Tempt Me: A First Class Romance Collection

by Jessica Hawkins

  “What are those?” I ask, walking around her desk. On the corner is a vase with—that fucker—vibrant purple and white roses complemented by baby’s breath and lavender.

  “They’re mine,” she says.

  I read the card. “This says Love, Rich.”

  “We’re in love,” she says and then shudders. “Nope. I can’t even say it without getting the creeps.”

  I ball my fist into my other hand. “Call him.”

  “What?”

  “Rich. Call him down here. Tell him it’s important.” I’m not sure how Halston will react to me confronting Rich, but at the moment, I don’t care. I was blindsided when Sadie chose Nathan, and this time, I intend to know what I’m up against.

  I can see Benny doesn’t want to make the call, but she does. After she hangs up, she says, “He’s coming.”

  “Don’t mention it to Halston.” I pick up Rich’s vase and hand it to her. “Trash these flowers. We need the vase for mine.”

  She gets up slowly, glancing at Halston’s office door. “Oh-kay . . .”

  “I’ll hang onto this,” I say about my bouquet as she leaves.

  I settle against the edge of Benny’s desk, cross my arms, and wait. I trust Halston. I don’t trust this guy. I’m not even sure how I feel about her dad from what I’ve heard. Halston is with me now, and I’m not going to sit back while Rich tries to sneak back in.

  I spot him weaving through the cubicles. I know it’s him. He looks younger than me—that’s a point in my column as far as I’m concerned. Halston isn’t just any girl. She’s a lot to handle and worth the effort. Her dad couldn’t do it, so he put her on drugs. Rich couldn’t do it, so he convinced her to stay on them.

  He slows down when he sees me, his eyes darting between my face and the roses.

  “Rich?” I ask, in case he’s thinking of retreating.

  He frowns. “Yeah? Who are you?”

  I set the bouquet on the desk beside me. They’ve served their purpose. I wait until he’s close enough that we won’t make a scene. “I’m Finn. Halston’s boyfriend.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” he says right away. “Well, she did, and still kind of does, and it’s me.”

  “Kind of?” I have to take a deep breath to keep from raising my voice. This guy needs to get a clue, and I guess I’ll have to give it to him. “What exactly does that mean? Be precise. Does she know she’s your girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  I shake my head. “Try again.”

  He stands up straighter. “Look, I don’t know who you are—”

  “I’m Finn.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time.” I scratch my jaw, fucking itchy stubble. “Halston tells me you’ve been coming around lately, trying to talk your way back into her life, bringing her shitty flowers. That stops here. Today.”

  “Does she know you’re talking to me?”

  “Not your business. Your business is this.” I hold up a finger and count off. “One—she’s not with you anymore. Two—she’s with me. Three—it’s over between you.”

  He narrows his eyes. “You don’t know shit about my relationship.”

  “Oh, hang on. There’s another.” I put up a fourth finger. “Stay the fuck away from her.” I stand, and he seems about half my size. “If she tells me again that you bothered her about anything not work related, I’ll come back, and I won’t be so pleasant. See, I’m in a pretty great mood at the moment, because I’ve got the prettiest fucking girl around on my arm. But if you try to take her from me, my mood will change.”

  “Do I want her back?” he asks. “Yes. But that’s the only part of the story you have right. As far as anyone in this office knows, as far as anyone in her life knows, I’m her boyfriend. Ask her. Her dad wants us together, and he always gets what he wants.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Are you coming to her house for Christmas?” he asks.

  I close my mouth. Christmas is four days away. I’ve avoided the topic, which has been easy since she hasn’t brought it up, either.

  “I didn’t think so,” he says. “Because I’ll be there.”

  Frustration tightens my muscles. He’s just trying to get under my skin. There’s no way Halston’s spending Christmas with her ex. “I didn’t call you here to make holiday plans. I’m telling you to back off.”

  “But—”

  “You should go. Now.”

  He looks behind me at Halston’s office. “We just want what’s best for her.”

  By we, I think he’s lumping himself in with her dad. It might take some effort to win her father over, but I’m up for the task. Rich, though? He’s gotta go. “So do I,” I say with a dismissive nod.

  He leaves. I wait until he’s out of sight, stand, and return into Halston’s office. She’s putting on her coat, so I help her into it. “Benny’s taking care of the roses.”

  She rises onto the balls of her feet, and I bend my head to kiss her. “Thank you,” she says. “The red ones are my favorite.”

  I win. Lavender-boy loses. On some level, I must’ve known that. Red roses lure you in with beauty and passion, which is why they suit Halston so well. Can they hurt you? Yes. If you don’t know how to handle them.

  Beautiful things should be that way, difficult to get to, to touch.

  Otherwise it’d be too easy for people to destroy them.

  I’ve sprouted a human vine. I’m sprawled out on the mattress, Halston intertwined with me. Her leg must be double-jointed or something, because it seems to wrap around mine twice. Her head rests on my arm, so I do a bicep curl that brings her mouth to mine. “You good?” I ask.

  She nods breathlessly. “So good.”

  Sex is a drug for us, plain and simple. It’s true for me, and it’s definitely true for her. Over the last few weeks she’s stopped drinking so much coffee. I’ll put a mug in front of her, and she’ll barely look up from her phone. Or she’ll take a sip, straddle my lap at the kitchen table, and forget all about it.

  I stroke her hair off her face until her panting subsides. It’s only ten o’clock at night. Before her, I read every night before bed, or my mind would keep me up into early morning hours. Luckily, great sex and great books have the same soothing effect.

  She runs a hand through my chest hair. “This is nice.”

  “What would you normally be doing now?” I ask. “If you were at your apartment. Before me?”

  “Hmm. I can’t remember a time before you.”

  I chuckle. “Twenty-five years, wiped out just like that.”

  She gets up on an elbow to look down at me. “I seriously can’t remember. My apartment feels like another planet right now. I guess I’d probably be watching Netflix or playing with my phone.”

  “Do you like to read?”

  “Depends. I kept books at Rich’s. When I stayed there, he usually read before bed.” She grimaces. “Sorry if that’s weird.”

  I shake my head, trying to be cool. It’s good for me to hear about Rich. Know your enemy and all that. I haven’t decided if I should bring up my conversation with him yesterday. There wasn’t even supposed to be a conversation. If it weren’t for his last comment about Christmas, I’d leave it. “What’s he like? Rich?”

  She flops down onto her back. “He’s, I don’t know. Even-tempered. Hard-working. A little insecure. His dad ignored him a lot.”

  “Why? Lots of siblings?”

  “He’s an only child, but his dad’s a big shot lawyer in Chicago who worked long hours. His mom had a prescription drug problem, still does, so his nanny did most of the heavy lifting.”

  I look up at the ceiling. An almost imperceptible crack runs along one side. My dad broke his back working long hours too, but it was out of necessity. He was away a lot, doing overtime at the factory where he worked. He was the opposite of a deadbeat dad—so much so that I rarely saw him. So, I was the man of the house. That’s what my parents told me, at least. I did
n’t take that responsibility lightly, but no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t man enough. I couldn’t keep my mom from spiraling downward, even though I rarely left her side. “Maybe Rich and I aren’t so different,” I say.

  “You feel different.” She curls back into me. Her lashes brush my chest when she looks up. “You never talk about your parents. All I know is you’re an only child.”

  “My pops passed a few years ago. My mom has . . .” Halston shifts against me, and I wrap my arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer. “She’s got something like Alzheimer’s. Brain damage from drinking so much. She stopped drinking when my dad died, but it was too late. She’s in a home now.”

  “I’m sorry.” Halston’s gray eyes get cloudy, but not the way they were when we met. I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss it, accepting her sympathy. “Was she an alcoholic when you were younger?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I didn’t understand that back then, and we didn’t call it that. But she was. She functioned all right. She’d get up, send me off to school with lunch, promise me it would be a good day, and sometimes it was.”

  “And the bad days?” Halston asks.

  “At school, I’d think of things we could do when I got home, like garden or sit at the dog park or rent a movie. On grocery days, I made up games to get all the items on the list.”

  She grins. “Sounds like fun.”

  “I guess I thought if I kept her busy enough, if I gave her a reason to be happy, she wouldn’t drink. I didn’t understand alcohol, but I knew when she went to this specific cupboard in the house, she’d turn into a different person. Once, we were in the middle of planting flowers in the front yard, and I was telling her about my day, and she just got up in the middle of it to pour herself a drink. You don’t forget that feeling.” My throat thickens. Am I blind to trust Halston to stick around when others haven’t? “Every day I tried to get her to choose me over that cupboard, but she chose the alcohol more often than not.”

  My watch on the nightstand ticks, the only noise for a while.

  “It wasn’t you,” Halston says gently. “She had an addiction.”

  “I know.”

  “I choose you every day.”

  I look down at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m like her,” she says. “I get like that, where I need something or I don’t feel right.”

  “You’re not like her,” I say. “Are you talking about the coffee?”

  She frowns. “You knew?”

  “Knew what?”

  “I tried stopping antidepressants about a year and half ago. I was doing well with Rich, and it’d been eight years since my mom’s death, so I wanted to see how it’d go. Doctor Lumby lowered my dosage, and I was fine for a few days, but then I started to get antsy.”

  “Did Rich know?”

  “I sat down with him and my dad and told them my decision. They weren’t thrilled, but they said they’d help.” She rolls onto her back, away from me. “Anyway, one night I was on my own and had a big meeting the next day, one of the most important of my career. I was anxious, so I had a glass of wine. Then another. I felt calmer and I pulled off the presentation so I celebrated.”

  “With wine?” I guess.

  She nods. “Nobody noticed how much I was drinking until I made a scene at a client dinner and got us kicked out of the restaurant. Of course, my dad and Rich were horrified and made me go back to my psychiatrist to tell him I needed the meds. And truthfully, I agreed. I’d never acted like that. Except once, when my recklessness—” She squints at the ceiling. “I would’ve started treatment again whether the three of them had made me or not.”

  My heart begins to race. Coffee, I can handle. Antidepressants too. But alcohol? I don’t know. I’ve been down that path once and have no interest in ever returning. When Halston showed up drunk at my place that night, I figured it was a one-time thing. “Do you still drink?”

  “Occasionally, but not like that. We upped my dosage, but for whatever reason, my patterns, as Rich calls them, stuck.”

  “Patterns?”

  “I weaned myself off wine with cigarettes, which is when I lost weight. But I hated the stink of smoke, so I started running and when I got bored with that, I went shopping. A lot. I had this incredible new body to show off, after all. My dad put an end to that when he saw my credit card bills, so I moved on to coffee.”

  “That explains why the first few times I saw you, you were never without your cup.”

  “For a while, I was drinking it all day—black coffee, lattes, cold brew, however I could get it.”

  My mind reels to catch up. I’d suspected something with the coffee, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. What does it mean that she’s nearly stopped drinking it since we met? Could something else have replaced it? Me, even? “Huh,” is all I can think to say.

  “Yeah.” She swallows audibly. “The writing too. I’ve kept a journal compulsively since I left the psych ward. My counselor there got me to start it. It’s just the past few weeks I haven’t been doing it. I’m sorry.”

  She tacks the apology on so quickly, I almost miss it. “Sorry? For what?”

  “I’m not what you thought. I didn’t know about your mom. If I had, I might’ve told you all this sooner. Or not. I would’ve been afraid to freak you out.”

  “Ah,” I say. “Tell me, what would’ve happened if I’d freaked out?”

  “You’d have left,” she says. “I wouldn’t have blamed you. But now that you love me, well . . .” She looks over at me. “Maybe you’re more open to accepting my weird behaviors.”

  I bring her back into my chest. “None of it sounds weird to me.”

  “How does it sound?”

  “Like you went through something traumatic, and nobody really took care of you after.” Any concern I just felt vanishes. At her core, she’s still the fifteen-year-old girl who blames herself for her mom’s death. I doubt anyone tried to convince her otherwise. She’s not obsessed with the photos or me or sex—not that I’d mind since I can’t get enough of her, either. She just stopped drinking coffee because I’m here now, and she doesn’t need it. I satisfy her in ways nobody else has been able. Like she said—she chooses me.

  “I’m going to take care of you now,” I say. “I promise.”

  “You already have. With you, I’m . . . I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Even when I was taking drugs specifically to be happy.”

  We both laugh softly, and I kiss the top of her head. I’m even more confident now that yesterday’s chat with Rich was necessary. Maybe he’s not bad for her, but he’s not right for her. She needs a man strong enough to carry some of her burden, committed enough not to drop it when it’s too heavy. He isn’t that. He couldn’t keep the patterns at bay like I do. He didn’t protect her. “Speaking of happy stuff,” I say, “we haven’t talked about Sunday.”

  “I know. I’ve been afraid to bring it up.”

  “Me too.” As if on cue, we both sit up. She gets my t-shirt from the end of the bed. I can’t stand that she still isn’t comfortable enough to be naked with me when we aren’t in the heat of the moment, but I’ll keep working on that. She crosses her legs, and I get a peek under the shirt right before she pulls it over her crotch. We just made love, but my cock stirs. When she tries to hide herself, I’m even more tempted by her.

  “Christmas,” she says seriously.

  “Yeah. I want to spend it with you.”

  She brightens. “I want to spend it with you too.”

  I take her hand. “But I can’t. I’ve thought about it from every angle, and I just can’t make it work.”

  “Oh.” Her posture droops. “I figured.”

  “Kendra’s boyfriend talked her into giving me three days at her parents’, which is why I haven’t had Marissa since earlier this month. It’s the only way I’ll get to watch Marissa open her presents. I didn’t get to spend last Christmas with her, so . . .”

  “Then you have to go.” Halston nods. “M
y dad’s expecting me anyway. I wasn’t sure of your plans, so I didn’t tell him otherwise.”

  “If I could bring you, I would.” I can’t. Kendra will never let me forget how I admonished her for introducing her five-week-long boyfriend to Marissa. I’ve known Halston less time than that. “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s okay.” She smiles. “I should be with my dad. It’s a difficult time of year for him because of the accident.”

  I squeeze her hand. “It’s difficult for both of you. Last year was hard for me too. Kendra had just learned about the affair.”

  “You’re lucky she came around.”

  “Yeah. Her boyfriend’s going to be good for her, I think.” This is as good an opening as I’m going to get. “So it’ll just be the two of you?”

  She opens her mouth but just looks at me.

  “Let me put it this way,” I say. “If I didn’t have Marissa to see, would you be bringing me home to meet the dad?”

  “No.” She plays with the hem of the shirt. “It wouldn’t be a good time. What with my mom’s stuff and all.”

  A movement outside catches my eye. The people in the apartment across the street have their curtains open and lights on. So do we. I wonder if they saw what we just did, if they notice us verging on an argument. “So that’s the only reason?” I ask, returning my attention to her.

  “No.”

  My throat gets dry. She’s obviously circumventing the truth, hiding something. “You promised me honesty, Halston.”

  She sucks in a breath and spits it out. “Rich will be at the house. His parents too.”

  I press my lips into a line. Rich was right, and I must’ve looked like a complete ass yesterday, peacocking around like I knew what was what. “Were you going to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  She frowns. “When I was ready. You don’t corner the market on complicated.”

  “I know, so I’m asking you to explain.”

  She rubs the tip of her nose. A light goes off in the apartment across the street. “He still thinks Rich and I are a couple,” she says. “Everyone does. His parents, our colleagues. Except Benny. She knows.”