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Not the urn, of course. But it hit me, staggeringly, as she smiled at me like that—why I’d felt those waves of nostalgia and familiarity around her, why it had been easy to talk to her, why it seemed less like a blind date with a stranger and more like reconnecting with an old friend.
Shit.
I wasn’t the only one lying about who I was. At least I didn’t have to feel as bad about filling her head with the idea of John. He was an idealistic version of myself where I wasn’t the owner of an international events planning company, but instead a travel photographer with different tourism companies in my portfolio. I now saw that the face across from me was Ava Riley’s, although she no longer had braces or dyed black hair. She’d grown up in the last ten years, so much so that I hadn’t even noticed who she was at first.
But I should have known. I should have considered the possibility of running into her at some point. David, her father, had said she’d recently moved to Manhattan, and although I hadn’t had the chance to visit his office as of yet, I was surprisedI hadn’t seen Ava walking around the financial district. From what I’d heard, she’d set up an office for whatever business she was starting in some of the spare, unused offices on David’s floor.
“John?” she asked, blinking at me as if I was the one who had gone insane here. Maybe I had. Maybe we both had.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to say to her. One minute ago, she had been someone else, someone I didn’t know, someone I could freely admit to being wildly attracted to. But now…shit, she was my best friend’s daughter. I’d met her when she wasten.
But she wasn’t ten anymore, and she wasn’t fifteen anymore, either.
“Sorry,” I said, clearing my throat with a bit of fake laughter. I let my gaze move to the photo of the man behind her, his fingers just barely holding onto the urn. “I missed what you said.”
She turned to look at the photograph before looking back at me. “Were youthatinto the picture of him?”
I shrugged. “It’s an amazing work to see in person.”
She watched me, her eyes practically burning a hole through my head, and I couldn’t tell if the little crease forming between her brows was from curiosity and attraction, or if she’d somehow made the connection, too. Surely, she must have—I barely looked any different than I had ten years ago in comparison to her massive transformation. I’d gone from thirty-five to forty-five, and yes, I’d gotten a few more grays and maybe a handful of extra laugh lines, butshehad become a full-fledged woman.
A woman that I’d spent the last hour ogling and imagining how many different ways I could fuck her.
I, at least, had a solid reason for hiding behind the persona of John. It kept me away from the women who threw themselves at me solely for my money, and it allowed me to find casual partners that I might not be able to cling to as Adrian. That, andI didn’t want to worry about having to disclose my son to anyone I was seeing.
Even if it crossed the lines I’d drawn out so clearly with him.
No lying.It was our one major rule, and every time I did this, every time I left the house to go meet someone, that’s exactly what I spent my entire evening doing.
“Can I be honest for a second?” she asked, taking a single step toward me. Her hand came to rest on the length of my forearm with just barely enough weight to feel it over my jacket. Her cheeks warmed again, bringing those freckles I hadn’t fully noticed ten years ago right back to the surface.She has to know.“I do these occasionally. Blind dates, or whatever. But I think this might be the most exciting one I’ve ever had.”
If she’d said that moments ago, it would have been game over for me. Even now, it almost was. I couldn’t deny that I was intensely attracted to both her body and her brain.
The cost of exploring what I felt would be her father potentially murdering me at the golf course next Saturday.
I let out a breathy chuckle as we started moving again, her wistful little movements as she found her stride alongside me feeling far too electrifying. Maybe she didn’t know. She would eventually, of course, but could I get away with it until we bumped into each other at the next charity event or party of her father’s?
Maybe.
“I can honestly, wholeheartedly agree.”
————
The sun had dipped well below the horizon as we finally emerged from the closing museum. We were among the last to be shooed out, partly because we were so engrossed in a conversation about whether contemporary photography counts as photographic art or contemporary art, that we’d barely had a moment to notice the time, and partly because I just didn’t want it to end.
Her hand slipped into mine on the bustling sidewalk beside Central Park. Taxis honked, nightlife roared, and the sounds of the city bled into my mind, influencing me, convincing me that it didn’t have to end just yet. Sure, I was meant to be walking her to the nearest subway stop, but we could goanywhere.
“Lily,” I said. My feet stopped in their tracks, drawing a hasty “asshole” from the man who was walking behind me, and before she’d even heard me, she felt the tug on her hand.
She spun around. “Yeah?”
The lights from the overhead streetlamp and the headlights passing by reflected in her eyes, and for a moment, she wasn’t Ava. She was Lily, the mysterious New York newbie who loved art and frequented a cafe on the other side of Manhattan from where she should be spending her time. She wasn’t the high-up socialite with a father who was my best friend.
And I could act on that.
I pulled on her hand, dragging her to me, closing the distance.
I let my free hand rest against her cheek, let it erase the little bit of chill on her skin from the late autumn air. I could feel the blossoming warmth across her face as she realized what I was doing.
