He was a better man than I deserved. I had known it instinctively since the first night I met him; and now I had the evidence, more than I could have asked for, and it only served to strengthen my certainty that I had to cut him loose. I was nobody, a cocktail waitress with a high school diploma. He was going to be President.

I felt hollowed out, like I had been scooped empty, every organ and hope and memory lifted clean out of me.

I said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

He must have sensed the finality in my voice, because he nodded, lips compressed into a thin line, and buttoned his coat.

He didn’t belong in my world, and I didn’t belong in his.

Chapter 10

Life after Carter was very quiet.

Without really meaning to, I began dividing my internal chronology into two eras: Before Carter and After Carter. It was a terrible idea, because it constantly reminded me of him and of what I’d lost. But by the time I realized what I was doing, it was too late.

Before Carter, I’d been a quiet, hard-working nobody, a silent mouse of a person, grinding through week after week and year after year of a dull, meaningless existence. But I hadn’t known it. It was just the way things were.

After Carter, I knew it.

It was hard to get up in the afternoon and go to work, with nothing to look forward to except years of loneliness and drudgery.

Maybe that was a little dramatic.

I felt dramatic, though. I felt like the heroine in a Romantic tragedy. I wanted to put on a long white dress and amble across the rain-drenched moors. I would catch a fever and waste elegantly away before I finally expired, in a heart-rending scene near the end of the novel.

Sadie was probably right: I read too many books.

I spent Thanksgiving with Sadie and her boyfriend, clustered around the table in Sadie’s tiny apartment. I wondered what Carter was doing. He was probably at his mother’s penthouse on the Upper East Side, eating a turducken and drinking expensive wine and laughing. He had only mentioned his mother to me once, but his affection for her had been obvious.

I hoped he was happy.

I wasn’t, and couldn’t imagine that I ever would be again.

I missed him all the time.

Work was no escape. I kept thinking I would turn around and see him there, looking at me from across the room, lifting his chin to let me know he wanted a drink. I thought I saw him, once, from behind, but then he turned and it wasn’t him at all, just some man wearing a suit.

I missed him.

Two weeks after he came to my apartment, I arrived at work just before 4 and stashed my things behind the bar, just as always. I greeted the other waitresses and the few dancers who were loitering around, just as always. And then Germaine came out of her office and said, “Regan, a word.”

I followed her in, feeling numb. Being summoned to Germaine’s office always filled me with nameless dread; I would probably never stop being convinced that she was about to fire me. But this time, instead of handing me my last paycheck, she said, “There’s a gentleman in room 4 who would like to speak with you.”

My heart leaped into my throat.

It had to be Carter. There was no one else it could be.

Still, I asked, “Can you tell me who it is?”

Germaine raised her eyebrows at me. “I think you should go see for yourself.”

Heart pounding, palms sweating, I left Germaine’s office and crossed the club to room 4.

I wasn’t sure what I was more afraid of: that it was Carter, or that it wasn’t.

The door was shut. I pushed it open without knocking.

The man inside turned—he turned toward me, and it was Carter, Carter’s hair, Carter’s blue eyes, Carter’s face looking at me from across the room.

“Regan,” he said, and my knees turned to jelly beneath me. I quickly took a seat on the nearest sofa. I didn’t trust my legs to hold me up.

Seeing him again was like having a hot fire lit in my belly. I didn’t know why I’d ever told him to stay away.

That wasn’t true. I knew exactly why. But all of my reasons seemed unimportant now.

“I’m sorry to corner you like this at work,” he said, before I could say anything. “You told me that nobody has ever told me ‘no,’ and maybe that’s true. I like getting my way. I’m not willing to let you go without a fight.”

“Oh,” I said. I was blank, numb.

“It’s true that we don’t know each other very well,” he said. “But you’ve had—some sort of pull on me, ever since the first time I saw you. I know you feel it too.” He spoke quickly, like he had rehearsed his words. “If you really don’t want to have anything to do with me, just say the word, and I’ll walk out that door and never speak to you again. But I’d really like to take you out for dinner tomorrow night.”

“To dinner,” I said. “Like a date?”

He smiled, then, and I knew what my answer would be. The last two weeks had been horrible. I never wanted to be away from him.

“Like a date,” he agreed. “We can just... talk. Get to know each other. Eat some good food. What do you say?”

I closed my eyes, feeling joy rise up within me, irresistible. It was like that moment on a diving board, right before you leap. “Yes,” I said.

“Yes what,” he said.

“Yes, I will go on a date with you,” I said. I opened my eyes and smiled at him.

“Christ,” he said, and crossed the room in two strides. He sunk onto the sofa beside me and gathered me against him, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my hair. “Regan.”

I clung to him, overwhelmed, burying my face against his shoulder. He smelled so familiar. I didn’t know how I had survived without him.

“I wish you would quit this job and let me take care of you, but I won’t ask you to do that,” he said, his cheek pressed against my hair. “I know you value your independence, and you’ve worked hard to get to where you are. I don’t want to take that away from you.”

“Okay,” I said. I turned my face up toward him, and he kissed me on the corner of my mouth, warm, deliberate. He kissed my cheek and the corner of my eye, and then my mouth, gently at first, soft, tender kisses that quickly became more heated. He slid one hand into my hair and tugged my head back, holding me in place as he claimed my mouth with his own.

I had missed this. I needed this. I needed him.