Page 42 of The Devil Gets His Due

An intensely handsome man and the woman he was once attracted to.

An intensely handsome man who once had his hands everywhere, who was once inside me and—if my stomach is any indication—sort of enjoyed being there.

“I wanted to know what you’re doing this weekend,” I tell him, somewhat breathlessly.

“And this casual conversation about my weekend plans couldn’t take place until I was dressed?”

“I had no idea you were so prudish,” I reply. “I mean, I guess if I’d ever thought about it, I’d have known, but still.”

He goes back to shaving. “I think you’re, quite intentionally, missing the point.”

I groan. “Do you want me to take off my shirt too?” I demand, and it’s not a mock threat. If he says,“yes”I’ll totally do it. “Will that level the playing field?”

He flinches, cursing under his breath. I assume it’s the idea of seeing me naked and disgustingly growing a human inside me until I spy the small dot of blood blooming on his cheek. “Oh.” I reach for toilet paper just as he turns to do the same. “You cut yourself.”

He’s frowning as ifIwas the one wielding the razor. I ignore him and press toilet paper to the cut, aware only once it’s in place that I’m pressed up against him, his bare arm against my breasts, his warm skin just beside my nose, smelling deliciously soapy and clean and male. The last time I was this close to a nearly naked man was…January.Him.

“Keeley,” he grunts, “do you think we could hold this conversation once I’m done in here?”

I glance at our reflection in the mirror. His eyes are closed as if he’s in pain. Apparently, I’ve pushed him too far.

“Fine, whatever,” I say, weirdly stung by his dismissal as I head for the door. “I just need you to come to dinner at my family’s house this weekend and pretend we’re in love, okay? Great, thanks, bye.”

“Wait.What?” he yells, but I’m already walking away.

I’m defrosting a bagel for Mark when he emerges, clean shaven, and braces himself against the counter. “So we’re really doing this, then? Your father is going to hate me.”

My laugh is a sad bubble of misery and self-loathing as I push the bagel into the toaster. “Have no fear. He’ll find a way to blame me for all of it. Well, actually, Shannon will blame me, and he’ll nod as if he was thinking it too.”

As much as I want them to meet Graham and thinkwow, Keeley finally did something right, when he leaves, they’ll just go back to saying,“Keeley strikes again.”There’s no way to win with them.

The toaster dings and I reach for the bagel, wincing as I burn the top of my fingers. I vaguely wonder what the hell I’m going to feed a kid when I can barely manage to use a toaster without injury.

“Have things always been this bad between you and Shannon?” Graham asks.

I shrug. “Yeah, but it makes sense. I’m so much like my mom, and she hates—” I stutter over the incorrect tense, “hatedmy mom.”

He slides me the cream cheese. “In what ways are you like your mom?”

I smile. “I look a lot like her. I mean, practically identical. And I guess we’re similarly…flighty.”

I sort of hope Graham doesn’t ask for details because they make her sound a little reckless, even by my standards. I’m sure I only know the tip of the iceberg and yet I know more than a kid should: the way she dropped out of college one week into her freshman year to tour the world with some guy in a band, and left him for a guy in a more famous band, and then returned to college, where she promptly got knocked up by an English professor—my father—who was engaged to someone else at the time.

“My mom was awesome, though,” I argue as if I’ve spoken all this aloud. “She just really believed she was destined for greatness. She thought we both were. She spent every penny she had trying to get me voice lessons so I could audition forThe Mickey Mouse Club.”

His mouth curves, almost as if he can remember her too. “I take it that wasn’t successful?”

I shake my head. “No amount of money was going to fix a voice as bad as mine.”

I wish he could have met her, though. He’d understand it then. My mother was all sparkle and light. She had the biggest ideas and the biggest dreams and very little follow-through, but it was fun to live in her world. I grab Mark’s bagel. “Okay, so we’re all set for next Saturday?”

He nods, and then his tongue slides over his lower lip. “Do you still have your ring?” he asks quietly.

I’m a little embarrassed by the truth. “Yeah, I…” I’m not sure what I was going to say, how I was going to excuse it. I’m not sure why I didn’t just leave it in the hotel room when I woke.

“I still have mine too,” he says.

Neither of us can meet the other’s eye.

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