Hold Me Close(34)

“No. It’s okay. It actually means you forgot about...it. The thing.” Effie made air quotes around the last word. “And you’re right. He was my high school boyfriend, if anyone was. He was my first kiss, and my first everything, too.”

Dee looked solemn. “Kind of hard to get over it, huh?”

“Not really,” Effie said lightly, the lie coating her tongue with the taste of copper and smoke. “Nothing’s that hard to get over, if you try hard enough.”





chapter sixteen

Effie had mapped Bill’s body over and over again. She knew every scar, and he had quite a few. There was the one running up the back of his calf from when he’d burned himself on a motorcycle pipe. There was a dimpled button in his lower right side from a stab wound. Not a knife, a fountain pen. Bill liked to joke he’d bled ink for weeks. He was always making jokes about the scars, as though they made him feel self-conscious but proud at the same time.


This wound on his arm was new. She stroked her fingers along it gently, barely touching the angry black stitches around the red, sliced flesh. Dog bite, he’d told her. He had to take antibiotics and get a rabies treatment.

“Seven shots in the belly,” he told her with barely a wince. “Fucking people who shouldn’t f*cking own f*cking dogs. I had to put it down. Right in front of...”

Bill’s voice broke. He covered his eyes with one big hand. His shoulders shook.

Effie pressed her mouth to his bare shoulder. She took his other hand. When he curved his fingers into hers, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the back.

There were few times when she’d ever been the one to offer him this kind of comfort. She felt ill-suited to it. For anyone, really, other than her kid. Effie had not often sought the solace of an embrace. A hard cock inside her? Oh, sure. But this softness, this consideration, was not as natural.

“Right in front of the kid.” Bill swiped at his eyes and gave her an angry stare. He shrugged out of her grip and went to the small sideboard he used as a liquor cabinet. He poured himself a healthy slug of whiskey and tossed it back. Then poured another. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and contemplated the amber liquid in the glass. He shook his head. “Four, maybe five years old. The dog came after me. Bit the f*ck out of my arm. I kicked it, and it went for the kid. I had to shoot it, Effie. It was going to maul that baby.”

She got up and took the shot glass from his hand to drink it herself. She set down the empty glass and put her hand over it when he lifted the bottle. The last thing Bill needed right now was to get hammered. He was already taking painkillers, which, more than anything else, told her how bad he hurt. Bill had broken his ankle once and walked on it for two days before seeking treatment.

“You did what you had to do,” she told him.

After dropping off Polly with her mother, Effie had planned to spend the night working—she had to finish up one commission and had a new project that had been circling her mind, gnawing at it, for a week now. Ever since she’d had coffee with Dee. The idea had come to her as they usually did, in the faint light of morning when she’d woken but wished she were still unconscious. Instead of dancing sugarplums, Effie dreamed of a dark room lit by faint orange light and the lengths of shadows. In the light of day, the normal light of day instead of eye-searing brightness used to diminish and control them, Effie was almost always able to put aside the dreams, but sometimes they lingered long enough to become inspiration.

It wouldn’t sell, of course. What she thought of as her “real” art never did. But she would paint it anyway, because if she couldn’t do something for herself once in a while, she’d lose her f*cking mind.

Bill’s text had come in when she was at the art supply store buying some new brushes and paints. The message had surprised her. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. Like the painkillers, his text meant he was really hurting.

Since seeing Mitchell online at LuvFinder, she hadn’t heard from him, not even once. She hadn’t texted him, either. The thought that he might not answer her because his interest had been taken up by someone else...it didn’t hurt, exactly, but it sure as hell smarted.

Effie held out her hand. “Come to bed.”

“I didn’t ask you to come over here to f*ck me.”

Effie laughed. “Yes, you did. And that’s why I came over. So come on. Unless you want to do it right here.”

She hadn’t exactly dressed for seduction, but that had never much mattered to Bill. The first time they’d ever f*cked, she’d been wearing a pair of ratty sweatpants and a stained T-shirt. She’d been soaking wet from running in the rain. He’d pulled up beside her in his car and offered to take her home. Instead, he’d taken her to his place.

Bill nudged her hand aside and poured himself another shot. Then one for her, and what the hell. She wasn’t leaving anytime soon. The painting could wait a few hours. Who knows, maybe it would be better if she was a little toasted when she did it, anyway. Maybe she’d be able to let herself go without that inner critic warning her she was f*cking it all up.

Bill licked his lips. Without a word he pushed past her and went down the hall and into the bedroom. After a few seconds, Effie followed. She found him in bed, already naked, but not hard.

She eyed him. “Hey.”

“Come suck my cock,” Bill said as if he was offering her a gift.