Page 330 of Mad Girl

You shimmied down the bed and pressed your face to my throat. Against my pulse, you whispered, “I failed you.”

“No,” I said against your temple, threading my fingers through your hair. “You’ve never failed me.”

The following week, when you went back to school, I approached my dad in his office. “We can have a party—if that’s what you still want,” I told him from the doorway. “I don’t care when.”

Nic barely glanced up from his laptop. “I don’t know, Elliot,” he said, jaw twitching as he typed away at the keyboard. “We’ll see.”

I don’t know what I’d anticipated—a flash of approval? A quiet thank you? A sigh of relief, maybe? Anything besides indifference.

Then again, maybe Nic was tired of getting his hopes up only for me to shoot them down.

I hovered in the doorway, fingering the old brass doorknob on his office door.

Nic slammed his laptop shut. “Listen,” he said, rising from the desk, then shoving both hands in his pockets. “I appreciate you doing that for Casey the other day—trying to help him tell John the truth.”

A prickle of unease worked its way down my spine. I looked past him, letting my gaze drift over the bookshelves behind his desk. The pictures of me from newborn to five to thirteen. One from my nineteenth birthday at the beach.

Had I really done it for you? Or had I done it out of guilt?

“You’re good for him,” Nic said softly.

I let out a laugh of disbelief. “You can’t actually believe that.”

“I’ve always believed that.”

“But you wanted me to get back with Willoughby.”

“Well, yeah. But mainly because I don’t want the drama between Michael and Casey getting in the way of your future.”

“What future?”

“Your future with Casey, Elliot—your future at the firm. You two could make a great team.”

“Meaning…what? You want us to run the firm together?”

“Yes,” Nic said, as if it were always meant to be this way: shared. Halved with someone more responsible. Never fully mine.

“You don’t think I can handle the firm without him?”

“I know you can handle the firm without him. But I want Casey to have a place there, too, and—together?—you’d kill it. You’re exactly right for each other.”

Was he joking? Had I slipped into some alternate dimension? In this one, was I good?

A quick glance at the photos behind him again—me at eight, the Christmas after the stabbing, clinging to Nic’s side, still needing his reassurance, worried he didn’t love me the same anymore—confirmed nothing had changed. How could he call me broken months ago and good for you now?

How could both things be true at the same time?

Rather than try to make sense of it, I said, “Whatever you think, Dad.” Then quietly slipped from his office and went back up to my room.

In bed that night, you pulled my braid loose the second I rested my head on the pillow beside yours. In no time, you had your fingers twisted in my hair and your mouth on my shoulder, open kisses that were barely restrained, heat coming off your body and seeping deliciously into mine. My breath hitched when you found the crook of my neck, your teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. As your hand drifted down my body and flattened against my stomach, I knew its final destination would leave me gasping for air.

But the conversation with my dad niggled at me. I needed to get it off my chest.

“Wait,” I said, catching your wrist as your fingers slipped down the front of my panties.

You stopped and drew back—not in frustration, but concern. Attentive, as always.

“I need to ask you something.”