“Well?”

Carly none too subtly jabbed me with her elbow and I looked up as a couple was seated at the next table over. The maître d walked stiffly away without looking at either party. No media was allowed...except when it was pre-arranged and tightly controlled.

The gorgeous redhead at the table next to ours looked nothing like the sharp-featured brunette who ran the biggest entertainment blog online, but those cheekbones were pretty much unmistakable. They should be. She’d paid enough for them. She casually placed her purse on the table, pointed it toward us, and then focused on her companion.

Max lifted his eyebrow the faintest bit and I took that to mean it was time.

“I’m still waiting for an explanation.”

He pushed his phone across the table toward me.

The image on display showed me with my back up against the car, one hand low on Carly’s hip, while the other gripped her back. She had her hands fisted on my chest and we looked pretty much like nothing else mattered.

So, that was what we looked like together.

“Ah...” I looked over at Carly. I knew Max already knew what was happening, so I felt sort of stupid telling him what he already knew.

She pressed her lips together, and I realized I wasn’t going to get any help from her. I looked back at Max and he raised an eyebrow.

I gave him a sheepish smile. “Oops?”

A smile jerked at his lips, but he got it under control quickly. “Oops?” he repeated. “That’s the best you can do? Just how long have you two been involved?”

Carly pursed her lips. “Do we count the six months we were keeping it cool because Ryan and Jake asked us to?”

Max made a show of dragging his hands down his face. “Six months?”

“We haven’t been involved for six months,” I said, shrugging. “Not really.”

He perked up a little.

“Well. We had a thing,” Carly said. She smiled a little sadly as some truth came into the story. “Then, after Jake fell, he asked Bobby to wait a while. He figured it wasn’t the best time for me to get involved with anybody. So Bobby waited. Now?”

She looked over at me, and the moment our eyes met, it was clear to me that I’d never stood a chance.

She possessed me, body, mind and soul.

***

“Did you mean it?”

It had been two weeks to the day since I said those three words to Carly, and this was the first time she’d brought it up. I hadn’t said anything about it, but I had a good reason. Sometimes, I was chickenshit.

But I couldn’t avoid it now.

I didn’t even have to ask what she meant.

Carly lay with her head on my chest, staring up at me. Her skin was still slick with sweat and so was mine. My heart hadn’t even come close to returning to normal, and I was happy to say neither had hers. I could feel it beating in a mad rhythm as she continued to watch me with calm eyes.

Did she feel calm?

I sure as hell didn’t.

“If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have said it.” It would’ve been easier to tell her that if I’d been staring up at the ceiling when I said it, but I wasn’t a complete coward.

“When?”

I didn’t pretend to not understand that either, but that was an easier one to answer. A stupid kind of smile started to spread across my face.

“I think it might’ve started when you hit me in the head with that damn purse of yours and yelled at me. You almost got run over by a car, but were you worried about that? No. You were too busy being put out because I had the nerve to get in your way.”

She sniffed, but then a grin spread out across her face. “I couldn’t believe you had the nerve to yell at me and call me stupid. Nobody’s ever yelled at me.”

“You probably thought I was an idiot,” I said.

“No.” Her voice softened. “I liked it. People never take the time to get to know me for me. They just decide on who they think I am, who they want me to be, based on what they think they know about me. You didn’t do that.”

I slid my hands down her back and caught her hips, tugging her close. “Who everyone else says you are doesn’t matter to me. It never has.”

“I know.” She leaned up and kissed me lightly. “I might have loved you for that alone, Bobby. But then you had to go and be so wonderful. I had no choice but to fall in love with you, you know.”

Chapter 17

Ever since that ‘oops’ bit of mine, the media had been on my ass like fleas on a dog. The stories ranged from laughable to lousy, from stupid to sickening, and everything in between. There had been days when it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed and face the people I worked with, the woman I love, hell, strangers on the street.

Then there was the whole surreal aspect of things, like I’d fallen through some weird sci-fi thing and ended up in an alternate reality or something.

Like the one day I’d gone to a local gym. Carly had a great one, but she didn’t have a rock wall and that was one thing I’d discovered I loved – rock climbing. I’d just been coming out of the gym, and these two girls, probably barely out of high school, had come up to me. The blonde had been all giggly and red-faced as she asked if I’d give her and her friend an autograph. I’d been asked before, something I knew I’d never get used to.

But then they’d asked me, What’s it like to kill somebody? What’s it like...being in prison?

I’d stopped, halfway through the scrawl of my name. If I’d been smart, I would have just finished up, ignored the questions and gone on. If I’d noticed the paps hanging around, I would have. But it hadn’t been until after that I’d noticed them at all.

“You serious?” I’d asked, staring at the girl who asked.

She looked like she’d been trying to make herself out as some sort of street tough, a hoop through her right nostril, the start of what might be a tattoo sleeve on her right arm.

To me, she looked like a little girl trying on her bigger, meaner sister’s clothes. A child playing dress-up.

“Yeah.” She fluttered her lashes, black and thick with too much mascara. “What’s it like...Bobby?”

“It hurts,” I said bluntly, too freaked out to give her anything but the truth. “It tears out a piece that makes you human, and no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to fix yourself, you can never get that piece back. No matter what you do, you can’t fix the hole you tore in another family when you ended somebody’s life. You’re broken. They’re broken. That’s it.”

She blinked then, caught off-guard, and looked at her friend. “But...”

“No.” I shook my head. “You wanted to know what it’s like and I told you. No buts. Prison? Hell, that’s a bucket of laughs. If you like having to guard your food and bolt it down so nobody steals it from you before you can eat it. Ever had somebody try to shank you while you were eating?”

I half-turned, dragging up my shirt and displaying the long, thin jagged scar that tore up my right side. Carly had gotten the story out of me one night when she’d been tracing all of my scars. It was still the most impressive.

“It barely missed my kidney. Spent some time in the infirmary over that one, and that was just one of my easier stays there. Want to hear about the other times?”

“Um.” She blinked again, her eyes watering.

I should’ve felt bad, and some part of me had, but her questions had been insane. Wanting my autograph because I was dating someone famous was one thing. Wanting it because of what I’d done...no way in hell would I ever be one of those assholes who wore their crime or time like a badge of honor.

Her friend had reached up and wrapped an arm around the blonde’s narrow shoulders.

“Don’t you want to know?” I’d asked softly, not quite done yet. “The first time I went to the infirmary was after I’d been on the inside less than four days. I’m a decent looking guy, and I was still pretty young. You know what that means?”