Taking the Heat. Victoria Dahl

stomach, which had felt merely hollow before, now churned with acid and sickness. It rose up and pushed at her throat. Veronica shook her head. She pressed her whole hand to her mouth, but there was no defeating it. She gave in and rushed to the bathroom.

      She didn’t feel any better after she was sick. She only felt more pitiful, more wrung out. She’d told Gabe MacKenzie, the new hot guy in town, that she had no experience with fucking. And then she’d practically begged him to apply his penis to her charitable enterprise.

      He’d somehow managed to resist her siren song, even after she’d started crying.

      Oh, my God, she’d started crying while she asked him to come to bed with her.

      He hadn’t come to bed. Thank God. What if he’d stayed? What if he’d spent the night and then woken up to find her goggling at him with her zombie raccoon eyes just before she vomited all over his naked body?

      “Oh, God.” Yes, that was one way to look at the bright side of things. She hadn’t talked him into taking her virginity and then thrown up on his penis.

      Veronica rinsed out her mouth, splashed cold water on her face and then tipped her head up to stare herself down in the mirror. Water dripped slowly from the pink tip of her nose. “I’ll have to move,” she said, watching the way her chin trembled. “I’ll have to start over in a new place where no one knows my shame.”

      It was really the only solution. It was exactly what she’d tell anyone who wrote in to her. Leave immediately. Take only what you can carry. Slip out of town under cover of night. Start somewhere new and this time try not to be a pitiful disaster.

      Except that wasn’t what she would say. She was overreacting. A little.

      So what would she tell herself?

      She felt dizzy at the thought. Or maybe she was dizzy from having consumed nothing but martinis and milk in the past twelve hours.

      Feet dragging, she headed back to the kitchen to make her sad omelet. She might be having the same thing for lunch and dinner. She obviously couldn’t leave the house today.

      She accidentally caught sight of the fridge as she poured the egg mixture into a pan. The black letters of the note glared at her. Let people see the real you? What a shitty idea that had been. She snatched the paper off the fridge and threw it into the trash. At least she could say she’d really tried it. The real her had been on full display last night. She’d given it her all. She’d practically shown him her real crotch.

      She seasoned the omelet, flipped it over and added cheese. Then extra cheese.

      Overreaction or not, she couldn’t leave town. She had nowhere to go. Jackson was the place she’d already retreated to. Her safe zone. Not that it had ever felt safe.

      She could flee to her dad’s latest house. Abandon her pretense of independence and go live in one of his professionally decorated guest rooms. That wouldn’t feel exactly safe, either, but she’d still have a lot of privacy. His “cabin” was in the mountains and the closest neighbors were almost a mile away. Granted, that closest neighbor was Isabelle, one of Veronica’s best friends, but she was too much of a hermit to cause problems. And Veronica’s dad wouldn’t bother her. She’d hardly seen him at all the last time she’d stayed there.

      Still...maybe she wasn’t as destroyed as she thought she was, because the thought of moving to her dad’s house lit a fire inside her, a burning fire that felt a lot like heartburn. She wasn’t ready to give up yet. Not completely.

      She ate her sad omelet and took a shower and put on a slightly less baggy T-shirt that made her small breasts look slightly more visible. She used some Visine and brushed her teeth and styled her hair. That was good, safe advice she could give herself. You’ll feel better if you make an effort, even if it’s just brushing your teeth.

      She peeked out her front window, then backed quickly away when she saw people walking past.

      Gabe knew where she lived. What if he stopped by? She’d made him promise, after all. But surely he never wanted to be in her presence again. Surely he’d play it safe and assume that a promise made to an insane drunk girl wasn’t meant to be kept.

      So she was stuck here. Her apartment was the safest place for her. She could do her work and sneak out only during Gabe’s work hours. Maybe she could somehow get his schedule from Lauren. Yes. Avoidance. That was the best tactic.

      Unless he decided to share his story. It was pretty funny, after all. Really funny. Veronica was the only one who wouldn’t be laughing. And maybe Veronica’s boss. He wouldn’t find it funny at all.

      “Shit,” she breathed. Gabe didn’t seem the type to gossip. He seemed entirely trustworthy. But she’d met him only twice. Maybe he was a catty, cruel asshole. Maybe he was the kind of guy who would’ve hung out with Veronica’s stepbrother in high school and laughed every time she walked by. Maybe he’d already texted his ten closest friends and then spread the tale around the library.

      Veronica checked her phone to see if Lauren had texted or called. But no, there were no messages from Lauren. Or Veronica’s boss. And there weren’t any accusatory emails from readers, either.

      But there were quite a few emails asking for help from Dear Veronica. She should really get to work.

      Even so, she switched back to her texts and stared at Lauren’s name. Maybe Lauren would have good advice to give. And Isabelle, too. Maybe Veronica could tell her friends at least some of the truth and see what they thought.

      But what if they just stared at her in horror and then made excuses never to see her again? They were both a little older and a lot more together. Lauren had already raised a kid and sent him off to college, and her new boyfriend was a silver-fox fire captain. And Isabelle was a successful artist who owned her own land and was dating a studly US marshal. Veronica really had nothing in common with either of them, but they’d still included her, inviting her along for girls’ nights out and treating her as an equal. She didn’t want them to know that she wasn’t an equal. Didn’t want to admit she was a fraud.

      But the next girls’ night was on Sunday. And she was getting a little tired of always being on guard. What if she treated them like real friends instead of just women who intimidated her?

      She had a few days to work up to it. She could always change her mind.

      Taking a deep breath, she took her notebook and marker from the drawer.

      #2, she wrote, Ask your friends for help. She stuck it to the fridge and stared at it for a whole minute. It looked wrong up there by itself, so she set her jaw and pulled the first note from the trash to put it back in its place.

      Her stomach tensed at the sight of both notes together, but she nodded. Two tiny things. Two basic pieces of advice that she’d give anyone. Surely she could pull this off. She needed help from her friends, and the only way to get it was to reveal a few tiny bits of herself. No big deal. No problem.

      She turned off the kitchen light and took her computer to her room. She had a few days. She’d start dealing with her issues on Sunday. But today? Today she’d hide.

      She put in her earbuds, cranked up the music and started reading letters. And the letters started to help her feel halfway normal.

       CHAPTER SIX

      GABE EYED LAUREN as they shut down the library together. He’d been eyeing her all day, hoping that interacting with her would somehow help him understand Veronica better. Did Lauren know the truth? Did it even matter? It wasn’t as if Gabe could ask her about it.

      The girl he’d been flirting with last night was a virgin. The thought still stunned him, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was only that he’d assumed since college that any woman he might date was probably as experienced as he was, give or take a couple of partners.

      But