Page 71 of Filthy Liar

Maybe I did, too. I pull the blanket over her and we curl up together, finally at peace.

29

Melinda

It takes a shockinglylong time to get my strength back. Weeks slide into a month, then suddenly, two months is around the corner.

I’ve started writing again, but the breaking news I had been working on was broken by other people, while I was unconscious, and then recovering. That’s life, and I don’t need to chase stories at all if I don’t want to.

But I do want to, that’s the problem.

I know I should talk to someone about that—Caroline, maybe. Jason, almost certainly. A therapist, no doubt. But I don’t do any of that. Instead, I think on it, stewing, and suddenly two months have gone by and I realize—shit, I’m grumpy.

“I was thinking,” Jason says one morning after we shower together, and he is painfully gentle with me, as always. “How would you feel about going out for dinner?”

I burst into tears.

He stares at me in horror. I stare right back, equally horrified, because I don’t cry, and if I did, it wouldn’t be over a very reasonable suggestion that it is maybe time to return to the land of the living.

“No, it’s too soon,” he corrects, albeit wrongly.

“It’s not too soon,” I say, furiously wiping my eyes. “It’s that I want more for my life than dinner to be a momentous event.” I take a really deep, all the way to the bottom of my lungs breath. “I don’t have any good stories to write, and I’m worried I won’t ever again, and I’m feeling a bit cooped up.”

He nods. “Okay. Yep. That’s bad. Let’s fix that.”

I slump against him. “Can we fix it over dinner?”

So he makes a reservation at a very private restaurant in Arlington, and I get dressed up. It’s the first time since the shooting that I’ve put on makeup—and the first time since I left California that I’m staring at myself in the mirror as I do so, and not some carefully constructed alter-ego.

Jason comes in as I put the finishing touches. He stands behind me and brushes my hair, now long enough to cover my shoulders, out of the way so he can kiss my neck.

“You look good enough to eat,” he whispers.

I shiver at the tempting thought. “Yes, please.”

“Right here?” He spins me around and lifts me onto the bathroom counter. “Hold on tight.”

I lean back against the mirror, bracing my hands on the counter, and he kneels in front of me. “You look good, too.” I let out a breathy laugh as he nips the inside of my thigh.

Ever so slowly, he’s getting rougher and more intense with me. I grab on to each moment with both hands.

He tugs my panties to the side and kisses my sex, a soft open-mouthed taste that ends in a teasing flick of his tongue against my clit. I rock against his face, suddenly very horny, but he only gives me two more slow-tongued kisses there before he stands up and crowds against me. “We’ll be late for dinner.”

“So mean,” I breathe. Then I lunge at him, tasting myself on his lips.

He slams me back against the mirror, his hands cushioning behind me, and thrusts his tongue deep into my mouth. “Make no mistake,” he growls. “I want more of that as soon as we get home. But we’re going to go out for dinner, like grown-ups, and talk about grown-up things like work. And fucking.”

I can’t wait. I shimmy my hips and he helps me down again.

Then he looks at me again. “Something is different about your face.”

I touch my bare mouth. He drops his gaze to my lips and smiles. “Yeah. You aren’t wearing any lipstick.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t, actually. Usually.”

“Huh.” He leans against the door frame. “You know, I wondered that. If the red and pink lipsticks were different personalities.”

I groan. “Is that what we’re calling my former identities?”

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