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  And I know as he marks my lips, and takes what he needs from my mouth, that my quip about ninety days is going to be pretty goddamn funny later. The joke will be on me. Like 89.5 days sooner.

  When he kisses me like this, and he touches me like that, I fall harder for him.

  That’s what I’ve been doing all week, with the dates, and the coffee, and the breakfast, and the office visit, and the walking and talking and kissing, and the running. Through it all, I’ve been falling for this man again.

  My heart hammers with the realization. It crashes against my sternum, demanding attention. And I absolutely notice it. I feel everything—the pounding against my ribcage, the flush over my skin as it turns hot, the blood speeding through the freeways in my body. Most of all, I pay attention to how every molecule in me wants to get closer to him.

  These feelings scared me in the past.

  They scare me again now.

  But not as much, and not as deeply, and not enough to stop me. I didn’t expect to fall again so quickly, but here it is. I’m in his arms, and I know this is where I belong.

  At some point, we come up for air. His eyes are fiery. Blazing with need.

  He licks his lips then shakes his head like he’s clearing his thoughts. He pulls me up and cups my cheeks in his big hands. “I’m crazy for you, my Smurf.”

  “Oh Tyler,” I say with a happy murmur. “I’m so crazy for you.” Then I add, with a little wink, “Axl.”

  That earns me yet another kiss.

  As we leave, with his hand in mind, my heart stutters. For a moment, it feels like a skipped beat. Like fear. How have I let myself fall under his spell again so easily? But then, as I loop an arm around his shoulder and absently rub, kneading the knots as he moans his approval, the answer is clear.

  I believe in healing. It’s my job, but it’s also my mantra.

  I try to repair ailments for a living. I like to think I’ve healed the wounds inside me.

  Through forgiveness. Through moving on. Through letting go.

  Now, I’m letting go in a whole new way as I fall again and more wildly for this daring, cocky, funny, caring man with a mullet, a big mouth, and a heart of gold.

  I’m not sure I ever forgave my father for leaving us. But he’s my dad. He was supposed to stay.

  With Tyler, I have a chance to forgive in a way I never could with my dad. To move beyond the past. Looking back, I can see I made mistakes, too. I didn’t always open my heart when I should have. Sometimes, I kept my fears too close to the vest. I put up walls from time to time.

  And just as he has a new chance with me, I have a new chance to be the person I want to be. As we walk through the New York evening, hand in hand on our way to a wig party, I thread my fingers more tightly through his.

  I take a breath.

  Shore up my heart.

  Prepare to say something I haven’t told a soul. Not Penny, not Nicole, and certainly not my mom. “I’m trying to find my dad.”

  My chest pinches and my throat squeezes.

  Tyler slows his pace and meets my gaze. “Yeah? How’s that going?”

  His tone is so normal, so measured, so wonderfully calm, that it eases the pain of some of the shards and splinters inside me. “I hired a private detective. I wanted to see where he is. If he’s still married. If he has more kids.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “He’s in Canada.” With each sentence I utter out loud, I feel lighter and freer. As the sounds of the New York evening clatter around us, from cabs screeching by, to buses slogging fumes, to the click-clack of harried New Yorkers, I enter my happy zone.

  It’s a little bubble with this man who adored me once upon a time and seems to yet again. He makes me feel like all my heart is safe with him—the happy parts, and the scarred parts, and the ones that are still healing, too.

  “He’s still married.” I add, “But I’m waiting for more info.”

  “What will you do when you get it?”

  We stop at the crosswalk as the light turns red. I turn to him and shrug. “I honestly don’t know. Contact him, I suppose? See how he’s doing? What he’s up to?”

  Tyler nods and bends to dust a soft kiss on my forehead. “Let me help you when you get the info.”

  I pull back to meet his gaze. “Help me?”

  “Anything you need,” he says, the look in his eyes so earnest and caring. “There’s nothing I want more than to be there for you if you need me. If you need a shoulder to lean on before, during, or after that call, you know where to find me.”

  And I float.

  My sexy ankle boots are hoverboards, and I rise up and up and up on a cloud of sweetness and bliss. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my dad, but this man wants to be by my side. And that means something to me—something real and true.

  Soon we make it to Gigi’s home, and she throws open the door, inviting us into a swirl of music and laughter and appetizers and delicious culinary scents. Her home is awash in brightly colored heads, too. She’s donned a rainbow-striped wig herself, which she affectionately calls her Rainbow Dash hair, after one of the My Little Ponies. She introduces us to several of the friends and family stuffed inside her brownstone off Amsterdam Avenue.

  There are women with Afros, some with 80s perms, and one with a green wig that looks as bright as the Emerald City. A man wears a woman’s strawberry-blond TV anchor cut, and another man has a 1970s Anchorman-style mop top. This party is a festival of color and style and lots and lots of locks. It’s an homage to survival and to life.

  We nibble on appetizers, and we drink champagne, and we toast with Gigi to kicking cancer’s ass. Soon, Tyler and I find ourselves in a little nook of the kitchen.

  “I won an awesome new deal at work,” he says, then tells me about one of his clients and how he pulled off a big contract.

  I raise my glass. “You’re amazing. You take these chances and they pay off.”

  He nods. “My cousin calls me Bungee Jump Tyler. I’m owning the nickname. Carving out my niche as one helluva daring attorney.”

  Something occurs to me. Something I haven’t thought much about before, but now I’ve got to know. “If we’d stayed together before, do you think you’d be one helluva daring attorney?”

  He tilts his head. “Why do you ask?”

  I lean in closer to him as an idea takes hold. “I just wonder—if we’d stayed together would we be doing what we’re doing right now? Maybe we wouldn’t be.”

  He raises an eyebrow and nods, as if considering it. “You think so?”

  I hold my hands out wide. “Who knows? Maybe you wouldn’t have gone into entertainment law. You love what you do, but maybe if we’d stuck to the path we mapped out, maybe we’d be on those same paths still. Maybe we wouldn’t have taken the chance to diverge and try new things?”

  “Like a new branch of law for me and a whole new career for you?”

  I bounce on my toes, energy coursing through me. “Look, I didn’t like our breakup, but maybe we were supposed to break up so we could become the people we are. I’m so damn happy to not be a lawyer and instead do massage for a living and run my own business. And you—you’re practicing a type of law you didn’t even plan to go into.”

  “And our split let us come back together as the people we are today. Like, this is how we’re supposed to be with each other?”

  “And with ourselves, too. Maybe we needed to be pulled apart to become our better selves.”

  He sets down his champagne glass, loops his arm around my waist, and tugs me close. “Delaney,” he says, his voice raspy, “what you just said is another reason why I’m not just crazy for you.”

  He takes a beat, and I study his face, trying to understand what he meant. “Not just crazy for me?”

  “I’m not,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s way more than that, angel. It’s so much deeper. I’m in love with you all over again.”

  I melt into his touch and breathe out words I haven’t said
since him. “I’m so in love with you, too.”

  23

  Tyler

  * * *

  Ask me a few weeks ago if I’d be riding in my elevator, molded to Delaney, kissing the hell out of her.

  The answer would have been a blank stare.

  A few weeks ago I couldn’t have conceived she’d be back in my life.

  But the second I saw her in the park the other week, my future turned one, two, three clicks in a new direction. And she was that direction. The future I once wanted desperately to have then stupidly torpedoed has boomeranged back to me. I’ve been granted a chance to do everything right this time around.

  As I kiss her while the elevator chugs upward in my building, I’m struck by the awareness of how absolutely fucking lucky I am.

  I’m here because of random luck.

  If I hadn’t gone to the park with my niece . . . if I hadn’t walked past that dude with the Rubik’s Cube . . . if I hadn’t opened my eyes at just that moment . . .

  The elevator dings and the door opens on my floor.

  A quick trip down the hall and I unlock my apartment. A strange flurry of tension settles over me. But as I watch Delaney’s eyes roam around my living room, taking in the crisp white walls, the blond hardwood floors, the light airy feel of my home, I realize I’m not tense at all.

  I’m nervous.

  I want her to like my home.

  I want her to feel at home here.

  I want her to be a part of my life.

  She turns in a circle then meets my gaze. “I approve. Now show me the bedroom.”

  I grin, my heart thumping happily. “As you wish,” I say, taking her hand, and walking down the short hallway to the bedroom. We stop just outside the door, and I adopt a serious expression as I set my hands on her shoulders. “I must warn you, though. I have something in here that’s quite rare in Manhattan homes.”

  “A sex swing?”

  “I hardly think that’s rare. I have”—I lower my voice to a stage whisper—“a king-size bed.”

  Her brown eyes twinkle. “Don’t get me excited.”

  I slide a hand under her dress, up her thigh. “I’m pretty sure you’re already excited.”

  “I meant about the bed.”

  I sweep out my arm toward the furniture in question. “Then, by all means, let’s get you in my bed.”

  She swats my shoulder then steps through the doorway and looks around. The room is sparse by design. A bed with a white comforter, a bureau, and a lamp. Some books, some frames, a signed Los Angeles Dodgers baseball, and a few odds and ends.

  She turns to me, her eyebrows arched in praise. “Let’s put that king-size bed to use.”

  And those are the hottest words I’ve heard in a long time because it involves my favorite thing—making her come. That’s my first, second, and third priority as I yank off my wig and the bandana in one fast tug.

  “No more Axl or Poison lookalike wig, but I’m still going to talk dirty to you,” I say and grasp her hips.

  “You better.”

  I strip her. Roping my arms around her, I slide the zipper down the back of her dress. She shivers as I let the material slip off her shoulders, over her arms, and the rest of the way down. I hold her hand as she steps out of the dress.

  Before she can bend to pick it up—since I know she will—I grab the dress and fold it gently on top of the bureau.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  “No. Thank you for wearing this lovely ensemble under the dress.”

  That would be a white lace bra that lifts her breasts beautifully. My dick thumps hard against the zipper of my jeans as my eyes drink in her sheer white lace panties. I want them off so badly.

  She lifts her hand to her hair, fingering the sapphire ends. “Wig on or off?”

  “Don’t care,” I say, as I grab the tail of my T-shirt and yank it over my head. I’ve got a one-track mind. “All I need is for you to get those panties off and let me finally go down on you.”

  “You say that like I’ve been depriving you for ages.”

  I reach between her legs, dragging my fingers against the wet panel of her panties. She gasps, her gorgeous mouth falling open in an O.

  “Considering I want little more than to bury my face between your legs, then yes, I’d say deprivation is what you’ve been cruelly practicing.”

  “Then we should end your cruel punishment.”

  I stroke her slippery wetness as I back her up to the bed. She loops her arms around my neck and tilts her chin up. She says my name like she’s going to tell me the secret to her world. “Tyler. I have a confession.”

  I pull down her panties. “I’m all ears.”

  “I’ve been getting off to you for the last few years,” she says as I help her step out of them.

  A groan rumbles up my chest. “You have?”

  She nods. “You’ve had some kind of voodoo hold on me. I tried to fight it, but I swear, every time, it was you. Your face, your voice, your hands.” Her tone goes gravelly, and I’ve never heard her more turned on. It makes me harder. Makes me hotter, until my skin burns with desire for her. “And your tongue. I’m obsessed with your tongue and your mouth and your lips.”

  I groan, rough and husky, then seize her jaw and stare in her eyes. “I think you’re the one talking dirty to me.”

  “It was always you. I always thought of you. You made me feel . . . so much.”

  “Angel, you make me feel everything.” I dip my face to her neck, bring my teeth to her skin, and nip.

  She yelps playfully. “That’s why I made you wait.”

  I wrench back. “Because you thought of me?”

  She nods then extracts herself from me, unhooking her bra and sinking down to the mattress. “Because I knew once you did that to me, there would be no going back. It was always my favorite thing. It always made me feel . . . vulnerable. More than sex. More than anything.”

  “You’ve got to know it’s okay to be vulnerable with me. It’s okay to let yourself go.” I bend lower and park my palms on the edge of the mattress, pinning her with my eyes. “I love your abandon. I love it so much. Almost as much as I fucking love you. And I love how you respond to me.”

  She falls back to her elbows. She’s naked save for her shoes. I run my hand along the leather of her boots. “I fucking love that you left these on.”

  She scoots farther onto the bed, inching nearer the headboard. I climb up and prowl after her. She rests her head on some pillows. Then she parts her lovely legs and invites me to heaven.

  And my dick sings hallelujah.

  I scrub a hand over my jaw, marveling—just fucking marveling at this woman.

  “Your pussy is so fucking pretty, Delaney,” I say, as I press my hands to her ankles.

  She lets her knees fall open. I can’t do anything but stare helplessly. She’s so wet, so slick, so pink and perfect. I drag a finger over the strip of hair. “Love this little landing strip.”

  She shivers, then shrugs playfully. “I can’t embrace the bare-as-a-bottom look.”

  “No need to when this is hot as fuck.” I graze a finger through her wet folds, and her sexy smile disappears. It’s replaced by an exquisite cry.

  Already.

  Al-fucking-ready.

  This woman.

  She’s mine. She’s fucking mine.

  I drop my face between her legs and flick my tongue across that slick heat.

  She arches her hips instantly. “Oh God.”

  I moan as I taste her. As I lick her. As I fucking savor the sweetness that I’ve missed. My God, she’s like opium. She’s addictive. She’s incredible. I nearly forgot how much I love going down on this woman, but I’m never forgetting it again. Because we are perfect like this. I flick my tongue against the delicious rise of her clit, and that winds her up. She bucks up against me.

  “Tyler,” she groans. “It’s so good.”

  I raise my eyes and watch her every reaction as I kiss her sweetness. Her n
aked body moves like a dancer’s when I do this to her. She’s languid and loose and so fucking sensual, meeting every lick, every stroke. Her lithe limbs twist, and she spears her fingers in her hair. It’s like a fucking dirty ballet, the way we are when I eat her out. There’s never been a doubt in my mind how good we are together in bed, but especially like this, ever since I introduced her to the joys and delights of my mouth. That first time, it was like she didn’t know what hit her, but she wanted it. She wanted it badly. In my car one evening on the side of a dark road, I pulled her jeans to her knees and told her I’d make her feel so fucking good.

  She was nervous, biting her lip even as she nodded.

  Now she’s the lovely junkie she became with me, and I want her addicted to my mouth for all time.

  I groan as I lick a line up her wetness, my dick hardening even more in my jeans. I’ve got to free that bastard soon. It’s tight and uncomfortable, but I will endure because . . . this.

  Her.

  She lets go of her hair and slams her hands to the covers by her side, her fists curling around the white comforter. “Go wild, baby,” I whisper, as I slide my hands under her ass, cupping her cheeks. “Give me all you’ve got.”

  She grabs my hair and sinks her fingers deep into my strands, pulling my face closer to her wondrous pussy. She grows wetter with each lick, each flick. I don’t need to use my fingers with Delaney. She loves the tongue. She’s always loved just the tongue.

  “God, it’s incredible,” she cries out, then lets go of my head with one hand. She brings her right hand up to her tits and starts kneading one. “You drive me so wild.”

  Oh, fuck.

  There is nothing hotter in all creation than a woman playing with her tits while you go down on her. It’s the ultimate sign of her abandon, proof of how exquisitely turned on she is. She’s so fucking aroused, she has to touch herself.

  And she flies off the edge like that. Squeezing her breast, moaning my name, arching up into my motherfucking face. I can barely breathe, and I don’t care. I’m where I want to be. I’m a live wire. Everything in me sizzles as her pleasure floods my tongue.

  “Oh God, I think I’m coming.”