A car honks in the distance, and Matt pulls his mouth away from mine. “I really, really need to leave,” he tells me softly, pressing his forehead against mine.

“Oh, okay.” I can’t keep the dejection out of my voice.

I really don’t understand why he can’t just bang me on the hood of the car.

Oh, that’s right, because I’m better than this and I need him to want me for me and not just as a distraction.

“I don’t want to go, I swear. But if I don’t leave right now, I’m going to take you upstairs, lock the door, and refuse to come out until we’re both naked, sweaty, and exhausted.”

I’m sorry, what’s the problem again?

I nod my head like I completely understand what he’s talking about. Why can’t he just forget about Melanie already?

“I know as soon as I walk away from you I’m going to regret saying this, but I just think we need to take this slow. I’ve already got one fucked-up relationship under my belt. I want things to be different this time.”

I can’t fault him for his honesty. I need to prove to him that he can trust me, and I suppose slow and truthful is better than hurried and naked. For now.

“It’s okay, I get it. But just know, when we finally are naked and sweaty, I’ll make sure you won’t have anything on your mind except for what I’m doing to you,” I tell him with a wink.

He groans, and by the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he’s second-guessing his noble efforts. I laugh and kiss him quickly on the lips and then move back before I take him against his will on the sidewalk. While fun, I don’t think the neighbors would appreciate the show.

I make sure to add a little extra sway to my hips as I walk away from him. Just because we’re taking things slow doesn’t mean I can’t torture him just a little.

“You’re killing me, Paige McCarty!” Matt shouts to me as I climb up the stairs and put my key in the lock.

I can’t keep the smile off of my face as I open the door and leave him outside on the sidewalk to think about what he’s missing. I hear his truck start up and pull away a few seconds later as I flop down on the couch, tossing my bag onto the coffee table. Seeing a piece of paper sitting on the glass top, I lean forward and pick it up. The smile dies on my face when I see the words scribbled across it in perfectly neat, block letters: IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YA, YOU’LL STOP STICKIN YOUR NOSE WHERE IT DON’T BELONG. GO BACK TO BEING IN PRETTY PICTURES AND NO ONE GETS HURT.


I drop the note like it’s on fire and scramble up from the couch, staring frantically around my condo, afraid to breathe.

Someone was in my home. Someone knows I’ve been looking into Vinnie DeMarco. What if they’re still here?

For the first time today, I wish my mother were here with her gun.

CHAPTER 15

We’re going to the fucking police right now,” Matt states angrily as he hits the blinker in his F-150 truck to take us into town.

When I ran out of my house in a panic, I pulled my phone out of my purse and called the first person I thought of. Was it just because I could still taste him on my lips? I could have called my mom, but I knew she would just lecture me, and I could have called Kennedy, but that would mean I’d have to come clean about what I’d been doing and I wasn’t ready for that. The only person I wanted in the midst of my fear was Matt. It exhilarated me and scared the shit out of me all at the same time.

I’d grown used to my independence in the months since my divorce, and it was a frightening feeling to want to depend on another person again. Especially one of the male gender who could fuck me over in the blink of an eye and crush my heart to pieces if he suddenly decided he was still in love with his lying, cheating ex.

“There’s no need to get the police involved. I probably overreacted. For all I know it was Andy trying to cause trouble because I won’t give him any money.”

He stops at the empty intersection and stares across the front seat of the truck at me. I can see the battle going on in his eyes. He wants so much to protect me from the person who left a threatening note in my house, but he also wants to do whatever I ask.

“I don’t like this, Paige. I don’t like this at all.”

Then he sighs deeply and takes the street that leads away from downtown and away from the police.

Andy would always make decisions for me. He would tell me that he was doing what he thought was in my best interest or say that the few years in age he had on me meant that he was able to make more informed choices about my life. Really, he wanted to make me feel like I needed him to function. For the first few months after we separated, I almost believed it. I didn’t know how to do anything on my own. I didn’t remember how to make the simplest of decisions because I had been relying on him for so long. With the help of my friends, I was able to see just how much he controlled my life and slowly get my independence back.

Something as little as having Matt listen to me when I tell him what I want means more to me than he’ll ever know. He didn’t belittle me or tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. He let me make my own decision, even if it turns out to be the wrong one.

I feel my throat growing tight with unshed tears and I have to clear it to keep them at bay. I will not cry right now.

“I wish you would have let me look through your place. What if whoever left that note was still there?” Matt asks.

“Are you crazy? That’s like something straight out of a horror movie. You never go back into a house looking for the bad people. It always ends with a machete to the face,” I argue.

“A machete, huh? Do you normally have a lot of people with machetes after you?” Matt asks with a laugh. “I’m seriously considering turning the truck around and going back to the police if that’s the case.”

“Like I said, I probably just made a big deal out of nothing. I’ll get hold of Andy first thing tomorrow and put the fear of God into him.”

“And if it wasn’t that little weasel, what then? Your friends aren’t sick and twisted enough to do this as some sort of joke, are they?” he asks.

I’m not going to lie; it warms my heart even more that he called Andy a weasel.

I laugh easily at the idea that Kennedy and Lorelei would sneak into my house and leave a note like that for me, the heaviness of my thoughts from a moment ago disappearing quickly. “Okay, I think it’s safe to say Lorelei would have never done something like that. She would have used bigger words to drive her point home, and she would have been more polite. Like, ‘Please discontinue your inquisitive ways or we shall be obliged to damage your appendages,’” I tell him in my best Lorelei voice.

“I would have to agree even though I’ve only talked to her for a few minutes. But what about Kennedy? She carries a gun and she sounds scary,” Matt says with a dramatic shiver. The smile on his face proves that he believed me when I said they wouldn’t do something like this, and he’s trying to distract me by making light of the situation.

“Well, it’s close to something Kennedy would have said, but hers would have had more cursing. ‘Get your fucking head out of your ass before I punch you in the goddamn face.’”

Matt and I laugh together as I describe my friend’s personalities to him with just a few sentences.

“I’m glad you called me,” he says softly as he pulls into a driveway of a gorgeous Cape Cod home and puts his truck in park.

He doesn’t give me a chance to reply as he jumps out of the truck and comes around to my side, opening the door for me and taking my hand to help me down. Hand in hand we walk up the steps of his front porch, and I stand to the side, admiring his profile as he unlocks the front door.

As soon as we walk inside, Matt hits a switch and bathes the living room in light. I have to say, I’m a little shocked at what I see. I assumed his place would look similar to Andy’s apartment: mismatched furniture, no pictures on the wall, still-unpacked boxes littering the floors, and takeout containers in the kitchen. Matt’s home is tastefully decorated and spotless. There aren’t any signs that a woman used to live here, but it also doesn’t look like a bachelor pad. It’s gray and black and full of leather, and I love it. I notice a framed picture on an end table next to the couch, and I walk right up to it and lift it up for a better look. In the picture, Matt has his arm around the shoulders of an older man; it almost looks like a before-and-after picture. I can tell right away that this is Matt’s father and also how nicely Matt is going to age. His father is a handsome man with the same bright blue eyes and dark hair as his son, except he has a few gray hairs at his temples and wrinkles around his eyes.

“This is a great picture. I’m assuming this is your dad?”

Matt comes up behind me and looks over my shoulder. “Yep. That’s Eric Russo. Obviously, he gets his good looks from me.”

I laugh, setting the picture back down and turning around to face him.

“Can you show me where the bathroom is? I want to wash up a little. And if you have anything I can use as pajamas, that would be good too. I didn’t think to grab anything when I went racing out of my house like a chicken.”

Matt places his hands on my shoulders, sliding them up my neck until he cups my cheeks. “I’m sure I can find something for you to wear. And you aren’t a chicken. I would have gone screaming into the night if someone left a note like that for me too.”

My heart skips a beat as he places a kiss on the tip of my nose before grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hallway.