Life went on, more or less. I’d woken up from a particularly enjoyable dream to a temporarily crushing disappointment to realize it was only fantasy more than once. Ever since I told Natasha to stay out of my life, it seemed that I had to remind myself she was gone every morning. She wouldn’t be waiting in the progressively more beaten up company car in front of my apartment. We wouldn’t have flirtatious exchanges on the drive to work. She wouldn’t harass me about the fact that I wasn’t paying her or that she had no real work to do.

She was gone. It was strange to me that in just a couple weeks, Natasha had made such a strong impact on my life that her absence could feel so staggering.

I knew I should be mad. Furious, even. I should be hurt. Maybe I was all those things to some degree, but nothing struck me as strongly as the feeling of loss. I knew I couldn’t let myself go back to her, but I hated that reality.

So when I stepped outside my building that morning, I wasn’t expecting to see Natasha. I definitely wasn’t expecting her to be holding some god-awful ugly sort of quilt full of hand-sewn pockets.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said seriously, apparently oblivious to the looks she was drawing from people walking to work. “But I’m sorry, and I know you love to organize things, so I made you something to keep your socks all sorted out. There’s all these pockets, so you can put a pair in each pocket or just organize them by color…” her voice trailed off a little and she bit her lip. “I wasn’t sure how many pairs of socks you have, but I could make you another if this doesn’t look like enough pockets.”

I took the thing from her and frowned at it. I was dying to say fuck it right there, to sweep her into my arms and kiss her, to tell her all was forgiven. But I had broken ties before she had a chance to make the wound as deep as it could have been. I’d gotten out, and forgiving her would be opening myself right back up for the dagger to the back I knew would inevitably come.

As much as I wanted to thank her and kiss her, I only took the blanket and walked to the car where my driver waited. I showed her the minimal respect of neatly folding it and setting it on my seat instead of tossing it thoughtlessly in the car, but I didn’t dare give her more than that.

She was there every day after that, like a sad, homesick puppy. Sometimes she brought me coffee, and it never had sugar. She always brought a perfect banana. She even wrote my name all over it just like I had taken to doing once she ate mine by mistake that first day. I spent longer than I would’ve ever admitted sitting in my office, studying the girlish curves of her handwriting, as if they held some secret answer about whether this was true regret or just regret for being caught.

Most days, she said nothing. She just waited with the gifts and watched me with those big, innocent eyes when I took them. Every day, it was harder to resist. I had to force myself to say nothing, because I knew if I spoke, I’d risk saying what was in my heart instead of what was wise.

She made me so many handcrafted organization devices, decorations, and tools, that I started to wonder how she could possibly think of anything else. After a few weeks, my apartment was packed with things she had made me, most of which I found surprisingly useful, especially the contraption she put together out of hangers to hold all my ties in a way I could see without having to flip through them. Of course, I’d already had a pretty good system, but somehow, knowing Natasha had dreamed it up made me instantly prefer her methods over mine every time.

I was a man of routine, and pretty soon, she became my favorite part of my routine. I didn’t wait all day for the banana I had before lunch. I waited for the glimpse of her I’d get in the morning.

The best gift she brought me was Caitlyn. It had been a few weeks since she started the routine of waiting outside for me, but she was holding Caitlyn’s hand when I came out instead of something she’d made for me.

Caitlyn made an excited squeal when she saw me and rushed to hug my legs. Natasha watched, even though she was trying to make it look like she was studying the ground.

“How did you pull this off?” I asked. It was probably the most I’d said to her since this whole thing started, and Natasha looked surprised to hear me talking to her.

Caitlyn answered for her. “I’m taking journalism classes. Natasha messaged me online and said she was a friend of yours, that if I convinced my mom to hire her as a tutor, she’d bring me over and we could hang out!”

“I’m pretty sure this is illegal,” I said, but still hugged Caitlyn back tightly.

“Well,” said Natasha. “It’s probably only just a little bit illegal, if it is. But it’s worth it, right?”

I got to meet with Caitlyn again the following Wednesday, and Natasha said we’d do the same on Friday, but when Friday morning came, Natasha was nowhere to be seen. I waited outside for half an hour before I got worried. Natasha never quite grew out of her tendency to be late for every reason under the sun, and I figured she’d just missed a train or overslept, but I finally decided to call her.

It felt like a kind of surrender to reach out to her after all this time with her waiting outside my door, but I knew she deserved at least that much, if not far more by now. She had betrayed my trust, but she was going beyond what I thought just about any woman would to make amends for it.

She didn’t pick up.

I tried her brother next, but he didn’t pick up, either.

I called my secretary and check for an emergency contact in Natasha’s file, wondering if I could possibly catch her parents somehow, but had no luck.

I had no choice left but to overreact, and I had my driver take me to the nearest hospital.

“Bruce?” said Natasha.

She was waiting in the lobby with red, puffy eyes. She rushed to me and hugged me tight. “It’s Braeden. He got kicked out by my parents when his days in the hotel ran out, and he tried to sleep in the park again. He got in a fight and there was a lot of blood, but they’re saying it might not be anything except a few lacerations on his scalp.”

“Good. Your brother is an asshole, but I’m glad he’s not dead.”

Natasha laughed. “I’ll make sure I tell him your exact wording on that.”

I smirked, and it felt strange, like after the weeks of our strange, nearly silent dance, we had stepped into a moment of time where it was like nothing had ever happened.

“You know,” I said after a moment. “If somebody really wanted me to forgive them. You’d think they would remember how much I enjoyed it the last time they got me a banana split.”

Excitement flashed in her eyes. “Maybe somebody didn’t think they would be able to pull the same move twice.”

“Then somebody underestimated how much I love banana splits.”

“Are you telling me I could’ve saved all the theatrics and gotten you to forgive me with a banana split from the start?”

"No. I'm saying you're adorably persistent, and I already didn't want to be pissed at you from the start, so you've done enough, and now I am just hungry for dessert before I forgive you."

"And you tell me this now, when I am stuck in the hospital worrying about my brother?" "Your brother sat half-naked on every conceivable surface of my apartment, moved my things around, and left a stench I haven't been able to completely remove. But if you want to make sure he's alive before we get dessert, I can respect that."

She leaned into me, forehead resting on my chest and let out a long, shuddering breath. “You mean it?”

“Yes. I don’t know how your parents raised him, but he has no manners. It was unbelievable.”

“No, you big idiot,” she said with a small laugh. “You really mean you’ll forgive me after what I did?”

“I’ll enjoy having an excuse to be a hardass on you again. You’ll need to accept that for now.”

She nodded. “Gladly.”

I sat across from Natasha in a trendy little cafe a few blocks away from the hospital. A banana split was between us, and I was digging into it like I hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“Did you forget how to find your lunch without your trusty intern or what?” she asked.

I tried to slow down a little as I laughed at myself. “Well, you could say I’ve been a little distracted.”

“By?”

“Remember the part where I said I’d enjoy being a hardass again?”

“Yes…”

“It means you don’t get to ask the questions here. Reporter.”

She cringed at that, as if she wasn’t quite ready to forgive herself for everything that happened, even if I was.

“Bruce, I—”

I held up my palm. “You don’t need to explain. I’ve got an apartment full of shit you made for me with your bare hands. I’ve got weeks of proof that you’re willing to do whatever it takes to prove you hate how this turned out. Call me simple, but I’ve got enough. Really, there’s only one thing I still want.”

Her eyebrows crept up as I let my gaze linger on her lips. I wondered what she thought I was going to say I wanted. Her. A kiss. A night with her alone. Another chance. I wanted all of those things, but I couldn’t make myself say it, not yet.

“The banana split,” I said. “I want the last bite.”

I almost laughed out loud when I saw how much she deflated.

“What?” I asked. “Were you hoping I was going to say something else?”

“Nope. I just wanted that last bite, too.” She was lying out of her teeth, but so was I, so I let it slide. This wasn’t the kind of lying that shook the foundations of a relationship. It was the kind of lying that hid happy secrets.

I scooped it up on my spoon and then leaned forward so I could reach across the table to hold it at her lips. “Open up, intern,” I said.

She gave me a wicked little smile and parted her lips to take the bite. I couldn't help remembering the way her lips had looked just as good when they were wrapped around my cock, and my heart rate quickened at the memory. What was it about dessert that got me so goddamn horny?

“You know,” she said when she swallowed the last of the bite. “They say you know a guy is the one when he gives you the last bite of his favorite meal.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s what they say. But I say you know he’s the one when you want him so badly you’ll embarrass yourself for weeks on end just for the slightest chance of winning him back.”

“Winning me, now, are you? Make no mistake about it, Natasha. You’re the prize here. You always were. The only question was whether the price of taking you for myself was too high or not.”

“So you’re saying you only wanted me if I was cheap?”

“I only wanted you if I thought you wouldn’t make a fool out of me. Over the last few weeks, I think I’ve come to realize I want you either way. Whether you make me into a fool or not. I just want you.”

“That sounded dangerously close to something a sweet, thoughtful man would say. What have you done with the cold, calculating Bruce I know?”

“Maybe I’m only saying nice things so that you’ll go to bed with me.” I felt my own breath catch a little after I had time to digest my own words. Then I felt my heartbeat race when a slow, seductive smile spread across her lips. So much for happy secrets.

“Maybe it’s working. But you made me wait weeks for this little date, I think the least you could do is show me a good time before you try to get me to bed.”

“What, like a date night?” I asked.

“Exactly like a date night.”

“Remind me when the tables turned again? Just yesterday, you were the one waiting outside my apartment, now you’re making demands?”

She pressed her lips together, looked up, and then nodded. “Hmm. Yep. That sounds right.”