Page 106 of The Devil Gets His Due

GRAHAM

THE PREVIOUS JANUARY

Iwake to find two fingers on my neck, checking my pulse, as a woman’s voice, husky with sleep, says, “God, not again.”

And even though I’ve got a headache beginning and I’m not quite awake, I laugh.

Keeley.

Obnoxious, over-confident, logic-impaired…and the only voice I’ve wanted to hear on the phone for the last six weeks.

I dream, for a half-second, that I’ve taken those two fingers of hers and pulled them into my mouth, wetting them to push inside her.I make her get herself off until she begs me to fuck her and then…

The hand leaves my neck and I wake again, then roll over to look at her. She is all lush lips and wild hair, looking like exactly what she is: a woman who was up most of the night getting fucked within an inch of her life; a woman who made me wild and unhinged in ways no one else ever has. There was actually a point, in the early hours of morning, when I caught myself thinking“I need to marry this girl.”Me—a guy who has spent his entire life swearing that’s the one thing he’ll never do. I’m sure it was just the dangerous combination of alcohol and Keeley naked, but it wasn’t an entirely new thought. It’s been in the background, barely repressed, for a while now, as if my world had been in black and white and I didn’t know it until I first heard her voice.

Who’d have thought my life would be transformed by a woman who’d called me both“boring”and“cheap”during the first five minutes of a phone call? I’d laughed over that conversation for days afterward.

“Did you just check my pulse?” I ask.

She stares at me. And then she scrambles out of bed.

“This didn’t happen,” she says, and I’m regrettably slow to understand. When I finally get it, it hits me like a hammer.

Everything I assumed was wrong and even the words she saidaloudwere completely meaningless. The whole fucking night meant nothing to her.

“Because you’re still on your mission to fuck the rock star,” I say. It’s an effort not to sound bitter. But how can she possibly want thatmoronafter the night we just had?

“If mankind let every simple mistake get in the way of its goals, we’d still be communicating via cave drawings,” she replies, shimmying into her dress.

She’s hunting the floor for something while my shock morphs to disappointment. Never in my life have I so misread another person’s feelings, but I certainly had some help…a few hours ago, she was saying she wanted to marry me and have a million babies. I knew even at the time it was standard Keeley hyperbole—it’s something I’ve heard her say of ice cream as well—but it turns out it’s what she says to someone she doesn’t evenwant.

Thank God I never told her what I was thinking. I’ll get through today and process my misery back home…the sooner the better. It’s an afternoon party—I can definitely make a late flight. I can’t believe I ever suggested I might stay the full week.

I reach for my phone to text my assistant.

Me: Jana, please get me on the redeye back to JFK tonight.

But just as I send it, Keeley turns to say goodbye, and there’s something in the way her eyes drift over me for a moment, as if she isn’t entirely sure she wants to leave. As if there’s some small piece of her that wishes this was different.

I wait until she’s gone before I send Jana a second text.

Me: Scratch that. I think I’ll stay.

I gamble at work, I take risks. But I’ve never taken one with my personal life until now. It’s not likely to pan out, but my God…if it did.

I guess I’m willing to find out.

Ten hours later,the party is over, and Keeley’s still by the rock star’s side.

This gamble of mine does not appear to have been worth taking, and yet I can’t look away from her. She’s in a white dress with a v cut so low she can’t possibly be wearing a bra, and all I can think of is sliding my hand inside to feel her nipple harden against my palm. I want to hear that small gasp of hers again, the way her eyes will fall shut and her head will roll backward when I do it. The fact that Six is looking at her like he wants to hear her gasp, too, has me on edge…and hearing him refer to her ashisgirl, earlier, nearly put me right over it.

She’d just asked what I remembered from last night when Six interrupted, and she had that glint in her eye, as if she already wanted to repeat it, no matter what she’d said this morning. I wish I’d gotten the chance to tell her. To step close enough for my breath to brush her ear as I described watching her on her knees in front of me, how my hand wound tight in her hair as I tried not to come. How it felt to slowly push inside her for the first time, how it took all my self-restraint to be careful with her, and when she whispered,“more”and dug her nails into my back, I gave in, and it was wilder and rougher than I’d ever been.

I’d have told her how fucking alive I felt during those hours, and that the desire to take care of her—unexpected, and something I’ve never felt for anyone else—still hasn’t left.

But he did interrupt, and he hasn’t left her side since, and the longer it goes on, the more I find myself drinking, and assuming I won’t get that lucky twice. She’s across from me now, at some club Drew’s brought us all to, and Six—again—is trying to look down her dress.

I’ve got to walk away.

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