His mouth moves lower, down my neck, nibbling at my collarbone, and to where my ni**les press up from beneath my dress. He sucks and licks, pulling them into his mouth until the fabric is soaked. It’s black, so no one but us will know, but I’ll feel the cool press of his kiss even after I walk out of the room.

I want to pull us back to the bed.

But he stands, studying my face for a beat. “Be good, Cerise.”

It occurs to me only now that we’re married, and I would be cheating on my husband if I slept with someone else this summer. But the idea of anyone else getting this man makes something simmer in my belly. I don’t like the thought at all, and I wonder if that’s the same fire I see in his expression.

“You, too,” I tell him.

Chapter SIX

I’M SURE I know what the phrase “weak in the knees” means now because I’m dreading having to get out of my car and use my legs. I’ve been with three people other than Ansel, but even with Luke, sex was never like that. Sex where it’s so wide open and honest that I know even after it’s over—and the heat has dissipated and Ansel isn’t even here beside me anymore—that I would have let him do anything.

It makes me wish I remembered our night in Vegas better. We had hours together then, rather than the paltry cupful of minutes tonight. Because somehow I know it was more honest and free and doubtless than even this was.

The heavy thunk of my car door slamming echoes down our quiet, suburban street. My house looks dark, but it’s too early for them to all be in bed. With the warm summer weather it’s most likely that my family is out on the back patio, having a late dinner.

But once I’m inside, I hear nothing but silence. The house is dark everywhere: in the living room, family room, kitchen. The patio is quiet, every room upstairs deserted. My footsteps slap quietly on the Spanish tile in the bathroom but fall silent as I move along the plush hallway carpet. For some reason I walk into every single room . . . finding no one. In the years since I started college—before I moved my things back into my old bedroom only days ago—I haven’t once been alone in this house, and the realization hits me like a physical shove. Someone is always here when I am: my mother, my father, one of my brothers. How strange that is. Yet now I’ve been given some quiet. It feels like a reprieve. And with this freedom, a current of electricity curls through me.

I could leave without having to confront my father.

I could leave without having to explain anything.

In an impulsive, hot flash, I’m certain this is what I want. I sprint to my room, find my passport, tear off my dress, and pull on clean clothes before hauling the biggest suitcase from the hall closet. I shove everything I can find from my dresser into it, and then practically clear my bathroom counter with a sweep of my arm into my toiletries case. The heavy bag thuds down the stairs behind me, falls over in the hallway as I begin to scribble a note for my family. The lies tumble out, and I struggle to keep from trying to say too much, sounding too manic.

I have an opportunity to go to France for a few weeks! A free ticket, too. I’ll be with a friend of Harlow’s Dad. She owns a small business. I’ll tell you about it later but I’m okay. I’ll call.

Love you,

Mia

I don’t ever lie to my family—or anyone for that matter—but right now, I don’t care. Now that the idea is in my head, the idea of not going to France pushes me into a full-on panic because not going to France means staying here for a few weeks. It means living under the dark cloud of my father’s controlling bullshit. And then it means moving to Boston and starting a life I’m not sure I want.

It means the possibility of never seeing Ansel again.

I look at the clock: I only have forty-five minutes until the plane leaves.

Lugging my bag to my car, I hurl it in the trunk and run to the driver’s side, texting Harlow: Whatever my dad asks you about France, just say yes.

Only three blocks away from my house I can hear my phone buzz on the passenger seat, no doubt with her reply—Harlow rarely puts her phone down—but I can’t look now. I know what I’ll see anyway, and I’m not sure when my brain will quiet down enough for me to answer her WHAT??

Her, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??

Her, CALL ME RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, MIA HOLLAND!!

So instead, I park—I’m being optimistic, and pull into the long-term parking lot. I drag my bag into the terminal. I check in, silently urging the woman at the ticketing counter to move faster.

“You’re cutting it very close,” she tells me with a disapproving frown. “Gate forty-four.”

Nodding, I tap a nervous hand on the counter and sprint away once she’s handed me my ticket, folded neatly in a paper sleeve. Security is dead at night on a Tuesday, but once I’m through, the long hallway to the gate at the end looms ahead of me. I’m running too fast to be worried about Ansel’s reaction, but the adrenaline isn’t enough to drown out the protesting of my permanently weak femur as I sprint.

At the gate, our flight is already boarding, and I have a panicked moment thinking maybe he’s already on the plane when I can’t pick him out of the mass of heads lined up to head down the jetway. I search wildly, self-consciously, and it’s a horrible, anxious feeling now that I’m here: telling him I changed my mind and want to come to France and

live with him

rely on him

be with him

requires a type of bravery I’m simply not sure I have outside of a hotel room where it’s all a temporary game, or in a bar where liquor let me find the perfect role to play all night. It’s possible I mentally calculate the danger of being relatively drunk for the entirety of the next few weeks.

A warm hand curls around my shoulder and I turn, finding myself staring up at Ansel’s wide, confused green eyes. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he shakes his head as if to clear it.

“Did they let you come down here to say goodbye?” he asks, seeming to try out the words. But then he looks closer: I’ve changed into white jeans, a blue tank top under a green hoodie. I have a carry-on slung over my shoulder, I’m out of breath and wearing what I can only imagine is a look of sheer panic on my face.

“I changed my mind.” I hitch my bag higher on my shoulder and watch his reaction: his smile comes a little too slowly to immediately put me at ease.

But at least he does smile, and it seems genuine. Then he confuses me even more, saying, “I guess I can’t stretch out and sleep on your seat now.”

I have no idea what to say to that, so I just smile awkwardly and look down at my feet. The gate attendant calls out another section of the plane to board and the microphone squawks sharply, making us both jump.

And then, it seems like the entire world falls completely silent.

“Shit,” I whisper, looking back down the way I came. It’s too bright, too loud, too far away from Vegas or even the enclosed privacy of his San Diego hotel room. What the hell am I doing? “I don’t have to come. I didn’t—”

He shushes me, taking a step closer and bending to kiss my cheek. “I’m sorry,” he says carefully, moving from one cheek to the other. “I’m all of a sudden very nervous. That wasn’t funny. I’m so glad you’re here.”

With a heavy exhale, I turn when he presses his hand to my lower back, but it’s as if our heated bubble has been punctured and we’ve stepped offstage and into the even more glaring lights of reality. It presses down on me, suffocating. My feet feel like they’re made of cement as I hand my ticket to the gate attendant, forcing a nervous smile before stepping onto the jetway.

What we know is dimly lit bars, playful banter, the clean, crisp sheets of hotel rooms. What we know is the unrequited possibility, the temptation of the idea. The make-believe. The adventure.

But when you choose the adventure, it becomes real life.

The jetway is filled with a strange buzzing sound I know will stay in my head for hours. Ansel walks behind me, and I wonder if my jeans are too tight, my hair too messy. I can feel him watching me, maybe checking me out now that I’ll be invading his real life. Maybe reconsidering. The truth is, there’s nothing romantic about boarding a plane, flying for fifteen hours with a virtual stranger. It’s the idea that’s exciting. There’s nothing escapist or glossy about overlit airports or cramped airplanes.

We stow our bags, take our seats. I’m in the middle, he’s in the aisle, and there’s an older man reading a paper next to the window, whose elbows press into my space, sharp but oblivious.

Ansel adjusts his seat belt and then adjusts it again before reaching above us for the vent. He aims it at himself, then at me, then back at himself before turning it down. He turns on the light, and his hands drop back into his lap, restless. Finally, he closes his eyes and I count as he takes ten deep breaths.

Oh, shit. He’s a nervous flyer.

I am the worst possible person in this moment because I don’t speak freely, not even in moments like this when some easy reassurance is required. I feel frantic inside, and my reaction to “frantic” is to go completely still. I’m the mouse in the field and it feels like every unknown situation in my life is an eagle flying overhead. It’s suddenly comical that I’ve chosen to do this.

Announcements are made, disasters prepared for, and the plane is off, climbing heavily through the night sky. I take Ansel’s hand—it’s the least I can do—and he grips it tightly.

God, I want to make this better.

About five minutes later, his hand goes slack, and then slides dully away from mine, heavy with sleep. Maybe if I’d given him more notice—or if I’d let him talk more the first night we met—he would have been able to tell me how much he hates to fly. Maybe then he would have been able to tell me he took something to help him sleep.

The cabin lights dim and both men beside me are dead asleep, but my body seems to be unable to relax. It’s not a normal feeling, being wound up like this. It’s a bit like having a fever, being restless in my own skin, unable to find a comfortable position.

I pull out the book I blindly shoved into my carry-on; unfortunately, it’s the memoir of a famous female CEO—a graduation gift from my father. The cover alone—a photo of her standing in a sensible suit against a stark blue background—does nothing to settle my sour stomach. Instead I read every word of the airplane safety insert and SkyMall in the seat pocket in front of me, and then steal the airline magazine from Ansel’s pocket and flip through it.

I still feel like hell.

Pulling my legs up, I press my forehead to my knees, turn my air up as far as it will go. I try to breathe deeply, but nothing seems to help. I’ve never had a panic attack before, so I don’t know what one feels like, but I don’t think it’s this.

I hope that’s not what this is.

It’s only when the flight attendant hands me a menu, and both options—salmon or tortellini—make my stomach revolt, that I realize what I’m feeling isn’t just nerves. It isn’t even the renewed rearing of my hangover’s head; this is something else. My skin is hot and oversensitive. My head swims.

The food is wheeled into the cabin, the smell of salmon and potatoes and spinach so pungent and thick that I’m gasping, stretching on my seat to get closer to the thin stream of cool air. It’s not enough. I want to escape to the bathroom, but immediately know I won’t make it. Before I can wake Ansel, I’m frantically digging in the seat pocket in front of me for the airsickness bag, barely getting it open before bending over and violently hurling inside.

It doesn’t get any worse than this moment right here, I’m sure of it. My body is in charge, and no matter how much my brain tells it to be quiet, to throw up like a proper lady—f**king quietly—it won’t. I groan, feeling another wave hit me, and beside me Ansel comes awake with a jerk. He presses a hand to my back and his sharp “Oh, no!” brings my humiliation fully to the surface.

I really can’t let him see me like this.

I push to stand, tripping over him before he has time to get out of his seat and practically falling into the aisle. I’m getting looks from other passengers—looks of shock and pity and disgust—but they should just be glad I managed to hold on to my bag of vomit when I launched myself into the aisle. Even though I have to concentrate fully on walking as I trip down toward the bathroom, in my head I’m glaring back at them. Have they ever been sick on a plane full of five hundred people, including their new stranger-husband? No? Then they can shut the hell up.

One small mercy is the empty lavatory just a few rows up and I shove the door open, practically collapsing inside. I throw away the bag in the tiny garbage can and crumple to the floor, bending over the toilet. Cold air blows up into my face, and the deep blue liquid in the bowl is enough to make me retch again. I’m shivering with fever, involuntarily moaning with every exhale. Whatever bug I have came on like a train barreling down the track and hitting a building full speed.