Page 5 of Hold on Tight

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.”

“It was really nice to meet you. And Sam. If you ever need an evening sitter, or weekends—”

“I’ll definitely call.”

“And meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you find someone, and I’ll call you if I think of anyone.”

“Thanks.”

Mira let the phone drop into her lap and took a deep breath.

On the other side of the room, the cocky guy with the prosthetic leg shifted in his seat, drawing her gaze. Brown hair, on the longer side of short, uncombed. A couple of days’ unshaven scruff. Not her type; she liked professional men, clean-shaven. Her mind was about to dismiss him—a guy I ran into in the physical therapist’s office and wasn’t attracted to, but not because he was an amputee, just because he wasn’t my fantasy. But something made her look again.

Holy shit. She knew that face. The strong jaw, the well-formed upper lip, the deep groove that ran vertically between his brows—

She’d memorized his features in the few weeks they’d been together, the quick three-quarters way he smiled, like he couldn’t quite fully commit to happiness, the all-in truth of his smile when he gave himself over. The creases that formed when he frowned, the way his jaw set when something bothered him. That night at the lake—the last night—the look on his face when she’d taken off her clothes. Gratitude and longing andWho, me? For real?

The night came back to her in sharp contrasts, pairs of impressions. The coolness of his wet skin and the heat of his body. The softness of his mouth moving over hers, over her breasts, and the hard tug of his suckling, the yank of desire she’d felt. The rich summer smells, green and overripe, and the clean soap scent of him. How open she’d felt, how boundary-less, melting, flowing, willing—and how her body had betrayed and frustrated her.

How good he’d made her feel, better than she’d ever felt in her life, and the way he’d hurt her. The way they’d dressed, packed up, and driven home in silence. How hard she’d cried, and for how long.

Jake.

His eyes caught hers, caught and held and held and held. Sam’s gray-blue eyes, Sam’s full lower lip, Sam’s absurdly long eyelashes. Jake’s face.

Would Sam someday have a jaw like that, square and strong? Would his nose, which was still a little boy’s pudgy upturned nose, be as bladelike as his father’s?

How many times had she promised herself that if this moment ever came, she wouldn’t hold the truth back from Jake?

But she’d never pictured it happening in a setting like this. Public. Awkward.

“Mira.” He said it slowly, as if he were pulling the name from the furthest reaches of his memory.

“Hi, Jake.”

Her voice was splintered, thready. There was no pretending this was a no-big-deal moment. Not for her. And he wasn’t trying to play it cool either. He scrutinized her, jaw set, expression serious. There was grief in every line of his face. Something she thought might be anger. A darkness behind the surface of his eyes that she’d seen only once before, that night by the lake, when she’d asked him for a future he couldn’t give.

She was feeling too much, and she couldn’t put it all together. When he’d been a stranger with a prosthetic leg, she could manage the sympathy, the curiosity, the faint survivor’s guilt. But he washer Jake, a man she’d been intimate with, and he’d lost part of the body she’d worshipped. He washer Jake, and he was here, in this room, and she was so glad to see him, so glad she wanted to hurl herself at him, but also terrified, because what was she supposed to do or say now?

She had promised herself she’d tell him.

But he had never really beenher Jake, had he? And now—

Now he really was a stranger. Even if her body was trying to tell her he wasn’t. Insisting it hadn’t forgotten the scent or the heat or the weight of him, hadn’t forgotten what he could do with his hungry mouth and skilled fingers.

She wasn’t eighteen. She wasn’t free to indulge herself, to throw herself open like a book. She had Sam to think about.

“You look good,” she said, because the silence was spreading and someone had to say something.

For a fraction of a second—she might have missed it if she hadn’t been so hyperalert—he looked down at his leg. Then back up at her face, his eyes empty.

He didn’t say it back.You look good, too, Mira. She hated herself for wishing he had.

She had no idea what to say next. How to make small talk with a man who was all the things he was to her: a summer fling gone wrong, the hottest not-sex she’d ever had, the father of her child. How to make small talk with someone who so obviously wanted nothing to do with her.

“You look like you’re doing great.”

The look in his eyes, pure scorn, told her how absurd he thought that was. “I do all right.”

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