Don't Deny Me Read online

  “Wow,” she said. “You are really going all out.”

  “Got hungry. Took a run to the market. Figured I could treat you to breakfast. And lunch, if you’ll let me. Dinner, too.” He grinned and kissed her again.

  Alice held the mug of hot coffee away from her body so it didn’t slop. In the light of mid-morning—God, how late had she slept?—Mick looked even better than he had last night. She, on the other hand …

  “You’re so gorgeous, you know that?”

  Alice burst into guffaws. “Oh, shut up! Oh, my God.”

  “It’s true.” Mick looked serious. “First thing in the morning like this? Right out of bed? I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.”

  She sipped coffee for a second before putting the mug on the table and her hands on her hips. “Look. Let’s just get something straight.”

  “Anything.” He looked expectant before turning to the stove to shut off the burners and slide the bacon onto a plate, which he put on the table before focusing on her again. “What is it?”

  She’d watched this domesticity with a raised brow. No denying that a man who cooked for her was sexy. Still, she had some things to say. “Just because I went to bed with you last night does not mean we can just pick up where we left off.”

  “Where we left off was pretty bad,” Mick said. “I was kind of hoping we’d start off in a different place. I meant what I said last night, Alice.”

  He’d said he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman. What that meant beyond the physical, Alice wasn’t sure. She focused on her own bare toes for a moment before looking up at him, her fists clenched until she forced herself to open them. “Why did you go to Bernie and Cookie’s party?”

  “Because they invited me, and it was a big deal. It didn’t seem right to miss it.”

  That had ostensibly been her reason, too, and she wasn’t about to tell him any different.

  “And I thought we’d be able to … you know. Catch up.”

  Alice’s eyebrows rose. “What, like we were old high school pals who hadn’t seen each other in a few years? Like maybe we’d worked together at summer camp? After everything, Mick, you thought we’d just … catch up?”

  “I wanted to see you again,” he told her. “And yeah. Catch up. Find out how you’d been. I know you think I didn’t care—”

  “I didn’t say that.” Though she’d thought it, more than once, as the years had passed without a word from him.

  Mick gave her a steady look. “Don’t you believe in second chances, Alice? Remember once how you told me that you were willing to make the effort? That what we had was worth it?”

  Like she could’ve forgotten it. Some parts of her relationship with Mick had gone fuzzy over the years, blurred around the edges like a vignette. That conversation was not one of them.

  “I love you,” he’d told her. “On some level.”

  Oh, the anger had dimmed, after a time. But never the sting of those words. They still burned and bit her in her tender places, remembering.

  He took her hand. The one with the scar. It had faded to white over the years. Only someone who knew it was there would even notice it. Mick stroked it now. Then kissed it, sending shivers all through her. He pulled her close, their fingers curled, and put her hand on his heart.

  “It’s worth trying,” Mick said. “Isn’t it?”

  Their relationship had been over the night of her accident, though they had limped along for a month or so after that before it finally ended. Fighting, mostly. Making up and making love, but the damage had been done, and they’d never really recovered from it. It had been the best and worst month of her life—the sex had been fierce and sometimes brutal. The words they’d thrown at each other, both in person and in letters harsh and ultimately, unforgivable. But the passion? That had been undeniable.

  She supposed everything about the two of them together had always been undeniable.

  Alice went to the small, built-in desk in the corner of her kitchen and opened the drawer. Inside was a tightly bound packet of letters she’d shoved there some time ago because she’d been unable to convince herself to burn them, but hadn’t wanted to be reminded of them all the time. She held them out to Mick.

  “I kept these,” she said. “I haven’t read them in a long time. But I used to read them all the time. I’ve read them so often I memorized most of them. They all hurt me.”

  Mick winced, but Alice kept going.

  “The angry letters were meant to hurt me, I guess, but the love letters always hurt me, too, because I could remember, so much, how it felt when we were together. I would read them and cry, torturing myself, because … because they were all I had left of you. All I thought I would ever have of you, and I could never bring myself to let them go. Ten years is a long time to hold on to something, Mick. It’s a really long time not to let go.”

  He crossed to her. Pulled her close. She buried her face against his chest, breathing in the clean, warm scent of Mick’s skin. It hadn’t changed, not in all these years.

  He kissed the top of her head. “I kept yours, too.”

  * * *

  Last night I dreamed of a long hallway lined with doors of black and white, all but the one at the end. That one was red. I walked toward it, not bothering even to knock at any of the others. I didn’t care what was behind them. I only wanted to get to the red door, because somehow I knew already what was behind it. The more I tried to get there, the longer the hallway got. Total cliché. Even in the dream, I knew it, and suddenly I knew it was a dream, and that I could control it, so I yelled out, “I want to get to the red door!”

  Everything stopped.

  I stood in front of the red door.

  And there you were.

  —Alice to Mick, unsent

  * * *

  It had been a long time since Mick had put pen to paper this way. Not merely a scribbled to-do list or a signed birthday card, but an actual letter. The last time that he could remember writing something like this, in fact, had been to Alice. A long time ago.

  It felt right, though. The scratch of the nib against the creamy thickness of the paper. The way the lines flowed, one into the other, making words. Handwriting was so different than typing on a computer or on a phone screen. He had to be very certain of what he wanted to say before he wrote it down. No backspace. No erasing.

  It felt very fitting.

  It had only been two weeks since he’d shown up at Alice’s door. They’d agreed to take things slow. It was easier, in a way, than it had been back then. Now they both had smartphones, social media, unlimited texting. Maturity, he thought with a snort as he twirled the heavy fountain pen in his fingers and thought about what to write next.

  The letters had been his suggestion. They’d written to each other a lot the first time around. Funny cards or little notes. During the breakup, they’d sent even more letters. It had been easier to write what they felt instead of saying it aloud, at least for him. During that last horrific month when they’d both been clinging to each other and trying to tear each other apart, writing those letters had been like lancing a boil. The sight of an envelope in his mailbox, addressed in Alice’s familiar hand, had always simultaneously lifted him and cast him down. And after it had ended for good, that last final letter from her that had told him never to contact her again, Mick had still kept writing letters he never sent.

  There’d been girls before Alice and a few after, but he’d never done that for any of them. Held on that way. He didn’t pull those unsent letters out to read them now, but he remembered all too well the words in them. He’d been angry. Pleading. Contrite. Sarcastic. Despondent. Vengeful, too.

  This time around was going to be different.

  In high school, his teacher had been adamant about making a rough draft before the final copy. There was something to be said for that, but in letter writing, Mick had found the first words were the best words. Okay, so maybe he spelled some things wrongs, or scratched them out, or re