“Why would you do that when you’re so good at destroying yourself?”

I open my door. “Waffles. Mmmm.” A few more snide remarks fly back and forth until I cut them off.

“No one speaks until you’ve had five bites of food each.”

When they were twenty they’d start fighting as soon as their blood sugar was low. Ten years later and not much has changed. You keep them fed, or they’ll take you out. Like Gremlins.

They are both sour-faced and obedient until the waitress drops off our meals. I cut into my omelet and watch as they slowly come out of their funk. In a few minutes they’re laughing and taking bites of each other’s food.

“What are the police saying, Olivia?”

She sets down her fork and wipes her mouth. “After I won the case, he was convinced it was because I loved him and we were supposed to be together. So, I guess he broke out, and he’s coming to claim his bride.”

“Seems like that happens a lot,” Cammie says through a mouthful of waffle. “Your ex-clients becoming obsessed with you and self-destructing.” She sucks syrup off the tip of her finger and stares pointedly at me.

I kick Cammie under the table.

“Ow!”

Olivia props her chin in her hands. “Don’t you wish Dobson loved Leah instead?”

I try not to laugh — I really do. But, those little quips of hers … she’s just so damn-Cammie gives me a dirty look. “Stop looking at her like that.”

I don’t respond, because I know exactly what she’s talking about. I wink at Olivia. My ex-wife accused me of the same thing. When I look at her, I can’t seem to look away. It’s been that way since the first day I saw her under the tree. All other beauty, since then, has reminded me of her. No matter what it is, it’s just a reflection of Olivia. The little witch has me spellbound.

I catch Olivia’s eyes and we stay there for a good six seconds, locked in a gaze so intimate my stomach hurts when we look away. I see her throat working as she tries to swallow her emotion. I know what she’s thinking.

Why?

I think that every day.

I pay the check and we climb back into my car. The girls don’t want to go back to Olivia’s.

“Caleb, he could crush you,” Cammie says. “I’ve seen him in person. No offense, but I don’t think you could take him. He’d. Crush. You.”

Olivia’s head is between her knees. She doesn’t want to joke about something so serious, but it’s hard with Cammie and me making light of everything. I see her back shaking in silent laughter. I reach over and snap her bra.

“You too, Duchess? You don’t think I could take care of Dobbie?”

“Dobbie was torturing small animals by the time he could walk. I once saw him bite the head off of a mouse and eat it.”

I make a face. “Really?”

“No. But, he eats his meat very rare.”

I snicker. “Is it true what they said about his mother? Her molesting all those kids in that church?”

Olivia picks at some fluff on her pant leg and shrugs. “It would seem so, yes. He spoke many times about the things his mother would do to him. It makes sense — his need to, um … force women to love him after having a mother like that.”

“Damn,” says Cammie from the backseat. “I thought having daddy issues messed you up.”

“Was he ever aggressive toward you?” I glance at her from the corner of my eye.

“No, no, he was very quiet. Almost gentlemanly. The girls told me that he would ask permission before raping them. That’s sick, isn’t it? Let me rape you … I’ll ask first and kill you if you say no, but let me ask anyway.”

The corner of her mouth dips in and she shakes her head. “People are so messed up. All of us. We just hurt each other.”

“Some of us a little more so, don’t you think? For instance, our good friend Dobson could have become an advocate for abused children rather than becoming a serial rapist.”

“Yeah,” she says. “His mind was broken. Not all abuse victims have the strength to make it through what he went through and come out with their brains all in one piece.”

I love her. God, I love her so much.

“Can we just not go back to my place?” she says. “It feels weird being there.”

“What about Cammie’s?” I suggest.

Cammie shakes her head. “I’m staying with my boyfriend while I close on my new house. Olivia hates him.”

I look at my watch. Jessica will be at my place until she leaves for work in a few hours. She only stays over a couple nights a week, but even so, I don’t like the idea of taking Olivia somewhere I have had sex with other women.

“We could get a hotel,” I say. “Hide out until they catch him.”

Olivia shakes her head. “No, who knows how long that will be? Just take me home, it’s okay.”

I can see the fear on her face, and I want to ask again where Noah is.

“I have an idea,” I say. When they press me, I won’t tell them what it is. It’s a ridiculous idea, but I like it. I make a U-turn and slide my car between the early morning traffic, heading back to her building.

“Do you want to grab some clothes?” She nods.

We make a brief stop at her building. I go up to her condo, in case Dobson is watching, and grab a duffel bag out of her closet. I open a couple drawers in her dresser until I find underwear. I stuff it into the bag. Next, I go to her closet and randomly choose a few items for her and Cammie. Before I leave, I stop at the other closet. His.

I pull open the door, not knowing what to expect. His clothes are there, all neatly on their hangers. I slam the door shut a little harder than I intended. I make one more stop in the living room. There is a table where he kept his whiskey in a decanter. The bottle is empty. I open it and hold it upside down.

Dry.

How long has he been gone? Why? Why didn’t she tell me?

I don’t say anything when I climb back into the car. Cammie is snoring softly in the backseat.

I pass her the bag and she mouths thank you.

Anything, Duchess, anything.

Chapter Eight

Soap sprayed on my windshield and the car vibrated as the jets beat water across the windows. Olivia pulled away from my mouth and glanced over her shoulder. I kissed down the elegant lines of her neck then laced my fingers into the back of her hair, steering her mouth back to mine. Things were getting out of control — for Olivia. For me, this was normal. A girl straddled on my lap, wearing a skirt … in the car wash … things could only get better from here. Not with Olivia. Things would not get better from here. Despite the fact that she was my girlfriend … and I loved her, and I wanted her na**d and on top of me, I didn’t want to take something from her that she wasn’t ready to give.

I grabbed her by the waist and replanted her in her own seat. Then I gripped the steering wheel and thought about my great aunt Ina. Aunt Ina was sixty-seven years old and she had warts … gross … nasty … protruding — warts. I thought about her chins and her cankles and the hair that grew out of her arm wart. Aunt Ina seemed to do the trick. I felt slightly more in control.

Olivia huffed in the seat next to me. “Why do you always do that? I was having fun.”

I kept my eyes closed and leaned my head back. “Duchess, do you want to have sex?”

Her answer came quickly. “No.”

“So what’s the point of doing that?”

She paused to think. “I don’t know. Everyone else messes around. Why can’t we just … you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I said, turning to look at her. “Why don’t you inform me what exactly it is that you have in mind?”

She blushed. “Can’t we just compromise?” she whispered this without looking at me.

“I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve been ha**g s*x since I was fifteen. I think I am compromising. If you’re asking me to feel you up like I’m a fifteen-year-old boy, I’m not going to do it.”

“I know,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry — I just can’t.”

Her voice pulled me out of my selfishness. It wasn’t her fault. I’d already waited a year. I would wait another — I wanted to wait. She was worth it.

I wanted her.

“The thing with messing around is — you slowly work your way toward sex. It starts with hands and then mouths and then before you know it you’re doing all three, all the time.”

She blushed.

“Once you start, you don’t stop. It’s a slow decline toward sex. So, if you’re really not ready to have sex, don’t start doing the other stuff. That’s all I’m saying.”

I opened the bottle of water that was sitting in my cup holder and took a sip. The car wash rattled around us, strips of soapy rubber slapping the metal. I felt those slaps.

She climbed back into my lap. God, I hope she can’t feel my erection. She put a hand on each side of my face and pressed her nose against mine. Her nose was cold. This was the softer side of Olivia. It was the side that caused me to want to stand over her like a dominating Alpha male and bare my teeth at anyone who came near her.

“I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m sorry I’m so messed up.”

My hands went back to her waist. “You’re not messed up, you’re just sexually repressed.”

She giggled. It was so girly and soft. When a woman made that sound, I couldn’t help but smile.

I looked down at her toned legs. All I would have to do was unzip my pants, she was already right-

“You’re going to have to go back to your seat.” My voice was gruff.

She scuttled back looking guilty.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as the dryers came on. I watched the drops of water shimmy across the windshield until they disappeared. What had I gotten myself into? I’d fallen in love with someone I couldn’t fix. My coach called me a fixer. It started my sophomore year when I saw a couple of the freshmen on the team struggling with their game. I worked with them on the side until their defense improved. Coach always used my side projects as starters. My junior year I had ten guys come to me on the side and ask for private practice sessions. I don’t know why, but I was good at it. Now, my need to fix things had transferred onto the women I was attracted to. I thought back to my ex-girlfriend, Jessica. She had been perfect, until…

I clenched my teeth. Maybe that’s why things hadn’t worked out between us. She was too perfect. Olivia was so beautifully broken. The hairline cracks in her personality were more pieces of art than flaws. I loved flawed art. Michelangelo’s statue of Lorenzo with its warped base that rose to accommodate his foot, the Mona Lisa’s missing eyebrows. Flaws were seriously underrated. They were beautiful if you looked at them just so.

I knew I was lying to myself by thinking I could fix her. But, it was too late. I didn’t know how to let go. She broke the silence first.

“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” she said.

“There’s always the option of asking me.” I put the car in gear and pulled forward. She watched my hand on the stick shift — she always did that.

Car wash — over. Pounding need to be inside of her — not over.

“I feel like you’re always trying to sneak into my mind. You’re like Peter Pan — always climbing in windows and causing trouble.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Did you really just call me Peter Pan?”

“I’ve called you worse.” I eased the car into the traffic.

“A llama,” she said. “I loved that.”

I laughed at her obvious sarcasm, and the lust spell was broken. I was back to just needing to be with her.

“Peter Pan wants to sneak into your mind and know what you’re thinking,” she tried again. She was looking at me so earnestly, I gave.

We pulled up at a red light. I reached over and grabbed her hand. Okay, if she wanted my thoughts, I was going to give them to her. Maybe it would do her good to be inside the mind of a normal, adult male. Maybe she’d play with said ‘normal adult male’ with a little more caution. I raised her fingers to my lips and kissed them. I conjured up an image of her on my lap and my voice dropped low so she knew I meant business.

“If you climb into my lap while wearing a skirt and kiss me like that again, I’m going to pull off your panties and f**k you.”

Her face blanched. Good. I needed her to be scared enough to not do that again. I wasn’t Superman. I was a man — a man that very much wanted to make love to his girlfriend.

She didn’t let go of my hand, if anything her hold on it tightened. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was biting her bottom lip, staring straight out of the windshield with glassy eyes.

I choked back a laugh. By God, I think I actually turned her on. My little Duchess — always the surprise.

From that day on, Peter Pan was our code word for — what are you thinking?

“Peter Pan.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You invented this game.”

We were lying on her floor, supposedly having a study session. Her lips were still a little swollen from our kissing session.

“I’m covered in Cheeto dust and trying to study. You’re annoying me because for the last forty minutes you’ve been staring at me, and it’s breaking my concentration.” She put another Cheeto in her mouth and let it melt. I grabbed her hand and stuck one of her fingers between my lips, sucking the “Cheeto dust” off. It was a new Oliviaism.

Her eyes glazed for a second, and I dropped her hand.