ODESSA

I find an empty park bench in Central Park and finish my pretzel-and-coffee lunch, composing my thoughts before I call my parents. It’s time to tell them about Jeremiah: that it’s officially over.

For good.

My fingers shake as I dial my father’s cell phone. He deserves to hear everything from me now, not secondhand through Mom.

“Hey, baby cakes!” His voice is a whistle, breathless.

“Hey, Dad.” I can’t help but smile when I hear his voice, though it disappears when I remember I’m seconds away from breaking the poor man’s heart.

“Good to hear from you,” he says. “I was getting worried. Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m doing well. Really happy.”

“I saw Jeremiah’s TV show the other day. You didn’t tell us the season started two weeks ago,” he says. “Trying to play catch up with the reruns. It’s a good show. Your mom made his southern fried chicken last night for dinner.”

“Daddy, you’re not supposed to be eating that kind of stuff.”

“Everybody’s going to die someday, right?”

I hate when he downplays his health. Cracking jokes isn’t going to make his chronic illnesses disappear.

“Your mother told me you and Jeremiah were going through a bit of a cooling off period,” he says. Leave it to my mother to put a delicate spin on some heavy news. Two years ago when my brother and his wife were having marital issues, my father damn near had a heart attack when he heard they’d legally separated. “Everything okay?”

I rake my hand along my leg and reposition myself. Attempting to find comfort on a wooden park bench is pretty much impossible.

“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I know you liked him a lot, but I don’t want to marry him anymore. We ended things. For good.”

My face pinches as I wait for his reaction, fingers crossed that this news doesn’t land him in the hospital.

“You still there?” I ask. The raspy breathing on the other end tells me he is, but I need him to say something. Anything.

“Back in high school,” he says. “I dated this girl. Marian Tisdale. She was incredible. Smile like you wouldn’t believe. Captain of the cheerleading squad. Hottest girl in school. We went off to college together, and I thought I was going to spend my life with this girl. I loved her more than anything.”

I press the phone hard against my ear. My father never speaks of life before my mom, and we all assumed that he didn’t exist until she came into his life.

“Just before the wedding,” he says. “She got cold feet. Said she couldn’t marry me because there were too many other options out there and what if she made the wrong choice? I was the only guy she’d ever loved.”

His tone is laced in melancholy, and my heart breaks for the younger version of my father.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I think my father took it harder than anyone,” he says. “Told me I’d never meet anyone as perfect for me as Marian Tisdale. And for years, I believed him.”

I know how that feels.

“And then one day, I’m working at my father’s deli and he announces that he hired some Bloom girl to pick up some hours on the second shift. A daughter of his buddy’s from the next town over.”

My heart warms.

“In walks your mother.” I can hear the smile in his hoarse words. “Never looked back after that.”

“Aw,” I sigh. “I knew you met at grandpa’s deli, but I’d never heard about Marian.”

“That’s because Marian is irrelevant,” he says. “Life didn’t matter until your mother. She’s my best friend. The girl who stuck by my side despite the fact that I didn’t deserve her. Still don’t deserve her. But thirty-five years later, she’s not going anywhere. You need someone who’ll stick with you when life gets hard. Really hard. Because it will. It always does.”

I nod, knowing he can’t see me. My words are lodged somewhere in my throat.

“Look. I liked Jeremiah. Emphasis on liked. If things got hard and Jeremiah bailed on you, he doesn’t deserve you,” Dad says. “And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knew you were only staying with him because you wanted to make me happy.”

I clutch at my heart, desperately wishing we’d have had this talk weeks ago.

“Thanks, Dad.” A lungful of fresh air reinvigorates me. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll see you and Mom in a couple weeks, okay? I’m flying back for Mother’s Day.”

“All right, baby cakes. Love you.”

* * *

“You’re back.” I linger in Beckham’s office doorway. His cheeks are sunken, his eyes darker than before. He stormed off earlier without saying a word. “You talk to Sophie?”

“Yep.” He glares at the computer screen, punching his keyboard.

“Get everything sorted out?” I shouldn’t pry, but then again, the woman was stalking me, so I have a right to ask.

“She’ll leave you alone from now on.”

That’s all I get?

“What’d she say?” I step into his office. His eyes snap toward me, crawling up me from head to toe as if I’m not welcome in here.

“The details are none of your concern, Odessa.”

“No, it is. She was following me.”

“And I told you she wouldn’t be a problem any longer. What part of that did you not understand?” He slams his keyboard tray back into his desk, slowly rising.

“What the hell is your problem?” My arms lock against my chest, and my hip cocks sideways. “Is any of this about last night?”

It has to be. Nothing else makes sense. Maybe he still loves Sophie and he hates himself for screwing me last night? I’m grasping at straws here but I need to understand what changed.

“Why would any of this be about last night?” A single eyebrow lifts.

My jaw slacks, the words sputtering in my mind. “Maybe you still have feelings for her?”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“Maybe you’re upset that I’m a bigger part of your life than you ever wanted me to be. Maybe you don’t know how to deal with that emotionally, so you shut down.”

He charges around the desk, coming closer until we’re face to face. He doesn’t intimidate me, and I refuse to back down.

“Thanks for the psychoanalysis, but it won’t be necessary.” His calm tone is delivered with controlled force.

“You don’t have to be so hard all the time,” I say. “You’re nothing but edges. If you’d soften up once in a while…”

“Not everyone lives in a little glass bubble where the sun always shines and life never gets real.” He huffs, his stormy eyes grazing my lips. “Must be fucking nice to always have shit figured out, Odessa. But I’m working on mine, so how about you worry about your own for once?”

“Why are you doing this?”

I search his eyes for a hint of anything that might tell me this friendship, whatever we have, is salvageable because I know what I saw back in Utah. He’s a good person. He has a good heart. This man seething in front of me is about to snap, and he needs someone there to pick up the pieces when he does.

“Push me away all you want,” I say. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

“Both.”

“You’re a damn fool,” he growls.

“Likewise.” I stand tall. “You need me. You need me and you hate the hell out of that fact. You’d be a fool to let me walk away, but lucky for you, I’m not going to.”

“I’m not capable of giving you the things you need.” His words offer an angry apology.

“It’s not about me, Beckham. It’s not about what I need.” Our eyes lock. I’m never letting go. At least not until he hears me out. “You told me once everyone’s in it for themselves. But you were wrong because if that were the case, I’d have walked away from you a long time ago. You’re right. You’re not what I need. But you need me. And I’m going to be there for you because that’s what friends do.”

He says nothing, his chest rising and falling.

“And like it or not, we’re friends.” I press my pointer finger into his heart. “Deny it all you want, but–”

A flash in his eyes precedes the grip he takes around my wrist, yanking me against his rigid body before I have a chance to protest.

“We passed friends a long time ago, don’t you think?”

I’m locked against him, his hands twisted in my hair and his lips silencing mine with a crushing kiss. My tongue dances with his. I’m caught between wanting to breathe and wanting to exist purely in this moment.

His hands fall to my waist, and he spins me around, stepping toward me until I fall back onto his desk. Leaning forward, he clears the space behind me, shoving his stapler aside. A cup of pens scatters on the floor, but his focus is on me. Beckham’s fingers work the button of my pants followed by the zipper, and within seconds my pants are tossed aside and my panties are ripped in two.

His mouth smashes mine, and he takes my bottom lip between his teeth as my hands work his belt. The heat in my body soars each time my fingers graze across the hardness beneath his layers.

The second he’s free and sheathed, he hoists my thighs around his hips, plowing his swollen cock into me like the whole fucking free world depends on it.

Beckham’s painfully delicious thrusts build a warm friction. With my fingers tangled in his dark hair, tugging and pulling, I widen my legs and welcome every generous inch of him.

Every plunge.

Every push.

Every prod.

But sex with Beckham is the perfect guilty pleasure. Carnal and uncomplicated. Exactly the way it should be.

His hand gropes my breast over my blouse, and I spot the longing in his eyes to be naked, touching all of me. He needs that closeness he so stubbornly tries to deny himself.

My ankles dig into his tight ass, pushing him deeper inside me as his thrusts quicken. The build-up washes over me as my nails claw his back. Warm spurts fill me, and his face tenses and relaxes as he unloads everything he has into me.

When it’s over, we don’t speak about it. We don’t need to. It is what it is.