After Hours (InterMix)(114)

“No.” He turned around and kissed my forehead, then coaxed me to flip so he could do the spooning, hugging me tight. “There’s always something broken. No need to make trouble when there’s plenty already waiting. Just lemme fix what I can, when you can’t do the job yourself.”

“I will,” I promised. He already was. Fixing that ache in my chest, just being here, holding me. Chiseling a few bricks out of his cold gray tower, just enough for me to slip inside and feel shielded from the wind and rain.

With a shallow, yielding noise, he went slack, muscles surrendering their duties, his arm a warm weight against my waist.

“Goodnight, Kel.”

Gently, I turned enough to kiss his jaw and feel his stubble against my lips, its usual rasp softened by an extra day’s growth. From the rest and routine he’d sacrificed, to come and be with me, to let us see each other for the helpless, frightened humans we were.

We got a little something between us.

So little. No thicker than a layer of cotton now. The thinnest membrane of latex when I’d next welcome his body inside mine. Barely anything at all, with those stubborn barriers demolished, just us two, lying here as the dust settled.

Just us two, stripped and spent, hearts beating together in the dark.





With the most heartfelt thanks to my dear friends and talented peers—Ruthie Knox, Charlotte Stein, Edie Harris, Serena Bell, Del Dryden, and Shelley Ann Clark—for their energy, time, and input.

Thanks also to my editor, Jesse Feldman, for seeking me out and inviting me to New York, and to my agent, Laura Bradford, for pushing me there in her wheelbarrow.

And with extra big thanks to my kick-ass mom and to Mary Ann Rivers (and unwitting colleagues), for their expertise. If I bungled any clinical details in this book, may the blame lay firmly on my own shoulders.