I’d been around the block—not like something crazy, but I’d kissed a lot of guys. Good, bad and everything in between. And then the really bad. But that didn’t exist except in the closet in the back of my mind that so wasn’t getting opened right now.
When I saw the crazy intense kisses on the movie screen—and I’d seen a lot, as I was a classic movie buff—I’d roll my eyes and curse Hollywood for perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes of what it should be like.
Because in real life, it wasn’t time-stopping magic with one kiss ruining or making your life while dramatic music played in the background.
At least that was what I’d thought.
I touched my lips with a single finger. They were swollen, hot, bruised with the tattoo of his own.
Keltan took a breath and stepped forward, so once more my nerve endings stood up. He reached his arm up, and I inhaled his scent, closing my eyes for a split second as his body pressed against mine once more.
Then he was gone and something warm was pressed against my hand.
I glanced down at my coffee cup, then back to him.
It was the only time in recorded existence that I was actually unhappy to have a cup of coffee in my hand.
“I can’t fuck you against your car,” he murmured. “No matter how much I want to. Because I’d most likely get us arrested, scar some children and make too many men fall in love with you,” he continued with a rough voice. “Plus, I want a chance. And if I let that kiss go further, then leave, I don’t get that chance. Because you’d think me an asshole, and I just couldn’t do that. I want a chance. When I get back from my last tour, I want to know that chance is waitin’ for me.”
I blinked up at him. “Your last tour?” I parroted. “Gwen told me that you’d already done that,” I said, then caught myself sounding like I’d been asking Gwen about him. “You know, she mentioned it. In passing. And she was excited about it. You not going back to wars. Where you have the possibility of getting shot.”
His eyes flickered with something, something that betrayed what was beyond those chocolate orbs rippling with desire. Something that I recognized as the chaos I also cloaked behind a still surface.
“Yeah. She was. Considering it’s the same place her brother never came back from after he visited her here.” His voice was flat, but not empty. I recognized it. What lay beneath.
Pain.
A lot of it.
“So, you lied to her,” I deduced. There was no accusation in my tone. Nothing actually. It was flat like his.
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “I didn’t tell the woman I promised my brother I’d look after before he died that I’d be going back to battle. Because I know her. She’d worry. I don’t need to be responsible for putting any more of that heaviness in her eyes when she’s finally got a reason to let most of it go.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The words, though easily spoken, were not something I guessed he shared with many people. But he was sharing it with me. For whatever reason.
“I get that,” I said finally. “You’re protecting her.”
He nodded. “Best way I know how.” There was a pause as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“I won’t say anything,” I reassured him. There was code about lying to your girlfriends, but I was agreeing with Keltan on this one. Gwen had been through enough for a lifetime. If this little untruth would make it easier for her to get through the day, I’d keep it to myself.
“I know,” Keltan said simply, confidently. Like he trusted me. Like he knew me. Not like I was a stranger he’d met the previous night at a biker party and then made out with against a car at an ungodly hour of the morning.
“So, you’re leaving to go back? To the war?” I clarified.
He nodded once, glancing to his watch. “A war,” he corrected. “This world doesn’t just have one. Shit, it doesn’t even have a hundred. One of many, babe.” His words were littered with double meaning and too much poignancy for that point in the morning. Or my life.
I didn’t answer.
Silence was usually the best option.
But not with him, it seemed. Stillness with him was dangerous because it gave whatever this was more chance to grow, evolve. And even though I was aware of how incredibly insane it was, it didn’t make it any different.
“Need to do that. Leave. About now,” he said, breaking the silence with his deep voice and rough accent. His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Not that I want to. You make a man forget about duty to his country. About anything but the way you taste.” His dark eyes traveled to my lips. “But I’ve got to. They don’t shoot deserters anymore. Which is a shame, because I’d risk a bullet for you in this instance, without hesitation. If there’s anything I fear more than not tasting more of those lips, it’s a cage. Which is what I’d get. They court-martial deserters.”
Maybe it was the talk of leaving, far too familiar and hitting an exposed bone that I thought I’d buried, but it jerked me out of my stupor so I could paint a mask of ice on my face.
“Yeah. You should go,” I agreed sharply. “Because accosting some woman on the street and talking to her like you know some sort of secret isn’t behavior set for this country. And I’m certainly not the person to be doing that. I’m not right for you.”
His eyes hardened. “I disagree.”
“Well then, you’re not right for me,” I argued, pushing past him to open my car door.
“Snow, the way you kissed me back tells me I’m exactly the right man for you. Even if you don’t admit it. We’ve got time.” He gave me one lingering look before he turned on his heel and walked the short distance to his pickup. I hated that I watched every second of his retreat.
That I wished for it not to be happening.
But I did.
And then he was gone.
And I was fucked.
Two Months Later
I thought of him every single day for the months after he was gone.
Which was insane. I had a handful of words with him, eighty percent of which were sarcastic (me) or teasing (him). And I’d stared at him all night, stoking whatever strange fire was burning between us.
Then there was the morning. The kiss. The kiss that was now a ghost, haunting my lips. Sometimes they actually tingled with the memory of his lips on mine.
A handful of moments. Actually, not even a handful.
Not enough to warrant obsession. Which was what I had.
I wondered about him. Worried when I found out he was finishing his tour in the army when that same tour had killed Gwen’s brother. Worried about the fact that Gwen was still oblivious to where he was. Actually thought he was in L.A. Luckily she had a child and a husband to keep her too busy to travel the few hours it would take to discover he was not, in fact, in L.A.
Who knew where he was.
Apart from running amuck in my mind.
In some far-off battlefield, one of the many raging on this earth right now.
It was unexplainable, really, the aching sort of despair the thought of him dead gave me.
The same aching sort of desperation to have those arms around me in my fantasies while I had a reliable climax from a battery-operated device.
“Earth to Lucy.”
I snapped my head up from my perusal of the faux fur throw I’d been fingering. “What?”
Polly smiled at me, shaking her choppy layered hair. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
I pursed my lips.
Her blue-violet eyes—the only thing we shared—flared as she jumped onto my sofa in front of which we’d been pacing.
“My levelheaded and ever-focused sister was trapped in her head?” she exclaimed in shock.
I gave her a look. “You’re calling me levelheaded? Really?” I asked, going for avoidance of the question.
No one knew about Keltan and the kiss. A miracle, really. We’d done it on the main street of a small town where gossip was almost as valuable as Benjamins. But the secret stayed
just that.
A secret.
Something I wouldn’t tell my best friends about, even though Rosie had grilled me to see if he did indeed turn up at my house in the middle of the night wearing only his socks like she’d suggested. I’d lied to her, hating doing it, but if I didn’t speak of it out loud, I could convince myself it never happened.
If it weren’t for the thoughts of him that invaded my mind when I wasn’t paying attention to actively not thinking of him.
And the e-mails.
Those damn e-mails.
They’d started exactly one week after he left.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: Glass Slippers
First of all, you’re gonna have to tell me who exactly this Lagerfeld guy is so I can kick his ass. But then again, maybe you’re not his girl anymore considering the way you kissed me that morning. Still, I’ll need his information. You know, just in case.
Second of all, I’ve just arrived in an undisclosed location with a company of men who have unfortunately found your Facebook profile and become obsessed with you. It’s not my fault, really. See, I don’t have Facebook. Don’t believe in the institution of it all. Social media? That bloody site is the reason why kids know how to “like” something before they can ride a bike. Not my thing.
That is until I met a girl with hair as black as night, skin as white as snow, lips to make a priest forget his vows and a body that a certain soldier can’t seem to get out of his mind.
Anyway, getting off track. So, I needed to see all that again. Just to make sure I hadn’t dreamed you up in some very detailed and excellent hallucination. Therefore, I borrowed my buddy Duke’s phone and his account. And proceeded to almost crash our Humvee because I was staring at your photo. You know, the one of you in the red dress?
My mates were unreasonably angry at me for almost getting them killed (strange fellas, these are), and they wrestled me to get the phone. And then they saw you.
The obsession began.
I’m just writing you to let you know that, if I do perish over here, ensure an extensive investigation is done to make sure it wasn’t my own men who decided to trim the fat on the competition and take you for themselves.
And the image of you in that fucking red dress is the only thing getting me through these miserable fucking days. And what’s making me determined not to get blown up by an IUD.
I need to see that in person, baby.
Who needs glass slippers when I’ve got the red dress?
K
I had stared at it for hours. Not an exaggeration. My editor had yelled at me for not filing a story on the cost of a new drinking fountain on Main Street.
I hadn’t even written it.
Nor did I after he yelled.
Instead, I wrote something far more dangerous.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: Re – Glass Slippers
Okay, firstly, how did you get this address?
Was it Rosie? I know it was her. I just need confirmation before I can pay the hitman. They get annoyed when I make mistakes and have to call them back for round two.
Second, I’m almost personally offended that you have no knowledge of the man, the myth, the legend and the only one who will own my heart. If you kick his ass, then you’ll break it. My heart, that is. And then I’d have to pay my hitman double.
And third, didn’t anyone tell you that texting and driving is illegal? I don’t know the laws in this undisclosed location, but the same sentiment must exist there. Please don’t do it again. You don’t want to be remembered as the only soldier whose demise was pinned on a cellular device and not an explosive one.
Actually, let’s just stay away from the explosive ones too.
Come back alive. I can’t promise the dress. Or anything, actually. But I can promise if you don’t, I’ll be very mad, and my wrath translates even beyond the grave. I’m like Jennifer Love Hewitt, with smaller boobs and a lesser penchant for boho.
Just so you know, and you can tell your friends this too, I’ll always be Lagerfeld’s girl.
No other man can steal my heart. Best tell your ‘fellas’ that before you die in vain.
L
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: Hitmen
Firstly, I’ll never tell you how I got this address. I don’t want you wasting money on a hitman. They’re hardly ever reliable anyway.
Plus, I’m a soldier, and a good one at that. Stealth and information acquirement are two of my many, many skills. I’ll need that, the basic skill of finding out a beautiful woman’s e-mail address when I finally get out of this fucking sandbox and into a city where marginally less people try to shoot me.
Near your neck of the woods, if I’m not mistaken?
A little town called Hollywood? Heard of it? Though I think the locals call it Los Angeles.
Setting up shop there after your country was finally smart enough to give me a visa. Good thing too, since I’ve saved its ass a couple of times. The country, not the visa.
But enough about me and my heroism.
Let’s talk about your boobs. Which are the perfect size, by the way.
Or how about what your favorite food is so I can fashion our date around it.
One day, that e-mail address is changing, and so is your loyalty for an old man who always seems to be wearing sunglasses (yes, I Googled him).
K
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: Re – Hitmen
Firstly, I don’t rightly need to order a hitman anyway. I can do my own dirty work. But I’d just had a manicure and didn’t want a pesky murder ruining it.
My hands had paused at this point, much as they had when I read the sentence about him moving a mere two hours from me. I’d known he was doing it, but this was right in front of me. In words. He was moving. To the City of Angels. And Devils. And everything in between. The place I’d been tossing up becoming another in between for years now. I hadn’t found whatever it was I needed to make the jump.
Courage, maybe.
Or a reason.
Rosie and I had always talked about leaving Amber together. In that sort of someday vibe where you considered such a thing as something to be done when you’re grown up. When your life got itself together.
Just at what point of adulthood were we considered “grown-ups?” ’Cause I sure as shit wasn’t one at almost twenty-seven. Sometimes I thought the reason I was so obsessed with clothes and shoes and bags was because I was playing pretend with them, playing the grown-up, because I was still that scared little girl.
I put my attention back on the e-mail.
You’re moving to Hollywood? To do security? Well I guess there’s enough boy bands with rabid fans who need protecting.
I would think a humble country boy such as yourself might want to head back to the Land of the Long White Cloud (I Googled that) and away from all the Americans.
Also, we will not be talking about my boobs. Don’t you know e-mail etiquette with a woman you are low-key stalking? Talk of such things is considered uncouth.
And I think that telling you my favorite food might foster some vain hope that you will find yourself with a date when you return.
You won’t. Well, not with me anyway.
I think it would be much better if you found another pen pal to send your endearing New Zealand slang to.
L
I shouldn’t have sent it. I should have deleted his e-mail after I’d read it. Problem was, even if I deleted it from the computer, it wouldn’t do much since I’d already committed it to memory. Then my fingers had worked without my brain’s consent and typed not only the reply, but hit the Send button too. That was on the first one. Then the second one came, and I found sense. Or lost it, I guessed, dep
ending on who you spoke to. Some people would say telling an infuriating, handsome man who kissed like Channing Tatum danced and spoke in an accent was insane.
Then again, nobody who really knew me ever classed me as sane.
But it didn’t mean sending that e-mail was easy.
And then I’d spent the next week obsessively checking my e-mail. Such obsessions did not go unnoticed.
“Why are you checking your phone so much?” Rosie asked, sucking down a cocktail.
I jerked my head up from the stupid spinning circle that produced no results.
“I’m not,” I said, my voice smooth but not as icy as usual.
Of course, my best friend picked up on it right away.
She slammed her drink down on the table with much more force than necessary, clear liquid spilling from the rim and onto the polished wood of the table.
She was so focused on me she didn’t even notice. “Okay, something’s up. You are constantly checking your phone. It has become surgically attached to your hand this week. What gives? And I will remind you that lying to your best friend is a crime punishable by death, or at the very least, a ban on borrowing my shoes for a month.”
I sipped my own cocktail. “I’m a journalist. I need my phone for stories.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stories? Like the new mascot for the high school is a rhino instead of a panther and there is going to be a mutiny among the panther-loving students?” she asked sarcastically.
I scowled at her. “No. If you must know, I’m waiting on a response from the editor of Covet. They wanted me to do a column. Apparently, she liked my blog.” It was only a half lie. Well, it was the entire truth. The editor had liked my blog and did want me to do a column. It just wasn’t her e-mail I was waiting on.
Rosie gaped at me. “No shit? Oh my gosh, Lucy, that’s freaking epic. I’m so proud of you. Does this mean I get free shoes? Not that it’s the only reason I want you to succeed in your chosen field, although it is a frontrunner. That and makeup.”