First, shower. I’ve been sitting in the same fucking spot for more than a day, and I’m not going to get Erin back by showing up at her apartment and looking like I’ve not slept and smelling like a barn. Though there’s probably no way to look like I’ve slept without actually…sleeping. I don’t have time for that.
Quickly, I shower, and I throw on clothes before grabbing my keys and heading out the door. This is the beautiful thing about living in Manhattan. The city is still alive and awake, though quieter. Another upside is that there’s absolutely no trouble getting a cab at this time of night.
I feel nearly delirious as I hail a cab and quickly pull up the email from Michael with Erin’s contract. Hopefully it will be one of the last times I ever see him after I fire him. Which will be after I sleep so I can make sure that I’m doing it correctly and give my lawyers and my editor time to work out a deal. But her contract has her address, and I rattle it off to the cabbie.
What I’m about to do is more important than sleeping.
Late night construction makes it take longer than I expect for the middle of the night, so when I pull up to Erin’s building it’s nearly five AM. I push into the building as an early morning runner comes out. Good thing I showered so it didn’t look like a drunk was trying to break into the lobby. That wouldn’t have gone well.
I climb the stairs two at a time until I’m on her floor, and then find her door. This is it. My stomach plummets. I need her to hear me, and I need her to forget what an ass I was because she’s the best thing that’s ever fucking happened to me.
I need her.
With one last breath, I bang on the door.
10
Erin
Thunder wakes me out of a dead sleep. That’s weird. We honestly don’t get thunder that often. Or if we do, it fades into the background of trains and cars and whatever noise is plaguing the city that day.
Laying my head back down, it comes again, startling me. Wait a second. That’s not thunder. Someone is banging on the door to my apartment?
I lean over and tap my phone. Five in the morning. What the actual hell?
More than once I almost trip in the dark on the way to the door. Please don’t let this be the police telling me that someone I know has died or that there’s a crazy person in the building. Of all the things, I really don’t need that right now.
No, it’s something that I need even less than my upstairs neighbor being murdered. Malik stands outside my door, disheveled and exhausted. He’s leaning against the doorframe, just waiting. After a minute, he knocks again. It’s softer this time, like he’s on the verge of giving up on the idea that I’m actually in here.
Damn it. I shouldn’t be curious, but I am. “What are you doing here, Malik?”
His head flies up, and I see him look directly at the peephole where I’m looking. “I need to talk to you, Erin. Please.”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I do.”
I shake my head. “And you didn’t think that maybe it could wait until normal ‘humans are awake’ hours?”
“No. It can’t wait.”
With a sigh, I open the door and unlock it. “What the fuck, Malik? You just fire me and break up with me out of the blue? You can’t just—”
Malik surges through the door and in one movement he wraps me up in his arms and his mouth slants across mine. He tastes like mint and coffee, and I shouldn’t want this, but I do. My body is a traitor and I melt under the way that he’s touching me, fully unable to form words or figure out if I want to push him away or make him come closer.
He shoves the door shut behind us and spins me so that I’m pushed up against it. God, it’s so good that I can’t breathe. And I also can’t do this. With the short time we spent together, I fell too hard and too deep for me to let him bounce in and out of my life. I won’t be able to take that.
“Malik,” I push my hands against his chest. “Stop.”
He pulls back just enough to stop kissing me but not enough to separate our bodies. His forehead rests against mine, and we catch our breath together.
“I can’t do this,” I say gently. “I can’t be a yo-yo for you. I can’t go back and forth because it will kill me, okay?” I hate how sad my voice sounds. But he deserves to know. He hurt me, and it still feels like I’m walking around with a wound in my chest because of him. That’s not something that I can just ignore.