Vicious continued to guide me by my elbow, which should’ve felt gallant and flattering, but I had zero illusions about what this was. I knew him well enough, despite all these years, to know romance was simply not on the menu for him. He was as emotionally available as a jackhammer. This was pure lust, exploding after a decade of simmering quietly, brewed by frustration, jealousy, and hate.

Once we walked through the revolving door, rushing down the street through the December chill and the crowds of Christmas shoppers, I started laughing. We were walking so fast that our butts might as well have been on fire.

“Do I wanna know what’s funny?” His face looked strained, and I bit down another chuckle.

I shouldn’t have laughed. I had blood on my lower lip, and he was sporting a visible erection. But he looked so serious. Like he was ushering me to the ER, and not to his bed.

“Just the way we’re acting, like two high schoolers who just found out one of them has an empty house,” I said, fighting another burst of giggles.

He squeezed my elbow, and we cut the corner, almost jogging.

My laughing stopped when we walked through the glass doors to the skyscraper where we lived. Vicious punched the elevator button three times in a row and started pacing, waiting for it to ping open. He ran his hand through his inky black hair.

“Rosie’s home,” I said, swallowing hard.

He turned around to look at me, and I swear it looked like his erection was going to break through his zipper, or his zipper was going to break his erection. Either way, it was going to hurt.

“We’ll go up to the penthouse,” he said, shoving a hand deeper into his tousled hair and tugging impatiently.

“She could bump into us in the elevator. Or the hallway. Or…”

Truly, I didn’t care about Rosie catching us. I was a grown-up, and besides, we’d both brought men over to our old studio on occasion. When it happened, the other sister would make herself scarce. Nope. I was clearly stalling, and I didn’t know why.

“Fine. We’ll grab a taxi. The Mandarin isn’t that far. It’s a long shot this time of the year, but they might have a room or two available. If not, there’s always the bathroom at Starbucks.” He turned around and started stalking toward the entrance.

I grabbed his hand and stopped him, and our eyes met. “Really, Vicious? After ten years of waiting, that’s how you want to do this? In a hotel, in the middle of the morning?”

“Fuck.” His jaw ticked and he exhaled, closing his eyes. “What did you think was gonna happen when we ditched work? That we would catch a Jennifer Lawrence movie under the fucking covers?”

He looked so on edge I thought he was going to detonate on the marble floor. I flattened my palm against the collar of his dress shirt, and that seemed to soothe him a little.

“I bought Rosie a plane ticket to fly home to see our parents. She’s supposed to pick up her meds around six then go to the airport straight from there. We can still go back to the office and come back here after she’s gone.”

“Fuck no,” he almost spat. “We’re spending today alone.”

When he didn’t move, just stared at me like he was going to take me on the floor, I tangled my fingers together, twisting them. “I could show you New York.”

“What?” His brows furrowed.

“Show you New York. Show you where I like to go, where I like to eat. Show you why it’s so much better than LA, why Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen and Scorsese rhapsodize about this crazy place with this crazy weather like it’s paradise.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t do monogamy.” He tsked like I had asked him if he could part the sea. “And that sounds a lot like a date.”

“It’s not,” I protested, feeling my face heat. “Also, I vividly remember you asking me to go to dinner with you yesterday. What’s changed?”

“That wasn’t a date. I was just really fucking hungry.”

“Well, what makes you think I’d like to date someone as hateful and cold as you anyway?” I tilted my head like a bird, my eyes blazing with heat.

“I don’t know. I don’t care. And I don’t do dates,” he said again, taking a step back and shaking his head. His cheeks flushed pink, and this time it wasn’t only from the cold.

Sweet Jesus and his holy crew.

At this point, I’d had enough of this nonsense, so I decided to kill the conversation. “Really?” I snorted.

“Really,” he enunciated.

“So if I tell you I want to re-do our senior year in one day…to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and let you get to second base like two teenagers…” I erased the gap between us, kissing a sliver of his exposed neck, and his breath stilled. “And go eat at P.J. Clarke’s and move to third base in the bathroom…” I rasped the words against his hot flesh and dragged my eyes up to meet his stormy ones. “And end the day at a Broadway show where I’d do something very inappropriate under your seat…” We melted into each other, and sure enough, I felt the swelling in his slacks getting bigger against my stomach. “You’d say…no?”

His face was the funniest thing on earth as it moved from surprised to eager, then finally to turned on.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pressing his hard cock against me. From the outside, it must’ve looked like we were sharing the dirtiest hug ever. “I’m about to go ice-skating for a hand job, and I’m not even sixteen anymore.”

“You’re totally going on a day date,” I joked.

He rolled his eyes but followed me back outside and into the nearest subway station, buttoning his pea coat to cover the massive bulge between his legs. “Lead the way.”

Despite my teasing, I didn’t really plan to take him ice-skating. But I wasn’t going to tell him that just yet. I actually enjoyed watching him sitting opposite me on the subway. Jaw grinding. Brows creased. Eyes locked on mine. We were oblivious to the noise around us—the damp, stinky coats brushing against us, the Kindles, paperbacks, and takeout bags that smelled like Asian food and were nudged into our ribs. It was just us.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent the day having fun in the city without thinking about picking up more shifts or running errands.

I also couldn’t remember the last time I spent the day with a man who made my knees weak, my breath erratic, and my heart feel like it didn’t belong to me anymore.

“This means nothing,” he said from across my seat, twisting my own words from yesterday when I let him into my apartment.

“I’m asking you to ice-skate with me, not trying to melt the ice around your cold, cold heart,” I retorted in the same way he’d responded to me less than twenty-four hours ago.

He cracked a rare smile. “Where are we really going? This isn’t the way to Rockefeller Center.”

“Always so perceptive, Mr. Spencer.” I got up and held on to one of the poles when we reached 77th Street station. He followed me. “We’re going to the Met.”

At the Met, there was a special exhibition about human anatomy, of all subjects. It was extra realistic and gory, too. When we waited in line to get the tickets, I told Vicious I’d almost fainted when I saw a real-live mummy the first time I’d visited the museum. He laughed and said that he once went to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia on a school trip and threw up when he saw some of the remains of Einstein’s brain.

“Can’t blame you. There are some things better left to the imagination…though I can’t see myself ever wanting to picture that either.” I scrunched my nose as we entered the exhibit.

I choked the little booklet I was holding to release some of the tension from my body. We stopped next to a picture of a real heart, sitting on a white cube. It was bloody and looked fresh, like it was still beating not long ago.

I saw the art in it.

Heck, I wanted to run back home and paint it.

“I was thirteen and all kinds of messed up. The brain just always seemed to me like the most important, intimate part of the human body. Maybe because that’s what was left of my mother after her accident. She was paralyzed from the neck down, but completely lucid. Still herself.”

I didn’t utter a word because it felt important to let him speak. We were both staring at the picture when he added, “I like the way you stare reality in the eye without looking away. You’re not a coward, Emilia.”

I nodded. “Neither are you. I mean, you’re crazy, but brave.”

We walked a few feet to our right, checking out the next piece. Time moved quickly, too quickly. Four hours into our day at the museum, and I was starving, so I suggested that we go get something to eat. Vicious nodded in agreement. I was surprised we’d gotten this far without him complaining about us being here so long. We walked toward the exit, but then he grabbed me by the collar of my coat and shoved me into a corner behind a wall leading to the bathroom. It was quiet and secluded. Just another dead weekday before Christmas.

His lips found mine quickly as he muttered, “Where’s that second base you promised me?”

I linked my fingers around his neck and waited for him to make a move.

I was a good girl.