We hold each other, sweaty and intertwined, until our breathing returns to normal. I pull out of her and go to dispose of the condom. When I get back to the bedroom, her lips stretch into a brilliant smile.

“Should we see if my oven works?” she teases. “I’m starving.”

“We worked up quite an appetite,” I agree.

She giggles as she scrambles off the bed to put on her underwear and an oversized shirt. She rummages around in a drawer and tosses me a rumpled T-shirt. When I unroll it, I realize it’s one of mine.

“You kept this?” I ask, my voice strangled with sudden emotion.

Scarlett bites her lip. “You got a tattoo. I kept a shirt.” She shrugs, but I can tell from the jerkiness of the movement that her emotion matches mine underneath her words.

“Mine’s more permanent, I guess.” I mimic her lighthearted tone as best I can.

Laughing softly, she nods. “You win.”

She passes by me and into the kitchen to rummage through cabinets for baking sheets and plates. We warm the food and spread out a blanket on the ground, enjoying a tapas picnic in her living room in our underwear.

In between kisses and shared bites of food, I can’t help but think she’s right. I’ve been able to work on a book that has woken me all the way up, and Scarlett is back in my life in the way I’ve always wanted her to be.

I have won.

Chapter 25

Scarlett

For two people for whom words are our lives, we don’t share many over the next few days. Instead, we spend our time exploring each other’s bodies, savoring all the ways we still fit together.

During the day, Ryan goes to work. Every morning, he tells me he wishes he could stay with me, but he wouldn’t get anything done. There are a few projects in addition to mine that need his attention, and he’s been distracted.

When he’s gone, I write. And while I still have trouble letting go of the work each night, Ryan interrupts, and the pull of his touch is enough to make me close the computer and focus on other things like eating, bathing, laughing, making love.

There’s a voice in the back of my mind that says Ryan used to be enough to keep me grounded before, too, and look how that went. But it’s still small enough that I can generally ignore it. Besides, last time it wasn’t the writing that did me in. It was all the extras—publicity tours, endless book signings, JMP’s constant need for more and more and more. And then the ultimate knowledge that my life could never look the way I truly wanted it to: slower moments, quiet mornings, maybe even a family…

That’s not going to happen this time. Trina made sure of it.