making any assumptions,” he says. “I like you too. A lot a lot.”
I smile.
“You want to be my girlfriend?” he asks.
Nodding, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Clearly.”
“Fine,” he says. “You’re my girlfriend.”
I kiss him. Hard. Harder than I’ve ever kissed him before.
He hoists me up, and I’m weightless in his arms. Carrying me up the steps, I kiss him again and again, my hands caressing his smooth face. I slide off of him when we reach the top, my fingers greedily tugging at the hem of his shirt.
I want him, and I want him now.
He stops me, placing his hands on mine. “I’ve got groceries being delivered any minute. I thought I’d make us dinner tonight and then maybe we could go out and see that movie you’ve been wanting to see. The one with Ryan Gosling and that girl from that other movie with that guy . . .”
“Really?” I squeal, doing a slight jump. “You’ll see it with me? God, we really are boyfriend and girlfriend now.”
He smirks, “Anyway, I just got back from the gym a little bit ago, I’m going to hit the shower quick.”
“Seriously?” I sigh. It’s not fair that a man can go to the gym and come back smelling like testosterone and pheromones and the good kind of sweat, and a woman leaves the gym walking home in a three-foot bubble of gym-stench and praying she doesn’t run into anyone she knows on the way. “I could eat you alive, you smell so good. It’s not fair.”
“Just make yourself at home,” he says, leaning in to kiss my forehead.
“Always do.”
Ace disappears down the hall, and I cozy up on his couch, flipping through channels on his TV and hoping I can find the latest Real Housewives of Whatever marathon because I’m so behind.
Score.
Found one.
I settle in, watching two women go at it. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think one of them talked to the other one’s daughter behind her back and the one is pissed off about it and accusing the other one of manipulating the daughter into not liking her fiancé? And it all happened in St. Barths last New Year’s Eve?
Something like that anyway.
God, I need popcorn for this.
A commercial plasters the screen, and my fly-like attention span wanes. I find myself focused on the photos that line Ace’s fireplace mantle. Rising, I move closer, examining each one like a detective attempting to unearth clues. I don’t see a single woman in any of these photos besides an older, middle-aged lady with jet black hair flanked by a bunch of strapping and audaciously handsome young men. The woman, who is clearly his mother, wears a proud smile, and the son standing to her left, Ace, has his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders.
The show comes back on, and I settle back into the warm indentation waiting for me on the sofa cushion when the faint chime of the doorbell interrupts the fight that’s about to break out on screen.
I don’t hear the shower running anymore, so I think Ace is out, but I doubt he’s appropriate yet, so I pop up and tromp downstairs to get the groceries.
“Just a minute,” I call out, taking the steps two at a time and almost tripping over my makeup case, which I forgot I’d left at the bottom of the landing.
Flinging the door open, I expect to be met by a man in a grocery store uniform lugging several bags worth of food.
Instead it’s a woman.
Hair the color of onyx.
Eyes like wild violets.
“Who are you?” she asks, a single brow arched.
I stand before her paralyzed, unable to speak.
The thumping of Ace’s feet coming down the stairs behind me almost drowns out the pounding of my heart in my ears.
“Kerenza,” Ace says. “What are you doing here?”
Kerenza?
It’s her.
It’s “K.”
I was right. I was right all along.
The woman with the violet eyes stares at me, her glare cold and incredulous. She looks at me like I don’t belong here, like she didn’t expect to see me and she wants me gone. I know women can get territorial sometimes, like yippy little harmless Chihuahuas, but this woman looks to me like she could be quite the opposite of harmless.
She looks downright vicious.
Beautiful and vicious, but vicious nonetheless.
“Alessio,” she says, smoothing a manicured hand down a silk blouse; white with tiny black polka dots.
Her nails are red; the color of broken hearts.
“Why are you here?” I hear the grit in his voice, and