Page 61 of First Touch

And she had talked to me. “When you’re well, we’ll go back to the States,” she had said. “We’ll be partners again and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

When I could talk, I asked her, “Do you think he’s dead?”

She shook her head, but her words were honest. “I don’t know.”

Later, I told her that it had been going on all summer. She spooned me in the bed and cried, stroking my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t,” I told her. Which had been true. All the opportunities I had to tell her, I’d thought about saying something and the words never made it past my lips. Because I’d wanted parts of it. Because I had been too addicted to the thrills Aaron gave me to know when he’d gone too far. Much like how she was addicted to the cocaine that the hotel manager supplied her with on a regular basis.

Amber misunderstood me, thinking that it must have been Aaron threatening me that kept me silent. “We should have a code,” she’d said. “A safe word. Something we can say to each other that means we need help, but no one else will know what it means.”

I got silent after that. What was there to say? She’d saved me from something that I’d willingly put myself into. Someone that I had desired beyond anything explainable. Someone that she’d possibly killed, and, if she hadn’t walked in, I might have let kill me.

I loved her for it. But, I hated her a little bit too.

Her iPod played in the background, something moody and unfamiliar that she’d put on repeat, something she did whenever she discovered a new song that she loved.

“What’s playing?” I had asked, more interested in changing the subject than finding out.

“Do you like it? One of the men I met last week introduced me to it. It’s a Leonard Cohen remake called ‘Famous Blue Raincoat.’”

“It’s pretty,” I’d said. Then I’d closed my eyes, wanting to drift back into a never-ending sleep.

But Amber shook my shoulder gently. “I’m serious, Emily. We need a word. Anything.” She paused, waiting for me to agree.

When I said nothing, she said, “How about ‘blue raincoat’? We’ll remember that from this song. How does that sound? Em?”

“Yes,” I’d said, not opening my eyes. “That’s good.”

“Then that’s what it will be.”

She sounded comforted by this decision, as if it fixed everything bad that might ever happen to us.

It was ignorant thinking on her part. “Blue raincoat” couldn’t help me. Because what good was a safe word if I knew I’d never use it?

CHAPTER 18

We wrapped up the season for NextGen on the last Friday of March, the same night Chris Blakely texted to say he was back in town. I used the burner phone to call him and made plans to see him the following Monday.

The weekend was spent with Reeve, as was every weekend. I left him Sunday night not expecting to hear from him again until Friday. But just as I was getting ready to leave for Chris’s house on Monday afternoon, Reeve surprised me with a phone call.

“I miss you,” he said, and tingles ran down my spine. “Since you aren’t shooting anymore, I should have had you stay the night last night.” There was never an invitation with him – he told me when I’d come over; he told me when I’d leave.

Was it wrong that that turned me on about him?

I cradled the phone on my shoulder so I could throw my hair in a ponytail. “But the rules,” I teased. “I still have two days before I can be seen around your house during the week. My two-month probation isn’t up until April first.” I was actually down to counting the hours. Not just because I was eager for him to take me places, but because I was tired of balancing two lives.

Also, with each day that passed without looking for Amber, it was getting easier to forget that I meant to be doing that.

“Fuck two days,” Reeve said.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means that my ranch manager from Wyoming happens to be in town along with some of his crew.”

I nearly dropped my phone at the mention of Wyoming – the last place Amber had been with Reeve.

“I have meetings with them throughout the day,” Reeve continued. “But I’ve also invited them for dinner at my house. I’ve decided you’ll join us.”