19
When the sun went down, Shane built a fire in the fireplace and sprawled on the couch in front of it, intending to just shut his eyes for a moment, lulled by the murmurs of laughter and chatter around him.
When he opened them again, the fire was still crackling, but the room was quiet apart from the soft turning of pages. He craned his neck to see Lilah curled up in one of the armchairs, reading. She looked up at the noise of his shuffling, her lips quirking in a half smile.
“How was your nap, Grandpa?”
“I’m on a lot of painkillers, okay?” he grumbled, the throb in his ribs alerting him they’d worn off. “Is everyone else gone?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, turning another page without breaking eye contact.
They were alone, then. Again.
It seemed like they were pushing their luck, this many times without incident. It felt inevitable that things would eventually explode, one way or another.
With great effort, he swung his legs over the side of the couch. “Did I sleep through all the cleanup?”
“I knew you were faking to get out of doing the dishes.” Her eyes glinted with good-natured mischief.
“I feel bad. I wanted to help, since I didn’t do any of the cooking.”
“You’re in luck. There’s still a few in the sink.”
“Well, I didn’t feel that bad,” he mumbled, and she snickered.
With a sigh, he scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck and stood up, heading toward the kitchen.
“Want some company?”
He turned to see her looking at him over her book, her expression hard to read.
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
She closed her book and trailed after him, refilling her wineglass before hoisting herself onto an empty stretch of counter.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment as he set down a dish towel on the counter next to him and turned on the sink, running his hand under the tap as it warmed up. But to his surprise, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It felt easy. Lived-in. Domestic.
It shouldn’t have felt this natural. Playing house with her like this, in a place neither of them lived, when they weren’t together anymore, when they hadn’t ever done this kind of thing even when they were together.
And yet somehow it felt like the thousandth time and not the first: lingering in the kitchen late at night after everyone they’d hosted had gone home, him doing the dishes, her drinking wine, both of them basking in the afterglow of good food and good company, quietly appreciative that they were alone again all the same.
He pushed the thought out of his head. “Do you need a ride back to the hotel after this?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shake her head. “I was planning on staying here tonight.”
“Here?”
Lilah idly swung her legs against the side of the counter. “Yeah, I mean, why not? I paid for it.”
He glanced over at her. “Actually, we paid for it. I have just as much of a right to that bed as you do.”
He was teasing, mostly, but tried to keep his expression serious. In return, she arched an eyebrow.
“I’ll pay you back for your half.”
He grinned, turning back to the sink. “I don’t know…spending the night somewhere other than that hotel is sounding pretty good to me right now. I don’t think my back will ever recover from that mattress.”
“How do you know this one is any better?”
“Only one way to find out.”
She didn’t respond, just sipped her wine. Maybe he was taking it too far, crossing into pushy. He looked over at her again. “I’ll go back if you want me to.”
She met his eyes, her tone neutral.
“I didn’t say that.”
He felt a ghost of a smirk cross his face but said nothing, turning back to the sink. He tried not to let his mind race about the implications of what that meant.
As if she could hear his thoughts, she added, “If you stay, you know nothing’s going to happen tonight, right?”
“Isn’t that jinxing ourselves? Now it’s all tempting and forbidden.”
“You’re right,” she deadpanned. “Maybe we should just have sex now to remove the temptation to have sex later.”
“Now you’re talking.”
He could tell she was working to keep her voice stern, to fight the laugh bubbling up underneath it. “I mean it.”
“I believe you.”
“And I mean every definition of sex. No hand stuff. No mouth stuff. No loopholes.”
“Well, stop talking about holes, then. You’re getting me all worked up.”
The laugh she was suppressing finally escaped, the sound sending a thrill through him. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He glanced over at her after he said it, almost without meaning to. Her cheeks were tinged pink, though it was just as likely from the wine as from anything else. She took another sip, holding his gaze.
He turned back to the pan that had held the apple cake and scrubbed vigorously. “Who said I want to have sex with you, anyway? Kind of full of yourself.”
She still didn’t say anything, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw her drain her glass and slide off the counter. He tensed as she approached him from behind, feeling the nudge of her feet on either side of his, followed by the soft press of her breasts against his back. To his dismay, he fumbled with the dish in his hands, and the small, hot exhale of her laugh on his neck made every hair on his body stand on end.
Resentment rushed through him at how easily she could get a reaction out of him, calling his bluff—joke or not—without doing much of anything. But mostly he was just grateful that he was facing away from her, the lower half of his body blocked by the sink, hiding the full, humiliating extent of his innate response to her.
When she rested her chin lightly in the spot between his neck and shoulder, just for a second, it occurred to him that maybe her boundary was less of a boundary and more of a dare in disguise.
He wouldn’t cross it without her permission, obviously, but there was plenty of leeway in the terms she’d laid down. Earlier, he’d peeked into the house’s one and only bedroom and was suddenly overtaken by the vivid image of the two of them tangled in those sheets, dry humping like overheated teenagers, slowly stripping off one piece of clothing at a time in an attempt to hold out as long as they could, each waiting for the other one to break first.
It must have been a sign of how hard up he was after half a year of celibacy that his hands were shaking at the thought.
If she noticed, she didn’t point it out. She just slowly reached around him, placing her wineglass in the almost empty sink.
“I’m gonna go take a shower,” she murmured into his neck.
As he watched her disappear down the hall toward the bathroom, another, more uncomfortable idea settled over him: maybe he was wrong. Maybe she didn’t deserve the manipulative seductress label he’d slapped her with—then, or now. Maybe, like Dr. Deena had suggested, it was another way to absolve himself of his own responsibility in their endless push and pull.
Maybe she was just as confused as he was about what they were to each other: unsure what she wanted, what was attainable, what was worth hoping for.
Maybe they both cloaked all that uncertainty in sex as a distraction, afraid of what they’d find if they bothered to look beneath the surface of their physical connection.
And as he heard the shower start to run, he wondered if maybe it wouldn’t have been the smart move for him to go back to the hotel after all.
…
Lilah took her time getting ready after her shower. As she dressed in the sweats and tank top she’d packed for herself, she tried to figure out how her solo getaway had turned into a pseudo–couples retreat. He’d given her an opening to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone, and she probably still could, if she wanted to. But she realized that at some point over the past few months, disturbingly and without permission, he’d snuck his way back onto the very short list of people whose company she preferred to being alone.
On her way out of the bedroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her shirt was thin enough that she considered putting her bra back on, but the idea of torturing herself with underwire for a second longer was less appealing than Shane’s inevitable teasing about it. Besides, it wasn’t like he was unfamiliar with the concept of her nipples. He’d just have to deal with it.
When she padded into the living room, Shane was on the couch, flipping through the channels. His brow furrowed as soon as his gaze fell on her, and she braced herself for what was coming next.
“Are those my pants?”
Fuck. She’d hoped he wouldn’t remember.
“I don’t think so,” she lied.
He pushed himself off the couch and strode over to her, reaching down and tugging playfully at the drawstring. “Yes, they are. They’re missing the little metal thing here. I thought they were gone for good.”
“Well…do I have to give them back? They’re my favorite pair.” The hint of a whine crept into her voice—mostly out of embarrassment that she’d been caught.
“Maybe just for tonight. I don’t have anything to sleep in.”
“What about your underwear?”
“If that’s what you’d prefer,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She knew he didn’t mean right that second, but she was annoyed enough that she hooked her thumbs into the waistband and stripped them off where she stood. He took them from her, his gaze locked on hers without straying downward.
While he was gone, she threw another log on the fire, then pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and swaddled herself in it from the neck down.
He returned shortly, dressed in the sweatpants and nothing else. She tried not to wince at the sight of the mottled bruising and taped-up spots on his torso. But once the shock wore off, she was struck again, like she’d been from afar at upfronts and from up close at their photo shoot, by how his body had changed in the time she’d known him.
The first season, he’d told her he’d never stepped foot in a gym, like that was supposed to impress her. That his lean frame and corded arms came from his time on the road with his friend’s punk band—the one that had brought him to L.A. in the first place—loading and unloading their equipment, living off free beer and bar snacks, coasting on his youthful metabolism.
He wasn’t a twenty-five-year-old dirtbag anymore, and it was clear he’d been taking advantage of the network-sponsored personal trainer and private gym membership. He’d bulked up and filled out, no longer lean—a body that told the story of hard work, but also of indulgence. Of someone who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—completely deprive himself of the things that brought him pleasure.
She realized too late her eyes were lingering, her face starting to warm.
“You’re not getting my shirt, too, if that’s what you’re after,” she said.
He grinned. “Just getting in your pants is enough for me.”
“Technically, you got in your own pants.”
“You wish.”
“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.”
He settled next to her. “It means move over and stop hogging the blanket.”
She unwrapped herself and they negotiated their positions carefully, taking spots at either end of the couch, the blanket large enough to cover both of them. As Shane stretched his legs out toward her, Lilah tucked hers underneath herself to prevent them from touching.
She grabbed the remote and began scrolling through the cable menu, pausing on one of the movie channels, which was just starting Gravy Train—Serena Montague’s breakout role, thirty years earlier. She raised her eyebrows at Shane. As expected, he shook his head, and she kept going.
“Whatever happened with you two, anyway?” she asked casually, her gaze still glued to the screen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shrug.
“Nothing interesting.”
“So she didn’t catch you in the hot tub with her daughter and her roommate when they were home for spring break?” she teased, racking her brain for the most outrageous of the tabloid rumors. He scoffed.
“Is that really what you think of me?”
“Well, I don’t know what to think,” she said, in a faux-scandalized voice.
He watched her scroll through the cable menu for a few more seconds. Just when she thought he was going to ignore her or change the subject, he said, “We just wanted different things.”
“Like…you wanted kids?”
“Not necessarily.” She snuck a look at him and was surprised to see the serious expression creasing his features. “She was just so settled, you know? Like, established. In her career, her life, everything. And at first, it was nice, because everything in my life was so fucking chaotic at that point.” He glanced at her sardonically. “I mean, I guess I don’t have to tell you that. Being with her kind of…stabilized me. But then, after a few years—around the time I turned thirty—it started to feel suffocating. Like, she could never compromise on anything. I think that’s what she liked about me, that I was so flexible. She could just mold me into whatever she wanted. Eventually I started to feel like…like maybe I wanted to be with someone that I could actually build a life with, together, rather than someone who already had their life all figured out before I even got there, and I just got slotted into it.”
Lilah grinned. “You say that now, but I bet you’re going to end up with some flexible, unmolded twenty-two-year-old that you’ll just slot into your life. The cycle continues.”
“I wasn’t twenty-two.”
“No, but she will be. Trust me.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He sounded slightly annoyed as he held out his hand. “You’re doing a terrible job picking.”
She tossed the remote at him. He picked it up and began scrolling so fast she got dizzy. “What about you and Dick?”
“You mean Richard?” She cast a sidelong glance at him, surprised that he was instantly able to summon the name of her on-again, off-again ex—who, unlike Serena, wasn’t exactly a household icon.
Her legs were starting to cramp, so she stretched them out, one at a time, her bare skin sliding against the worn-in fabric of his sweats. He kept his eyes on the television, but she thought she saw a tendon in his neck twitch.
“Richard and I…we weren’t good at compromising, either. Mostly about where we wanted to live. He hated being in L.A. if he didn’t have to be, for work.”
“Did you ever think about moving back to New York to be with him?”
“Sometimes. I almost did, after I left the show.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because you weren’t in love with him.”
She paused. “No.”
He glanced over at her, holding her gaze for a moment before turning back to the television.
“But you kept getting back together.” His tone was measured.
“Yeah. I mean, we were so similar. Too similar, probably. But it was…familiar. And it was nice that he wasn’t famous, that we’d known each other since before…it made it feel normal, almost.” She pulled one of the decorative throw pillows onto her lap and wrapped her arms around it. Shane didn’t say anything, just kept flipping channels in silence.
“He really looked down on the show,” she said quietly after a moment. “He’d always tell me I was wasting my talent, which I was deluded enough to think was a compliment. But he just thought he was better than all of it. Me included.”
“What did he think you should be doing instead?”
“I don’t know. Making a hundred dollars a week in some experimental off-off-off-Broadway play, probably.”
“So he was an insecure snob who couldn’t handle the fact that you were more successful than he was.” He said it so matter-of-factly that she couldn’t stop herself from grinning.
“Well, if you want to put it that way.”
Shane finally put the remote down, settling on a rerun of an old reality show that centered around a group of bros hitting one another in the balls with various items. Lilah opened her mouth to protest. Instead, she asked, “Did you love her? Serena?”
He was still looking at the television, but she could tell he wasn’t really watching it. His chest rose and fell, heavily, slowly. “I loved being with her, yeah,” he said. “She’s an amazing person. But she was kind of…impenetrable, I guess. I think being that famous for that long messes with you. And I know it got to her, what people said about us. About her. She didn’t let her guard down much, even when we were alone. It was like she was always performing.” Finally, he turned to face her, fixing her with a stare that made goosebumps scatter across her skin. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t really love someone unless they let you.”
Lilah swallowed hard but kept her gaze steady. “Sounds like you have a thing for emotionally unavailable women. You should probably talk to someone about that.”
He snorted a little, shaking his head wearily. “You’re tellin’ me.”
The defeated edge in his voice made her heart squeeze. He wasn’t looking at her anymore.
She turned back to the television, looking at it without absorbing anything.
“Shane?”
“Hmm?”
She hesitated. “Did you try to quit? After we…after the first season?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, his face in profile, eyes in shadow. Finally, he exhaled heavily and shook his head, but she could tell it was a gesture of resignation, not denial.
“I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. I was just…I was out of my mind. After everything. The thought of showing up to that set again every day…I’m just lucky it was big enough that they offered me more money, instead of suing my ass for breach of contract. Really put into perspective how ungrateful I was being, trying to throw it all away over…” He trailed off, glancing at her uneasily, then back at the TV.
Lilah sat with that for a moment, unsure what to do with it. “Why did they give me a raise, too, though?”
He shrugged, but she could see the tension in his gesture, the feigned nonchalance. “It just didn’t seem right. Me getting paid more, when we’re doing the same job.”
Even though she’d been expecting it, sort of, it felt like the air pressure in the room dropped. Lilah blinked, fighting to get her next words out.
“But you hated me.”
He stretched one of his arms across the back of the couch, finally looking straight at her. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Lilah,” he said quietly.
She held his gaze, her stomach churning with unease. There was something about the look on his face—helpless, almost—that only made it worse. After a long beat, she turned back to the TV, and so did he.
They watched the rest of the episode in silence. She shivered, pulling the blanket up to her neck. He shot her a sidelong glance before tugging it back toward himself. As their half-playful power struggle continued, they slid lower and lower on the couch, until they were both snuggled fully under the blanket, legs entangled like a pretzel. Lilah wanted to be annoyed, but she was too cozy to care.
When the next episode started, she repositioned her leg more abruptly than she’d meant to, her heel making hard contact with something warm and firm. Shane hissed through his teeth, jerking upright.
“Jesus Christ, watch your feet,” he said with a wince, reaching under the blanket and adjusting himself.
She stifled a laugh. “Sorry. They made that seem more fun on TV.”
“They also say not to try it at home,” he grumbled under his breath. “Just get over here, already, before you do any permanent damage.”
She paused, unsure she’d heard him correctly. But he didn’t take it back, just stared at her, eyes dark and bottomless, flickering in the light from the fire.
The blanket fell away from her shoulders as she sat up, folding her legs underneath her until she was kneeling. She crawled across the couch toward him, never more aware that they’d split one outfit’s worth of clothing between the two of them, that her tank top was barely more than a technicality.
She assumed his hands would be on her as soon as she was within reach, but instead he flipped the blanket back, scooting over to create space for her between his body and the back of the couch. She slid in beside him, half relieved, half regretful that this was all he meant.
Once she was seated next to him, bare shoulder to bare shoulder, the long line of his lower body pressed against hers, she hesitated, looking over at him. He was studying her with a serious, almost troubled expression, his gaze flicking from her eyes to her lips to her chest and then back to her lips again.
She wondered if he was going to try to kiss her after all. He obviously wanted to, and it would be so easy, their faces already inches apart. They’d done it plenty of times before, they were days away from being forced to do it again, and once the idea entered her head, it was hard to make it leave.
But she knew if they did, it wouldn’t matter what she’d said earlier—she wouldn’t be able to stop there. And going down that road with him again would only lead to the same drama and mess and emotional carnage it always had, their work environment once again collateral damage. The tentative peace they’d fought so hard for over the last few months undone in a single night. They’d come too far to risk it.
So she slid down farther, Shane following her lead, until they were both lying flat: her cheek on his bare chest, her arm stretching across the span of his ribs, her breasts pressed into his side. He brought his arm around her, tucking her shoulder tightly into his armpit, before pulling the blanket back over them. Once they were fully settled, they both exhaled heavily, and Lilah felt the last bit of tension drain from her body as she relaxed against him.
There was nothing wrong with a little cuddling. It didn’t have to mean anything. Considering how well their bodies fit together like this, it would be a waste if they didn’t. Lilah couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this comfortable, warm and swaddled and safe, mellowed by wine and practically high off the scent of his skin. Her eyelids began to droop.
“ ’S better.” Even though she couldn’t see his face, she could tell by the sluggishness in his voice that his eyes were probably closed, too. He stroked his hand back and forth over her upper arm absentmindedly, sending pleasurable tingles down through her toes.
“Now that you’re safe from me?” she asked his chest.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be safe from you,” he murmured, or maybe she hallucinated it, since she was already drifting off.
The next thing she knew, the room was dark apart from the flickering of the TV—and cold, too, now that the fire had gone out. But she was warm somehow, even though the blanket was half-off her. It didn’t take her long to figure out the source: she was lying on her side, facing Shane, his arms wrapped around her, his weight pinning her to the back of the couch.
She took inventory of one body part at a time, her heart speeding up exponentially as she accounted for every limb: both her arms around his neck. Her bottom leg sandwiched between his heavy thighs. Her top one slung over his hip. There wasn’t very much of her that wasn’t pressed up against him.
He was still asleep, his brow creased deeply, like he was worried about something. She resisted the temptation to reach up and smooth it out with her thumb.
She must have tensed because she felt him stir, clutching her closer as he woke up. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t say anything. He still seemed half-asleep, honestly. But his hands began to move.
The hand that wasn’t pinned under her body trailed down her back, settling on the strip of skin below her tank top, then back up again. His fingertips grazed under the hem, the barest brush somehow sending electric currents straight to her core, her nipples tightening against his chest. He kept his gaze locked on her face, and she knew he was waiting for a signal to stop. One of her hands clenched—practically spasmed—giving her away, her nails digging into the muscles of his shoulder.
He moved with purpose then, freeing the parts of his body that were trapped underneath her, shifting her more fully onto her back, looming above her. His gaze swept over her, eyes glazed, before he slid his hand possessively over her stomach, skating it up over her shirt until he stopped short, just below the swell of her breast.
She struggled for air, her lungs feeling like they were operating at half capacity. In her borderline dream state, his weight and heat and scent crowding her on all sides, restless and greedy, all her earlier inhibitions melted away. There was something hazy and unreal about the whole thing, like nothing that happened would exist outside that moment.
That must have been what emboldened her to place her own hand over his and move it the rest of the way, her breath escaping in a helpless gasp when she felt the warmth of his palm cupping her, his thumb grazing her nipple, her whole body clenching with need.
She thought his eyes would turn her to ash on the spot. He bent his head, and she felt his breath ghost against her skin. “God. Please,” he rasped, his voice desperate. “I know we can’t. I just…need to…” He didn’t finish his sentence before he closed his mouth over her other nipple, sucking through the ribbed fabric of her tank top, as hot and damp and electrifying as if he’d put his mouth directly between her legs. She arched her back and whimpered, lacing her fingers through his hair and holding on tightly.
At her encouragement, he gripped her breast roughly at the same time that she felt the sharp wince of his teeth, making her cry out harder. She wrapped her leg around his waist again and ground against him, her brain so clouded with lust she couldn’t summon any rational excuse why she shouldn’t. Like there was no way that anything that felt this good, that she wanted this badly, could possibly be a mistake.
Too soon, he groaned and released her, sliding his hand down to meet the other one at the small of her back. He rested his cheek against her lower belly, exhaling heavily, as if stopping took ten times more effort than action. She reached down to stroke his hair.
She knew, then, that they really weren’t going to have sex that night.
They weren’t going to have sex ever again, unless it was for keeps.
The idea didn’t unsettle her as much as she thought it would. It must have snuck in and nested in the basement of her subconscious at some point over the last few weeks—or maybe it had been there for years, lying dormant, waiting for her to wise up and notice it.
That didn’t mean it was going to lead anywhere. But it was there, all the same.
She thought maybe he’d fallen asleep again, his breathing slow, his head moving gently with the rise and fall of her stomach. But then he propped his elbows on either side of her waist and looked up at her, his hair sticking up where she’d messed with it.
“Should we go to bed?”
Lilah had already brushed her teeth, so she got straight into bed while Shane was in the bathroom. She sighed with pleasure as she slid into the cool, crisp sheets, feeling herself start to drift off again as soon as her head hit the pillow.
She heard the door creak, followed by Shane’s footsteps. Felt the depression of the mattress as he climbed in next to her.
All of a sudden she was awake again, alert, waiting to see what he would do.
He shifted closer, until she could feel the heat of him at her back.
His lips brushed her ear. “Is this okay?”
She nodded, and he slid his arm over her stomach, closing the gap between them. She covered his hand with hers, loosely interlacing their fingers, shivering at the press of his lips to the back of her neck.
They were still in that position when she woke up the next morning.