Never Yours Again novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Guest Bed
Lucy comes home from a red-eye to a bite mark on Rhett's neck, finds the guest bed stripped, packs, and walks out; in the lobby Ellis tells her there is money on her coming back and that he bet against it.
I came off a red-eye flight with my suitcase rattling behind me and my thumb over the keypad.
The door opened before I pressed a single number.
Rhett stood there with his hair still wet and a charcoal towel low on his hips, already reaching for my suitcase.
I hadn't seen him in almost three weeks.
All my tiredness dropped away, and I threw my arms around his neck.
"I missed you so much," I said into his shoulder. "Did you miss me? The client today said"
Then I stopped talking.
A dark purple mark sat on his collarbone, fresh and round, with the print of teeth in it.
My smile went stiff.
I stepped back and pushed on his chest with both hands.
"Someone was here."
Rhett touched the mark with two fingers.
"Lucy, sit down, and I'll make you coffee. You just landed."
"Who was here?"
"She left an hour ago."
He said it.
I walked past him down the hall.
The guest room door was open.
The sheets were stripped off the bed and lying in a heap by the window.
Both pillows had been thrown on the floor.
The room smelled of a perfume I didn't own, and under it, of Rhett.
I stood in that doorway for a moment.
I had cried in front of him before.
I had begged him before, in that same hallway, in a dozen small ways, for a dozen small crimes.
I didn't do either.
I turned around and walked into our bedroom.
Rhett followed me as far as the door and leaned his shoulder against the frame.
I pulled my suitcase open on the bed and started taking things out of the closet.
I took the black dress, my work boots and the cardigan my mother knitted me.
"What's with the drama?" he said.
He had a glass of scotch in his hand.
I hadn't seen him pick it up.
"Nobody died," he said. "It's a bed."
"It's my guest room."
"It's my apartment."
That was true.
He had bought it in his name, eight months after I moved in, and he had told me it was a gift.
"Lucy." He swirled the ice. "You know how this goes."
"Tell me."
"You pack. You go to Shawna's. You cry for a day and a half." He smiled at me. "Give it forty-eight hours and you'll be begging to come home."
He wasn't angry.
He was bored, which was worse.
I had chased this man for two years before he agreed to one dinner.
I had asked him out six times, and the sixth time he laughed and said fine.
Since then I had been easy to have.
I had never made him choose, or wait, or explain.
Whenever I complained, he gave me the same answer, and he gave it again now.
"If it bothers you, there's the door."
I looked at him.
He looked back, as sure of me as he was of the floor.
"Okay," I said.
His smile slipped a little.
I went to the bottom shelf of the closet and found the gray wool jacket.
I had owned it for five years.
It was from the night we met, at the Lakeshore Gala, when I was a junior planner with wine on my sleeve and nowhere to hide.
A man had found me on the balcony and put this jacket around my shoulders.
I told myself that man was Rhett.
In all the years since, Rhett had never once asked me what we talked about out there.
I told myself men forget.
I folded the jacket small and laid it on top of everything else.
Then I took my passport, my laptop and the folder of my mother's letters.
"You're really doing this," Rhett said.
"I'm really doing this."
"Fine." He lifted the glass. "Don't take the good towels."
I took the good towels.
Then I slid my key card out of my wallet and set it on the nightstand next to the lamp.
Rhett stopped smiling when it clicked against the wood.
"That's a nice touch," he said. "Very dramatic."
I rolled my suitcase down the hall and out the front door.
He didn't follow me.
He didn't have to.
He was sure the elevator would bring me back.
The elevator carried me twenty-two floors down, alone, and I watched my own face in the brass doors the whole way.
I looked tired.
I did not look like someone who was going to cry for a day and a half.
The doors opened on the lobby, and a man was standing in front of them with a garment bag over his arm.
Ellis Flaherty.
He ran Rhett's company, and he had been at every dinner I'd ever cooked in that apartment.
His eyes went to my suitcase, then to my face, and stayed there.
"Lucy."
"He's upstairs," I said. "He's in a towel. Don't ask."
He didn't ask.
He lifted my suitcase over the lip of the door without a word, then set it down on the sidewalk beside me.
"There's a bet," he said.
"What?"
"At his club. Rhett told the table you'd be back by Thursday." He kept his voice flat. "People put money on it."
My face went hot.
"Everyone knew?"
"Everyone knew he'd say it." He looked at me steadily. "I took the other side. Two hundred dollars says you don't."
I stared at him.
"Why?"
Ellis shifted the garment bag to his other arm.
"Because I've watched you for a long time," he said. "I thought one of us should be right."
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