And then she was pulling at the buttons down the front of his shirt with shaking hands, switching to his belt and when it didn’t come easily enough, back to shirt buttons again with a frustrated whimper.
“Fuck. Maggie, I need—”
“Yes.” Whatever it was, he could have it. Her. Here. Now. Anything.
“You’re so—”
She didn’t care. Maybe tomorrow she would, but in that moment only one thing mattered.
“Clothes.”
His mouth slammed down on hers again and somehow they were making it up the stairs amid the groping and rubbing and hot, wet kissing.
Halfway up the flight, she gasped into his mouth as they bounced into the south wall. Her dress was unbuttoned down to her waist and he’d found the taut peak of her nipple with the rough pad of his thumb.
At three-quarters, Ty’s shirt was open and free of his trousers, and they were in some sort of crab-crawling, full-contact, desperation-driven migration toward the landing. Because, God help her, that was as far as she needed to go. Just beyond the rail where they couldn’t be seen from the security door if Ford came home.
Only then their mouths were fused and Tyler’s tongue was sliding over and around hers and she suddenly didn’t care if they made it to the next stair, let alone the second-floor hall. She was shoving at the shoulders of his open coat, trying to shrug free of her own, when he broke the kiss, and in some move she couldn’t track, he had her hiked up in his arms.
He cleared the last stairs and made it as far as her door, growling into her neck about keys as, one arm braced against the wall above her head, he rocked forward, giving her another taste of the steely ridge of his erection. A taste that had her following with her hips, begging with her body for Tyler to take her where she so desperately needed to go.
He caught a handful of the skirt that had fallen back into place, rucking the silky fabric up, freeing her knee to coast up the outside of his thigh and his to push in and—oh God, yes!
“Jesus, Maggie,” he groaned, meeting the tilt of her hips with the rock of his own, starting a cycle of pleasure-driven motion that was ratcheting higher with every revolution. He was so hard, rolling against that singular spot of want again and again.
“Tyler,” she gasped, clutching at his shoulders as years of neglect coalesced into a pulsing, hot ache.
It was too much.
Not enough.
“I need,” she begged, breathlessly, “I need…oh please…”
His hands were on her ass, one dipping beneath the satin of her panties from behind, coasting lower until his fingers found her sex and their mutual groans came together where their mouths met.
Then, eyes locked, Tyler pressed one thick finger against her slick opening and slid inside. In and out he stroked before adding a second finger. He pushed deeper, waking every wet sensitized nerve until—
“Tyler!” she cried into the empty hallway as everything inside her seized, clamping down hard around his slow thrusts. Her orgasm slammed through her like a tidal wave, hammering her center with a force that left her stunned, breathless, weak…and then suddenly, desperately aching for more.
For all of him.
“Fucking beautiful.”
She nodded, distracted as, hands shaking, she tugged at his belt.
They were seconds away from taking this where it desperately needed to go. And it would be worlds better if they were inside her apartment when they got there—better, but at this point, not necessary.
Only then the call of reason echoed from across the void. And she froze. “We need to go to your place.”
His mouth stopped its marauding path over her neck and he pulled back to meet her eyes. The look on his face was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. His cheekbones were flushed dark, his eyes intense and focused on her with a singular purpose, those unbelievable lips parted for the ragged breaths he was sucking.
Hot.
“We can’t do it here. For one thing, Ava and Sam let themselves in pretty much whenever they feel like it, and because I don’t…um…ever…have company, they don’t even knock anymore. And even if I put the chain on the door, it would be sending up a signal flare that I wasn’t alone—which would mean they’d basically camp out, one at the front door, one at the back, with Ford standing beneath the window if they could catch him, just to make sure they found out who it was and had enough information to tease me about it for the next millennium. But that’s just reason one. Reason two is even if they didn’t catch us in the act…condoms. I’m not on the pill and Sam has a sort of unhealthy obsession with this three-pack of condoms he keeps replacing for me every time they expire. He’s always playing with the box and…he knows the expiration date by heart, so it’s not like I could even go out and replace them really quickly with another three-pack of the same brand. He’d know!”
She sucked in a breath and shook her head, stunned there’d been that much brain function happening when thirty seconds before, all signs were indicating it had tapped out at the word please.
Having gotten what she was certain was a pretty sufficient explanation for why they had to go to his place instead of hers, she reached for the collar of his shirt and pulled him in for another kiss because the ones he gave were crack-cocaine addictive. And probably at least as bad a habit to pick up. But like any good junkie, all she cared about was getting her next fix. Consequences be damned.
Only instead of grabbing her thighs and hoisting her up to carry her the remaining flight of stairs at a jog, Tyler slowed the kiss, cooling it down before pulling away with a quiet but potent curse. One she instinctually understood signaled the return of his reason as well.
“Maggie,” he started, his voice sounding more pained than she could stand to hear after the taste of heaven he’d given her. “You’re beautiful. And you know I want to—but we can’t.”
She shook her head, unwilling to accept it. “I know what we agreed, Tyler. But seriously, we pretty much already have, so I think we can. We should. We’ll just put the hard-stop we’d intended for earlier…right after. What’s one night?” she asked, her body still vibrating with need. “We can come back from it no problem. Tomorrow we’ll be friends, but tonight…tonight we give in. Give each other something good. We don’t need to stop because of some silly rule—”
“It’s not about the rules, Maggie.”
“Then what?” Her hands were on his chest, coasting up those hard planes and around his neck, leaving their bodies in an intimate press that felt so completely right. Even more so when Tyler’s hands rested at her hips, his thumbs brushing softly in a way so natural, she wondered if he realized he was doing it. “We’re both adults. And it’s not like there’s someone else.”
Silence answered and her heart started to pound, though this time for a wholly different reason.
Throat tight, she forced a short laugh, because there was no way.
“There isn’t, right, Tyler? You aren’t involved with anyone. Because if you were,” she swallowed, searching his eyes, “you wouldn’t have taken me out. You wouldn’t have kissed me. You wouldn’t have.”
“Maggie.” His voice was all gravel and glass, somehow filling her name with more apology than she would have thought possible. “It’s complicated—”
Her breath rushed out in a punch.
Complicated?
This wasn’t happening.
Icy dread slid through her veins, and her skin started to prickle. The walls around them pressed in as the low roar of her blood pumping past her ears escalated like an approaching freight train.
There was no way.
Not again.
Not with Tyler.
“Maggie, let me explain.”
“No.” Only that single word barely took voice as she fumbled the buttons at the front of her dress. She turned her head and shut her eyes. How could she have done this again?
He had secrets. She’d known it from the start. But still, had she been deliberately blind…becau
se something about the familiarity, something about the destructive pattern, felt right to her? Because she was broken and—
“Maggie, this isn’t what you think. Just stop a second and listen!” His hands were firm on her shoulders and he’d gotten right up in her face. “Yes, there’s someone else. But the only person I’m betraying here is myself. And the only way I can explain it is if you come upstairs and let me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Goddammit.
He couldn’t have screwed up worse. Tyler stalked into his apartment, fists clenched at his sides and that tragic, confused look on Maggie’s face etched across his mind.
She didn’t understand. And how could she, when he hadn’t given her so much as a clue as to what the situation was?
Not too surprising that instead of taking him up on his offer to explain, she hadn’t even bothered to flip him off before she found her keys and then put a solid door and deadbolt between them. Smart girl, not to give a lying bastard another shot at snowing her.
Except he hadn’t actually lied to her, and he couldn’t stand to let her think he had. Not after everything else he’d blown to hell tonight.
Pacing back to the living room, he stopped at the coffee table and opened the recessed drawer beneath.
There was only one thing inside. The simple leather-bound photo album his mother had given him when Charlie was born.
He ran a thumb across the top cover. Then, flipping it open to the first page, he got out his phone.
—
Maggie was sitting slumped at her kitchen table, a bottle of tequila in front of her and not enough will to pour it. It wouldn’t make her forget. And without Ava around, it wouldn’t even be fun. Pushing the bottle aside, she figured she’d already done enough self-destructing for one night.
From the corner of her eye she saw her phone light up. Needing it to be Ava, she swept it off the table and thumbed the screen to life—before she’d registered who the message was from.
Tyler. Not Ava.
And to think she’d believed her night couldn’t get any worse. But that was before she saw the attached photo of a wrinkled baby, carefully bundled in a silky blue blanket.
Tyler: This is why I had to stop.
Her stomach lurched.
Oh God, not again.
Knowing she shouldn’t engage, but physically unable to stop her thumbs from flying over the screen, she demanded confirmation.
Maggie: Your son?
Of course this was his son. Why else would he be sending her his picture?
Tyler: I thought he was.
—
Maggie closed the apartment door behind Tyler and waved him into the kitchen, where he sat at the table, raising an eye at the tequila.
Still not sure what he was going to say, but too curious not to give him a chance, she sat across from him and folded her arms. “Disinfectant.”
The corner of his mouth twitched and she hated herself for the way her belly reacted, then hated herself more for the surge of pity she felt at the emptiness she saw in his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he answered, raking a hand through his hair. He met her eyes. “I’m not seeing anyone, Maggie. I’m not married. And technically, I’m not even involved. I’m sorry I didn’t clarify it before. But after what happened, I wasn’t thinking straight. And that question—it caught me off guard.”
She wanted to be relieved, to take comfort in his words, but she remembered all too well the need to accept half-answers when she hadn’t wanted to see an ugly truth for what it was. And that refusal had been her downfall with Kyle, leaving her blindsided by the news that the man she was engaged to marry in three weeks’ time already had a wife and two children, with a third on the way.
Oh, he’d planned to divorce. Just like he’d planned to tell Maggie before her parents had sunk a fortune into a wedding Kyle had known he wasn’t going to go through with. And before his pregnant wife had shown up at her parents’ church and, in front of half the town, branded her a home wrecker.
No more half-truths.
“Technically?” she asked dryly.
“It’ll make more sense once I’ve explained. Or maybe it won’t. But either way, you deserve to know.”
Tyler carefully positioned the album between them, opened to the first page. To a five-by-seven glossy of a wrinkled little newborn, with a shock of dark hair standing on end and big, bright, curious eyes. He was beautiful. But he wasn’t Tyler’s child. And suddenly Maggie regretted the way she’d lashed out, shoved at him, and refused to let him explain.
“His name is Charlie.”
“You thought he was yours?” she asked tentatively.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then finally, eyes locked on the image of this little boy, ran his thumb across the protective plastic as he answered. “When this was taken, yeah. I thought so. It’s what his mother told me when she came to me pregnant a month after we’d broken up. What I believed when he was born and for almost a year after that.”
Slowly, he flipped through the album. Each page picturing this dark-haired little boy, in the arms of various smiling people of assorted ages she could only assume were Tyler’s friends and family. People she’d never seen here. Not even once. There were photos with droolly, toothless smiles and photos documenting new skills. One capturing that stunned look as this little boy held a chubby seized foot in front of his face. Another taken at floor level, that tiny body arched up, neck craning in anticipation of getting to the person behind the lens. More documenting baths, feedings, peaceful naps, and wild grins.
But the pictures that made her heart tighten and ache were those that included Tyler. Looking exhausted, his jaw covered in thick stubble and a huge smile as he proudly displayed this newborn boy. Looking perplexed as he wrestled tiny arms into a onesie. Cradling the sleeping baby in his arms. Against his bare chest. Holding him perched in the crook of his arm.
The boy looked delighted. But it was Tyler’s face she couldn’t tear her eyes from. His expressions ranging from thunderstruck joy and awe to unbridled adoration. All shades of the same deep emotion…love.
“What happened?” she whispered, dreading the answer, because the very fact that they were sitting there meant this was a story without a happy ending.
“A week before Charlie’s first birthday, I learned that, biologically, he wasn’t mine. I came home from work and Gina, his mother, was waiting for me with the DNA tests that confirmed another man was my son’s father. And she was leaving to be with him.”
“My God, Tyler.” The betrayal. The pain.
“How— What—?” She shook her head, not knowing what to say.
But it seemed he’d been there before.
“I couldn’t believe it at first. I mean, she was standing there with the lab results and the words kept coming. The apologies and accusations and justifications and blame…and at some point it was just noise. I walked past her and asked where Charlie was. I wanted to get the fuck away from her crazy talk and spend the night watching my son push Cheerios around his high chair. If Gina wanted to leave, she could go. But Charlie…” Tyler closed his eyes. “Blood didn’t matter; he was mine. And if she thought otherwise, she was nuts. I was the guy who went to every prenatal appointment. The one who had his ultrasound on my phone for months. I was the first one to hold him. The one who walked him nights and knew which bottle was the best for feeding him. I changed his diapers and won his first smiles and saw his first steps. I was the one who loved him from before he was even born, and no piece of paper was going to change that. Nothing could. He’s my son, blood or not.”
He cleared his throat, pushing back from the table to look down at the floor between his feet. “Only Charlie wasn’t there. And none of those things mattered. Because Gina had taken him. She was sorry, but he was with his father—this jackass whose crap band she’d followed out to New York, and then when Charlie was six months old, decided to follow back here. Not that I knew that at the time. I thought she w
anted to be closer to her mother when I agreed to move. And now Gina had taken my son to this guy who hadn’t been ready to be a father when she got pregnant. Who’d chosen not to be around for anything. And they were going to be a family.”
Maggie wanted to throw up. She’d known betrayal. But nothing like this. “What did you do?”
“I went to the police. To a lawyer. And then another lawyer and another. Only they all said the same thing. I didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, because Charlie”—he stopped, taking a breath like the words were still too hard to say—“wasn’t mine.”
Shifting his focus back to the album between them, he turned to the last page. To the boy with huge eyes and an open-mouthed smile, caught mid-baby-Godzilla stride. “This is from before his first birthday, but he’s two now.”
There weren’t any more pictures.
Heart heavy, she asked, “Have you seen him since?”
“Gina let me see him once after she left. To say goodbye. There was a police officer, and Charlie didn’t understand when I had to give him back. He was screaming and kicking—” The muscles of his throat moved up and down as he revisited what had to be a grueling memory. For her. So she could understand.
Though she still wasn’t certain she fully did.
Had this strong man been so deeply wounded that he’d chosen never to risk hurt again? Seeing the devastation in his eyes, she couldn’t blame him if it was the case. To be betrayed so brutally. She took his hand.
He’d shared a life with this woman. A child. A home.
“Do you still love her?”
—
The question threw Tyler. Still love Gina?
Shit, it would have been laughable if the truth weren’t such a nightmare.
“No, Maggie. You’ve got it wrong. It was never like that with her.”
Not even in the beginning, when Gina had been the sexy good time, tumbling into his bed with her goofy stories about following some band out to New York and her life’s-an-adventure attitude. Not through those first weeks when she’d been all about the laughs and the sex. Before he’d figured out there was something off about her and ended the relationship less than a month in.