Once in James’ warm car, I text Claire that I found a ride home and wish her and Griffen a Happy New Year. Then I give James my address before he can ask for it, or worse, suggest a hotel.

I know he doesn’t want me in his house. Doesn’t want me to see Rufus. Doesn’t want me in his bed, in his kitchen tomorrow morning. And though it hurts, I understand.

When we arrive, I don’t give him a tour and he doesn’t ask for one. By the time the door closes, he already has my coat off and my shirt over my head. Yanking my bra upwards, he fills his hands with my breasts, relearning their curves, their weight.

“Ah, fuck me, you’re still perfect,” he mutters, and bends to cover one aching peak with his mouth. I grab his hair and arch my back with a cry, giving myself to the sensation. Giving myself to him.

We don’t make it to the bedroom. I’d like to think it’s out of desperate passion, but I know it’s more than that. He doesn’t want the intimacy of a bed. He wants me out of time and place, and that’s okay with me. I want to give him what he needs.

His touch on my body is borderline savage, my own restraint just as absent. We aren’t making love, too much heartbreak and betrayal between us. It’s carnal war, selfish and needy.

I crawl naked onto my living room couch and grip the frame. James is a maelstrom of heat behind me, yanking me back from the cushions and crushing me to his chest.

“Tell me you want this,” he growls.

“James—”

“Say it, Iris!”

“I want this. I want you. Please.”

I don’t stop begging until he tilts my hips and thrusts inside me in one smooth movement. Even primed by his mouth and fingers, I still shudder at the burning stretch that borders pain.

Some part of my James still lives, because he waits unmoving for me to adjust.

“Okay,” I whisper.

With my consent given, he doesn’t hold back. There’s no finesse in his movements, no grace in my acceptance. Only the fierce sounds of flesh against flesh, of his grunts and my moans.

The fingers anchoring my hip spasm. “God help me,” he gasps. “I can’t… you feel—fuck!”

He empties inside me with hoarse cry, then immediately pulls out and stumbles back. The sudden withdrawal is shocking; I collapse against the couch, shaking and bereft. I don’t need to see his expression to feel his regret.

His weight hits the coffee table with a thud. “We didn’t use a condom,” he says mutedly.

I lift my head just enough say, “I’ll get the morning after pill.”

“I’m, er, clean of disease, and I assume you—”

“Yes,” I snap.

His sigh floats over my bare back. “Will you at look at me? We need to talk about this.”

Grabbing a nearby blanket, I cover myself as best I can and turn around. What I see is both so right and so wrong. James, naked and flushed and beautiful, half-hard and glistening with sweat and me. But his face, his eyes—they aren’t his.

I just had sex with a stranger.

“Just go,” I say tightly. “You don’t have to explain or placate me. I know what this was.”

A brow quirks. “What’s that?”

“Hate-sex.”

Both eyebrows lift at that. “I don’t hate you.” He cocks his head thoughtfully. “Although the moniker is rather apt.”

Pulling the blanket snug around me, I draw my knees to my chest and ignore the sensation of wetness leaking onto my couch cushions. I’ll burn them tomorrow.

“What were you expecting, James? My tears? For me to beg you to stay?”

The sad fact is that I would beg if I thought it would do me any good. And I will cry—when he’s gone.

He frowns. “No, I simply don’t want you to misunderstand.”

I laugh shortly. “Oh, I understand just fine.”

His mask cracks for a moment. I see longing in his eyes, mixed with bright anger and old hurt.

“I loved you,” he whispers. “Even if I never said it outright, you had to know.”

Thinking it can’t get any more painful than this, I throw caution to the wind and tell him the truth. “I did know, and I loved you, too. I still love you.”

His eyes shutter, expression closing off. “Sorry pet, the man you loved is dead, buried alongside the idealism of youth.”

Oh, how wrong I was.

This is worse. Much worse.

A mirthless laugh scrapes from my throat. “Fucking poets. All of you are terminally narcissistic.”

He stares at me in shock.

My own buried anger erupts. I point at him, uncaring that the blanket slips from my shoulders.

“Let’s cut the flowery bullshit, Beckett. You lied to me. Methodically, flawlessly, over weeks and weeks. If anyone has a right to resentment, it’s me. Face it—you’re not angry with me, you’re angry at yourself. You did this, not me. You didn’t have the balls to see a disaster of your own making through to the end. You were the one who triggered my memory of the rape. You didn’t fight for me, for us. You tucked tail and ran!”

“You told me you were seeing someone else!” he yells, jerking to his feet to pace across the living room. “You rejected me over and over. You were a fucking ice queen, Iris!”

My anger drains away, leaving me cold and hollow. I grab the loose blanket and cover myself as James yanks on his pants.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chants. He grabs his shirt from the floor, then faces me with the fabric bunched in his hands. “We were loosely together, what, a grand total of three weeks? I can count on one hand the number of times we slept in the same bed. This is fucking ridiculous. A sick obsession I can’t seem to rid myself of. You were right, what you told me back then. I loved a fantasy of you and for some reason, I can’t let go of that woman. Even though she doesn’t exist. Even when the truth invariably disappoints.”

“Get the fuck out,” I seethe.

“Gladly,” he snaps, pulling on his shirt and stomping across the room for his shoes and coat.

A minute later, the front door slams. His car starts, tires squealing on the wet asphalt as he speeds away.

Quiet darkness retakes my world. I fold into myself, curling on my side with the blanket over my head.

* * *

When I don’t answer Claire’s repeated phone calls the following afternoon, she shows up and uses her house key to let herself in. She finds me still naked and nearly catatonic on the couch. At least I’m upright—the television is on and a half-eaten yogurt rests on the coffee table.

I blink lethargically. “How did you know I’d be here?”

She hands me a small brown pharmacy bag. “You don’t remember texting me at six this morning?”

I peek inside the bag to see a little blue box. Memory—and sanity—returns in a rush. I tear open the package and pop the tablet from its sheath, gagging as I try to swallow it dry.

Claire shakes her head sadly, reaching into her purse for a water bottle. I chug until I can’t taste the pill anymore, then hand the bottle back.

“It was Beckett, wasn’t it?”

I nod.

“I take it things didn’t end well?”

I snort. “You could say that.”

“Do you want me to stay a while longer, Iris? I don’t have to leave when Griff does, and I can just as easily job-hunt from here. I’ll fly down for any interviews—”

“No, Claire. It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

Tears glisten in her eyes. “I’m worried. What are you going to do?”

My answering grin probably makes me look like a maniac, but I don’t care. “Write the next Great American Novel, what else?”