Slowly I began to wake up. On my stomach in my bed, I felt the air on my skin and the blankets bunched down around my waist. My whole body and soul felt relaxed, practically indolent. Last night was amazing. Lizzie was amazing. My cheek shifted against the pillow as I smiled, and I reached out for her.

Then I opened my eyes.

She wasn’t there. My bed was empty, the sheets cool.

I frowned. The first time I ever wanted a woman to sleep over, and she’d bolted. It surprised me how disappointed and empty I felt. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, then glanced over at the window.

Wait, it was still dark. She couldn’t have been gone that long.

My frown deepened. I thought—no, I knew—that we’d had something amazing. We’d made love. Before, the idea of that kind of emotional connection might have freaked me out, but with Lizzie, it felt right. Natural.

Mike had been right. We were dating. More than that, I was falling for her.

And she was gone.

Why? What happened?

I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand to text her.

Where are you? –A

The ding I heard out in the living room both surprised and reassured me.

“Lizzie?”

No answer. I got out of bed and fished around for my underwear. Once I had on my boxer briefs, muscle memory took me through the darkened apartment to the living room.

She sat on my couch in shadow, her knees up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs.

“What are you doing, sitting in the dark like this?”

She turned her head toward me, but in the dimness I couldn’t see her expression.

I twisted the switch on a lamp, the Edison bulb glowing like the embers of a fire—the same fire that was in her eyes. Whoa, what?

“What’s going on?” Why were her clothes on? And why was my laptop on the coffee table in front of her? I’d left it on my dresser, hadn’t I?

“You tell me, Cubicle Crush.”

Shit.

“What are you talking about?”

“Pete’s not Cubicle Crush. You are.” It was a not a question but a statement, her voice cold and furious. “Aren’t you?”

I remained silent, rubbing my hand over my head.

“Aren’t you?” she yelled. “Come on, Ash! You ‘tell it like it is’ right? You’re honest to a fault, right?”

Of all the times she’d teased me, I’d never heard that kind of contemptuous mocking tone from her before. My hand went out as I cringed. She twisted away from me.

“It wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—it was just a joke.”

“A joke?” Her anger morphed into mortification. “Oh my god. You were laughing at me the whole time.”

“Not that kind of joke, dammit.”

“Let’s see how we can make fun of Miss Behave,” she mocked. “We can string her along in this—” She broke off, gasping. “Jesus, does Rob know about this?”

When I hesitated, she made a choking noise. “Okay, yeah, he knows,” I admitted.

She jumped up from the couch and moved behind the back of it, keeping it between us. Crossed her arms over her chest. “Is this why I got moved to news? You just wanted to humiliate me and take both columns for yourself?”

I shook my head, struggling to keep up with her conspiracy theories. “No, you’re getting it all wrong. Would you just listen—?”

“And I made jokes about hooking up in the storage closet…” Her pretty face contorted with disgust. Only a few hours ago it had contorted with pleasure—pleasure that I’d put there.

Only a few hours ago we’d been falling in love. How had we gotten here?

Oh right, I’d lied to her. The sick feeling in my stomach wasn’t going away; it was just getting worse. I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Look, I wrote the first email kind of as a joke.”

I could almost see her brain working as she recalled the first email about having a crush on a co-worker. “What part was the joke?”

Okay, maybe ‘joke’ was the wrong word to use. “None of it, really. I meant it. I liked you.”

“Liked?” she repeated, emphasizing the past tense.

“Like! Like!” I might even love her, but I didn’t want to say that out loud. “But I didn’t know what you thought of me.”

“You could have just asked.” Her eyes narrowed. “In fact, wasn’t that part of my response?”

Probably. “You were running hot and cold in the beginning.”

“So this was some kind of weird experiment to get me into bed?” She jerked her head toward my bedroom.

Clearly she’d forgotten that the first time I made her come was in her own apartment. Not the point, Ash, not the point.

“No. Fuck! You’re misunderstanding everything.” I circled the couch to try to get to her, but she evaded me.

“Then explain it to me.”

“I sent the first message partly because I really wanted to know, and partly because I wanted to get an idea of what Miss Behave would say. I was still getting an idea of your advice style, okay? You with me so far?”

She nodded. At least she was listening. She’d dropped her arms, but her hands were tangled nervously together near her navel.

“Then Mooney decided to run with it as a… weird kind of feature. You know that. And I just had to keep it going.”

“You could have said no to him.”

“You’re the one who said yes in the first place!”

Frowning, she stabbed her finger at me in the air. “Then why didn’t you tell me then?”

“It wasn’t meant to go this far!”

“You mean I wasn’t supposed to find out.”

“Besides, I didn’t know that Mooney knew it was me, anyhow!”

She looked confused. I couldn’t blame her. I was a little fuzzy on when he discovered I was sending the emails myself.

“You could have just stopped emailing,” she said.

Finally I was able to sneak up to her and take her hands in mine. They were cold, clammy, but I wouldn’t let her slip away. Her eyes flashed at me, anger mixed with hurt in her gaze. It hit me like a punch to the throat.

I lowered my voice, trying to put all my honesty into it—for all that it mattered then. “I know. I could have stopped, but I didn’t want to. That’s the truth, Lizzie.”

It was stealth flirting. Like putting anonymous notes in your friend’s locker at school to see how they would respond to a secret admirer. That’s all it was at first. Somehow, it had become a way that I could peek under her good girl disguise. It was a way to discover all the facets that made Elizabeth Bell my Lizzie, sharp and shining and cleaved. But from the look on her face, she wouldn’t understand that if I tried to tell her.

“So the truth was that you wanted to keep lying.” She ripped her hands out of my grasp and flung her arms out in an exaggerated shrug. “All the while proclaiming how much better your column was because you were honest.”

My nostrils flared with frustration as I frowned. “Wait, is this about work or is this about us?”

“Both!”

“I was honest with Miss Behave,” I pointed out.

She looked down at the floor. “Just not with me.”

“Lizzie…”

When I reached out for her again, she darted away and headed for the door and scooped up her laptop bag. Her shoulders sagged, as though the bag weighed fifty pounds.

She turned back to me. Despite the shadows, I could see her face was wet with tears. My throat closed up at the thought that I’d made her cry. Fuck fuck fuck.

“How can I trust anything you’ve said to me, Ash?”

I shook my head. “You’re blowing this all out of proportion.” I flashed back on something she’d said earlier. “What about ‘Miss Believe’?”

“Maybe she was mistaken.”

My brain was in a tailspin. I was frustrated that she was taking this so personally, when it really wasn’t a big thing.

The knot in my stomach, however, told me that I could—just maybe—be wrong about that.

“Look, I’m sorry that I made you doubt me, but…” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I have feelings for you.”

When she said nothing, I opened my eyes to look at her again. She was wiping her tears off her face with her sleeves. I stepped forward.

Just saying that out loud made me feel bolder and more fragile at the same time. The truth did hurt. Being this open and vulnerable was scary as fuck. Suddenly I wondered how honest I’d been with myself about everything.

“Please don’t doubt how I feel about you.”

She sucked in a breath, her expression hardening. “No, you don’t. You don’t get to do that.”

“What? Lo—”

“No!” she cried out, panic in her glittering eyes. “Don’t ask me to believe anything you’re saying. You made me doubt myself, Ash. That’s worse than doubting you, believe it or not.”

“Lizzie, can’t we just—”

“I have to go,” she said flatly, pivoting away. “I just need to… go.”

She was too polite to slam the door behind her, but the sound of it closing echoed in my chest.

Well, fuck.

---

“Are you trying to give yourself a heart attack?”

I tried to glare at Mike, but it was difficult to do with the treadmill going at a speed that made my jaw rattle with every step.

After Lizzie had walked out, I stewed and steamed before trying to go back to sleep. Instead, I tossed and turned, and then somehow managed to waste the entire day doing sweet fuck-all before meeting Mike at the gym.

“Haven’t you heard?” I gasped. “I… don’t… have… a heart.”

“Dude.” My friend leaned across me and slapped the emergency stop button. The belt slowed more quickly than my heart rate did. My legs felt wobbly as I shifted into a walk. Damn, I was going to feel that tomorrow.

He snorted as he handed me my water bottle, and then waved toward the weightlifting equipment. “If you want to punish yourself, at least drop a plate on your foot or something. But you’re making the rest of us look bad.”

I scowled at him from behind the towel I wiped over my face.

“C’mon,” he said. “Spot me.”

We walked over to the cages. I swigged more water as Mike hoisted the bar up and then slipped some plates on it for squatting.

“You wanna swap out?” he asked as he positioned himself under the bar.

I shook my head. No way would my legs be able to take it at that moment. He blew out a breath and fell into his first squat. Some spotter I was; I was completely lost in my own head. At least he wasn’t bench-pressing.

“You know what your problem is, Ash?” Mike said at the top of a squat.

I waited for him to tell me. No doubt there was a list. We could be here a while.

“You’re in love with the stripper.”

“She’s not a stripper, asshole!”

He grinned up at me from the bottom of his next squat. “That’s the part you take issue… with?” he grunted. Then rose and racked the bar, breathing heavily.

I fell silent.

“Classic,” he laughed. “First you didn’t know you were already dating her, and now you’re in denial about being in love with her. Next thing you know she’ll be walking down the aisle toward you and you’re mistaking it for a business meeting.”

My mind filled with the image of Lizzie rocking a long white gown and a radiant expectation. I smiled reflexively. Then shook my damn head.

“I’m not in denial.” The fact that I was admitting to loving Lizzie sat between us, like the rest between his sets.

Mike leaned against the bar, watching me carefully. “You know how I knew that my wife was the one?”

“How?”

“It bothered me when she was upset about something. Like, really bothered me.”

“That’s because you’re a narcissist.”

“Ha ha. No, it’s called empathy. I think. When you love someone, you feel what they feel.”

“Is this why you’re eating for two, now?”

“Fucker. Just put yourself in her shoes for a second. If she’d written about you in her column but didn’t name you, how would you feel?” He held up a hand to stop me. “And not bragging about your dick size or something.”

My mouth closed. Hmmm. “I guess I’d feel kind of…”

“Betrayed? Humiliated? Exposed?”

“I thought you said we weren’t talking about my dick,” I joked. I joked because admitting the truth was pretty fucking painful.

I’d fucked up.

Now I was faced with two basic realities: I was in love with Lizzie, and I’d hurt her.

How was I going to fix this?