Chapter 17 - The Write Off

Present Day

West pulls a small tool out of his pocket and picks the lock to the food court with a quick flip of his wrist. He opens the door, checks to see if the coast is clear, and then holds it out so I can enter first. I throw him a quizzical look as I slip inside the empty building.

“Um, we’re definitely going to talk about why you carry a lockpick,” I whisper.

“Up there,” he says, pointing toward a staircase leading to the second level. We pass a handful of fast-casual restaurants, all of them locked up for the night, and take the stairs in silence.

The top level is an open cafeteria, and West strides confidently across the tile floor. He hops over the stainless steel counter with the remembered ease of a former employee.

“What are you doing?” I whisper as he fiddles with the buttons on a large machine. He ducks under the counter, tears open a bag, and pours it into the top.

“No one is going to hear us,” he says at full volume. The machine hums to life, and West turns to me, satisfied. “Fifteen minutes until soft serve.”

“They sell soft serve on University.”

“Bougie stuff that comes in flavors like charcoal and mocha.”

“I like mocha.”

He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “Who are you, and what have you done with Mars?”

“You’re not the only one who’s changed,” I say. I hop onto the counter and scoot to the ledge, crossing one knee over the other, once again wondering why my dress is so short. It feels like the hemline shrinks another inch every time West’s eyes slide to my thighs. Now, though, his attention is squarely on my face as he leans against the counter across from me and crosses his ankles. His corded forearms are too visible in the dim light. I feel vaguely like I’ve been abducted from my own life and dropped into an alternate reality.

I clear my throat. West’s face is impassive. I don’t want to be the one to break the silence, but neither does he. I tilt my head, and he matches the gesture, his lifted brow the only testament to his burning curiosity. I can’t help but wonder how long he can last. My twisted mind picks up the innuendo in that thought, and I flush molten hot.

“Fine, you win.” I lift my hands in surrender.

“Were we playing a game, Darling?” His tone betrays the smirk lying beneath neutral features.

I hum noncommittally.

His hands grip the countertop, fingers twitching with the restrained urge to drum them against steel. My eyes travel up his arms to his face, where he’s staring at me hard.

He’s dying to say something. I can read his restraint in every muscle.

“Just spit it out, West.”

He presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek—his thinking face—and I wonder if he’s sorting through his options, deciding between the hundreds of things he wants to say.

Or maybe that’s just me.

“You were blushing a minute ago. Why?”

I swallow heavily. “It’s hot in here.”

He huffs a laugh that sounds like frustration. “You’ve always been a bad liar.”

“I wish I could say the same about you,” I say, my tongue lazy in my mouth.

His smirk slips sideways, his mouth flattening into a hard line. “Why did you read that passage from my book?”

My shoulders relax. An easy one. “To piss you off.”

“Because you still hate me.”

“Yes,” I say, a bit too late to be convincing.

“Even after reading it.”

I roll my eyes. I’m not nineteen anymore. I’m not going to fall in love with him because of a few pretty words on a page. “You haven’t given me a reason not to.”

He searches my expression for the lie and doesn’t find it. He nods slowly, pain flashing in his eyes.

The timer dings. West shakes himself out of his trance and rifles through shelves until he reappears with two spoons and a giant bowl. He pulls the lever on the soft-serve machine and fills the bowl with chocolate-and-vanilla swirl. It’s lopsided and near collapse, like a mountain in a Dr. Seuss book. He presents it to me with a self-directed grimace. Off-kilter due to his proximity and resigned by way of sugar, I exhale the very last of my fight. It’s a losing battle, anyway, when he’s determined to be kind.

“Losing your touch,” I say as I lean in for the first bite of his messy creation.

He swats my spoon away with his. “Patience, Darling,” he admonishes. Reaching under the counter, he produces a ten-pound bag of chocolate sprinkles.

“I forgot about these!”

West looks smug as he shakes them over the top before looking to me for approval.

“More.”

He doubles the number of sprinkles and wordlessly pushes the bowl toward me.

“I still don’t see why we couldn’t have purchased soft serve like the non-felons we are.” I dip the spoon into the bowl and bring it to my mouth, flipping it so the cold ice cream lands on my tongue. I groan in surprise. “Never mind. You’re right. This is what soft serve should be.”

The ice cream slips down my throat, and I feel a sick swoop of nostalgia that makes my eyes burn. I can’t count the number of swirl cones I ate in my four years here. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, the memories all mixed up with my memories of West. Objectively, I’ve had better desserts. But this one is my favorite.

West ducks his head, a self-satisfied smirk playing at the corner of his lips. He digs his spoon into the bowl and comes away with a large bite.

“If you did this to prove to me that Tucson is better than New York…” I trail off, unsure how to end my sentence.

He leans a hip against the counter’s edge. “Why would I need to do that?” He closes his lips indecently around a large spoonful.

Blood rushes feverishly to my cheeks, and I have to look away. “It’s no contest.”

“I agree.”

I drag my spoon through the ice cream to avoid looking at him. “I haven’t been back since graduation—” I wince at my own mistake and push forward, hoping he doesn’t notice. “This city feels like another lifetime. I don’t know how you can live here without constant reminders.” My face flushes again, and I wonder why I’m dancing so close to topics I’d rather avoid.

“Who says I do?”

My eyes snap up to his, and oh no, have we been this close this whole time? He’s leaning sideways against the edge of the counter I’m sitting on, his body fully turned to face me, and his hips are inches from my crossed knees. I swallow and see his eyes track the movement. My eyes fall to his lips, a spoon dangling loosely from them, then his hands. His fingers rest on the counter, dangerously close to my thighs. We’re not touching, but I’ve never been so aware of not touching someone. The absence of it is nearly corporeal.

As if reading my thoughts, West pushes away. He takes the empty bowl and holds it up expectantly. I blink at him. He reaches across my lap to gently pry the spoon from my clenched fist before turning around, and I watch the muscles under his shirt stretch and tighten as he washes the dishes.

When all traces of us have been erased, West dries his hands on his jeans and turns to face me once again. “Time to get you home for real.”

With proper breathing air between us now, I can think clearly. “I’ll go alone. I’m totally sobered up, and I could walk that route with my eyes closed.”

“You think so?” He rakes an unsure hand through his curls, and I realize he’s torn. He wants to be a gentleman, but he’ll let me leave if I don’t want him around.

“Maybe not. I’ve forgotten some things.” I surprise myself with the lie. As hard as I’ve tried to forget, this campus is spilled across my memory like permanent ink. Even with the vast benevolence of thirty-six inches of space in which to make good decisions, I don’t want to walk home alone.

West narrows his eyes, curiosity warring with doubt. “I bet you didn’t forget the library,” he says.

I remember hands in my hair. My spine against a bookshelf. His tongue on my neck.

A beat passes. “Because you were always writing,” he adds.

“Not always,” I protest.

“You were single-minded.”

“I was fun!”

The lines around his eyes crinkle when he laughs. I like it more than I should. “You know you’re fun when you have to say it out loud.”

I childishly kick my feet in annoyance, knocking them back against the shelves, sending a metal bowl clattering to the floor. I lean forward, but West touches me just above the knee, wordlessly stilling my movement.

The sensation registers between my thighs.

A bad idea, this dress. It’s tricked my libido into thinking this is a date.

He bends down and returns the bowl to its place, and when he stands up, he’s positioned between my knees. My dress is criminally short. If I move closer, he’d be between my bare thighs. A bolt of repressed heat shoots through me.

His eyes are intense as they sweep over my face. They trace the outline of my mouth before dipping lower and then back up again. If he’s as surprised as I am, it doesn’t show.

There’s a cacophony happening inside me. All the warning bells are blaring: a five-alarm fire. Without permission from my brain, my body inches toward him. His hands relax heavily on my upper thighs, his fingertips lightly brushing the hem of my dress.

I nearly stop breathing. His expression is so clear I can practically hear him.

Your move, Darling.

I glance down and see a hard swell against his jeans. Heat blooms in my belly and spreads out. Into my chest, making it burn. Below my waist, making me ache. I’m jittery and nervous and lightheaded. If he weren’t pinning me to this counter, who knows what I would have done by now. Hooked my leg around his. Slid myself to the edge of the counter until I felt him pressed against my inner thighs. My thoughts run wild, and I fear that they’re all over my face.

West’s throat works, his gaze as steady as his hands. I can feel him inside my head. He knows exactly what I want.

My throat goes dry. “Admit it, West. Sometimes I was fun.”

He leans so close I feel the scrape of whiskers against my jaw. “You were more than fun, Mars.” He moves slowly, pauses. His hands tighten on my thighs—a question. I tilt my head, and he presses a kiss under my ear, right where he knows I like it. Fire licks down my spine. “You were the best fucking thing about this town,” he whispers, scattering goose bumps across my skin.

I skim my shaking hands up his arms and take a deep breath. If I turn to the side, even an inch, he’ll kiss me.

He’s in my head again. Your move, Darling. It’s shocking that after all this time, I still know him so well. Like fluency in a dead language.

I bite my bottom lip and consider my options, thinking about what could be waiting for me on the other side of a kiss. But then he exhales a hot breath against my ear, the sound misting through me, and I’m adrift, swept up in his tide; it no longer feels like a choice.

My nose brushes against his whiskered jaw as I turn and press my lips to his. Something deep in my chest shifts and unlocks. We’re both unmoving; it’s hardly even a kiss yet. It feels more like a return.

There you are, I think.

What took us so long? his mouth says in return.

We’re still motionless, but his lips are warm and soft, and his kiss is resolved. Like kissing me is a decision he made once and never looked back from.

Stunned by the implication, I gasp. His tongue presses against mine, his mouth pulling oxygen from between my teeth. His hand leaves my thigh, and once again, the absence of him is physical, but then it threads through my hair and tilts my jaw up to give him a better angle. His hair tickles my forehead, and I want to brush it back, want to grab it between my fingers, want to touch him in so many places, but he is everywhere, crowding me, surrounding me, taking control of this kiss, which I hadn’t planned to want but am desperate to continue. He’s broader and stronger than the last time we were this close. I can’t think. Can hardly breathe as his lips work over mine.

Kissing the man in front of me contains shades of our history but is also completely different and infinitely better than it once was. Heat rushes to my core, pulsing painfully. A tangled frisson of pleasure and desire weaves under my skin, remaking me into a new version of myself. Building me a different set of bones.

The sensation of his tongue on my lips and my teeth and my neck is the most catastrophic thing I’ve ever felt. If I had the capacity to think, I’d realize that I’m careening toward ruin.

There’s a buzz against metal, sending my thoughts ricocheting in every direction. I wrench away from him, and we both look down, our breaths jagged and desperate. The noise is coming from his phone, in his front pocket, pressed against the edge of the counter.

“Answer it,” I say. I need a minute to catch my breath. To think.

West adjusts himself with a wince and reads the text. As he’s reading, his phone buzzes again. He looks at the caller and I catch a glimpse of the ID photo—she’s smiling, she’s gorgeous.

My new bones crumble to dust, carried away with the breeze.

He grimaces. “Sorry, I have to take this. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I barely choke the words out as I scoot back and cross my legs. My dress slides up. I tug it down, mortified.

“Everything okay?” West says into the phone.

I hear a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, but it’s too faint for me to decipher what she’s saying. I tilt my head closer, shameless. I hear a string of swear words, but the voice doesn’t sound upset. If this is West’s girlfriend, she probably doesn’t know that I just felt his erection against my leg. That I could look at it now, if I wanted to. (I don’t want to!)

“Yeah. Mm-hmm. Call if you need anything. Don’t forget to send a pic.” He ends the call and slides his phone in his back pocket. Whatever pic she’s sending, he’s saving it for later.

“That was my sister,” he says quickly, and I delete the sarcastic remark about nudes from the tip of my tongue.

“Gabbi? Little foul-mouthed Gabbi?” I reach my hand into his back pocket and grab his phone. West watches with amusement. “How old is she? I want to see a picture!” He unlocks it and swipes through recent photos, showing me a stunning young woman with dark skin and curly hair.

I snatch the phone out of his hands to inspect it closely. “Wow. She’s gorgeous!” I place his phone on the counter. “It sounds like you two are close now?”

He nods. “We got closer when we were both on the East Coast; I talked so much about this place that she decided to come.”

I shake my head in awe. He really did it. He became the man he didn’t think he could be. “It’s a good thing you came back, isn’t it?” I ask quietly.

His face is full of feelings, but this time, I’m not sure which ones. He dips his chin in silent confirmation. “I have regrets. That’s not one of them.”

He opens his mouth to speak again, and I panic about the potential destination of this conversation.

“What’s Gabbi up to these days?”

“She’s an undergrad. Engineering major. So smart. She gives me shit constantly—”

“I bet you deserve it,” I cut in.

His mouth quirks up fondly. “I’m sure I do. She has a date tonight. Some guy from an app. She called to tell me where they’re meeting, what they plan to do for the evening. She’ll send me a picture of his ID and let him know that her older brother will hunt him down if necessary.”

I knew he looked like a hit man. “What better way to scare off creeps than to threaten them with her six-foot-four, problematically jacked older brother?”

I’ve never been so thankful for the full moon shining through the window, because it means I get to see West blush. “What’s problematic about the way I look?”

“You look like you belong on an oil rig, not behind a typewriter.”

“You know I don’t use a typewriter, right?” He’s gorgeously indignant, his eyebrows a dark slash, his curls a work of art. I should have written them into my book. They deserve to be memorialized.

“I know when you’re lying, Virginia.”

“Virginia?”

“You changed my nickname,” I challenge.

“That one’s just bad, though.”

“What about West Nile Virus?”

“What about no.”

“WestJet? North West?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Wild Wild West.”

I pretend to gag.

He rolls his eyes. “I used to own a typewriter, but I left it in New York when I escaped Dimes Square.”

I put my hand on his forearm. “Oh my gosh, can we talk about that whole situation?”

He recoils at the thought. “Too soon.”

“The Doc Martens–to-typewriter pipeline is undeniable. It’s your Tumblr culture.”

West barks a surprised laugh, and my mood soars. I retreat from the touchy subject of our past and return to safer ground. “Gabbi does sound smart. Taking pictures of their IDs and all,” I say.

“Don’t tell me you date without doing that.” His tone is full of disapproval.

“Dating in New York is…” I trail off, unsure how to describe the hellish, postapocalyptic landscape of NYC dating apps, where no one ever gets together, because the promise of someone hotter, smarter, and richer is only a swipe away. “Let’s just say I’ve been off the apps for a while. I prefer to meet men the old-fashioned way.”

“Such as?”

Falling in love with him at nineteen, letting that relationship ruin your life, and never getting over it.

“To be determined.”

“Well, if you ever get back on the apps, you can send me pictures of your dates. I’ll threaten them, too.”

I huff a laugh. “Funny thing to say for a guy who just had his tongue in my mouth.”

West scrutinizes my face, but in a different way than he did earlier. Before, I knew he wanted me. Now he looks calculating. Assessing.

I shrug out of his jacket and shove it back into his hands, feeling stupidly transparent. I cross my arms over my chest. I’ve written enough love scenes to know when the moment has passed; if West wanted to kiss me again, he wouldn’t be mentally sending me on dates with random dudes.

I’m an idiot, and I should have known.

“Um, thanks for the ice cream, I guess. I’ll walk the rest of the way on my own.” I tuck my hair behind my ears and slide off the counter.

He steps closer, crowding me until my ass hits metal. “Don’t leave. We still need to talk.”

I roll my eyes. “I must have misunderstood what we’ve been doing all night.”

His grips the counter in frustration. His phone screen illuminates, the vibration rattling against steel.

I don’t mean to look, and I certainly don’t mean to read the notification on West’s lock screen, but it’s second nature: Hear a phone buzz, look toward the sound. When my eyes land on the name of the sender, the air seeps from my lungs.

In a blink, I digest the subject of the email. It’s only three words, but it snaps me back to reality. Like waking up from hypnosis.

Noon on Sunday?

A shock runs through me. “I’m an idiot.”

“Mars, no.”

I step around him, too stunned to speak. “You’re speaking with her this weekend? That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.” I glare at him, daring him to contradict what I already know is true.

West hesitates, a wolf caught in a trap.

I let out a disbelieving laugh. “I can’t believe I thought you changed. I can’t believe I kissed you!” His expression flickers to one I recognize but can’t name. “Don’t follow me.” I turn on my heel to do the thing I should have done an hour ago—run.

West’s voice trails after me, but I don’t stop until I’m safely off campus and away from our memories.

For one shining, nostalgic hour, I tricked myself into thinking that West and I could outrun the things we did to each other, but I was wrong. It won’t happen, and I was a fool to believe it could.

It’s only later, while I’m staring at the ceiling of my hotel room, that I put a name to the emotion on West’s face as I fled.

Heartsick.

I could weep for the irony of it, but I don’t. Instead, I laugh as tears run sideways down my cheeks, mad as hell that I can’t tell the only other person who would understand the joke.