The next morning when Nathan gets up to go to work, I go through his cupboards looking for something to eat. Everything is gluten free, preservative free, free of nitrites and nitrates, no saturated or trans fats, no sugar—in other words, no flavor. Nathan might want to eat like he’s in prison, but I’m not about that life.

I get showered and dressed and head for the grocery store. There’s only one in town. I figured by now the town would’ve grown large enough to afford another grocery store, but alas, no.

I pull into the parking lot and head inside. The temperature drops at least ten degrees in the building and smells like fresh produce. I won’t be needing any of that. Nathan has the fridge stocked with everything leafy and green you can imagine. What I need are things in boxes. If it doesn’t have 80% of my daily intake of sugar and sodium in one serving, I’m not interested.

I head for the sugary cereals and run into Sarah Boyd.

“Oh my God, Wanda, is that you?”

“Sarah Boyd, it’s been ages,” I say, genuinely happy to see her.

Sarah was one of my good friends in high school. She used to come to all of my sleep overs.

She lifts up her hand to show me her ring. “It’s Sarah Sanderson now.”

“Sanderson, as in Keith Sanderson?” Keith was a total stoner in high school. His dad owned the auto mall in town. Last I heard, Keith had gotten his shit together and was running the family business now. Even though I moved away, I was never without the gossip when I talked to old friends on the phone—though they failed to mention Mac was back in town last time we spoke. How that could slip their minds is a mystery to me. Sarah was the only one I lost contact with.

“He’s the one,” she says proudly. “We got married straight out of high school and have two beautiful children.”

Children … She’s the same age as me, give or take a couple months. I can’t imagine being married with two children at twenty-three years old.

“Wow, congratulations,” I say.

“I’m so happy you’re back. You won’t believe who else is in town.” I already know the answer, but I feign ignorance because she looks far too excited to spill the gossip.

“Who?” I say as if I’m on the edge of my seat.

“Mac Stillwell.”

“No shit? That’s crazy.”

She nods vigorously. “Yep, and he’s living next door to your brother.”

“That’s so wild. I guess I’ll probably see him at some point since I’m staying with Nathan until I can find a place on my own.”

I leave out the part that I’m flat broke and in debt and will probably live with Nathan the rest of my life.

Her eyes grow wide. “Girl, we need to have a sleep over like the old days, get out the binoculars and watch Mac exercise.”

I laugh. We were basically stalkers now that I think of it. But I have to admit, it was so much fun having the girls over and drooling over my hot neighbor.

“I don’t think your husband will appreciate that,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “Please, he’d be thrilled to get me out of the house for a night.”

“That sounds like fun, actually,” I say.

It doesn’t. I want Mac all to myself, but I’m not going to admit it.

Her phone starts going off. She looks down at the screen and growls at it. “It’s Keith wondering what’s taking so long. I swear that man can’t handle his own kids more than an hour before he loses his mind. He’s always saying how being a stay at home mom is the easiest job there is, but he has no idea the shit I have to deal with on a daily basis.”

I smile and she leans over to hug me. “It was good to see you again. I mean it, let’s have a girls’ night. If not to spy on your neighbor, then to get sloppy drunk and forget our problems.”

I wonder how happily married she actually is.

“It’s a plan.”

As soon as she walks away, I see three other people I knew from high school, but luckily, not well enough to where they feel compelled to stop and talk to me.

The next aisle over, I run straight into Mac. I startle, dropping my keys. It’s a good thing I didn’t have groceries in my hands. I’m stunned to see him here in a place that’s so … mundane. All of my fantasies involve him being in romantic places. For some reason it never occurred to me that he actually goes shopping and does things that normal people do.

“Hello again,” he says with a cocksure grin. It’s almost as if he was expecting to run into me.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” I say dumbly. Obviously he’s grocery shopping, but like me, he has nothing in his hands yet.

He shrugs off the stupid comment, and says, “It’s good to see you again.”

I think about my conversation with Nathan last night, and I feel a little wary of him, even though standing here, right in front of him with his beautiful face and stunning smile, it’s hard to see him the way my brother does, as a conniving back stabber. But I know, better than anyone, that a pretty face can hide all kinds of secrets. My ex was no slouch in the looks department—though he was no Mac Stillwell by any means—and he lied right to my face for years without me ever being suspicious.

“It’s good to see you too,” I say, trying not to sound as blissed out by his presence as I do. Why the hell does this have to be so confusing? I should hate him for what he’s done to Nathan, but he’s making it so damn difficult.

He steps closer to me, his warmth radiating off of him in the cold store. He leans over and talks quietly under his breath in a sexy voice. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Last night I masturbated to the thought of you. I want to taste and smell your sweet pussy and I miss the sight of that perfect ass slamming up against me.”

His dirty words instantly make me wet. It’s hard to think, to concentrate, to even care that we’re in a grocery store surrounded by people.

“I can still smell you on my sheets,” he continues. “It makes me crazy.”

I think about all the times I looked into his window from my room, hoping to catch him masturbating, but never did. If only I had looked out my window last night instead of going straight to bed.

I’m breathing heavier. My palms start to sweat.

“I need to taste you. I want your warm pussy around my cock,” he says.

“I can’t …” I start to say, but he grabs me by the hand and he’s dragging me away. At first I think he’s going to whisk me off in his car, back to his place, but instead we turn and we’re heading to the back of the store.

“What are we doing?” I ask, confused when we go through the double doors and into the back of the store where the loading dock is and where there are crates of food stacked to the ceiling waiting to be put on shelves.

“I used to work here when I was in high school. I know all the good hiding spots,” he says with a wink.

“Wait, you want to have sex here, in the grocery story?” I start to pull away, but his grip tightens.

“Trust me,” he says.

I’m nervous, but also thrilled to be doing something so dangerous. My brain starts to fog over from the thought of being with him again, and suddenly I’m no longer worried about getting caught. All I want is to be with him again, to feel him inside of me. Right now I would follow him anywhere.

He leads us to the back of the room where there’s a storage closet full of cleaning supplies. There’s a pallet of paper towels, packed tightly so that when he has me sit on them, they don’t buckle from my weight.

“Are you sure no one is going to come in here?” I ask, not waiting for him to answer as I unbutton my shorts.

“This is where they keep the extra cleaning supplies when the others are all used up in the break room. No one ever comes in here—at least not this time of day.”

“Okay,” I say.

We hurry to take off our clothes. This is not the time nor the place for sensual love-making. Both of us are very aware that this is going to be a quick fuck. I, for one, am totally okay with that.

He yanks down my shorts and underwear. They dangle off my ankle as he lays me down and spreads my legs. He kneels in front of me and smiles. “Doesn’t take much to turn you on, does it?” he says as he runs his finger across my slick opening.

“Not when it comes to you,” I admit.

He puts his mouth around my clit and works his magic until my eyes start to roll in the back of my head. A finger slides into me and I pull in a sharp breath. I hadn’t forgotten what it was like to have something inside of me, I just forgot the extent of exactly how good it could feel. He pulls away and lays on top of the pallet of paper towels and says, “Sit on my face.”

I straddle his head and lower myself onto his waiting tongue. It’s hard to stay quiet while he drives me crazy, working his tongue like a drill, moving in and out and in circular motions. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out.

I unzip his pants and pull his gorgeous cock out. It springs from his boxers. It still stuns me to see how big it is. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. It seems even more intimidating now that I have to fit it into my mouth than it did when I first saw it.

I stretch my mouth wide open and swallow him down, inch by delicious inch. He slides down my throat with relative ease despite his size, hitting the back of my throat before I ever reach the base of his cock. There’s no way I’ll be able to take all of him, but it’s fun to try.

I suck his cock eagerly, tonguing the rim of his head while he eats my pussy with the same gusto he shows on the soccer field. He holds my ass in his hands, pulling me lower, and I feel his tongue tickle my back entrance. I suck in a startled breath. That’s a new sensation I wasn’t expecting, but it feels incredible.

There’s a voice on the other side of the door. It’s close. I hesitate. Mac makes a disappointed sound when I let his cock fall out of my mouth.

“Did you hear that?” I ask him.

“Ignore it,” he says.

But then the door handle turns and my stomach drops. I stare at the door for what feels like an hour but is probably only seconds, frozen in place, too afraid to move even though I know I need to get dressed. Mac doesn’t seem as concerned as I am even though it is likely that we’re about to get busted.

The door cracks open enough for me to see someone on the other side, but they’re too focused on their conversation to see the people inside the room that should be empty. Mac and I scramble to put our clothes on. The talking keeps up. I frantically look around for a place to hide, but there’s nothing. I’m holding my breath.

“Relax, it’s fine,” Mac says, but it’s not. If whoever is on the other side of that door walks in, they’ll know why we’re in this closet. Our flushed faces and sex-mussed hair gives away all our secrets.

Suddenly, the person on the other side of the door lets go of the handle. The door closes and the voices recede in the distance. I’m finally able to take a breath. My pulse thuds at the base of my throat. My mouth is dry and it’s hard to swallow.

“Hey, are you okay?” Mac says, putting his hands on my shoulders to comfort me. I wish I could say yes, but I’m far from okay.

“Everyone in this town knows both of us. If anyone sees us together, they’ll tell my brother. If he finds out I’ve been sleeping with you …” my words trail off when his lips press together and he looks down at the ground.

“Are you sure you’re worried about your brother finding out, or are you just ashamed to be seen with me?” Mac says.

“What? Why on earth would you think I’m ashamed to be seen with you?”

If it weren’t for my fear of Nathan finding out, I would brag about being with Mac to anyone who would listen. Even if it is just sex, being with Mac is nothing to be ashamed of. I want to tell him that, but I’m afraid to let him know that my feelings for him have always gone beyond the physical. I actually care for him. He’s not just a pretty face. Growing up next to him, I’ve seen how he treats people, how he’s always helping someone out without expecting anything in return. Becoming a professional athlete and making millions can change a person. It can make them selfish and materialistic. But not him. He was always in the news for the charity work he did. That’s not the kind of guy a girl is ashamed to be seen with.

“Why—” I start to say, but he cuts me off, as if afraid to hear the answer.

“Never mind, let’s just go. I need to get back to the gym.”

The mention of his gym reminds me of my conversation with Nathan last night and how upset he was when I asked about Mac living next door again. It also reminds me of what he said about Mac not being a good person. It seems impossible. But maybe the charitable boy I see on the outside is not so sweet on the inside. As hard as it is to believe, I can’t be sure. Some people are good at hiding things.

“I need to know something,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows in question. “Like what?”

I hesitate, afraid to come of confrontational, like I’m accusing him of something before I know the answer.

“Why would you open a gym when you know this town isn’t big enough for you and Nathan both?”

Mac stares at me, his expression impossible to read. I was hoping to see something there, the real truth, or maybe guilt. Something. Anything. “You talked about me with him?”

“I … I …” I stammer. Great, now I have to admit that we’d been talking about him.

Taking a deep breath, I continue. “I may have asked about the old rivalry between the two of you.”

His mouth tilts into a shadow of a smile. “You won’t learn anything about me through Nathan. He only sees what he wants to. That guy can hold a grudge.”

He’s not wrong about that last part. I’ve seen him hold grudges for years against friends for telling the tiniest of lies. With Nathan truth is the most important part of any relationship. It kills me to be keeping this secret from him. But I can’t tell him. He’ll be devastated. And I definitely can’t let him find out about me and Mac through strangers. I don’t know what to do. If I find out Mac opened his gym to hurt my brother, it will make walking away so much easier. Part of me wants that, and yet the biggest part of me wants Mac to be the standup guy I believe him to be. I’m not sure which would hurt most: him being as amazing as I think he is and not being able to be with him, or finding out he’s a real asshole and everything I ever believed was a lie.

“Is he wrong about you?” I ask. “You just said you were going back to the gym. Does that gym belong to you?”

He stands straighter and looks me in the eye. “Yes, the building is under construction. We open in a week. But it’s not what Nathan thinks.”

“Then what is it?” I demand, anger seeping into my words. I know Mac knew about my brother’s gym. This town is too small to keep secrets. He knew about the gym and he opened a rival one anyway. I want to walk away, but the little nagging voice inside my head that holds out hope for a good explanation keeps me standing in front of him.

He sighs. “Let me take you to breakfast. We can talk about it there.”

I can’t go to breakfast with him. I can’t go anywhere with him that isn’t a closet or his home. It doesn’t matter where we go in this town, people will recognize us and I can’t run the risk of Nathan finding out we’re hanging out.

Sensing my hesitance, Mac says, “We’ll get it to go. We can eat in the car.”

I nod. “Okay.”

* * *

We get our food to go and head for the boat docks. There we sit in Mac’s car and watch the boats come in. It’s overcast and more like Seattle weather today rather than the unseasonably hot day we had yesterday. Clouds hang heavy over our heads, but there’s no rain—thankfully.

“Why did you come back to town?” Mac asks.

Funny, I was about to ask him the same thing.

I shrug. “Things just weren’t working out for me in Oregon.”

“What happened to your fashion line?” he asks.

I freeze with my breakfast burrito halfway to my mouth, then put it back in its Styrofoam container. “How did you know about my fashion line?”

I search through my memories, trying to figure out if I mentioned anything about it when I went to his house, but I know I didn’t. It’s a sore subject and not something I bring up in conversation. I’m so embarrassed that it failed.

He presses his lips together and fidgets with his plastic fork as if contemplating his next words. He seems almost ashamed about what he’s about to say.

“After we hooked up I looked you up online.”

“You were internet stalking me,” I say with mock anger. I’ve been internet stalking him most of my life. I can’t fault the guy for being curious about a girl he just slept with.

He smiles and shakes his head. “I remember in high school when you entered that fashion contest the school put on, and you won.”

I wonder if I’ll ever stop being surprised by him. With Mac it’s one shock after another. And here I thought I’d always been invisible to him. And yet he remembers a school event that maybe twenty people showed up for. Not only that, but he remembers that I won. I barely even remember that. In fact, I’d forgotten all about it until he brought it up.

“Things didn’t end up working out with the business, so I’m just going to have to find something else to do,” I say.

“You really should come by the gym. I’m looking to hire someone for a position I think you’ll be perfect for. And the pay is good.”

I want to jump on the opportunity. Nathan wasn’t able to hire me at his own gym, and I’ve been worried about what I’m going to do for work. But Nathan would never forgive me if I started working for his competition. It would ruin our relationship forever.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Before you give me a firm no, just come by and check things out.”

“I don’t know.”

He leans over the seat, kisses my neck and whispers, “Please.” His warm breath tickles. It’s so hard to say no to him. I guess it can’t hurt just to go look.

“Yeah, okay.”