Prologue

I never planned on becoming the woman who sat around waiting for a text from some guy whose last name I didn’t even know. But there I was anyway, standing in my kitchen at one thirty in the morning, lights mostly off, on my third glass of red wine after his first text, which had landed at nine. Four hours and thirty minutes. That was the level of pathetic I had reached. If Brianna ever found out the full scale of my embarrassment over this man she would drag me straight to therapy.

My phone buzzed and his name lit up the screen. Cass: Coming up. Two words. That was all it took to let him back into my apartment after seventeen days of radio silence. I should have ignored it and gone back to bed. Client files were stacked all over my desk and those files needed dealing with in the morning. I should have pretended I still had a shred of self respect left after a full year of this bootycall dance. Instead I ran my hands over the silk robe I kept telling myself I hadn’t put on for him.

A few minutes later the apartment door opened and he walked in with that confidence that sometimes looked more like a permanent stain. Plain black T shirt, faded black jeans, Timberland boots (brown ones this time). He smiled and that single dimple on his left cheek showed up the second his eyes met mine. God. That dimple turned me stupid every single time.

We met at Phoenix Nights during a girls night built entirely on tequila shots and terrible decisions. I was alone at the bar watching my completely wasted best friends Brianna and Monica on the dance floor. Brianna suddenly stopped moving, rushed over, and whispered that some guy in the VIP booth had been staring at me since we walked in. I looked over. And sure enough there he was watching me. Ten very hot men in that booth. Not one of them talking. Just watching the whole club. Yeah I counted.

It was supposed to be one night of ridiculous hot sex. Somehow it turned into a year of him showing up whenever he felt like it. Sometimes he texted first. Other times he didn’t. Like he expected me to have zero plans beyond waiting around for him. The texts annoyed me more than anything. Always short. Always cold.

“You’re late,” I said as I walked over.

“Traffic.”

“At one thirty?”

He said nothing. I stopped right in front of him close enough to catch the coffee and clean soap smell he always carried. That was when I noticed how tired his eyes looked. None of the usual fire he brought with him. He reached out and brushed some hair from my face. Warm rough fingers. My stomach twisted in ways that made zero sense. Seriously? After all this time?

“Sophia,” he said. Voice low like the word itself meant something.

Hearing my name in his mouth was dangerous. I slid my hands up his jacket anyway, felt the solid warmth underneath, and kissed him before I could talk myself out of it. He took over fast. One hand at the back of my neck, the other pulling me closer. The kind of kiss that made my knees forget how to work.

We barely made it upstairs. The door was still half open when he had me against it, mouth on my neck, hands sliding under the robe like he had been thinking about this the entire time he was gone. I laughed a little, out of breath. “Missed this, huh?”

“Something like that.”

Seventeen days of questions vanished the second his hands were on me. Two minutes of that and none of it mattered anymore. The questions could wait. My pride could definitely wait. Right then it was only heat and skin and the low sounds he made when I tugged him toward the bed.

Afterward I lay with my cheek against his chest listening to his heartbeat slow down. His arm was heavy across me. Fingers tracing lazy little patterns on my shoulder. City lights slipped through the blinds in uneven stripes across the ceiling. Probably dust on the TV stand. I hadn’t cleaned in days. One of my socks still sat on the floor by the couch from Tuesday.

“What are you thinking?” he muttered.

“What’s your name?” My voice came out scratchy.

He huffed something that might have been a laugh and kissed the top of my head. It felt too soft for whatever this arrangement was. That was the thing with Cass. Every once in a while he would do something small like that and I would start wondering. Then he would disappear again and I would remember the rules we had never actually agreed on. No questions. No expectations. I let the name question drop.

I traced one of the scars along his ribs. He tensed a little but didn’t pull away. “Still not telling me where you got this one?”

“No.”

Short. Final. Same as always.

I nodded against his chest. Pushing felt like the fastest way to make him vanish for good. And as much as I hated admitting it, I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. We lay there a while. His breathing got deeper. I stayed awake longer staring at those stupid light stripes. Part of me wanted to wake him up and ask real questions. What do you do? Where do you go? Why me? The other part was scared of the answers. Or worse, of getting none at all.

Eventually I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke a few hours later the bed was empty. Sheets cool on his side. No note. No text. Just the faint smell of him on my pillow and that familiar twist in my chest.

Same shit different month. I sat up, pulled the sheet around myself, and checked my phone. Nothing. Eventually I threw the blankets aside and headed for the kitchen. Coffee first. Self respect.