I could finish him off in my hand, but I’ve gone all in. I’m not giving my first blow job in a half-baked, half-ass way. I’m going all the way. He comes in my mouth, and I swallow the taste of him.

He shudders and hisses, and then he whistles. Yes, he actually whistles as I release him and slink up next to him. His eyes are closed, but his lips are curved into this crazy sexy grin, and he’s fucking humming.

“That’s adorable that you whistle after a blow job.”

“I’m whistling a happy tune,” he murmurs. Soon, he opens his eyes, and he looks drunk and happy. “Congratulations on your first blow job, Harley.”

I roll my eyes, swat his shoulder. He grabs me, pulls my naked body next to his.

“How was it?” I ask.

“You want to know?”

“Yes.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, idiot. That’s why I asked.”

“Now, I’m gonna tell you. But you can’t get mad at me. And you can’t analyze it. And you can’t hold it against me.”

I tense. “That’s not good.”

“No. It is good. It was good. Harley,” he says, holding my gaze, looking intensely serious. “It was the best ever. Because it was you.”

I melt and wriggle against him. Then, he slips his hand between my legs. Raises an eyebrow when he feels how wet I am. “You liked doing that to me evidently?”

“Yes,” I say, and I feel no shame. I did like it. I like him.

“A lot, huh?”

He slides his thumb across me, and in an instant I am gasping for breath.

“Yes,” I pant.

“So much that it made you this wet?” He draws a delicious line through all that wetness. I’m sure I’m coating his fingers right now, and I’m also sure I don’t care.

Nor does he. Because he brings his fingers to his mouth, licks them, them returns them to me. “You’re so fucking delicious,” he tells me, as he strokes me more, and I grab his shoulder to hold on. We’re lying next to each other, facing each other, and he slides his fingers across me, and I moan.

“Oh,” I say, and I start to close my eyes and just let go, let myself feel what he’s doing to me.

“Open your eyes, Harley,” he tells me, and I do. “I want to watch you when you come. I want you to look at me as I touch you.”

I nod, whimpering heavily as he rubs his thumb against me where I want him most. I open my legs more for him, hooking my thigh over his as he runs his finger across me. I’m so aroused again, throbbing with heat, and I can’t believe I am already this ratcheted up after what he did to me, but I am.

My body is unlocked. Everything I’ve kept inside, everything I’ve forbidden myself from feeling, is happening. It’s like I had lost my voice for ages and I didn’t even want to find it, but then I found it, he found it, and he opened the treasure chest and set me free. Now I’m feeling the most delicious, delirious, intense feelings in the world, in the solar system, in the whole damn universe as he strokes me, his fingers slipping across my wetness. “Rock into me,” he tells me in a hot whisper as I dig my nails into his shoulder. “Rock into my hand. I want you to get off again. I want to be the one who makes you come again and again. I want to hear my name on your lips.”

“Trey,” I whisper.

“Like that,” he says, and I move again, arching into his hand, his touch some kind of deliciousness, his eyes searching me, knowing all my past, all my secrets, all my shame, and even so, he still wants everything about me, every part of me, and this part too. I grip his shoulder harder, needing terribly to hold on to him as pleasure ripples through me, lighting me up, like fireworks sparkling through my whole body. My belly tightens and my breathing grows erratic as he sends me off into another orgasm.

“Trey,” I say, then I manage two more words. Words I have never said out loud to a man. “I’m coming.”

“Yes, you are. You’re coming for me Harley. You’re coming for me.”

“I’m coming for you,” I repeat as the pleasure floods me, and I close my eyes, rocking into his hand, the spasms and aftershocks rolling through me.

Chapter Eighteen

Harley

That’s how it goes for the next few days. We are together. We make it to our final classes and work. He takes me to the tree he planted for his brothers in Abingdon Square Park. We hold hands the whole time, until I see the tree. I let go of him so I can I wrap my arms around the tree and kiss the small trunk. Then we return to his place and we touch each other more. He gives me more orgasms than I ever knew I could have, and I learn how he likes everything.

We don’t go all the way though. I know we will. Just not yet.

I even hear back from Miranda. She emails me on Thursday morning.

The final file you sent has been received. The material contained in it has been approved. I will take care of everything from here. The terms of our agreement have been fulfilled.

It’s over then. My debt is paid. The slate is wiped clean.

I should feel light as a balloon. I should feel buoyant, ready to float to the sky on a cotton candy cloud. But I feel oddly unsettled when I see the next note. It’s from my mother.

I have to tell you about the story I’ve been trailing. Meeting with a source now. About to bust this wide open. Love, The Cleaner.

I remind myself that she’s investigating a congressman. That she busts big-time liars and cheaters. She’s probably going to call me soon, and want to celebrate her next potential award-winning piece.

But she’s not the only writer in the family. I can write again, and I can write for me.

While Trey’s showering, I take out the notebook Joanne gave me, opening it to the first page. It’s fresh and white, like falling snow. I imagine a dusky night sky, stars twinkling, and a bright shining moon. It’s cold, but a pair of walking, talking dogs joke about not needing jackets. It tickles a memory of when I was younger, of making up stories like this for someone. But who? I try to grasp at the memory, but it’s too hazy and it fades away. Still, the image is enough for me to go on, and I start jotting down notes about a new story. Because I can finally write what I want to write. Something simple, something magical, something for kids.

When Trey steps out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, he tips his forehead to the notebook. “You writing?”

“Just playing around with some ideas,” I say.

He sits down next to me on the futon, and I’m thoroughly distracted by the fresh, clean, sexy smell of him. I lean into his neck and plant a quick kiss. He pulls at the strap on my tanktop, and I’m pretty sure we’re about to go for another round of something.

But he taps my shoulder instead. “Hey. Weren’t you going to tell about your red ribbon? You were supposed to tell me what it meant to you.”

I cast my eyes down. “You won’t like it.”

The muscles in his arms tense. “It better not be for Cam.”

I shake my head, then raise my eyes. “It’s for my mom. It’s to remind me of her. She used to put this red ribbon in my hair when she did my hair for her parties,” I say, and as I tell the story I hear it for the first time as a dispassionate observer. I was her pretty pony. Her little doll of a daughter. Then I became the prize to help her catch men.

He blows a long stream of air from his lips, shakes his head. I swear I can feel the fumes of his anger. But he’s not mad at me. He’s mad at her. And maybe, just maybe, I am too. I didn’t want to be dressed up and paraded around. I didn’t want to be her wingwoman. I wanted to be her daughter.

He grips my shoulders. Narrows his eyes. “When you’re ready, say the word. I’ll redo that tattoo for you.”

“You will?”

“Fuck yeah. Almost one-quarter of our business is redoing tats from years ago. Covering them up. Reworking them. I can do something else for you. When you’re ready.”

“Okay. I’ll think of something else.”

“But thank you for telling me, and you’re right. I don’t like it. And I don’t like your mom. And I don’t like what she did to you. But that’s just the way it goes.” He points to my notebook. “Will you show me sometime what you’re working on? Because I’d be a hell of a lot more interested in your stories about animal magic, and why you are so drawn to those stories, than about that shit Miranda was making you write because you were covering up for your mom.”

I laugh. “Definitely. And check this out,” I say, closing the notebook and showing him the cover. “Joanne gave it to me. Isn’t that a cool heart drawing?”

He traces the misshapen heart with his index finger. “That’s an awesome illustration. I love how it’s all stretched and pulled and twisted, but it’s still whole.”

“It is still whole. It’s the ugly beautiful.”

Trey raises an eyebrow. “The ugly beautiful?”

“It’s this saying, I guess. Joanne told me about it. I think it means that beautiful things can come from an ugly place. That it’s the flower that grows in a landfill. Or the stained glass window in an abandoned apartment building. Or maybe,” I say, then take a beat, my heart skittering, “It’s meeting you in the middle of all the awfulness. Because you’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He closes his eyes briefly, then winces, as if the sentiment is too scary.

Fear grips me. I’ve said too much. I want to take it all back, and time stands still in the wretchedness of this moment that I’ve ruined.

Then it revs up and my heart is racing at the speed of light as he curves a hand around my neck and leans his forehead against mine in the most tender gesture. All the hairs on my arms are standing on end and I’m coated in warmth and anticipation and something else too. Hope. The most painful, wondrous, delirious kind of hope that’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. And this feeling is hope multiplied. My hope and the hope he is falling for real.

“I’m falling for you in a big way, Harley, and I have no clue what to do about it but let it happen.”

“Let’s let it happen.”

“It’s happening and I don’t want to stop it,” he says as he cups my cheeks. He brushes his lips to mine, and my breath catches from the softness, the sweetness.

But the kiss is cut short when my phone rings loudly.

My mother’s ringtone. I ignore it and return to Trey’s lips. But she calls again. And again. And again.

I finally pick up. “Hi. What’s going on?”

“I’ve been looking into a story. I saw some pages of a manuscript and – call it a reporter’s hunch – I feel like I might know the writer. Are you Layla?”

My blood freezes and my brain goes numb. The walls around all my secrets are cracking.

Even when I try to escape her, I can’t. She is at the beginning and the end and the middle of every twist and turn and dead end in this maze.

Miranda is my mom’s editor too.

* * *

Miranda is the most important person in my mother’s career.

Miranda plucked my mom from the lowly assignment desk, honed her journalist chops, and molded her into the fearless cutthroat reporter she is today.

Miranda is like a fairy godmother to my mom.

Miranda is also the woman cuckolded by her most prestigious investigative reporter’s daughter.

Phil is Twenty-Four on my list. I had an “almost affair” with my mom’s editor’s husband.

But I had my reasons, I swear I had them.

I never shared them with Miranda. Because I don’t want her to know my mom stole her husband first, and I walked into the trap I knew was being set. I walked into it with my arms wide open, ready for the photos to be snapped, the evidence to be amassed. Only I never expected Miranda would do what she did and handcuff me back. How could I? Those things don’t occur to you as possibilities. You don’t think, “Oh, if I have an affair with my mom’s editor’s husband to willingly get caught, the editor will then blackmail me into writing Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict.”

It’s a catchy title, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t pick that up? It has mega bestseller written all over it. Especially since it’ll be shrouded in secrecy when it hits bookstore shelves.

Because it’ll be by “Anonymous.” Everyone will be abuzz trying to figure out who this Layla character is who learned how to kiss at a carnival, then went pro and made money hand over fist when she became a high-priced call girl. But wait! The salaciousness doesn’t end there! The girl got caught! Gasp! The girl confessed! The girl then cleaned up her act! She went to recovery! Who doesn’t love a tale of redemption? The hooker with the heart of gold. The whore turned good. It’s Heidi Fleiss, it’s Elliot Spitzer, it’s Tiger Woods. Only sexier and scarier.