Page 44 of The Trouble with Flings

“Everything okay?” she asks.

I nod. “Mm-hm.”

“I’m ordering a round of drinks,” Reggie says. “What would you like?”

“Nothing. Thanks, but would you mind putting my glass on the bar?” I finish my drink and hand it to him. “I think I’m going to head home.”

Mia frowns. “Already?”

“Yeah. I’m just not feeling it tonight. I’ve been working late on fundraising ideas. I’m kind of beat.”

Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t push.

I glance at Reggie. “Will you make sure she gets home safely?”

“Of course,” he says.

The look he gives Mia is so protective and certain, so completely hers, it makes me ache behind my ribs. I want to shake him and tell him to wake the hell up.

But I don’t, because I know better than anyone that a forced relationship is never a good one.

“Want me to get you a car?” he asks.

“Thanks, but it would take them longer to get here tonight than it will for me to walk home.” I hug him. “If anything happens to her…”

“I know the rules,” he says, giving me a half grin.

I hug Mia, and she says, “Text me when you get home.”

“I will.” I retrieve my coat from the coat check and pull it on as I push through the doors, still clutching my phone.

The cold hits like an electric shock after the warmth of the bar. The streets are packed and loud as throngs of people make their way toward Times Square. I take a moment to fill my lungs with the crisp air and open Fitz’s text one more time, drinking in the lips I miss, the sexy playfulness in his eyes, and that freaking confident grin that he sent knowing exactly how seeing his face would affect me.

You could be kissing these lips at midnight.

A fleeting thought whispers through my mind about calling his bluff, catching the ferry, and getting one last taste of those lips at midnight.

What the hell am I doing?

I silently curse him for making me toy with that idea.

How does he always know what to say to get me going? I know how guys are. It doesn’t matter what Leni said about his reputation. He told me he plays his cards close to his chest. I’ve been roped in by mysterious guys before. Close to my chest is just a softer way of saying he’s good at hiding things.

I shove my phone in my pocket and fall into step with the crowd walking by, the cold and the noise folding in around me. And just this once, I urge myself to believe in the delusion that when the clock strikes midnight, it’ll sweep up all of the pieces of me—my cracked-open heart, my wavering independence, the slice of myself I gave to Fitz—and somehow, magically, the next twelve months will stitch me back together, and the pull of Fitz, and the ache of all that we had in Costa Rica, will fade away, as if it never cracked me open at all.

Chapter Twelve

Fitz

Flurries drift around my SUV as I drive to my mother’s house for breakfast. Late January on Silver Island is as unpredictable as the woman I can’t stop thinking about, biting with salt and wind one minute and teasing with dazzling sunshine the next, daring you to believe something warmer is right around the corner.

Jennifer has been a whisper in my pocket for the last six weeks, her return texts lighting up my phone late at night, when the rest of the world is quiet and her guard is finally down.

I haven’t tried to see her yet. I know she’ll make up an excuse, but I also know it wouldn’t be because she doesn’t want to see me. I’ve felt a gradual shift in her the last few weeks, with texts that roll in after I think she’s done for the night and jokes she makes that aren’t quite jokes. Like when she texted, You’re distracting me. I’m trying to sleep. To which I said I hadn’t texted her, and she replied, You exist, and it’s annoying.

Then there are texts like the one she sent last night when I was leaving a poker game with Wells and some of our friends. Turns out Costa Rican wine doesn’t taste as good without the right company. I asked if that was her way of saying she missed me, and she replied, Don’t flatter yourself, Fitzgerald. It’s my way of saying I have terrible taste in wine.

She’s coming around, but the timing has to be right, or that biting wind will burn right through us.