She’d been a blip in his life. He’d probably tied ten other girls to their kitchen tables by now. Maybe it was his standard thing—tie a girl to her table, molest her with cutlery, fuck her, move on to the next conquest.
All that talk of collars the last night they’d been together had been the logical progression of keeping her close. Nothing more. A game of cat and mouse where both had gotten away. She was pretty sure she’d been the mouse and not the cat by the end of it, and that was the part that ate at her. He’d walked all over her and made her crave more.
By the time she stepped out of the shower, at least she felt human again. She brushed the tangles from her hair then dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, trying not to think of the chopped-up ones hidden in her bottom drawer. It was hard to resist taking them out and looking at them, but she managed.
The wine in the fridge beckoned to her, and she obeyed. She filled a coffee mug with pinot noir and laughed at how classy she was.
Friday night and here she was alone, standing in her kitchen, drinking wine from an “I <3 justice” coffee mug and trying not to think about what Atlas was probably doing. Maybe he was at Fitte. Maybe she should go.
But maybe he was with someone else. A scene came to mind of some pretty girl she didn’t know hanging off his arm, or worse, bound and at his mercy.
She thumped the coffee mug down on the counter, spilling wine, then sighed at the mess she’d made.
This was ridiculous. There was apparently no one else on the planet she wanted to talk to but him, and he was probably balls deep in some other girl right that minute.
Why couldn’t she be violent and irrational? She really wanted to throw something. Have a fit. Cry.
She wanted to show up at his house and do crazy ex-girlfriend shit, but she wouldn’t let herself. She was determined to be more dignified than that. Besides, how would that look back at the precinct?
Maybe she should go to the shooting range. She didn’t even know when they closed tonight.
Or she could watch some porn and jill off? She needed to blow off some steam before she did something stupid.
There was a knock at her door. At this time of night? Probably Emilia from apartment five looking for her cat for the fourth time today. Or maybe Bryn from seven had locked himself out again. Poor kid was too young to be on his own. Glad for the interruption, she unbolted the door and swung it open.
Oh god.
Mr. Tall, Blond, and Beautiful filled her doorway. Her heart hit her throat and for a long moment she couldn’t say a damn thing.
“Hi,” he said, as though they’d seen each other yesterday.
“Hi,” she said back, stunned.
“You’re welcome to slam the door in my face. I just needed to see you.”
Needed to her see? This had to be a dream. “Why?”
His lips pressed into a grim line. “To prove to myself that you’re real.”
The landing filled with a breathless silence. His gaze drifted over her face as though he was trying to memorize it. The usual cocky expression he wore was gone, and in its place was stark longing.
Nervousness urged her to make a joke, but she was afraid that if she did he’d think she didn’t care. She cared. Her anger at his deception had burned out weeks ago, replaced by disappointment that he hadn’t considered her worth fighting for.
“I know our relationship started with a lie,” he said carefully, “but aside from the parts I couldn’t tell you, everything else was the truth. How you make me feel is the truth.” His blue eyes were earnest, and she wanted to just forget about all of their issues and go back to pretending.
A cop dating a thief would never work. She needed to tell him to leave, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Not when he’d finally shown up at her door. Bravado would be easier if she hadn’t fantasized a thousand times about him charging into her apartment and reclaiming her. This tentative hopefulness wasn’t what she’d dreamed about at all, and yet it was better. This felt more like love than lust. There was plenty of lust in the world—love was harder to come by.
“So aside from the fact that you are who you are,” she said, “and I am who I am, you want to pretend things between us are normal?”
“If things between us were normal, I would have stopped obsessing about you by now.”
She grimaced, then against her better judgment she backed up and gestured him in. He only moved into the kitchen far enough to let her close the door behind him.
“How did you get in downstairs?”
“It was propped open with a copy of War and Peace.”
“Oh. Sometimes Mr. Hines does that when he burns his dinner.”