The apartment is quiet when I unlock the front door, and I thank God that Emma The Perfect must be in bed.

I creep into the kitchen to get a drink, running the tap as softly as I can while I fill my glass.

“Where were you?”

I spin around, almost dropping the glass. There’s Emma, wrapped in a light pink silk robe, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up? I was trying to be quiet.” Like, seriously quiet. Apparently my sister has supersonic hearing.

“It’s okay,” she says, waving off my concern. I was watching a movie on my laptop in bed and I fell asleep.”

She looks me up and down, and when her nose wrinkles, I realize I must be a mess. I pat my hair self-consciously, and sure enough, it’s all frizzed up in the back. You know — the kind of hair you get when you’re pressed up against a brick wall with your ex-boyfriend’s tongue down your throat.

“Where were you?” she asks again.

“I had a dinner meeting.”

She nods but doesn’t look convinced. I pull the blue folio out of my purse and wave it at her.

“We’re thinking of taking on a new client,” I explain.

“Oh, that’s great!” The folio must have been enough proof because now she smiles. “Who is it?”

“Actually…” I take a deep breath. No point lying to Emma. She’d find out eventually anyway. “Do you remember Wes Lake?”

Emma stares at me blankly.

“From high school?” I prompt, and she shakes her head.

“Of course I remember Wes,” she says drily. “I just can’t believe you’d consider working with him. After what he did to you, Rori?”

I sigh, leaning against the counter. “I know. But his company is huge, and the project is really interesting, and the money he’s offering is just … whoa.”

Emma folds her arms. “And he’s a jackass.”

A jackass, to Emma, is the worst thing you can be.

And she knows jackasses. Because to me, she’s Emma The Perfect, but to the rest of the world, she’s Miss Emma, of the popular online advice column Miss Emma’s Modern Manners. Every week she doles out etiquette advice, the most frequent of which is, “Don’t be a jackass.” It’s good advice, I suppose, and judging by the letters Emma gets, there are a hell of a lot of jackasses out there.

Is Wes a jackass? I don’t know. I’m not sure I have much objectivity when it comes to him.

“God, Rori, you cried for weeks,” Emma says, reading my mind. She shakes her head. “Weeks.”

“I remember.” I drink from my glass of water, washing away the suddenly sour taste in my mouth. She’s right. Of course she is. My sisters, Emma and Blake, were both younger than me, but both of them could well remember how devastated I’d been when Wes had left. It was the shock of the thing. One minute things were perfect, and the next minute he was … gone.

“That’s all in the past,” I assure Emma. “It’s completely irrelevant now.”

I don’t mention that tonight, my feelings for Wes had felt very much in the present. At least my physical feelings for him. My lips tingle again, remembering our kiss.

I’d lusted after Wes since the first time I saw him, a million years ago, in freshman English. I still remember the bright blue t-shirt he wore, the way it had picked up the cobalt in his eyes. He was gorgeous.

Still is.

And the things he used to do to me … my body hasn’t forgotten that either. The way he always made me feel. Beautiful, sensual, cared for. Even when we were awkward teenagers, it never felt that way with him. Wes was my first, and we came to life when we were together, the same way it felt like we did tonight.

Except what happened tonight is so not going to happen again. Like, ever. E-V-E-R. It shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. My throbbing lips are a reminder of how vigilant I’m going to have to be.

Emma pulls her soft brown hair back and slides an elastic band off her wrist as she twists it up. She leans against the kitchen counter.

“I just don’t know why you’d want to spend any more time than you have to with that jackass,” she says, as she flicks away a stray wisp of hair. “He’s a …”

“A jackass, I know,” I cut her off. I finish my water and set my glass in the sink. Emma folds her arms, looking cross. Miss Emma does not approve of cutting someone off, of course. Or of dishes in the sink.

“I know you’re just looking out for me,” I say, to appease her. “I get it. And yes, Wes hurt me. But I’m not that same little girl anymore. This is a job — one that could be great for Marigold. I’m sure we can work together for a few months without any issues. We’re both grown-ups, you know.” I force my lips into a smile.

Emma hesitates, but then smiles back.

“You’re right,” she admits. “I just hate the thought of you getting hurt.”

“Not gonna happen,” I assure her as I wish her goodnight and head down the hallway to my bedroom.

I wish I had as much conviction as I’m pretending, though. During dinner tonight, I thought maybe everything I just said was at least possible — that I could work with Wes without any messiness. But that was before the kiss.

Now I’m not so sure.

* * *

First thing on Monday, I bring the contract into the office to share it with Kyla. We’d texted a bunch on the weekend, and I’d told her I’d tentatively accepted the offer, but I wanted us both to go over the contract with a fine tooth comb before we sign anything. I hate to say it, but there’s a tiny part of me that still doesn’t completely trust Wes. Or should I say, doesn’t trust GoldLake. Our union still feels a bit unholy, and I’m going to make damn sure we don’t get screwed here.

Kyla is already at the office when I arrive.

“Tell me everything,” she says, bouncing to the poker table and flopping into one of the chairs.

I bite back a smile. No way am I telling her everything, but I launch into a full report of the dinner and of Wes’s pitch. While I’m talking I nudge the folio with the contract towards her. When I’m done, she opens it and flips through the pages.

“The billable hour estimates are on page seven,” I tell her. I wait while she scans the page and burst out laughing as her eyes go wide.

“Holy shit, Rori,” she says. She stares at me, mouth agape. “This is …”

“Fucking crazy, I know.” And it is. After everything else that happened with Wes that night, I’d almost forgotten about the completely ridiculous offer he made us.

“This isn’t regular money,” Kyla says, laughing. “This is baller money.”

I giggle. “Hell yeah, it is.”

“This is gold-plated MacBook, champagne-fountain, diamond-tooth kind of money.”

I laugh again. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far but … yeah. It’s amazing, right? It would take so much pressure off us.” I think wistfully of all the projects I want to take on.

Kyla’s quiet for another few minutes while she looks over the rest of the contract. She closes the folio with a sigh.

“We can read the contract more closely today but … I think we should take it.”

“Yeah? Even though it’s GoldLake?”

She nods. I don’t know how to feel. Even though I’m excited, I think part of me was secretly hoping that Kyla wouldn’t want to go along with it. That I’d have a good reason to turn down the job and not have to see Wes again.

I’ve been flip-flopping about the whole thing all weekend. One minute I think I’ve decided that working together will be fine, that I can handle it, and then the next minute I go in completely the opposite direction and want to run screaming far, far away from Wes Lake.

I never thought a four-hundred-thousand-dollar account would be something I’d question. The money is spectacular, no doubt. But is working with Wes a deal breaker?

“You said yourself the program sounded really cool,” Kyla says. “We don’t have to associate ourselves with the rest of GoldLake’s activities — we’re just helping promote an initiative we believe in. Right?”

“Right,” I echo, but I know my voice lacks conviction.

For not-the-first-time, I feel annoyed with Wes. Why did he seek me out? Me. There have to be a hundred firms in this city that could take on this project. Instead he had to waltz back into my life after twelve years and make me an offer I couldn’t refuse, no matter how badly I wanted to. It isn’t fair.

The industrial dryer downstairs kicks in then, and the rumble echoes deep in my bones. I almost laugh. Buttercup. Maybe that’s the universe telling me to suck it up, buttercup.

Kyla looks at me. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I tell her. “Nothing at all. Let’s start going through the contract. If we’re going to take this deal, we are not getting screwed in the process.”