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  Harris and I had been together eighteen months, almost half of Gabe’s life, living together for the last six months. And if you’d asked me yesterday, I would have told you that Harris and I were one good, long conversation away from engagement and marriage and him becoming Gabe’s stepdad.

  Apparently I was missing some key details. And my heart just—flew apart. The first thing I thought was, Oh, my God, I have to tell—

  Mia.

  Like a one-two punch.

  The two of them closed in on me, surrounding me, talking, both at the same time, making these pointless, meaningless apologies, and the worst part was the way they kept meeting each other’s eyes, looking for comfort and confirmation.

  Comfort and confirmation that used to be mine.

  That’s how your life goes to shit in a minute.

  But the thing is, it works the other way, too. A minute ago, everything was shit. But now I’m in Jack’s arms, and I’m aware of the fact that his body approves heartily of mine. And I’m feeling that—despite everything cataclysmic that’s just happened—it’s okay. Because that’s how Jack makes me feel. That’s how Jack has always made me feel.

  All I want is more of him. Because Jack also makes me greedy. I want his mouth on mine and that excellent, admirable erection inside me (where I know from personal experience that it will rock my world), and despite our track record and the fact that having Jack makes me crave more Jack and that Jack is not remotely, even slightly, available for the having, I can’t resist the craving.

  There’s some part of my brain shouting desperately out of the snake pit, Don’t do it! You’re on the rebound!

  But that sane voice gets drowned out. Somehow, my hand is on the back of his head, in his hair (soft, wavy), and I’m pulling him down to me.

  His lips barely touch mine at first, and I can feel him tug back, resisting, and for a second I think he’s going to reject me. And I know this is stupid and immature, but I can’t take it right now. I selfishly need him to cancel out the awful feeling of having the two people who are supposed to love you most in the world betray you and make you feel like you don’t matter at all. Right now, I’m not thinking about any of the reasons this is a bad idea. I’m just thinking about how his body is telling me I’m okay—I’m safe. I’m sexy. I matter, in some way, even if it’s a shallow way.

  So I beg. “Please, Jack.”

  It’s like all his resistance just collapses. His mouth settles onto mine and his arms come tighter around me, and we’re kissing.

  His lips are so knowing. And he takes control, right away, setting the pace—slow, with a sweet edge of desperation. His tongue inquires at the seam of my lips and I open to him because there’s really no question. I’m open to him and I always have been. I can’t close him off, not completely—not the way I’ve wished so many times I could.

  I go from wanting to be wanted to just pure want, and he’s the same. We’re all over each other. I weave my fingers in his hair and he tugs a handful of mine. I grab his butt to pull him tighter against me and he picks me up so I can wrap my legs around his waist, and then he’s carrying me over to the couch and setting me down, laying me down, covering me, still kissing me, kissing my face, my neck, the vee of my shirt, the tops of my breasts. He tugs at my shirt and I pull it up over my head and he groans.

  “Oh, my God, Maddie.”

  You see? a different voice in my head says. He thinks you’re beautiful.

  He goes after me with hands and mouth, tugging down the lace of my bra, dipping his head to nip and flick my nipples, telling me I have the most perfect breasts ever (which cannot be true; I have nursed a baby, but whatever). Lower down, his body is moving very slowly and gently and deliberately against mine, not just rock and thrust, which would be bad enough, but with this sweet crazy friction across the seam of my jeans that will, if he keeps it up, make me come screaming his name.

  “Jack,” I whimper.

  “Mmm?”

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He’s not kidding, either. He keeps it up, just like that, that perfect rhythm, that perfect friction, until I bow my whole body from the intensity of it and bite—hard—into his shoulder. And even then, he doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t stop, just says, “Yeah, that’s it, that’s right, baby, you come for me.”

  Then I can do nothing but lie like a limp rag on his couch and watch as he strips his T-shirt off and begins to unbutton and unzip his jeans. I know that underneath those jeans is Just Jack, although there is nothing Just about Jack at all. I’d blocked that bit, maybe out of self-preservation, because when you’re sleeping with someone who’s giving you 75 percent of the max you’ve had, it doesn’t pay to dwell on what you’re missing.

  But now my full attention is on the lovely, lovely surplus that is about to be unveiled for me. Memory has flooded back: behind that fly, he’s long and straight and thick and—

  Then he freezes, and something goes cold in my chest.

  He stays like that for a moment, still as a statue. And then he shakes his head.

  “Jack,” I beg.

  His hand goes to his fly again, but I can tell something’s changed.

  “I was going to do it again,” he says. “I was going to fuck you without a condom, again.”

  He shakes his head like he’s disgusted with himself. And then he turns the look of disgust on me. “You don’t want this,” he says.

  “I—”

  But I’m not sure exactly what I am going to say. Am I going to tell him that what just happened felt more right than being with Harris ever felt?

  Or that Jack, after all these years, can still make everything okay, just by being Jack?

  Or am I about to tell him he’s right, that I kissed him, made him kiss me, because I was on the rebound and needed someone to make me feel like I mattered?

  Which is also, clearly, true.

  Down the hall, there’s a small cry, barely more than a whimper.

  Jesus. Gabe!

  In a flash, Jack’s got his jeans zipped and buttoned and is heading down the hall.

  I feel a hot burst of shame and remorse for having let this happen. With Gabe asleep down the hall, no less. It doesn’t matter that Gabe cries out like that all the time and almost never actually wakes up. I didn’t even check in on him to make sure he was sleeping. That’s how in my own head—or maybe it’s more accurate to say, how possessed by my own body—I was.

  I pull myself to sitting, and everything feels wrong and sordid. My rumpled clothes, my boots still on, my hair tangled and sweaty, the damp crotch of my panties and jeans, the slight sensation of burn from the friction of his rubbing.

  I was going to do it again, he’d said.

  I was going to fuck you without a condom again.

  It’s that little word, again, that really makes me come to my senses. Because it brings it all home. The fact that we’ve been here once before, and we both know, all too well, that it doesn’t get us anywhere. Jack is Jack, as he so abundantly proved to me five years ago. He is a sucker for tears, a comforter par excellence, a lover of whatever woman is naked and vulnerable in his den, but he is not husband material.

  He doesn’t have to be, a wicked little voice whispers. You could just let him make you feel good.

  The real problem, however, is that there is no “just” with Jack. That’s the real lesson I learned the last time I tried this. That when I have some Jack, I want all the Jack. I want him to touch me, yes, I want him to make me come like he just did—harder than anyone ever has, without even half-trying. But even more than that, I want him to be part of my life. I want him to be part of our lives.

  But that is not a thing that exists.

  At least, not for me and Gabe.

  Chapter 4

  Gabe is still snoring away. He must have been dreaming.

  I come back down the hall, and she’s sitting on the couch, and her body language screams it: we’re not going to have sex. Cloth
es neat, back straight, legs crossed, hands folded. Closed for business.

  Yeah. Probably for the best.

  Said no man, ever. I am still craving access to her body like a starving man craves food, but even a starving man can recognize an empty pantry.

  “So,” I say.

  Her eyes fill with tears again. “I—I’m sorry.”

  “What are you apologizing for?”

  “For letting things go so far and then not—”

  She gestures in the general direction of my waning semi.

  “Getting me off?” I shrug. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  Notice, I don’t apologize for taking advantage of her distress. Not that I don’t feel a little bit guilty. But only a little bit. That was her hand on the back of my head and her voice murmuring, Jack, please, and her whimpering Jack, don’t stop.

  Yeah. I was paying attention. All of me was.

  “I was upset—”

  “No, really?” I say. It comes out testier than I mean it to. I’m all for a woman’s right to say no, anytime she needs to say no, but let’s face it, there is a real, biological vise around my balls right now, and they are letting me know about it.

  “I should go,” she says quietly.

  I’m not planning to argue with her. Mainly because I’m too busy having an argument in my own head. One part of me—the part that actually knows what’s good for itself—is fucking relieved that she’s just going to walk away. Because as much as my body has designs on hers, there is no way that won’t lead to complications. And I’m not a complications guy. I’m the simplest guy you know. I go to work, I go out with the guys, I pay child support and watch my kid to avoid being an asshole, I get laid when the urge strikes. It’s worked out well for me since Gabe was born, and I was planning on sticking to that strategy for the next seventy years or so.

  The other part of me, the crazy, stupid, self-destructive part, is thinking, Just a little more. Just one night. Or two. Or a week, or a month, or as long as it takes to get this out of our systems. What can it hurt?

  She stands up, the movement sharp and decisive.

  “You can’t go back there.”

  This is not a thing I plan to say. It just pops out of my mouth. Because I’m picturing her going back to that condo she shares with Harris. The condo where she found him with his tongue on her best friend’s—

  Yeah, not so much.

  I can see the moment when she has the same realization.

  “I can’t go back there,” she repeats. And her whole upper body kind of collapses. Her face, too. I recognize that look. It’s not unlike the look that Gabe had on his face an hour earlier when he realized that all the women in his life had abandoned him with me.

  Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.

  “And I definitely can’t stay with Mia.”

  The way she’s cataloguing it, where she can’t go, it makes my chest hurt.

  “I could—go to San Diego.”

  Her mom and dad are in San Diego. They retired there right after Maddie moved into Harris’s place with Gabe. Maddie complains all the time about how far away her parents are and how infrequently Gabe gets to see them. If she went to San Diego with Gabe, it would break my mom’s and my sister’s hearts.

  “Stay here,” I burst out.

  I’m not thinking. Because if I’d been thinking, I’d know that was the worst idea ever. The kind of idea dreamed up by a still semi-hard dick frustrated in its evening activities, not by an actual brain. And yet, I’m still talking. Or one of my heads is still talking, anyway.

  “I have lots of space. Gabe has a room here.”

  And we could finish what we just started. We could let it play out, see where it goes. Get it done, get it out of our systems, put it behind us.

  You idiot! my brain is shouting back at me. If you want to get laid, there are twenty women I can think off the top of my head, no strings attached, no complications (and that’s not counting the ones you would have met tonight if you’d gone to the game with Henry and Clark). This one? She’s off limits. She’s always been off limits.

  Maddie’s shaking her head. “That’s a really bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  Have I mentioned I’m contrary? If someone fights with me, I tend to dig in. It’s one of the things that used to send my dad into a rage. Two seconds ago, I was pretty sure it was a really bad idea, too, but now that Maddie’s arguing with me—

  “It would be confusing for Gabe. Having his parents together.”

  “Not more confusing than you moving out of Harris’s condo. It would be the least disruptive thing for him. If you’re going to pull him out of Harris’s place, that’s going to mess with his head, but at least this is familiar.”

  I am officially a dick, because I am using emotional manipulation and the happiness of our child to convince a woman to stay under my roof so that I can have another shot at getting her into bed. But I don’t feel that guilty. Maybe because I think what I said is actually true. Gabe is going to be super-confused no matter what. He likes Harris (the only example of really bad taste I’ve seen from him—must be Maddie’s genes). So maybe hanging out here for a little bit would make a good consolation prize.

  Maddie is looking confused now. I can see her working through the details in her head. So I give her a little help.

  “Commute stays the same.” The pharmacy where she works is in Seattle, so actually halfway between Harris’s condo and my house. “It’ll give you time to find a place that’s the right size and not too expensive, which will save us both money.” I figure if I display some obvious self-interest, that will deflect her away from my real self-interest. “Plus, built-in child care.”

  She eyes me suspiciously. Maybe she’s more aware than I think of my less-than-superior track record at watching Gabe on my own.

  “What? I’d be here anyway. And my mom and my sister are super close. You know they’d be psyched to help.”

  “But Gabe’s preschool is near Harris’s place—”

  “So he’ll switch. You can pull him out, and either send him near me or wait till you figure out where you’re going to live and then enroll him.”

  She bites her lip, thinking about it. “I think I have to pull him anyway. It doesn’t make sense for me to live in Mukilteo if Harris and I aren’t together.”

  The thing is, I have now actually convinced myself it’s a great idea. For one thing, where the hell else is she going to go? She doesn’t have other friends she’s as close to as Mia, and even if she did, they probably wouldn’t have the space to take in both her and Gabe. But apart from that, this is actually a good solution for the two of them, for all the reasons I gave her. And I can put up with the disruption, especially if there are a few benefits thrown in—

  Her eyes narrow. It’s possible she saw my glance slide over her body when I was thinking about benefits. If I did not mention this earlier, being pregnant and nursing Gabe made Maddie’s body sexier. Rounder, more generous, softer—

  Eyes up, Jack.

  Mine meet hers, unfortunately. Caught.

  “That—what just happened—” She waves a hand to indicate the couch. “That can’t happen again.”

  I thoroughly disagree with her, but I’m not going to argue. I nod, earnestly. “Okay. That can be a ground rule.” We can revisit the ground rules as necessary, later.

  She is still eyeing me suspiciously.

  “You’re the one who jumped me,” I point out.

  She looks sheepish, and relaxes a little.

  “I’ll go make up the guest bed.”

  “Jack—”

  She’s going to say no. She’s going to say what a bad idea it is—for her, for me, for Gabe, for all of us.

  Her eyes are soft, still red from crying earlier, and very green in the lamplight.

  “Thank you.”

  She follows me down the hall and we make up the guest bed together, not talking much, me swearing occasionally under my breath as one does over
the fact that it’s the twenty-first century and no one’s managed to come up with anything better than a fucking fitted sheet.

  “Can I borrow something to sleep in?” she asks. “I guess I’ll have to go back there tomorrow to get some of my stuff at least.” Her face crumples at that.

  “I can go with you. Run interference.”

  “You’d do that?”

  She doesn’t have anyone else to do it. I don’t point that out to her, though. I just say, “Yeah.”

  I give her one of my T-shirts and a pair of sweat shorts with a tie waist. She says she’ll use Gabe’s toothbrush tonight.

  I say, “Um, good night.”

  She says, “Yeah. Good night.”

  I brush my teeth and slide between my own sheets.

  She’s wearing my clothes. They’re touching her bare skin.

  I lie there, my balls still achy, thinking, So much for not-a-complications-guy.

  Chapter 5

  I can’t sleep.

  It’s just too much. The images burned into my mind, of the expression of abandon on Mia’s face and the guilt on Harris’s, and the way they looked to each other for support. How I figured it out, in jerky frames like a bad filmstrip: Mia’s face. Mia’s skirt. Harris. Under the skirt. His head under the skirt, with his face—cheating. My boyfriend’s cheating. On. Me. With. My. Best. Friend.

  The woman formerly known as my best friend, that is.

  In the dark room, in the quiet house, my thoughts are thick and heavy and my mind won’t let any of them go so I can drift off.

  When I left the condo, I knew I had to get away. And I knew I needed to go somewhere—somewhere safe—but all I could think of was that Mia and Harris had taken that away from me. They’d taken home away from me. They’d taken trust away from me.

  Except—Jack had done that, years before. So Mia and Harris were only reminding me that trusting someone to take care of your feelings was a really, really bad idea.

  Yet, insanely, when I was sitting in my Prius, gripping the wheel like it would keep me from breaking into pieces, tears running down my face, the only place I could think to go—the only place that still felt safe—was Jack’s.