Erika sat up in bed, the sheets around her waist, and pressed her thumbs together. I sat beside her, watching each movement, each hesitation. How could one person be this adorable, this fucking endearing, and this frustrating all wrapped in one?

“You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”

She sighed. “I didn’t want to do this for a reason.”

“Do what?”

“Get involved with you, in any way. You’re exactly what I don’t need right now, and exactly what I want, and I’m caught in the space in-between,” she replied.

“I like how matter-of-fact you’re being about it.”

“That’s all I can do. Tell the truth. I expect you’ll do the same.”

I swallowed guilt, forced it deep down, and nodded on the surface. “Of course.” Couldn’t afford to lose her now. I’d almost lost her because of the damn photographs. If she found out about the—not now. Focus on what she wants. What you want.

“I am not ready for any kind of relationship,” Erika said, “and I expect you aren’t either. I mean, I know you aren’t. You’re just not that type of guy. Never mind that things would be complicated if Marc found out.”

No shit on that one. She likely didn’t understand the extent to which they’d be complicated. I doubted her brother had ever let her in on the fact that he’d expressly forbade me from touching her, being anything more than an acquaintance to her.

“Then what do you want, Erika?” I asked. “I know it’s me. You want me, and I want you.”

“But neither of us wants a relationship. Where does that leave us? Fuck buddies?” She grimaced after saying it. “I’m not the fuck-buddy type of girl.”

“I don’t think either of us are that person, but we don’t have any options left. Christ, we don’t have to come up with a definition for it now. We can chill. It’s two days till Christmas. Is this really what you want to be discussing?”

“Maybe,” she said, then laughed. “God, Noah, you confuse the shit out of me.”

“Ditto,” I said, and took her hand.

“Even this is just… I don’t know.” She lifted our hands, where our fingers were intertwined, and sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said. “We’re past the point of keeping secrets, I guess. You’ve seen my vagina.”

“Sounds fucking delightful when you put it like that. Should I whip out my penis rather than my cock next time?” I asked, laughing. “And you and I both know that I haven’t seen your vagina, but your vulva.”

“God, I forgot I was talking to a fellow ob-gyn.” She rolled her eyes. “We’re so annoying.”

“Back to the question,” I said, and she sharpened up, focused on me. “What happened to you? Between you and that dickwad who broke your heart? We came close to talking about it the other day, but we never got there. Care to divulge?”

Erika’s expression folded inward on itself, and she bowed her head.

I waited patiently, squeezed her hand and brushed my thumb across her knuckles. The quiet grew between us, the clock ticked over to 4:00 a.m., and still she didn’t talk.

Finally, Erika raised her head and looked at me directly. Her gaze was sharp as ever, but her eyes swam with unshed tears. “I’m over him,” she said. “I just want to make that clear from the start. I don’t have feelings for Jason anymore, other than regret.”

“OK.”

Erika sucked in a breath. “Jason was my partner, and he was technically my boss in a practice back in Chicago. Well, it was a private clinic, specializing in fertility, child labor, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d been dating for quite some time, things going well, apart from the occasional fight and the mediocre sex. I really wanted and have always wanted a child,” she continued, and a tear escaped her eyelashes. She caught it and swept it away. “That’s what drove me to do what we do in the first place. The miracle of life, of having a little baby. When I was younger, I was convinced that I’d never have a successful relationship. I don’t know what it was, I guess that I’d never been in one and didn’t see myself with anyone except—never mind. I just didn’t see myself being a wife. But I did see myself being a mother. And that was something I always wanted.”

“You’d make a wonderful mother,” I said.

Another tear, and then another. “Dammit, sorry.”

I opened my bedside table’s drawer and drew out a box of Kleenex.

She accepted a tissue, dabbed at her eyes and nose and gave me a watery smile. “Kleenex in the drawers?”

“It’s been a long winter,” I quipped. “You were saying?”

“So, when Jason and I had reached the three-year point in our relationship, I figured, you know, I’m thirty-three, I’m not getting any older, let’s try. He agreed. So, we tried. And we tried, and we—”

“Not sure I want to hear about all the trying,” I replied, gruffly.

She managed a raw laugh. “Right. Well, the point was, a year later, I still wasn’t pregnant, and all the signs were there. So, we did a fertility test, and it turned out that I have an inhospitable womb. And that my best shot was to either adopt, or to try surrogacy, or even just in vitro.”

“Right.”

“We did that,” she continued, and her voice grew shaky. “I spent all my savings, not his, mine, just mine, on treatments, and it didn’t work. I didn’t get pregnant. And when it was done and I told Jason my savings were up, that we needed to make some other kind of plan to have a baby, he flipped his shit.”

My guts wound tight, and I clenched the hand that wasn’t holding hers into a fist.

“He told me that he’d never wanted a damn baby to start with and that I was fucking obsessed and he couldn’t stand it a second longer. He said I wasn’t the woman he’d fallen in love with. He told me it was over. He fired me from the practice out of conflict of interests and kicked me out of the apartment, most of which I’d paid for. Of course, by that point, I didn’t have any money to challenge him legally.” She shrugged. “And that’s how I wound up in New York. This job at St. Katherine’s was a godsend. It came at exactly the right time. I don’t know what I would’ve done without it. Been that washed up, childless thirty-something-year-old living at home with her parents. Who knows?”

I squeezed her hand, then raised it and pressed my lips to it. “Where does he live?”

“Don’t be like that,” she said, “It’s been four months. I’m fine.”

“Still in Chicago?”

“As far as I know,” Erika said, and shrugged. “I haven’t exactly kept track of his movements, and I don’t care to. Jason is the past, and working at St. Katherine’s delivering babies, making mothers smile, that’s my future. I’d love to end up heading the department here. I don’t know, I guess, if I can’t be a mother myself, I’d like to help other women have the best experience possible becoming mothers.”

Fuck, she was amazing. So fucking selfless. After everything that prick had put her through, she still wanted to do this, to give other people what she could never have. It actually choked me up. I gulped the lump down and nodded. “You’re amazing, Erika. You deserve happiness.”

She snuggled closer to me, and I put my arm around her shoulders, kissed her on the temple. “Well, since we’re on the truth train,” I said, and drew back a little, looked her in the eyes, “I feel like a shitheel.”

“Why?”

“Your brother doesn’t want me near you.”

Erika sat bolt upright and stared at me. “Huh?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t want me near you. He’s been warning me off you for the last seventeen-plus years, and he’ll likely do it until the day I fucking die. He thinks I’m not worth the ground you walk on.” I paused, smiled at her. “He’s right, of course.”

“Whatever,” Erika said, and rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe that. Marc told you this, explicitly?”

“Dude, he warned me off you. He’s threatened and cajoled, and I’ve always kept my promise.”

“What changed?” Erika asked.

That was a damn good question. What had changed? It had been at the wedding, witnessing my best friend happy and married, no longer a bachelor like me. “That silver dress you wore,” I said. “That changed a few things.”

“Seriously,” she said, monotone. “A dress?”

“Fuck it, Erika, I’m a simple man, and I’ve been simply obsessed with you for fucking years. That dress pushed me over the edge. And the fact that, fuck it, I don’t know. This apartment has been empty for years. Life has been the same for a very, fucking long time.”

“How so?”

I exhaled, looked around the room, at the blank white walls, then the silvery-gray sheets. “It’s been cold. Empty. Fuck it, a part of me might have wanted some excitement, some change. And you were always the one that got away. The only woman I’ve ever—regretted never having been with.” That was the best way to put it without getting too fucking emotional. “And now, shit, you’re here, filling my house with your sounds, my belly with your food.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. How could I know, just yet? “I don’t fucking know, Erika.”

“What do you know?” she asked. “For certain, I mean.”

“That I want you near me. That I want you around. That I fucking love being inside you, but most of all, that when you’re near me, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time or biding it until one day when all this shit is over and I’m cold and rotting in the grave. I feel like I’m living. For once, I feel like I’m living, and that it doesn’t matter I’m not the fucking best in the world. That I’m not a businessman or what someone else wants me to be. I’m me, and you want me for that. It blows my mind. You blow my mind.”

Her jaw dropped, and she stared up at me, caught in the crook of my elbow, shaking her head. “Noah. I had no idea.”

I shrugged. “Neither did I, until I said it. Truth is, Erika, you make me want to live again.”

She snuggled closer to me, made a small whimpering noise in her throat. I placed one finger under her chin and tipped it back slightly, allowed myself access to those precious lips. I kissed her, slowly, parted her lips, tasted her tongue.

It was deep, sensual, and she moaned against my lips, leaning into it. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered.

“Then how come we are?” I deepened the kiss, ran the backs of my fingers down her jawline, then her neck, to her collarbone.

A cell phone trilled down the hall, and she pulled away from me. “Shit,” she said.

“What?”

“My cell. I’d better check—it might be the hospital.” She scooted out of the bed and I groaned, watched her scoot off out of the bedroom and down the hall. The ringing cut out and there was a rumble of talk, then a pause. “Yeah, it’s the hospital. One of my patients has gone into labor. I’ve got to get down there.”

“I’ll call you a cab,” I said.

“No need,” she called back. “I’ve got this.” She rushed back into the room, gripping her jeans, the phone in one hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” I replied and caught her hand, dragged her into another kiss.

She kissed me back, passionately.

“Merry Christmas Eve Day,” I said.

“Merry, indeed.” She winked, and then she was gone.