I hunkered down like a guerilla fighter behind a huge granite boulder that looked to have been assaulted by generations of birds with very serious gastrointestinal issues. Part of me just couldn’t believe that I was hiding in the woods from Max, nor could I believe that I had used jogging as an excuse. Me! Rosie Madden! The closest I ever got to exercise was a halfhearted downward dog when my calves felt crampy. But now here I was, dripping with sweat, getting accosted by an array of terrifying New England jungle insects, which looked like maybe they were migrating from the jungles of Far Away, and covered in mud from where I’d slid into a ravine. Because even more than not believing I was running and hiding, I still couldn’t believe what I’d done with him. I was terrified of it. Embarrassed about the way I’d talked to him. Horrified by how…unfiltered I’d been. I touched the spot where he’d left the hickey, still tender. Not like he’d been particularly filtered himself.

God.

The noise of a truck filled the air from down the drive, and I hurled myself into the underbrush for cover. It was Max’s truck, I’d have known the sound of that engine anywhere. But I stayed low. I couldn’t face him. Not yet. Not until I got my wits about me and this hickey healed enough to go out in public. Or I found a summery scarf.

The gravel crunched under Max’s truck as he slowly rolled past the point where I’d taken cover in the bushes. I saw the rusty hubs of his tires. I flattened myself against the dirt and shifted a leaf that was in front of my nose with one fingertip.

Which was when I realized that leaf was attached to two others. Broad leaves, small center stem. Shiny, waxy green.

Poison ivy. Everywhere.

Was this just a big joke? Was someone in the heavens looking down, with laugh-tears streaming down their face?

A bird flew over and deposited a package on the boulder. A droplet of wet poop landed on my arm.

Awesome.

But I maintained position. I didn’t move, or even start scratching my already-itchy skin. Once I heard Max’s wheels leave my driveway and get onto the asphalt of Boston Post Road, I extricated myself as carefully as I could. It was like some ludicrous game of Twister, with only one person playing. And then I limped on home. Forcing my mind away from the thought of Max, I concentrated on the second most pressing issue: figuring out where my gram kept the calamine lotion and antihistamines.

* * *

Go figure, they were in the medicine cabinet. I dosed myself with non-drowsy allergy meds, and then I peeled off my poison-ivyed running clothes in the backyard, along with my shoes, and ran up the steps naked, with Julia charging after me like a potbellied pig. I took a cool shower, barely warm enough to get a fresh bar of soap to lather. Over and over again, I rinsed my skin and the soap too. With every touch, I thought of Max’s kisses all over my body. On my tattoo. Over my hips. Down my legs.

Fact: He was an absolutely fantastic lover. He hadn’t screwed around with any sort of how does that feel nonsense, but he seemed to know exactly what I liked. There were a couple of spots—on my ass, on my inner thigh—where there were bruises from his teeth, from the way he’d sucked and bitten.

Oh, how I wanted his bites.

But I would not eat his pint of ice cream. I would not. I toweled off and dropped the bar of soap into the garbage. I got a fresh one and put it on the rack under the shower head, along with a new bath puff. Julia watched from her spot on top of the toilet.

As I put lines of lotion on the non-itchy parts of my legs and over my tattoo, my thoughts went right back to Max. He was like the marshmallows floating on the top of my cocoa. I couldn’t avoid him, even if I’d wanted to. But what exactly was I going to say? Let’s pretend that didn’t happen, let’s pretend we didn’t have the best sex of our lives together. Or maybe, even less plausible, Yes, we had sex! But it was just sex.

Pffffffft. I scrunched the water from my curls. That was anything except for just sex. Out of sheer habit, I tapped my phone to wake it up. There he was again. He’d sent me a text as he left that said simply:

Call me.

I wanted to. So much. But I didn’t. I put on my big-girl pants instead. I did my makeup, I dotted my itchy spots with calamine. I got dressed in a clean pair of yoga pants and a tank. Then I trotted downstairs barefoot. As I passed the steps where he’d had me on my back, I felt a pinch in my ankle. And my heart.

The pain in my heart was beyond my control. But the ankle was different. That, at least, I knew how to treat. So, from the freezer, I grabbed a bag of frozen peas. I turned up the AC to max and got situated on the couch with Julia and my sketchbook. I put my feet on the coffee table, and she draped herself over my shoulders like a slightly inflexible mink coat, periodically swatting my cheek with her tail. I was just getting into a new illustration when my calendar popped up with the notification I’d been pretending I wouldn’t have to deal with ever.

I groaned a little. It was a tiny notice that encompassed the big looming question that had been facing me for months.

The future.

It was too much to think about at the moment. I was tired and frazzled, and I tried to drown myself in work. It actually helped, for a while, and I busily focused on the Kingdom of Somewhere, with its castle and Matterhorn-like peaks. But my thoughts were jumbled, and my stone walls turned out terribly. My trees looked parched, my valleys too empty and bleak.

Max was one part of the problem. But so too was Gray Moose Books. In New York.

See also, my dream job.

I erased my stone walls and started again. The odds of me getting the job were laughably small. I knew I wasn’t experienced enough; I knew I didn’t have the right pedigree. But Max and I had talked about it a lot. He said yes, I said no. He said try it, or you’ll never know. I said, but I already know what they’ll say. I blew some eraser rubbings off my sketchpad and glanced at my computer.

Try it…

As if I were taking tentative steps across an icy lake, I slowly moved the attachments off my desktop into my email, one by one. I dragged over my most polished portfolio. I double-checked that my cover letter had my phone number and address and the right date. I wrote my professional subject line. I wrote my professional email. I read and reread the words out loud to make sure I hadn’t blundered into some very unfortunate typo. My heart was pounding so hard, I could feel it behind my eyes. For a long time, I stared at it—long enough for my screen saver to pop on. Streaming back at me were pictures of me. And Max.

…or you’ll never know.

Max was gutsier than me. He was a risk-taker, and I wasn’t. But it was as if some of his energy and rubbed off on me. Last night had been like a B12 shot of confidence. For one instant, I truly believed I could do it—that I could do anything. That I was that amazing, fearless woman I’d been with him last night. So I held my breath, hovered my cursor over the paper airplane logo, and pressed send, filling the room with that weird swoosh of a sent message, so loud that it sent Julia scrambling.

With my palm, I slapped my laptop shut and put it on the coffee table. I flipped back a few pages in my sketchbook, from when I’d had a conference call with the author. “How about the prince?” I’d asked.

And she’d answered, “The sort of guy who’d rescue a kitten from a tree no matter how dangerous, the sort of guy who you’d die to see wearing a Baby Björn. That guy. You know the one.”

With every draft, the results were the same. The broad shoulders, the thick, dark hair, the general air of delicious impossible man-of-my-dreams-ness. Apparently, I knew just the one. The fairy-tale prince in my head looked exactly like Max.