Don't Deny Me Read online

  “You look good in my clothes,” Mick said.

  Alice smiled. With her face scrubbed and wet hair slicked back from her forehead, she still looked luminous and beautiful enough to stop his heart. She looked a little shy, though.

  “Are you sure this is okay?”

  Mick pulled back the blankets. “Get in.”

  She hopped into bed, scooting over and turning on her side so he could spoon her. He buried his face in her damp hair, breathing her in. His hand fit naturally on her belly, just below the hem of his T-shirt. He was already falling asleep when she spoke.

  “Hey.”

  Mick yawned. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t like it when you don’t call me back,” Alice said after a second or so.

  Her voice had been matter-of-fact and low, not confrontational or bitchy. Still, it set him back a little. Mick’s fingers twitched on her bare skin.

  “Okay,” was all he said.

  Alice was silent.

  “I can’t always get back to you right away,” Mick said after another few seconds had passed. “I mean, sometimes I’m busy.”

  She shifted to look at him. “Well, yeah. I know that. I’m just saying that in general, I don’t like it when you don’t answer me. I know sometimes you’re busy, we all are. But when you just don’t answer me at all, well, that’s not cool.”

  “I always answer you.” Defensive, Mick moved away from her a little bit.

  “You didn’t today. I called and left a message for you, and you didn’t answer.”

  He thought about that, knowing she was right but still not willing to take blame for what he didn’t think needed it. “I would have called you tomorrow, Alice. You know that.”

  “I hope so,” was all she said and tucked herself back against him.

  Shit. This wasn’t an argument, but it had the flavor of one. He thought of a comeback and discarded it. Then another. He listened to the soft sound of her breathing slow and felt her relax against him. She was falling asleep, but now Mick was wide-eyed. Not quite with indignation, that was too strong a word for it. But definitely irritation.

  “I always answer you,” he said again. “Maybe it takes me awhile, but I do.”

  Alice’s breathing caught, and she twitched. Her voice, thick with sleep, rasped. “You didn’t today, and we could’ve had lunch together or something, because you were in York, but you didn’t call me back.”

  “I was busy working, Alice, I didn’t have time for lunch.”

  She pushed away from him this time to sit up. She rubbed at her face. “Well, I didn’t know that. If you’d called to let me know, I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

  Mick sat, too. “What’s the big deal? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s just that … I was missing you. And when you IM’d me, I got excited, I thought maybe we’d get to see each other in the middle of the week, and I wouldn’t have to wait until Friday or Saturday.” She paused. “If you’d called me back and told me you were too busy with work, I’d have been disappointed, but I’d have understood. But you didn’t.”

  “We still got to see each other,” Mick pointed out. “You’re here now.”

  “Because I called you! Because Jay asked me out for happy hour, and I was close enough to stop here! That’s the only reason!”

  This was not the kind of conversation he wanted to be having at nearly two in the morning. And he definitely didn’t want her to start crying or some shit like that, but there were tears in her voice. With a scowl, Mick ran his hands through his hair to keep himself from saying something he’d regret.

  “Never mind,” Alice said sullenly. She moved to the edge of the bed, her back to him. “I’ll be out of here by five or so.”

  Mick lay back, staring at the ceiling, jaw clenched. Beside him, too far away to touch but close enough he could still feel every move she made, Alice was as still as a corpse. Maybe she’d been able to fall asleep, but there was no way Mick was going to.

  She was right. He had not called her back, nor had he intended to. Well, sure, he would’ve called her the next day, but he really hadn’t returned her call today on purpose. No special reason, other than she’d caught him when he was busy and by the time he got home all he wanted was to eat dinner and watch a few hours of TV and crash. He’d thought about calling her, but in the end, he’d been unable to muster the energy for a conversation.

  “I needed a break,” Mick said aloud.

  From the edge of the bed, Alice made no sound but the subtle, hesitant shift of her breathing.

  “I was tired, and I knew if I called you back that you’d want me to meet up because I was so close, and I didn’t have time for lunch, so I figured you’d angle for dinner, and I really just wanted to get home.”

  Quietly, smoothly, Alice sat. In the dark, she was only a silhouette, which meant he didn’t have to see her face. Mick wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  “I see,” she said.

  “I was tired.”

  He heard her swallow. “Okay.”

  “I would’ve called you tomorrow, Alice. You know I would have.”

  “I don’t know that,” she told him, and shit, she was crying, he could hear it. “I hope that you would, but I don’t know that you would. Not really. Because I thought you’d call me back today, and you didn’t. And I thought you’d call me back last week, but you didn’t then, either. So, I get it. You needed a break. Sorry. I shouldn’t have come over—”

  “Don’t,” he said as a way to cut her off before this got out of hand.

  She shrugged off his touch and got out of bed. “Don’t what? Go home? If you need a break so bad, I shouldn’t be here, right? Let me give you a break.”

  “No, Alice, c’mon, that’s not—”

  She was already taking off her borrowed clothes, searching for her own, but with only the light coming in from the window, she was having a hard time. Mick watched her for half a minute, then got out of bed. He tried to take her by the arm, but she pulled away.

  “I guess it’s fine when your dick is in my mouth,” she snapped. “Then you don’t need a break, huh?”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say!”

  She whirled on him, wearing only her panties and clutching the rest of her clothes to her chest. “It’s true, though, isn’t it? When I try to make plans with you, you can never manage to give me more than a day’s notice or so. You don’t return my calls or texts sometimes, and now I find out it’s because you need a break. A break, Mick? I see you once or twice a week, and I haven’t ever asked you for more than that, because we live just far enough apart to make it kind of a pain to get together. But guess what, I would make the effort to see you, even if I have to get up at five A.M. to get to work the next day. Or even just for dinner and then we both went home. I’d make it work to see you, Mick, because to me, it’s worth the effort.”

  She’d stopped fighting to get away from him, but she didn’t let him pull her closer. His fingers had dug into her upper arms, and he relaxed his grip. He let his hands slide down her arms, then let her go.

  “When you love somebody, you should make them worth the effort,” Alice whispered.

  She looked at him, waiting. He knew what she wanted to hear, but he couldn’t say it. He could tell her he loved her a dozen times, and it probably wouldn’t be enough, because that was how love worked. You fell into it like a deep, dark pit, and you couldn’t get out.

  Mick frowned. “I took you to see my family. Isn’t that making an effort?”

  “I liked meeting them. Yes, it was.” She put her clothes on the chair and slipped on her shirt, buttoning it over bare flesh. “And when we are together, Mick, we have a good time.”

  “I have a good time with you, too.”

  She looked at him. He could barely make out her features, but he could see enough to know that she wasn’t crying. At least there was that.

  “It’s not how it feels when we’re together, Mick. It’s how it feels when we’re apart.” Here s