I took some cups from the cabinet and set them on the table while Ryan grabbed the plates. Mark opened one of the containers and dumped some fortune cookies on the table. He put one in front of each of us like he used to do when we’d get Chinese takeout and eat it with Mom. My eyes stung at the memory and I blinked back the tears.

He picked his up, I took mine and we both looked at Ryan.

“What?”

“We’re supposed to open them together and read them out loud,” Mark said. A little of the eagerness went out of his expression. “We always did it with Mom,” he said softly.

Ryan picked up his fortune cookie. “I’m on it.”

“Ready?” I looked at Mark and when he nodded, I said, “Go!” The one to get their fortune out first was the winner.

Mark waved his slip of paper in the air. “Something wonderful will happen.” He folded the paper and tucked it beside his plate, then looked at me.

“Follow your dreams,” I read aloud.

“Your turn,” Mark said.

“The early bird gets the worm,” Ryan said and started to put the fortune in his pocket.

I grabbed it from him. “It doesn’t say that.” My smile faded as I read it to myself. Love is not easy, but worth it. I handed the slip back and reached for a box. There were so many questions I could ask Ryan about why he didn’t want to share that fortune, but I didn’t. I was pretty sure the answer that I was looking for wouldn’t be there. “Did you remember the sauce this time, Creature?”

We ate and when we were almost through with the meal, Mark said, “Ryan is going to a fight.”

“What?” I lowered my fork.

“Juvante said he’d pick Ryan up for a fight tomorrow.”

“A fight.” I looked at Ryan.

His eyes darkened. “It’s not what you think.”

Mark scooted his chair back. “Can I watch TV?”

“Read a book or something,” I said, still staring at Ryan.

“I read them all.”

“Then reread one. You know Mom has TV limits.”

“But—”

“Creature, I need to talk to Ryan.”

Without another word, but with a long suffering sigh, Mark left the kitchen.

“A fight is the reason why you can’t come to the hospital with me? You’d rather go beat the hell out of someone? For what reason?”

He scowled. “Did I miss the part where you became my girlfriend?”

“Oh, you think I don’t have the right to question what you’re doing? You’re around Mark. I have to look out for him. That makes anything you’re involved in that could hurt him my business.”

A muscle in Ryan’s jaw worked. “Do you think I’d do anything that would hurt him?”

“Would you?”

Ryan slid the chair away from the table and picked up his plate. He dumped the scraps into the garbage and set the plate into the sink. With his back to me, he said, “How could you even ask me that?”

“Because...because you have a history and it’s not a good one.”

He turned around and the look on his face made me regret my words. “I never said I had a good past and I never promised I was your prince fucking charming.”

I moved to join him. “No, you never said you had a good past, but you never said how bad it was either. When I asked you before to tell me that your past was over, you didn’t answer me. Why are you going to fight? Is it something to do with your past?”

“I’m going to bed.” Ryan walked past me.

“Ryan!”

He stopped but wouldn’t look at me.

“If you’re doing something wrong you can’t stay here.”

He faced me and his lips twisted up in a mocking smile, so handsome it hurt to look at him. “Define wrong.”

*

RYAN

Two o’clock in the morning and I was still wide awake. The argument with Tana kept playing over and over in my mind. After I’d said to define wrong, she’d gone off on me. Unloading everything she’d thought but had never said until now. She was pissed at me and afraid for me.

I would never be free of my past and now that I was going to do a U-turn right back toward it, Tana was right to be scared. Because that’s what I’d seen in her eyes. Fear. The kind of fear that hadn’t been there before her mother had been hurt.

The bedroom door opened and light from the hallway slanted across the bed. Tana hovered in the doorway. “Ryan? Are you awake?”

I eased up onto one elbow. “What do you want?”

She came into the room. “I’m sorry for what I said in the kitchen. I know that you’d never do anything to hurt any of us.” The bed dipped when she sat beside me.

I lay back down and linked my fingers behind my head to stare up at the ceiling. I sucked in a breath when she put her hand on my bare chest.

“You’ve pulled away from me ever since—”

I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to have to fight the tug-of-war going on inside of me. “It’s better this way.”

“It feels like everything is changing and I’m losing my best friend and I’m scared.” She leaned closer, so close that the warmth of her breath fanned across the side of my face. “I need you to hold me. I need you. I know it makes me sound weak and pathetic and...don’t make me beg for the comfort of being held.”

Like they had a will of their own, my arms lowered and wrapped around Tana. One second we were staring at each other in the dim light shed by the open door and the next, she was lying across me and we were kissing. I was a thief taking comfort and pleasure from someone I had no right to touch. But Tana Shaw was the one addiction I’d always crave. I’d have to die to stop wanting her, to stop needing her.

She roamed my body with her hands and I didn’t have the will to push her away. Not this time. One more time, I promised myself. One final time. Her hands were eager on me, searing my flesh, laying claim to skin she didn’t know she already owned. She kissed the side of my neck, the width of my shoulders and trailed kisses down the center of my chest. Dipping lower and lower until she put her mouth on the waistband of my boxers.

“Tana—”

“I want you this way, but you’ll have to teach me.” Her hands dipped into my boxers, lowering them and she reached in to cup my raging erection. She dipped her face down and ran her tongue along the side of me, stopping at the head to gently suck on the side of it.

Oh shit.

“Like this?” She pulled me into her mouth and I almost pulled a charley horse in my thigh because my muscles clenched so hard. When her hand squeezed my balls, I couldn’t form a coherent word. I could only take a few seconds of her giving me pleasure before I had to stop her. I grabbed her arms and hauled her up the length of my body, shifting and rolling her over until we were side by side. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, that I always would, but it would only make the inevitable parting harder. Instead of words, I used my lips and my hands to show her what I’d never be able to say.

There was a difference this time than the first time we’d been together. A bittersweetness that made my throat burn. I kissed Tana softly, then slowly eased her out of her clothes. She helped remove mine and then she was beneath me, opening up her legs, letting me in, her smile shy and trusting.

I was hers.

She was mine.

For tonight.

I plunged into her, rocking her body, gently loving her with everything that I was. Tears leaked from the sides of her eyes and I kissed her as I kept moving. “Don’t cry, baby.”

“I’m not sad. It’s just...”

I couldn’t let her say the words I knew were on the tip of her tongue. She would shatter me if I heard them. I’d never known love and I’d craved it all my young life. Now here it was, in the most beautiful, purest form waiting for me and I couldn’t take it. “Shh...” I eased out almost all the way and then back in, increasing the tempo until Tana breathlessly begged me. I worshipped every inch of her skin with my lips, my hands, and my body until she clutched at my shoulders, raked her nails across my back and called my name.