“Right here.” I tapped my lips, and she obliged with a kiss.
When she released me, she glanced up at the leaded glass panes of the greenhouse roof. “It stopped raining.”
“Good. You won’t get pneumonia. Can I walk you home?”
Another happy sigh. “No, I think I’ll enjoy a minute alone before I see Ivy. Are you … are you okay if I tell her? About us?”
“Sure, so long as she doesn’t get all nosy about us.”
“I can’t promise that,” she said on a laugh, followed by a pause. “What should I tell her we are?”
My heart lurched. “Whatever you want us to be.”
“Easy. Uncomplicated. Casual. No strings, no expectations.”
“I can do all those things.”
“It’s just that I haven’t been single in a long time,” she continued, her nerves plain and bare despite her efforts to keep them tamped down. “A few weeks ago, I lived with a man. Technically, I sort of still do—I still have a few pieces of furniture there. I don’t have my own place, and I’m not even sure how I feel about relationships, never mind—”
“I can do all those things,” I repeated a little slower. “You don’t need to explain.”
She relaxed in my arms. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” I said and meant it.
This was my specialty—providing a diversion. I’d trained my whole adult life for this. I could be Lila’s soft place to land after falling like she had. I could catch her, give her comfort.
I ignored the fleeting thought that I could give her more, if she wanted it. But the truth rang eternal—I knew what things were and what they weren’t. I knew that in this scenario, I could be the one to get hurt if I found myself dumb enough to get my feelings involved. So I’d enjoy Lila when I had her, and I’d let the rest go, for her sake and for my own.
I’d take what I could get.
And I’d keep on pretending it would be enough.
LILA
I kissed him goodbye one final time before he nudged me out the door of Longbourne, his hair perfectly ruffled and his lips swollen from kisses.
As I walked away, I checked my phone, realizing it’d been hours of kisses. I felt like I’d blacked out and lost time, unable to parse the passage of time and the state of my person—disheveled, untwisted, loose and lighter than I’d been in a week. A year. More maybe.
Kash had erased my brain like a whiteboard. I could barely remember what I’d been so consumed with a few short hours ago. God, old me was uptight. Past Lila was a drag, and new, improved Lila was bold and wise and happy.
Happy.
After the last few weeks, the sensation shocked me. Intoxicated me. The old adage was right—the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else. Preferably someone hotter, with a substantial ass and a smile that turned my ovaries into a toaster oven, who treated me like his sole purpose in life was to give me orgasms. Piles and mounds and dump trucks full of orgasms and kisses and smiles and touching of all the skin, all the muscles.
All the Kash.
I strutted up Bleecker without care that I probably had mascara all over my face and my hair looked like a dirty mop. Because Kash made me feel like a million and one bucks. And tomorrow night, he’d do it again.
And if I was lucky, again and again.
I wasn’t even myself, and I couldn’t find it in me to care. And why should I? All my life I’d done what I’d thought I should rather than what I wanted—Brock might have been right in that—but that first shot started a war in my heart, and there was no going back. There was no undoing it, no unringing of the bell. I was the new and improved Lila who damned the rules and did what she pleased.
Presently including Kash Bennet.
God, he was perfect. Attentive in ways that had left me flushed, not just for what he’d done to my body, but in the small ways he made me feel like the only woman on the planet. Buttoning my shirt with care. Holding my face like it was porcelain in his palm. That look in his eyes that promised he could be whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted him.
And oh, how I wanted him. After being without for so long, I didn’t think my body would be slaked so easily. Already I could see our ‘day off’ looming, and felt like a hoarder, vowing to stockpile as much Kash as I could tomorrow night to hold me over.
Tomorrow. It seemed like a lifetime until tomorrow.
Up the building’s stairs I floated like a loose balloon, and through the front door I went, smiling like I’d just learned how.
At my entrance, Ivy and Dean froze in the kitchen, dumbstruck as they looked me over.
“Hello,” I chirped, setting my bag on a dining chair.
Dinner sizzled in a pan, neglected by Dean, whose dark forehead furrowed, spoon midair, head cocked like a bird. Ivy blinked, dishes in hand and blue eyes narrowed in confusion, red hair piled on her head and belly so comically large, she was a marvel of physics. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t about to tump over.
Her gaze combed over me, head to foot. “What happened to you? You’re filthy.”
I cleared my throat to stifle a giggle. “I got caught in the rain on my way to Longbourne.”
“And?” she prompted, rolling her hand to get me to continue.
“And Tess wasn’t there. Kash was.”
My face must have said it all because Ivy gasped, hands flying to her open, smiling mouth and auburn brows brushing her hairline.
“Oh my God!” she squealed behind her fingers. “No! You didn’t!”
Dean still looked confounded. “Didn’t what?”
“Sleep with Kash Bennet,” I said archly.
Ivy broke into a stretch of giggles, doing the Flashdance toward me, and I giggled right back, the two of us like a couple of teenagers who’d finally gotten kissed by Billy Mendez.
She stopped, holding her belly and laughing, her cheeks high and flushed. With her free hand, she snagged one of mine and dragged me in the direction of her bedroom.
“You’re gonna tell me everything, unabridged.”
“Congratulations?” Dean said as we passed, holding up his gigantic hand, which I slapped hard enough to sting in salute of the highest of fives.
“Thanks!” I kicked off my shoes with a thunk, trotting behind my sister, who moved much faster than someone in her state should be able to.
Once in her room, she whipped me like a derby girl toward her bed and closed the door.
“Kash Fucking Bennet!” she squealed, and we broke into giggles again.
I flopped on her bed with a sigh, staring at the ceiling with a stupid grin on my face. “You were right. I needed a rebound.”
She climbed onto the bed with an oof. “I like being right. God, you know—Luke was historically the easiest of the Bennets to talk to, to get with. But Kash? I think Kash is hotter. Don’t tell Luke I said so.”
“I think it’s that he seems unattainable. Luke is easy, but Kash has another layer to him, you know? What you see with Luke is what you get. But Kash plays it closer to the vest. He’s more…I dunno. Mysterious.”
Ivy snorted a laugh. “Yeah, Kash is a real international man of mystery with his pun T-shirts and dirty jeans.”
I tittered. “Oh my God, seriously, what is wrong with me? I cannot stop giggling.”