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What the fuck had gotten into him? What was it with Drew and Black girls, anyway?

Phallon didn’t care whose daughter Nicole was. She didn’t know a thing about basketball, but even she knew who Melvin Wright was. Everybody with a pulse did. So what? Her daddy could have all the money in the world. Money didn’t change what she was. You could put that girl in the most expensive clothes in New York City, and she’d still be . . .

Phallon’s lip curled.

She’d still be Black.

And Drew had lost his damn mind over her.

She tore the paper in half. Then in half again, and again, the photo coming apart in her hands, Nicole’s face splitting down the middle, Drew’s hand splitting off from her cheek. She kept tearing until the pieces were too small to tear anymore, until there was nothing left but newsprint confetti and gray smudges on her fingertips, and then she dumped all of it in the wastebasket under the desk.

She sat down on the edge of the bed. Her heart was going hard, and her hands were shaking.

She breathed in. Breathed out.

There. Gone.

When her hands quit shaking, she got up and went to the closet. He’d hung up four dress shirts. She flipped past the blue and the gray and took down a white one, crisp, still smelling like starch and a little like him. He must’ve worn it to one of those dinners.

Then she stepped out of her heels and undressed. Coat, sweater, skirt, stockings, bra, panties. She folded them over the back of the chair one by one, the way her mother had taught her, and stood in the middle of his room naked. She put on his shirt and didn’t button it. The cuffs fell past her fingers, and the tails hit the middle of her thighs. She rolled the sleeves to her elbows and went into the bathroom.

Her hair had gone flat on the plane. She dug a comb out of her purse, bent over, teased it at the roots, flipped it back, and sprayed it with the travel can of Aqua Net until it held. She leaned into the mirror and did her lips in the deep red she’d bought special for tonight, then blotted them and did them again. She spritzed Rapture on her wrists, on her throat, between her breasts, and on the inside of each thigh.

She let the shirt hang open and looked at herself.

That was what he’d been missing. That right there.

She went back out and sprayed Rapture on his pillow too, so that even if he passed out the second his head hit it, he’d wake up smelling her. Then she reached behind the nightstand, found where the phone cord went into the wall, and pulled it out. Nobody was calling this room tonight. Not his mother. Not her.

She switched off the lamp. The light from the cracked bathroom door was better anyway. It caught her hair and left the rest of the room soft. She pulled back the comforter and lay down on his side of the bed. First she tried it on her back, then on her side, propped on one elbow, then on her back again, one knee up, the shirt pulled open so it framed her. She ran her hand slowly down her stomach and thought about his hands there instead.

She knew what he liked. She knew exactly how he grabbed a fistful of hair when he was close. She knew how rough he got when he was in a mood, and tonight he was in the worst mood of his life. Good. Let him take it out on her. She’d let him do anything he wanted. Anything. She’d never told him no, not once, and she wasn’t about to start now. Whatever he wanted, however he wanted it, for as long as he wanted it. He could use her up until he forgot his own name, never mind Nicole’s.

Drunk men didn’t argue, and they didn’t think. They felt, and Drew was going to feel her, and in the morning, when he woke up next to her with her lipstick all over him, he’d remember how good it used to be. He’d remember who he was.

And if he didn’t . . .

No. He would.

She hadn’t come all this way to go home empty-handed.

Down the hall, the elevator dinged.

Phallon held still and listened. Footsteps came toward the room, heavy and uneven, and then paused. Something thumped against the wall, and somebody swore under his breath.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

She heard the card go into the lock. The handle rattled and didn’t give, and he cursed again. The card slid out and went in again. The handle rattled a second time.

Phallon smiled and wet her lips.

The third time, the lock clicked. The door swung open, and a wedge of hallway light cut across the carpet. Drew stumbled in with one hand on the frame, squinting into the dark.

Phallon arched her back and let the shirt fall open.

“Hey, baby,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Chapter Forty-Six