I told Natasha to take the day off, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when she was waiting in front of my apartment in the company car. She had her hair pulled up into a business-like bun, which almost made her look professional.

I leaned in the passenger window and reached to rub something purple and sticky from the corner of her mouth. I licked my finger and grinned. “Toast with jelly for breakfast?” I asked.

She cleared her throat while she rubbed at the spot. “I don’t know how that got there. I must’ve bumped into someone’s breakfast on my way out this morning.”

“Of course.” I pulled open the door and got in. “That’s the most likely explanation, by a long shot. So, mind telling me why you aren’t taking the day off like I asked?”

She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and stared at the road. “Because I’m not going to let what happened last night in the office make things awkward. Whatever that was… it happened, and it doesn’t matter how it happened. I’m still your intern and I’m going to do my job.”

“Even if your job is putting up with my shit until you quit out of sheer frustration?”

She relaxed her grip on the wheel a little and grinned. “And how is that different than any other job?”

“Well, I’m not paying you, for starters.”

“There is that,” she admitted. “But internships are the new slavery. If you’re under thirty and you want a job, you’ve got to be lucky or talented out of your mind to avoid them.”

“Don’t forget the forty and over crowd,” I added. “They don’t get hired either because they’re more expensive than you young slaves, or we just assume they don’t know how to work email.”

She thought about that for a second. “I guess you picked just about the only way to make it in the world, didn’t you? Become your own boss and make your own rules.”

“Until you meet somebody who refuses to play by them,” I said. I let my eyes linger on her long enough for her to understand my meaning.

She looked down, chewing her lip in a way that was quickly becoming my kryptonite. “Natasha… I’m sorry about last night.”

She shook her head, quickly straightening and staring back at the road again. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s what it was. Sex is just sex, anyway, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though it had felt like it was going to be a whole lot more than sex. It had felt like I was about to throw away all the precautions I’d been taking with my heart for the last two years, like I was going to dive in head first and say screw the consequences. But then I saw Valerie’s number on my phone. She only ever called when something was wrong with Caitlyn, and I knew it was a call I needed to take.

"I'll be blunt," I said. "I asked you to stay home because I'm going to see my ex-girlfriend today. She was the one who called last night."

Natasha’s face fell, but she was quick to smooth her expression back to neutral. “Okay. Where does she live?”

“Natasha,” I said. “I can get my driver to do this. You don’t have to—”

“I’m just your intern,” she said. “Right? Why should I care if I have to drive you to see your ex?”

“I’m just saying you don’t have to. You can take the day off.”

“No,” she said. She started the car and merged into traffic, and I was almost grateful that she didn’t talk for the rest of the drive.

We parked just inside the north end of Tribeca. Natasha glanced around and then gave me a curious look. “Isn’t this the part of the city where people like Leonardo Dicaprio live? Was your ex a movie star?”

“No,” I said. It wasn’t easy, but I kept the bitterness from my voice. “A waitress, actually.”

The curiosity on Natasha’s face deepened. “And she lives here?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay, you win. I’m curious. Are you going to make me beg, or do I need to resort to blackmail? Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the torn panties. Last I checked, destruction of personal property was a pretty big deal in a legal court.”

Her words immediately brought me back to last night, and I felt the rush all over again. She had tasted so goddamn good, but the farther I got from what happened, the more it felt like it was the kind of experience we couldn’t repeat. Valerie’s call had come at the worst possible moment, and it felt like some kind of warning from the universe to avoid making the same mistake again.

Even though nothing about Natasha felt the same. Still, there were multiple paths to the same destination, and every path I’d ever started with a relationship or a commitment had lead to the same dead end.

“There’s nothing to tell, really. I was stupid and thought she was into me. Turned out, she was into my bank accounts. Literally. I was the dumbass who decided we were far enough along to trust her, and once she’d taken as much as she wanted for herself, it was too late. I wasn’t going to drag her into a legal battle because it’d mean dragging her daughter along for the ride.”

“You have a daughter?” asked Natasha, who stopped walking suddenly and put her hand on my arm.

“No,” I said. “Caitlyn was Valerie’s daughter from a previous relationship. She’ll be nine next month.”

“And you let Valerie get away with robbing you to protect her daughter? Jesus,” she said to herself. “You must really care about Caitlyn.”

“She’s a good kid, but no judge in his right mind would give me any kind of visitation rights.” I chuckled, studying the ground as we walked. “To tell the truth, I think I had stopped feeling right about things with Valerie before I ever found out, but somehow I knew she’d take Caitlyn away if I ever broke things off. She was spiteful like that, and she knew how to get me where it hurt.”

“I’m sorry. Is that what the phone call was about? Does she want more money?”

I was surprised again by how perceptive Natasha was. It was easy to see the pretty face and the fit body and think she was like so many women in this city—pretty on the outside and empty on the inside. She had a way of constantly reminding me she was far more than that, though. “More or less,” I said.

“So she lives in Tribeca but she’s still begging you for money?”

“You know what? Why don’t you come inside when I go to see her. I think it’ll be easier to understand if you see for yourself.”