Page 12 of Unrequited (Woodlands 4)

She'd held me when I came home at thirteen after hearing my big crush Mike Van Elm preferred blondes. Sarah Jorgerson, who apparently also had a crush on Mike, told him I'd liked him. He'd pulled up the corner of his eyes and said he'd never date a chink.

And it was Ivy who gave me the perfect rebuttal to those stupid guys at parties who asked me if my vagina was slanted just like my eyes—an Asian version of whether the carpet matched the drapes. "If you don't know, you never will." I'd used that line more than I should've had to, I reflected. College guys were idiots. No wonder I was still single.

Ivy had taken the family first motto seriously until her addictions pushed her off the tracks. I would never forget how she stood up for me every single time.

She scrunched up her nose. "I don't care if you see him, but Winter, you deserve so much better than Finn O'Malley. He's one of those guys who seems nice on the outside but will tear you apart and won't even look behind him at the carnage. He doesn't have a heart. He's wrapped up in his own life, his own pursuits, and what is going on in your life isn't important. In all the years we dated, he never once said I love you."

She talked for another ten minutes on how Finn O'Malley was the worst guy I could ever date, but all I heard was I don't care if you date him.

5

FINN

"Have a good night?" I asked when Winter walked out of the strip club at three in the morning for the second night in a row.

"What are you doing here?" She peered into the dark night. Jimmy Risk had his parking lot dimly lit, possibly to disguise husbands paying a hundred for a table dance from girls they had no shot with.

I pushed away from the side of my truck and approached. What was I doing here? A good question with no good answers. All the ones that popped to mind were fairly creepy, from the I've been waiting to I just passed by this road leading north that holds only auto body shops and strip clubs to I wanted to spend a second consecutive night at a strip club.

I went with the solid truth. "I wanted to talk to you."

"We talked last night." Her tone was terse and unwelcoming.

For a moment I thought about walking away. There were plenty of female fish in the sea, so why was I stalking—following—this one? I had never had to chase anything or anyone in my entire life, but that night two months ago woke me the hell up. We'd talked, we'd commiserated, we'd comforted each other, and then we’d proceeded to have several hours of unforgettable sex. So no, I wasn't done with her. Not by a long shot.

I said, "You said things, but they didn't make any sense."

“You mean you didn’t agree with them.”

That was accurate. She’d said we were done, and I disagreed. Ergo, her words were nonsensical.

She pressed her lips together and took a step toward her car, but I moved with her until she realized I wasn't going anywhere.

She paused and turned halfway. Her fine features were in profile. The curve of her cheek she once thought wasn’t sloped enough and her snub nose that begged for a kiss were lightly highlighted by the streetlights. "You ever see the movie The Joy Luck Club?" she asked.

"No, I can't say I have. Should I?"

"In old Chinese culture, the man can take more than one wife. The more wives he has, the lower your status. In The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother had no status as the fourth wife."

It took a minute to process her statement. It was about Ivy but not in the way I'd expected. "The fact that Ivy dated me first makes you feel like a fourth wife?"

She waved her hand. "Second wife, fourth wife. Whatever. But yes, I'll always wonder if you should be with her, and I don't want to feel that way."

"I don't see you that way."

She threw her arms out. "What is it that you even want? To hang out? To fuck?"

She sounded frustrated, like me. "Yes to both. I want us to spend time together, as adults. You're twenty-two, and I'm twenty-five. That's a far cry from fourteen and seventeen, and I’m guessing both of us have changed. So let’s find out who we are. And in the meantime, yes, we should goddamn have more sex. I can't forget that night. And I don't want to. When I close my eyes, I still feel you coming apart in my arms."

She made a strangled sound and dropped her chin into h

er chest. Instantly I felt like an ass. I wanted to make her feel good, knew I could. I wasn’t alone that night. She had been insatiable. She couldn’t get enough, and neither could I. It made no sense for us not to see where a little more time could take us.

"Tell me what’s wrong so I can make it better."

"It wasn't supposed to be that way."

"What way?"

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