Cross My Heart. AM Hartnett

the other part of him couldn’t stand not knowing. He’d been so concerned with making sure that Evie wanted this as much as he did that he didn’t stop to wonder whether he would be the one who got cold feet.

      And now he had them, and he didn’t know what to do with them.

      He got off the bus in front of the hospital and grabbed a second cup of coffee from the cafeteria before heading to his locker, where his heart kicked at the sight of the photo he kept taped to the inside. It was taken before they had gone from friends to lovers: he and Evie when they had both been struck down with a cold in the same week. They looked terrible with red and raw noses and unwashed hair, but it had been a good day of being lazy on the sofa watching DVDs. She’d tried to hide her face when he took out his phone but he’d tucked his fingers into her armpits and tickled her, and the shot he got was a little blurry but made him deliriously happy whenever he saw her smile. He’d almost gone crazy with wanting to kiss her, even with the runny nose and puffy eyes.

      REDWOLF77 was right. He was protective of her. He loved her. God, he loved her. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but that didn’t stop him from loving her. If she gave him any indication whatsoever that she wanted to end this he’d do it, but his Evie was fearless.

      Which was why he needed to be sure he found the right man. Not for him, but for her. For them.

      Someone he could trust not to hurt her.

      Someone he could trust not to take her away from him.

      Coming out of her apartment, fingers flying over the screen to return Ryan’s text, Evie didn’t see the wall of plaid and hair standing on the other side of the door until she walked into it.

      ‘Jesus!’ Seth stepped back as she jumped, and returned her smile with a scolding look. ‘Maybe they should start giving out tickets for walking with those things.’

      ‘Or you could stop being a dinosaur, trade in that flip-phone and start communicating like someone your own age,’ she countered, hand still against her throat as her heart crawled back down where it belonged. She leaned in the doorway and looked down at the toolbox in his hand. ‘Is there a problem?’

      ‘You didn’t get my notice?’ She shook her head. ‘Why do I bother? I got my grant. I need to measure the windows on the inside, and while I’m in there I thought I’d run the tape through the whole place and check out that slow drain of yours.’

      ‘Planning to evict me?’

      ‘Never, though I expect I’ll be getting your notice to quit in the fall when you finally move upstairs.’

      ‘Shush,’ she said, though he was probably right. She’d spent more time in Ryan’s apartment since moving in than she had in her own, and Ryan had already teased that he should start making space for her in his closet.

      ‘The bathroom is kind of grungy, but that’s nothing new. Go ahead.’

      She stepped aside, and Seth looked down her body. ‘No work today?’

      ‘I always have the day off after I do evenings.’

      His first look had been nothing more but a quick intake of the green leggings and white sneakers she wore, but the second was slower, more discreet. It was the same look she got on the elevator with him when she first came to look at the apartment, and, just like she had to keep back her giggle then, she had to do it now as she watched him tuck his interest away.

      When she first moved into the building, she became a little giddy whenever she ran into Seth. ‘Sex on legs’ was how she described him to her sister once. Not at all her type, not like Ryan, but he certainly fitted nicely into those fantasies that had yet to be indulged by a young woman out on her own for the first time. In her imagination, Seth had her on her knees in the elevator or bound to the cage down in the storage basement, or even bent over the banister outside her apartment with his hand in her hair.

      She would have settled for a hard screw in her virgin bed and was on the verge of asking him for a drink when Ryan became a fixture, and her fantasies about Seth were overtaken by the flutter she got just thinking about her adorable neighbour. Then, once Ryan told her about Seth’s wife, she couldn’t meet Seth without feeling a little sad.

      It was a little funny watching him walk into her apartment now, the picture of manliness with broad shoulders covered in plaid and the ink on display from the elbow down where his sleeves were rolled up, but wearing moccasin slippers, his usual uniform.

      A horrifying thought struck her as he headed for the bathroom, and she followed behind him.

      ‘Oh, I think I forgot my phone. I’ll just be a second and I’ll be out of your hair.’

      As he turned on the bathroom light and set his toolbox aside, Evie veered off into the bedroom. The bed was made – she hadn’t slept in it for days – but a tangle of sheets was the least of her concerns.

      Evie peeked back to make sure Seth was still turned away from her, then quickly untied the nylon restraints from the head and footboard and dropped them into the hamper. She did another quick check around the room but there was nothing else, no handcuffs carelessly tossed on to the vanity table and no vibrators or plugs mingled with the bottles of nail polish and pots of creams.

      ‘So, do you need to use the toilet before you go?’ Seth asked, appearing in her bedroom door as she finished her perusal.

      ‘No, I’m good.’ She smiled up at him as she replaced her purse across her chest. She hated to admit it, but just watching him lean on the threshold had the potential to get her really horny really fast.

      ‘I think you probably should,’ he said, holding her gaze with a crooked smile, and mortification gushed through her.

      She clapped her hands over her eyes and groaned. ‘Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.’

      ‘I’ve seen worse,’ he said with a quiet chuckle as she rushed past him to the bathroom.

      Laid on the lip of the tub where they had been left to dry was a row of vibrators in various colours.

      ‘Define worse,’ she groaned, then held up her hand. ‘No, please don’t. I don’t want to hear about the fucking machine the middle-aged couple downstairs has in their spare bedroom.’

      ‘You need to run up to Ryan’s and do a sweep?’

      She swivelled around and frowned. ‘You’re having too much fun with this, aren’t you?’

      ‘I don’t have a neatly arranged line of vibrators air-drying in my bathroom, so I’m actually feeling a little bad about myself at the moment.’ He slipped a hand into his breast pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘I’ll give you a minute to put those away and dismantle the sex swing in the closet.’

      ‘You’re not funny,’ she called after him, and quickly gathered up her freshly washed toys. She was pretty sure she didn’t need to check Ryan’s place, as they hadn’t used any toys the night before, but after she called out her goodbye to Seth she went up to check anyway.

      She’d already missed her bus to the mall, and so she sank down on the end of Ryan’s bed and pulled up her text app.

       Seth saw my toys in the bathroom and now I think I’m going to die.

      Not the anal beads! came the reply almost immediately. He must have been at the nurse’s station or on break.

       You’re not mature enough to be my boyfriend.

       I’m not the one with a vibrator shaped like a dolphin.

      Evie flopped back on the bed and dragged the pillows over her face. She supposed her smell was in there somewhere, but all that filled her head was Ryan.

       What would have happened if you had given up on Ryan and asked Seth to come in one night?

      She tried to push the question away, but it refused to be banished. She rolled