I was close to crawling out of my skin with impatience. A hundred times I’d had to stop myself from calling or texting Lizzie. Emailing her. Showing up at her apartment, or her place of work.

Basically, I was one good intention away from being a stalker.

Dara had emailed me to let me know that Lizzie had read the column. So that was something, at least.

So I waited. Leaving my balls in her court was agonizing. I wasn’t good at waiting for important things to come to me; usually I was the kind of guy who went out and got them.

After two days, I’d gotten creative. It was time to put my trust fund to work, funding Project Make Lizzie Trust Me Again.

I bought ads on the Hot Mess and Static sites. Dara, Pete, and Rob all sent me WTF? emails the first day, but I refused to back down. It was a little harder explaining myself to the news director, but I owed him a heads up, at least.

I told myself it was my romantic side coming out. When Mike saw it, he said it was more like my pussy-whipped, crazy side coming out. Either way, it was certifiably stupid and I even got a voice mail from my dad laughing at me. But… nothing from Lizzie. Goddamn crickets.

To hell with this, I thought as I stomped over to her apartment. I wasn’t waiting any longer. Yeah, it was ten o’clock at night, and yeah I probably should have waited until morning, but I knew sleep wouldn’t come while I thought about this.

While I thought about her.

She buzzed me up without even asking who was there, which relieved me and pissed me off at the same time. I could be the friendly neighborhood serial killer! On the way up, all my words jumbled together in my head, twisted by rising emotion and adrenaline.

The door opened almost as soon as I knocked, as though she was waiting right there.

“Just a second,” she croaked, looking down at her purse while she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. With her hand outstretched, she looked up at me and blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” I took in her flushed cheeks, bright eyes, red nose, and brown fuzzy robe and realized that either she was sick or masquerading as a squirrel.

“You’re not who I was waiting for,” she managed to say.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

We stood there, silently watching each other. Her buzzer went, startling both of us. “That’s probably…” she trailed off as she reached for the intercom.

My hand fell on her arm. “Ask who it is, first,” I reminded her. The color in her cheeks deepened as she realized that her recklessness was why I was standing in front of her.

“Food?” I asked.

She nodded. “Soup.”

“You’re sick.” It wasn’t a question.

“You’re a genius.” When she tried to roll her eyes, she swayed a little.

My hands went to her shoulders, steadying her. How come I hadn’t known she wasn’t feeling well? I felt like I should have known, or Dara should have told me—if she even knew.

I looked over Lizzie’s head, taking in the state of her apartment. The folding screen dividing her bed from the living room was open, and there was a direct line from the nest of tissues on her bed to a reality show playing on the TV.

“Back to bed.” I turned her around and steered her to the bed, then I took off my jacket and shoes, and rolled up the sleeves of my flannel shirt.

In a couple of minutes, the delivery guy was paid, tipped, and on his way back down as I opened up a big Styrofoam container of hot and sour soup. My mouth started watering at the tangy smell rising up before me as I started searching for a bowl.

Maybe two bowls.

“Do you want to eat at the table, or…?” I glanced over at Lizzie, who’d settled back into her nest and now sat up in bed with a lap desk on her outstretched legs. She’d removed her robe to reveal a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants.

She still looked beautiful, even as she plucked up the used tissues surrounding her and dropped them, one by one, over the far side of the bed.

If I truly loved her, then chances were good that I’d be going over there with a trash bag later. A sigh escaped me, as wispy as the steam from the soup.

I carried a bowl and spoon over to her, placing it carefully on the makeshift tray in front of her. “Don’t spill; it’s hot.”

“Yes, mom.” At least she didn’t lose her equilibrium this time as she lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Thanks,” she said quietly as she brought the spoon to her mouth.

I stood at the edge of her bed. I didn’t want to sit down and risk jostling her. I’d thought not talking to her, not seeing her was tough, but the five feet or so that separated us felt ten times worse. I wanted to take her in my arms, kiss every inch of her…

“How sick are you?” I asked.

“Just caught a chill or something,” she said, happily slurping the soup.

I looked around. Her computer was far away, on the coffee table. No coat was draped over the back of the couch or boots by the door. “You worked from home today?”

Lizzie muttered something about a “mental health day” as the spoon clinked on the bottom of the bowl.

I strode over to relieve her of the bowl and the makeshift tray. After I put the bowl in the sink, I brought her a fresh bottle of water from the fridge—and a new box of tissues.

She looked suspiciously at them. “Are you going to make me cry again?”

Ouch. I could have just stood still and let her carve out my heart with the soup spoon.

“Honestly,” she said, “I just wanted to hide from the world today. I don’t feel that bad, other than a bit sniffly. And tired. Tired of everything.”

She looked up at me with a beleaguered expression, and I had to wonder how much of the way she felt was because of me. Again I wanted to kick myself, for being the source of her pain instead of her happiness.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked gently.

Her gaze pinned me, her features relaxed and her mouth teased me with a small smile. “No. I don’t.”

Instant relief swelled inside me, until I remembered why I came over. I glanced over at her closed laptop again.

“Have you been online at all today?”

She shook her head as she snuggled down in the bed. “Decided to take the day off. No work, no social media, no email. I even turned my phone off.” She sounded both embarrassed and astonished at her own self-restraint.

It figured. Once I started laughing, I found I couldn’t stop.

Her brows drew together. “Why are you laughing at me?”

Shit. I swiped my hand over my face. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you.” Something loosened in my chest just taking in her wounded expression. “I’m not laughing at you,” I repeated softly, then held up a hand. “Just a sec.”

I grabbed her computer and placed it on her lap. “Go to the Hot Mess site.”

She gave me a quizzical look, but woke up the laptop and went to the bookmark.

The homepage loaded, and I could pinpoint the moment she saw it. Her eyes widened and her chin jerked up as she looked at me. I remained silent as she turned back to the screen, but lowered myself to the edge of her bed. As she scanned and scrolled, clicking through different pages of the site, her gasps turned into choking sounds of disbelief.

“Oh my god.”

“I wanted to be honest with you.”

“With me, sure. But with the rest of the world?”

Pretty much every ad on the site was one I’d paid for, asking her to forgive me. Reminding her of special moments we’d had together (PG-rated, naturally). Telling her that I missed her.

More than that, I’d confessed to every embarrassing moment in my life that I could think of, every secret that I’d kept. I’d hidden too much from her, and I owed her utmost honesty now.

“You cheated in eleventh grade math?” she read from one of the boxes.

“Yep.” Hopefully my former teacher didn’t subscribe to Hot Mess.

Her cheeks flushed as she pointed to another. “Seriously?”

I shrugged, not sure what she was seeing.

She raised an eyebrow and read out loud, “‘True fact: I shaved my pubes in college to make my dick look bigger’,” she blurted out, her gaze going to my crotch.

Oh, that. I rubbed the back of my neck. Maybe I’d taken it too far?

She snickered. “Oh my god, why would you even need to?”

That was a compliment, right? I reached for her hand, taking it off the track pad.

“No, I want to read more!” she whined, but her eyes sparkled and my heart beat harder at the shit-eating grin on her face. “Did you sleep with a stuffie until you were twelve? Did you pick your nose and eat it? What else is there?”

Her gaze flitted back and forth between the screen and me as I squeezed her fingers in mine. God, I’d missed holding her hand.

True fact: Mike was right—I am pussy-whipped.

“Lizzie, there’s something I didn’t, uh…”

She couldn’t stop giggling. “W-what could possibly be worse than th-this?”

I shut the computer with my free hand and pushed it off her lap to the opposite side of the bed. Her disappointed whine made me smile. Hell, everything about her made me smile.

“I couldn’t—not on the site, for everyone to see…”

She blinked, but her face was soft as she grabbed my other hand as well. “What?”

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

Her silence told me nothing.

Under my palms I felt the bumps of her knuckles. Slowly, I slid my hands up, over her delicate wrists and up her arms. To my satisfaction, she shivered a little.

Yes, she knew.

I pulled her a little closer to me and edged myself a little closer to her, but I kept my gaze down, as though it would be easier to tell the truth without the weight of her hypnotic stare. Her bright hazel eyes were my undoing and my salvation. The same could be said of many parts of Lizzie Bell.

“I love you. I am in love with you.” I paused, then swallowed. “I’ve done a lot of stupid things,” I admitted, jerking my head toward the laptop. “But the worst thing I’ve ever done was hurt you.”

Finally I looked up as she made a sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes were glossy with tears and she bit her lower lip. It surely wasn’t meant to be seductive, but my body tightened nonetheless.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know,” I whispered, a lump growing in my throat. “I didn’t know that it was so… contagious.”

“Love?”

“Hurt.”

Her palms cupped my elbows, squeezing gently before her fingers trailed up my triceps and around to my shoulder blades. The blanket bunched between us as we drew together like magnets. I rested my forehead against hers and exhaled.

I felt lighter for saying it, as though my apology had been weighing me down. As though sharing the hurt had halved it. As though telling her I loved her had lifted me up.

Then I realized what she’d said. I leaned back a little and tilted her chin up. “Wait. Love is contagious?” As in, she loved me back?

She nodded.

Swiftly, fiercely, I yanked her forward until she was straddling my thighs. The warm weight of her felt so damn right.

“Say it,” I demanded. “I need to hear you say it.”

Lizzie sighed, her breath warm on my face. “I love you. Damn you, I couldn’t help it.”

My mouth spread into a grin so broad I thought my face would crack. “It’s a fucking epidemic.”

I only caught a flash of her smile before I covered it with my mouth.

Finally!

The restlessness and nagging feeling of incompleteness vanished as we kissed. She shifted on my lap, and I shuddered as her fingernails combed over my scalp.

I grunted into her mouth, deepening the kiss. Her loose t-shirt fell off one creamy shoulder when I wove my hands underneath the fabric at the small of her back.

She swayed against me, our mouths moving one way and then angling another, trying to get closer, trying to make up for lost time and dumb mistakes born of nothing more than pride and fear.

One of my hands splayed over the tensing muscles at the curve of her spine, and the other dipped down under the waistband of her sweats. I met no resistance, of any kind.

“Going commando?” I murmured.

She just arched and whimpered into my ear as my forefinger teased the top of her crack. Then she began tugging at the tails of my shirt.

When she shimmied back, it wasn’t a retreat; it was to unbutton my shirt with hot, trembling hands.

When my hands left her back, it wasn’t a rebuff, but so I could fill my palms with her gorgeous breasts.

Her eyes closed and her fingers stilled on my shirt as I rubbed my thumbs over her distended nipples.

“Yes,” she hissed. “That feels…” There was a satisfied gleam in her eyes when she opened them. A hitched breath and a twerk of her hips punctuated her next words and the last two buttons of my shirt. “So. Good.”

Impatiently she shoved my shirt off, and as I pulled my arms out of it, she whipped her own t-shirt over her head. She was bare underneath, naked in every way.

Mine.

The curve of her neck lured me in, and I latched on hungrily. A primitive part of me wanted to mark her, wanted to suck her skin into my mouth until it was red with welts and bruised with my brand.

I felt invincible with her in my arms, but still a groan escaped when she pressed against me, skin to skin. I swelled uncomfortably in my jeans at the sensation of her hard nipples against my chest and the taste of her skin in my mouth.

With one hand I fisted her hair and tugged her head back. I needed to press my tongue against the fluttering pulse beneath her jaw. I needed to feel the vibration of her throaty moan against my open mouth.

Her fingers scraped across my back, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. All of the blood in my body rushed south, as if I wasn’t already hard enough to bust through the fly of my jeans.

She rocked against me once, twice, torturing me with her little gasps.

“Want you,” she sighed then ground down on me harder than before, seeking her own stimulation.

I didn’t want to make it a competition, but I was pretty sure I wanted her more. I needed her. But… “Baby, are you sure—”

Lizzie shook her head, scrabbling back on top of the blankets far enough to yank her sweatpants down her legs. They fell off the side of the bed, joining the pile of tissues in purgatory.

She kneeled before me, naked and flushed, her eyes glittering.

“You’re sick…” I trailed off as she growled and reached for the button at my waist. Fuck, she was making it hard to be a gentleman with her knuckles nudging against my happy trail.

“I don’t care if you don’t. And I’m not that sick.”

Nope, I didn’t care. But— “Lizzie, I didn’t tell you I loved you just to get in your pants.”

Oh Christ, she was taking my cock out and wrapping her hot little hands around it. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Her hungry gaze swung up to my face. She smirked. “Damn. That’s why I said it. And look—” she said, squeezing me until I gasped, “—it worked.”

“Behave,” I warned her. The sound of her giggle did some kind of hocus pocus on my heart. “I don’t want you to think I’m lying to you or misleading you.”

“I don’t.” With one hand squeezing my cock at the base, she flattened her other palm on my chest. “And I honestly love you.”

I just stared at her, my blood boiling from her touch and the truth in her eyes. Fuck me, what did I do to deserve this girl? Capturing her mouth with mine wasn’t nearly enough. I wanted all of her.

“I love you more,” I murmured against her lips.

She cracked up, breaking our kiss. “This isn’t some kind of pissing contest, you know.”

My face screwed up with disgust. “Definitely not. That’s not something I’m into.”

She grinned as she pushed me off the bed. “I think your competitive nature is getting the better of you. We don’t need a contest to prove who loves the other more.”

I stood up, shoved down my jeans and boxers, and stepped out of them. My hand went to my cock, standing up and dripping against my belly. “Doesn’t matter. I’d win.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Cocky bastard.”

Looking down, I shrugged. The truth hurts—sometimes.

She sat back on the bed, her legs curled under her to the side demurely, but her skin had the pearly luster of an old Master. When she held out her hand to me, I took it and let her draw me back onto the bed.

“Challenge accepted,” she said.