I didn’t want to look up. I was sure I’d perform hari kari on myself with the scissors sitting on her desk if I found her looking down on me with pity, or disappointment, or disgust. Although I knew I deserved it all. “So that’s why I lost it. There’s the boiled down truth. I saw the red door and wanted to paint it black because I had no rights to demand you be treated with respect, no rights to protect you.”

Her hand found mine, weaving its fingers through mine. Warmth flooded me, the kind that made it impossible to remember what cold felt like. “You’re my friend, Patrick,” she said, squeezing my hand. “That gives you every right.”

This whole conversation was beautiful, as intimate as I’d ever had with a woman, and, despite her assurances threatening to make a joke of my real-men-don’t-cry policy, I realized I’d skirted the real issue by not admitting that I didn’t only want the right to stand up for her, I wanted all of her.

These were two somewhat similar and very different things.

“I’ll remember that the next time Ty tries to throw you on your derriere again,” I said, reverting to lightheartedness when I felt anything but. “Wait, what am I talking about? There better not ever be a next time,” I growled, trying to block the image of Emma falling shock faced to the ground.

“There won’t be,” she whispered to herself.

“Wait,” I said, too good at interpreting the unsaid for my proverbial blood pressure’s sake. “He hasn’t done this before has he? Pushed you around?” I didn’t want to ask it because I knew if she confirmed he had, I’d be facing murder charges in about half an hour, but that was a secondary concern.

When she didn’t give me an immediate answer, I tilted her chin up with my hand until she was forced to look at me. “Emma?”

“No, never,” she answered. Her eyes didn’t dart to the side, she didn’t bite her lip, she didn’t run her fingers through her hair; nothing said she wasn’t telling the truth, and I would know. Being a strength instructor the better part of forever, I’d taught “Truth Detection and Lie Evasion” only about one thousand times to about ten thousand students. It was ingrained. “He was just so drunk Saturday night, drunker than I’ve ever seen him. He wasn’t acting like himself.”

“All due respect, Em,” I said, moving my hand from her chin because it was what I was supposed to do, not what I wanted to do. “But in my experience, alcohol doesn’t create a monster out of nothing. It only lets it off the chain.”

She sighed, folding herself around the pillow deeper. “Listen, could we not talk about Ty anymore? And by anymore, I mean never again. He’s my boyfriend and you’re my friend, but the two of you can’t tolerate each other, even in conversation, so I’m officially invoking my right to not discuss either of you in the other’s company because I refuse to forfeit either of you.”

The cell phone on her nightstand vibrated, earning a nervous glance from her before she turned it off without sparing a closer look at the caller ID. Chances are she already knew who it was and chances were the same I did too, but only seconds following her Ty-talk-off-limits ultimatum, I wasn’t going to say anything. “I want to keep you both,” she finished, a corner of her mouth lifting like she was guilty for wanting this.

I was nothing short of elated that she wanted to keep me in any way, so I tried not to agonize over her wanting to keep Ty too. A loser like that would dig his own grave eventually—he didn’t need any help from me. And from the look of his girlfriend’s face, he was one misstep away from hanging himself. And guess where I’d be? Right here, waiting for her. For as long as it took because, as hard as Emma tried to front that she didn’t feel it, the link tying us together was as undeniable as it was inescapable.

That might have been a cocky thing to assume, that this supreme specimen of a woman who was “officially” off the market had a gravitational pull towards me, but I knew few things better than women, and moments like this, when her eyes flitted away from me as quickly as they flickered to me, like she didn’t know where to look without giving herself away, told me what I needed to know.

Friends didn’t have a problem looking into each other’s eyes.

“Em, I’m yours to keep. I’m not going anywhere,” I said, contemplating rolling the last few inches to her bed. “So this is the last I’ll say about your soon-to-be ex,”—her eyes did a half roll—“I was in the wrong Saturday night, but so was he. One of the gazillion lessons my mother pounded into my brain was that it’s never okay to lay your hands on a woman in an angry way, so I’ll do my darndest not to badmouth him in front of you anymore, but fair warning that I won’t be able to control myself if he lays his hands on you again. I don’t care if it’s a rumor I hear in passing, I’ll throttle him.” I was giving the fanatic a little too much leash, so I reined him in, softening my threat with a smile. “Those are my terms. If those are acceptable, please make your mark here,” I said, tapping my cheek while flashing her a wicked grin. “With your lips.”

“My lips are off duty,” she said, wielding her pillow as a weapon. “This will just have to do.” The pillow grazed my face like she could hurt me with a feather stuffed rectangle of fabric. She could have cold-cocked me over the head with a duffel bag full of bricks and I wouldn’t have been phased.

“Did you just throw the opening swing in what is surely to become a world war of pillow fights?” I challenged, playfully grinding my fist into my other hand. “I’m not the kind of man to retreat from an attack, you know.” Shoving the chair back towards the desk, I grabbed the black satin pillow off Julia’s bed.

“Don’t. You. Dare,” Emma warned, pushing back into the corner of her bed.

“Nothing can save you now,” I said, wielding the pillow like it was Excalibur. “Any last words?” I asked, already mid-swing.

“Yeah,” she said as I suddenly found myself half-spread over her bed with her straddling me in the most chaste way I’d ever been straddled. Emma was wicked fast. And strong. “You shouldn’t mess with girls who grew up with four older brothers who served wet willies for breakfast.” Her brows popped twice as she grazed me again over the face with her pillow. I didn’t even make an attempt to stop her. Immortal instincts aside, I don’t think I could have.

Having her hovering above me, smiling the one only Emma could, pinned to the bed by her knees, the scent of her sheets—and these were only a few of the sensations that were intoxicating me—I laid beneath her like an old man on his death bed, happy to go out with his boots on.

But as soon as Emma moved to position herself off of me, my state of frozen drunkenness evaporated. Before she could right herself, I had her pinned back to the bed, although I took the chaste high road and only trapped her with my hands over her shoulders, despite my chest aching to pin her a few other ways too. She looked as surprised as I had moments ago, but managed to laugh through it, rolling side to side, trying to free herself.

“And you shouldn’t mess with the boy who weighed twenty pounds less than his three brothers who liked to use whatever limb they could to take out their internalized jealousy at me for being the good looking one in the family,” I said as sternly as a man could as he was being prodded in the sides. My laughter mixed with hers, until I was certain nothing could ruin this moment.

That was, until a thunderous rapping sounded at the door. “Emma!” an equally loud voice shouted through it. “Let me in! If that little girl who’s got a hard on for you is in there, he’s going to catch a beating.”

Emma went stone stiff, her face blanching. I wasn’t sure what she was so terrified of, but it seemed her boyfriend almost catching her playing around with her, eh-hmm, friend didn’t warrant a quarter of the emotion flashing over her face.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered, hoping she’d tell me to open the door, deck the loser in his face, and then get back to what we were doing.

“Just pretend we’re not here,” she whispered back, her eyes darting back at the door.

“Emma, dammit. Open the door. I know you’re in there.” Ty was in the boiling over stage—I didn’t need to see his red face to ascertain this. The door took another beating as he attacked it with both fists. “You’ve got ten seconds to open this door or else I’m taking it down.”

“Like hell he is,” I said, shoving to a stand, my fists balled as I headed towards the door, ready to show this redneck how to show a woman some respect.

“No,” Emma hissed, grabbing me by the hand and whipping me around. “Please, you promised you’d behave.”

I closed my eyes, focusing on unclenching my jaw. “I promised I’d try to behave myself. This”—I tilted my head back at the door where Ty continued his assault on it—“is making good behavior impossible.”

Making another attempt at the door, she stalled me again, coming into the area that was all personal space. Her warmth crept across the sheet of air separating us, making its way against my skin. Looking up at me, she rested a trembling hand on my cheek.

“Be the man I know you are,” she whispered, her eyes begging me to find whatever restraint she was sure I had, although I was anything but. Restraint wouldn’t be something I’d say I had in vast amounts, or any amounts for that matter.

Feeling like it was going against every natural fiber in my body, I sighed. “Does that window open?” I glanced at the window above the desk.

She nodded her head, giving me a look like she couldn’t understand what that had to do with anything.

Rushing in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go, I lifted the lock and whooshed the window open.

“We’re three floors up!” Emma whisper shouted. “Don’t you dare.”

Crouching over her desk, I sent a playful smile her way before launching myself out the window.

At least most of the way. My fingers still curled over the sill, not able to resist the expression on her face when she rushed to the window. Raw terror was probably the best way to describe the flattened planes of her face.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” she gasped, glancing from the hard ground below us back to me.

Managing to shrug in my hanging position, I answered her, “Being the man you believe I am.”

Shaking her head, a tiny smile formed. “Of course. You’ve finally become him two seconds before you break your neck.”

“Three floors? I got this,” I assured her, the entire world gone again when she looked at me the way she was now. “I’ve leapt out of many a maiden’s chambers floors higher I’ll have you know.”

She shook her head like she couldn’t believe I was making jokes at a time like this. “I do have to say, if it wasn’t for the extenuating circumstances,” she said, her head tilting back at the door, “I’d probably find this whole hanging out of my window, making sweet little looks at me thing rather romantic.” She ran her fingers over mine. “It’s got Shakespeare written all over it.” Taking another look at the ground, she cast an anxious look my way. “Are you sure you’ll be all right? That’s a long ways down.”