowed footprints all over him. Not to mention that this constitutes his first day of sobriety.
The least I can do is help him deal.
I gesture to his book. “Do you want to do your reading now?”
He glances at the nightstand, unmoved. “No. I’d much rather spend the day in bed. With you.”
“Really?” That coaxes a smile from me. “Breaking the military routine? I didn’t think I’d ever see the day.”
He takes a long draft of coffee. “I happen to have a very good reason. And she’s lying in my bed, looking incredibly sultry right now.”
That revives my spirits, and I lift the sheet in invitation. He abandons his mug and crawls in, and at the moment of joining, I breathe a sigh, because by then, no space exists between us at all.
In the afternoon, someone knocks on our door.
We’re on the couch, naked, having never actually made it into clothes at all, when Michael jerks up from kissing my belly button.
The knock comes again. “Who’s that?” I say.
“I don’t know.” His eyebrows snap low over his eyes. “I’ll go check. You stay here.”
I frown. I can’t imagine who would show up unannounced on a Wednesday afternoon, but I obediently hunker into the couch, hiding my nudity from whoever’s in the hallway.
Michael grabs a throw pillow to shield himself with and goes to the door.
“Hey, Mr. Drake.” I recognize the baritone boom of our downstairs doorman, the one who looks like a UFC champion but apparently obsesses over chess in his spare time. “Oh. Um...sorry. Should I...come back?”
“Hey, Juan.” Michael sounds relieved. “No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”
“Sorry to disturb you, but...” Feet shuffle. “Your brother’s in the lobby. I knew you were already up here, so I stopped him from getting into the elevator, but he’s getting loud down there. Says he won’t leave until he sees you. The manager wants to call the police, but I figured you should have the chance to deal with it first, if you want to.”
A curse slips past Michael’s lips. “Yeah. Give me a minute to get dressed, will you?”
Juan rumbles an affirmative. Michael closes the door and tosses the pillow aside. He strides to the bedroom, his bare soles slapping against the concrete.
I get up and follow.
By the dresser, he stabs one leg into a pair of jeans, then the other. With his tousled hair and swollen lips, he’s clearly spent the day in the throes of passion, but he doesn’t bother to hide it. “God, the last thing I need is for him to make a scene.”
“What does he want?”
Michael drags a hand through his tangled hair and sighs. “It’s... He sort of...asked me for a favor, yesterday.”
I frown. “Favor? What favor?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s not something I can do.”
Something to do with Lily, I suspect, based on his evasiveness. “Would it help if I went down with you? For moral support?”
He shoots me a startled look while buttoning his jeans. “No. I don’t want you getting dragged into my family drama.”
“It’s not dragging if I’m volunteering.”
He shakes his head, then pulls on a T-shirt and angles past me. “No. Stay here. I’ll only be a minute.”
His parting words come so close to matching yesterday’s that my heartbeat thickens, but I assure myself he won’t disappear this time. While I wait, I don jeans and a vibrant yellow-and-purple top, then take up a post at the kitchen island.
Twenty minutes later, the condo door opens again.
I cry out. “Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?”
Michael stalks in. One eye is swollen shut, his bottom lip split and bleeding. Red splatter-marks stain his white T-shirt. He prowls past me, clearly on some kind of mission.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s aiming for the tornado picture.
He lifts the photograph off the wall, his movements so measured that I can only compare to that day outside Patrick’s house. Then, he was angry. Gloriously so. Now, he’s something worse. Eerily, perilously calm, so much so that I shiver.
“What’re you doing?”
“Taking this down,” he says, his voice perfectly even. “And throwing it away.”
I press a hand to my chest. Something inside fractures at seeing him toss out the photograph I’ve spent the past month bonding with. “But why ?”
Michael swings to look at me. A savage fire burns behind his eyes, as if his calm is just a facade. “Because Grayson took this, and he just punched me in the face. Repeatedly. At which point I told him I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want to see this picture, either. It was idiotic of me to put it up in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I stare open-mouthed as the door clicks shut behind him. I swear I can feel the photograph careening down the trash chute at the end of the hall.
When Michael returns, he comes close. Air saws in and out of him, like he ran up to the nineteenth floor instead of taking the elevator. Except he stands so terribly, horribly still.
I lay a hand against his bloodied shirtfront, reassuring myself that he’s in one piece, at least. “Let’s get you cleaned up. In the shower?”
My offer takes the edge off the blaze in his eyes. Or eye, singular. One’s swollen to a slit. “Fine.”
I lead him to the bathroom. In the glass-walled shower, I sit him on the tiled bench and gingerly wipe away blood with a washcloth. He gazes up as the hot water works its way into him.
“What happened down there?” I say.
He snorts. “He hit me.”
“Right, but why?”
His mouth twists. “You know, I actually thought he and I were making progress. But in the end, it’s always the same story. Everything’s always all about him. What I need is never actually going to matter to him.”
I frown. “So he still hates you? Wishes you were dead?”
His uninjured eye narrows. “Is that what you think?”
“Well, yeah. That’s what you told me. Last month, on the drive up from Seagrove. Remember?”
He doesn’t answer, just studies me while I dab at his wounds. Not in that open, soul-deep way, but like he’s searching for something specific.
My voice drops. “I just don’t get it. Why would he punch you after bailing you out of jail? Is he still mad about what you did to Lily?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Despite the billowing steam, all the color drains from Michael’s cheeks. He stares, stricken, as if I’ve just slapped him across the face.
My insides quiver. “Oh, god, that didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean to make it sound like you killed her.”
I wince. I should just slap myself across the face, at this point. “You know what? That didn’t come out right, either. I’m just going to shut up now.”
Michael doesn’t move. The thundering water wreathes us in fog, and I stand there, sickened by the sense that I’ve just broken him.
It certainly looks like I have. In the seawater depths of his eyes, a jagged crevasse yawns, an empty hurt so much greater than anything I suspected he had inside of him.
Which begs the question of how he could possibly have been so openhearted with me all this time. Because now, peering down, I understand that some part of him is shattered. Smashed to bits.
Has Grayson inflicted all that damage since yesterday? Or did I simply miss it?
“Fuck your brother,” I say, incapable of thinking of anything else.
A shutter descends, whisking Michael’s pain from view. The reaction unsettles me, but he finally unfreezes. With infinite care, he sets the washcloth aside, then clasps my hands. Water tries to slip between our fingers, but I hang on.
“Promise me something.” He sounds hoarser than usual, as if he’s screamed himself raw, except he hasn’t once raised his voice.
“Anything,” I whisper, aghast at myself.
“Don’t mention Grayson ever again. Or...her.” Raw pain flashes across his features before he stows it away again. “Please. I just want to forget them both.”
I nod, mute.
Michael stands up, then spins me around and pins my hands to the glass. He nips at the back of my neck, suckles on my earlobe, runs his fingers down my sides and up around the curves of my breasts.
This time, he’s gentle enough that each touch feels like forgiveness. I welcome the absolution. Eventually, he nudges my legs apart, then clutches me close and eases into me, bringing our bodies flush. Every tender slide of flesh smooths the serrated silence, reshaping it into a blissful, coiling roar that heats me from the inside.
My eyes flutter shut. There’s him. Wet, slippery heat. Nothing else matters.
His arms tighten around me as we both go over the edge.
Afterward, he dresses and leaves to buy a new phone. He makes me promise not to open the door, and while he doesn’t say why, I know exactly who he’s trying to protect me from.
In his absence, I grow restless, plagued by the sense that something fundamental has changed and that a man I’ve never met is responsible.
Eventually, I can stand the silence no longer. I take the elevator down to the basement, where I stand by the dumpster and glare at the wreckage of the tornado picture. It lies on a mountain of refuse, its glass shattered, its frame splintered, and yet the thing still makes a valiant attempt to hypnotize me.
Fuck you, Grayson Drake , I mentally shout. You had no right .
I repeat the words until fury replaces temptation, until the tornado and the field turn my stomach.
Back upstairs, Michael returns in the early evening. He goes straight to the bedroom and changes into a pair of slacks and a dark blue button-down. “I want to take you to dinner,” he says. “Something nice.”
I pause. We rarely, if ever, go out. “You don’t want to order in?”
“No. This has been a day from hell. All I want to do now is eat lobster by candlelight with a beautiful woman. My woman.”
I squint at him. “Even though you have a black eye?”
“Mostly because I have a black eye,” he says, matter-of-fact.
My fingers twine as I hover in the doorway. I have nothing against fancy dinners, but spending an evening separated by a gulf of linen and silverware strikes me as an unlikely way to bridge this distance. I’d rather find our way back to the evenings spent entangled on the couch with delivered Italian, when nothing could penetrate our blissful bubble. When nothing mattered but today .
Michael must catch my hesitation, because his expression softens. He comes and cups my face. “Look, I know everything’s strange, but it won’t feel this way forever. You’re staying. I won’t drink anymore. From now on, we’re going to eat expensive food and have lots of sex and just...take care of each other, okay?”
I gaze up. Those eyes hold mine, yet despite his assurances, they’re more opaque than fathomless right now. “Things will go back to the way they were?” I prompt.
“Yes. Soon.”
“Okay,” I breathe. “Soon.”
He kisses me, with enough heat that my misgivings melt away.
I change into a clingy dress that earns a look of approval. Downstairs, in the parking garage, the Audi sits in its usual spot. Michael tells me he picked it up from an impound lot today after getting a new key made at the dealership.
On the way to the restaurant, he drives with a firm ten-and-two grip. I try for a joke, though I already suspect my efforts to lighten the mood will prove futile. “Since when do you drive like an old lady?”
“Old lady?” He gives me a skeptical look. “What do you mean?”
“You look like you’re worried you’ll lose control at any second.”
Instead of cracking a smile, he actually ponders. “Maybe it’s time I took driving more seriously. It’s not like there’s no risk involved. And now I have something to protect.”
Something to protect . The sentiment should soothe me, but I can’t help wondering how long it will take for Michael’s humor to return. His open, easy confidence.
Soon , I tell myself, settling back in the seat. He said soon, and he hasn’t broken a promise to me yet.
Someday soon, everything will go back to the way it was.