Page 127 of Unmanageable

I catch her mouth with mine, smothering the rest of the sound as the slow pace breaks into something heavy and hard. I give one last, deep thrust, my entire lower body locking as I come inside her.

She breaks a second later, her body shuddering in long, violent waves against mine, her forehead slamming into the hollow of my neck as she whimpers, her breath hot and wet against my collarbone.

I pull back and adjust my clothes. Scottie stays on the counter, her legs dangling over the edge, her hair a massive, knotted nest around her shoulders. Her jeans remain crumpled on the floor beneath the island.

She looks down at the pool of oil, then at the half-chopped tomatoes, and lets out a soft, tired laugh that sounds like a sigh.

“We ruined the dinner.”

“The dinner was too complicated for us anyway,” I say, reaching over to grab a dish towel from the handle of the oven. I gently drag the cloth across her bare stomach, wiping away the streak of oil before I help her slide down off the marble.

Her knees give out the second her feet hit the floor, and I have to catch her by the elbows to keep her upright.

“My legs don’t work,” she says, leaning her forehead against my chest.

I wiggle my eyebrows. “That’s because Gary Potts is a professional.”

***

Twenty minutes later, freshly showered and wearing my clothes, Scottie is sitting on the massive white sofa. She is curled against my side, her feet tucked beneath my thigh, her eyes fixed on some old black-and-white movie playing on the massive television screen against the wall.

“So,” I say, resting my arm along the back of the sofa and tugging a strand of her damp hair. “Where do they live?”

“Who?”

“Gary and Bernadette. Obviously.”

She hums. “Well. Bernadette definitely wants a townhouse in Boston. Somewhere with brick walls and a heater that doesn’t click every five minutes. She wants a little coffee shop on the corner that has those almond croissants she likes. The ones that taste like pure butter and sugar.”

“Sounds expensive,” I rumble, my thumb tracing the slope of her shoulder. “Gary doesn’t do townhouses. Gary lives in a vintage van down by the harbor. Free parking. No landlord.”

“Gary is a caveman,” she counters, looking up at me, her eyes bright with that familiar, mocking glint. “Bernadette refuses to live in a vehicle that smells permanently of old hockey gear and stale gas station coffee. She has standards, Cash.”

“Gary has standards too,” I say, nudging her shoulder with mine. “He has a very specific organizational system for his paper bags. And he likes the van. It comes with a very hot companion.”

Scottie’s smile softens, turning into something a little quieter, a little more tired. She reaches down, her fingers tangling into mine where my hand rests on her knee.

“Bernadette would compromise on a shared apartment. If there was a yard. Or at least a big window.”

“Does Gary get to keep his tools in the living room?”

“Absolutely not,” she laughs. “He gets a corner in the hallway. And he has to take a shower that stays hot for more than four minutes before he’s allowed on the furniture.”

“Sounds terrible,” I murmur, pulling her closer until her head rests under my chin. “He’d hate it.”

“He’d love it,” she whispers. “He’d get to see his companion every day.”

Both of us know the lines we aren’t supposed to cross.

We both know that by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, she is my representation and I am her client. The contract dictates the boundary, and Boston is where the boundary lives.

But right now, in the quiet of this room in Denver, the future feels like something we can actually touch.

I look at her face in the pale blue light of the window, her red hair spread out across my chest.

I love her.

The words are right there, right at the back of my teeth, solid enough to choke on.