“How do you know him?” Hailey asked as she passed Ryder a beer from the fridge she’d stocked for him last week. And, yes, she was aware that action might show some expectation of the affair stretching out, but she’d reasoned it as her preference for being prepared. Besides, she liked beer. It was no big deal.

After the hospital, where Ryder had visited some of the other children and performed magic tricks like a two-bit carnival magician, she hadn’t felt like climbing Everest or whatever he’d had planned, so had asked him to flash them back to her place He hadn’t argued.

He now lounged on her couch, in what she’d come to think of as his spot, cheekbones prominent as if his skin was stretched too tight. She wanted to curl into his lap and hold him close, comfort him, but keeping to the boundaries in their casual relationship, sat on the other side of the couch.

Ryder thanked her and swigged from the bottle. He dangled it over his knee, swishing what was left almost absently.

“I don’t know him, exactly,” he said, eyes flickering to her and back to the cooking show she’d switched on for background noise. “I just visit him a lot.”

“He’s got cancer?”

Ryder shook his head. “Heart condition. He needs a new one.”

“You can’t just wish . . . ?”

“No. Only the Partners could enforce that huge a request, and even then, so many things could go wrong. Healing is draining, and a trade is usually required. Someone else could die—maybe even one of them.” Ryder shrugged. “If they could heal everyone in the world without side effects, don’t you think they would?”

Hailey understood but . . . she thought of the bright-eyed little boy who was so keen to travel, and her heart wept. A hard lump rose in her throat. “So he’s going to die?”

“If he doesn’t get a transplant.” A gusty breath left him. “Even if I wanted to attempt granting him a heart, WFY has strict rules. One of the most important is not to endanger human or Genie life, and the consequences of such a wish could be damaging to either.” He looked so defeated as he shrugged again.

“You were right.” Hailey swallowed some wine to displace that mountain-sized lump. “Perspective given. Ethan said a few hurtful things to me and I’m still upset?” She scoffed. “Pathetic.”

“Hey. It’s not a bad thing to be upset about.” Ryder produced a tired smile, circled the rim of his beer bottle with his thumb. It made a hollow noise. “Besides, what about the happiness you brought to that kid today? To all the kids—especially the one you made that balloon snake for?”

“The most superior of the balloon animals.” Hailey settled against the back of the couch, wine in hand. “I guess that did feel good. You go there every week?”

“Pretty much. I like to give back. The world’s been good to me since I became a Genie.” He shrugged.

Hailey pursed her lips, respect shimmering like gold dust. “You are the most decent man.”

To her delight, a blush settled on his cheeks. “Get out.”

“You’re squirming,” she pointed out to be mean.

He leered. “Bet I can make you do it, too.”

“Cute.” She hesitated. The rules, Lawson, remember the—She cut off her inner voice. “Why do you go if it hurts so much?” Hey, she’d ask a friend the same thing.

His sigh was long-suffering. “Dog. Bone. Get what I’m saying?”

“It better not be you comparing me to a slobbery canine.”

“Hey, I’ve seen you look at me with my shirt off.” He laughed as she hitched up and threw one of the couch cushions at him. A thought from him and it floated safely to the chair. “All right. All right. I started right after Leo and I became Genies.”

“Because that was a great thing that happened to you?”

He hesitated. The look he gave her was intense, completely different from the playful Ryder from minutes ago. “Yeah.”

“Your parents must have been thrilled.”

“Dad was.”

“Your mom not so happy?”

Shadows crept steadily into the brown as he gazed at her. “Mom . . . died when Leo and I were twenty-one.”

Cursing herself, Hailey put the wineglass down on the table with a thunk. She should’ve stuck to the boundaries. Her hands felt awkward as she clenched and unclenched them. “I’m sorry, Ryder. My foot likes to live in my mouth. You’ve probably noticed.”

“It’s okay. How would you know?” He studied the bottle in his hands as if he’d never seen one before. As she watched, nimble fingers began to pluck the label as if it was the most important thing he could be doing at that moment.

She sat on the words she ached to say, reluctant to venture farther out of where they’d drawn the line. Casual sex meant not going into the emotional stuff, no sharing of pasts. They’d already waded in far too much. So even though she felt like she was turning blue with the not asking, she was going to control herself.

Ryder, the veteran of casual sex, didn’t seem to notice they were coloring outside the lines. “She had breast cancer,” he said, the words soft, each one vibrating with old pain as he concentrated on the label’s corner.

Her insides turned out, wrung like a towel, grated into nothing. Ryder. He’d lost both his parents and then to lose another . . . “God. I’m so sorry.”

“Everyone said that. Didn’t help though.” Ryder’s smile was wry, painful. He lost interest in his label project and leaned forward to put his bottle on the table. “Didn’t help that we knew it was coming. Mom . . . she found the lump too late. Doctors put her through chemo anyway but there was nothing that could eradicate it completely. Eventually she stopped treatment. Said she wanted to go out with dignity.”

“Ryder . . .” She had no words.

“It’s okay. I mean, I miss her. We all do. But life goes on, right?”

Screw it. She needed it as much as he did.

Hailey got up and slid onto his lap. She nestled her head on his chest until his arms slowly came around her.

“When I visit those kids,” he said, so quiet, as if he was breathing the words into her skin, “I feel like I can help. Genies should help, right? They shouldn’t be bound by stupid rules or side effects that prevent a child from getting the heart they need.”

“Ben might still get the help he needs,” she said, more optimist than truth.

Ryder inhaled. Exhaled. Then his hands tightened on her back. “My brother didn’t.”

“Leo?” Her stomach churned. God. Not more. She didn’t raise her head, somehow knew he wouldn’t be able to say more if she was looking at him. “He was sick?”

Ryder stood anyway, sliding her off his knee, and paced to the window. His broad frame was silhouetted against the sunset. He looked . . . alone.

“It was seven years after mom had . . . passed.” He braced an arm on the window and gazed through it. His face was mirrored back to her, empty of Ryder. “We’d finally started to move on. Dad had started to smile again. Then Leo started having blackouts. Headaches. He’d say the most random things.”

“God.”

“Yeah.” His laugh was a broken thing, one hand flat on her window. “Tumor. Critical. Pressing on the brain. All these things that basically meant my twin was going to die. Like my parents. Like my mom.”

She felt helpless. Any words that she came up with sounded stupid. She didn’t want to crowd him. She was useless.

“I couldn’t stand it, Hailey.” His voice grated, raw, against her ragged emotions. “I couldn’t stand my twin dying.”

Something clicked into place. She wrapped her arms around herself, like she longed to do for him, but he’d already rejected her once. “So you went to WFY.”

“I’d met Luka when I was working outside the city on a horse farm. He was on one of his solo trips to clear his head and we talked for a bit. He seemed nice. Bizarre, but that was Genies for you. I thought if I could make my case to him, he might help.”

“But he wouldn’t cure him.”

“He couldn’t. To his credit, he came with me to the house—a senior Handler—and examined Leo. Hand on the head stuff. He said the tumor was too far gone, it had passed into the terminal stage.” Ryder brooded into the window. “I think I’d have killed myself if Leo had died, or gone insane. Luckily, Luka had a third option.”

“He made you both Genies.”

A nod. “You see, when someone becomes a Genie, their mortal body is frozen in time. Leo’s tumor included. As soon as he became a Genie, he was safe.”

“You saved his life.”

“I saved both of us.”

He’d been dealt such a crappy hand. To think when she’d first met him she’d assumed he had it so easy because he was a Genie. That nothing had touched him, could touch him. Death had visited his family again and again until he’d thwarted it with a Hail Mary pass. Everything about him clicked into place until she saw the final jigsaw piece. Why he surrounded himself with people and cared so much and lived for now.

The party for Leo. What had Ryder said?

He needs to celebrate life.

It wasn’t just a party to celebrate their becoming Genies. It was a celebration of Leo’s continued life.

Right then, she vowed to make it the absolute best party she could drum up. He wanted fire jugglers on stilts? She’d make it happen. Exotic-dancing girls? She’d provide blindfolds for the guests who didn’t approve—or were just into kink.

Something powerful crowded her throat as she stared at him. Tenderness, caring, whatever it was, it wasn’t what she wanted to feel for someone she was meant to be casual about.

But after what he’d just shared, the last thing she felt was casual.

Damn it to hell and back. Thick panic scraped her throat. This wasn’t how it was meant to go.

Her arms slid down to dangle useless at her sides. The air was thick with emotion, hurt and pain and embarrassment. She didn’t know how to break it, but she did know one thing. Even if it was stupid. “I’m glad you told me.”

“I don’t even know why I did.” His smile was funny as he turned to her. One eyebrow cocked. “You got some hidden powers I don’t know about?”

“Oh yeah.” She nodded seriously, determined to make him relax, make him smile again. Draw him back to the light, to where they were supposed to be. “All kinds of talents. Like . . . did I ever tell you what I can do with a cherry?”

“No . . .”

She stood and moved closer, eyes intent on him, all seduction as she paused an inch from his ear. “Eat it,” she purred.

“Damn, that’s sexy.” He shook his head, a grin curving those gorgeous lips. Any hint of darkness washed away as he started forward. “I have to have you now.”

She laughed as he lunged and tackled her to the floor.

* * *

The next night, Hailey summoned in her best shot at unbiased advice about casual relationships.

“Thanks for coming over so late.” Hailey opened the door and waited for Max to walk the rest of the hall.

“No big.” Max swept past in a black dress so tight it should’ve crushed a rib. “I didn’t have plans.”

“Liar.” Hailey closed the door with a grateful smile. “You want something to drink?”

“Depends. Is this going to finally be a dissection of how Genies do the nasty or something more serious?”

Hailey got out the wine bottle she’d put in the fridge when she’d called Max over. “Bit of both.”

“Ah.” Max wandered to the couch and plopped down. Her legs curled up beneath her regardless of how her skirt hiked up. “So where’s Q? He’s more in touch with this feminine crap than I am.”

“Got a date with an accountant.” Hailey poured out two glasses and handed one over to Max before sitting in her chair. Unlike Max, she couldn’t relax. “Jon, remember?”

“The one in his building he’s been banging on about for the past three weeks? Well.” A feline smile curved Max’s mouth. She toasted the absent Quentin. “Finally getting laid. Good for him.”

“You’re such a romantic fool, Max.”

“That’s what they tell me. All right. Enough small talk. You wanna tell me why I’m here?”

“It’s Ryder.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Max swirled her wine. “What’s the ass done?”

“Nothing. I just need some advice.” Hailey pressed her lips together, wondered how to phrase it. “If you were starting to, hypothetically, develop feelings for your lover—”

Max put her glass down so fast the wine slopped over the rim. “Oh, honey, no. You can’t,” she interrupted.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Hales. You can screw, bonk, have a rip-roaring hilarious time with your rebound guy, but you can’t chain him down—well—” She laughed, but stopped when Hailey sent her an evil-eyed glare.

“Especially,” Max continued with a little cough, “when the guy is a gorgeous, carefree Genie.”

“Max. Shut up. I was going to say, hypothetically, if you’d started to develop feelings for your lover, would it be time to end it?”

Though that was the last thing Hailey wanted to do. Ever since the night before when he’d shared all his pain, she’d begun feeling way too . . . female about the whole affair. Wondering if he was feeling okay this morning, wondering what it meant that he’d told her. She didn’t want to be tangled up in feelings again only to trip and fall on her face. She wanted to have a casual fling, one with sex and laughter.

Only now she couldn’t go back to the place where she only viewed him as a friend with benefits, and she couldn’t go forward to wanting him to be something serious. Even the idea had little butterflies of panic fluttering in her throat, making her choke.

Damn it, this was his fault. The oversharing ass.

Max was staring at her curiously. “You want to end the affair?”

“No.” The response was a little sour. “But he won’t play by my rules.”

“Rules?” When Hailey outlined them, Max hooted with laughter. “Hales, you take the cake and the cake stand. You told him this?”

“I wanted to be clear.”

“Uh-huh.” Humor shined in her gaze. “And he won’t play by them now?”

“No. He keeps bringing up his past and making me feel all gooey for him, and he’s sweet about Ethan and he makes me feel so good. It’s not funny, Max,” Hailey said, exasperated as her friend started to snicker. “This was meant to be my reckless, I-know-it’s-going-nowhere-but-damn-it-feels-good thing. Now it feels more complicated.”

“Because he shared some stuff?” Max snorted. “Oldest trick in the book. Guy pours on the sob story and woman falls over herself to perform and make him feel happy. Did you go down on him?”

The heat turned up one hundred degrees. “I’m not answering that.”

“So you did.” A lift of her shoulder. “We all fall for it.”

“He wasn’t telling me about a pet dog that died, Max. It was intimate stuff.”

“Hales, what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” She stared at her friend in frustration. “I’m so torn. On one hand, there’s this great guy and we have hot sex and he makes me laugh. He pushes me to try new things and makes me feel braver, bolder than I am.” Her feet knocked together, the heels clicking. “On the other, there’s this great guy that I’m starting to look at as more than a hot body. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“No,” Max agreed, all too fast for Hailey’s liking. “He’s meant to be your rebound guy. You don’t get involved with your rebound guy. Okay, so he can flash you anywhere in the world, has the body of a god, and actually treats you decently . . .” She stopped, brow crinkled. “Where was I?”

Hailey punched her friend on the arm, a frustrated laugh slipping free. “Would you be serious? I need help here.”

“I’ll say.” Max warded off another punch with a twist to her lips. “Okay, okay. Look, the way I look at it, you can either run, or come clean and tell Ryder he needs to step up or step out.”

As if a cold finger ran down her spine, Hailey sat up straighter. “Step up to what, though? I don’t want to step up. I want to carry on as we were.”

“Then carry on, you idiot. Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

Because sometimes, when Ryder looked at her in a certain way, or when his arm tightened around her in bed before they went to sleep, or when he texted her a stupid selfie, she wondered if having a few more strings might not be such a bad thing. And that scared the hell out of her. No way was she ready for a RELATIONSHIP (full capitals for the seriousness of the word). If only there was a pit stop on the way from Fling-town to Relationship-ville.

“Look,” Max said, taking one of Hailey’s hands and squeezing. “My advice? Don’t freak out over a couple of mushy feelings. So the guy shared something. Big whoop. He’ll still leave his dirty socks in the bed, his wet towel on the floor. Use that hot body for sex and fun, and leave the emotions out of it.”

If only it were that easy.