Applause swelled and died off when someone opened the conference hall door and let it swing shut, leaving the crowd inside. Pryce had done the same thing twenty minutes ago. He’d gone into the bar and gotten a glass of bourbon, then opted to sit at the far end of the lobby close to the bar. Now the sudden noise pulled his attention from the twin, revolving doors where snow had begun to fall faster and thicker out beyond t...

Sunlight slanted through the high windows of the library. The building was old and grand, the ceilings arched with ornate plasterwork. Heavy wooden bookcases lined the walls and spilled further out into neatly organised mazes around the cavernous room. Tables occupied the central space, students sweating over textbooks as noise from the street outside drifted up through the open windows. He was following her through the b...

The rooms were tidy; spotless, even. She liked it that way and yet the longer she paced through them alone, the more anxious she became. The apartment didn’t look homely enough; it suddenly seemed too clean and clinical. She stood and briefly considered the living room before hurrying to move things; putting vases out of place, pulling novels from their assigned bookcase positions and stacking them erratically on the shel...

Violet could never sleep on planes. She watched anxiously as her fellow passengers filed onto the Austrian Airlines plane to Vienna, hoping that the seat beside her would remain vacant because maybe with the extra space, sleep would come easier. There was something very infuriating about seeing every other person fall into blissful slumber while she sat upright, wide-awake and exhausted. But it was December. The departure...

She hadn't realised it was getting dark and by the time she did, it was too late to do anything about it. The late light of the autumn sky had turned grey like it couldn't wait to fade out altogether. The bottle on the table was half full. There was maybe an inch of liquid gold remaining in her glass. His was empty. There were a thousand things she always planned to say to him but every protest she'd ever come up with had...

She'd opened the window but the room was still far too hot. Her hair felt damp and her vest clung to the curves of her breasts. One slender hand clutched the phone to her ear and the other worked desperately between her legs. His voice urged her on. "You're so bad," he groaned, the words heavy with desire. "God, if I was there..." He let the idea hang long enough to tip her over the edge; her fingers moving frantically as...

She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know how old he was or where he lived or if he was married or what he did for a living or whether it was his first Corona or his seventh. He was alone, at least as far as she could tell. Then again, maybe his girlfriend had gone to the ladies room or outside for a cigarette. She'd already decided he probably had a very beautiful girlfriend who smoked and yet looked effortlessly gorgeou...

It might have seemed audacious to ask the woman they’d screwed over to do their wedding flowers, but Calvin and Ivy were desperate. Three florists had already cancelled on them, and the summer wedding season meant everyone else was already overbooked. With a mere two months remaining until the big day, they had next to no time to find the kind of florist that could make their high-profile wedding into the exquisite occasi...

It was twenty seven minutes to two. Twenty seven minutes until I’d see him again. I’d deliberated over what to wear all week and even after getting dressed I’d changed three times. I’d done my makeup carefully; painstakingly trying to emanate online contouring tutorials. Letting out a breath, I frowned at my reflection. I was trying too hard. It bordered on ridiculous. I had far more important things to worry about. Like...

She was thinking of Marco again. Nike sighed. Leaning forward in her seat, she tried to engage in the buzzing restaurant table conversation but her mind kept wandering. She felt restless and exhausted all at once. She hadn’t slept properly for weeks; suffering from the kind of insomnia she’d usually get during the first few days of a vacation. But she wasn’t on vacation. Not anymore. Monaco had been almost a month ago but...

Maia was back. She came back every summer and Arch never knew how to deal with it. It seemed fitting for her to reappear with blue skies and sunshine and yet her arrival wound him into something that took weeks to undo. She never stayed long. Just a few days. If he hadn’t paid attention, he might have even missed her. Just the edge of a pretty skirt or the swing of her dark hair. The laugh. Some things never changed. Ever...

There were twelve inches between them, give or take. She was curled in the passenger seat of his Audi, facing his way and just looking at him. Tyler didn’t know how long he could take it. He looked at everything except her. The streetlights lit up the dust on the dashboard. He’d switched off the car but the digital clock still glowed in the dark. He watched it until he had to blink. He swallowed hard. He shifted in his se...

Sometimes I wonderIf traces of usWill still linger inThe places we loveIf people will ever hearEchoing midnight laughterDancing through the tired roomsOf uninspired hotelsWhere our worlds fade outClothes following doubtOnto the laminate floorUnrelenting fingers diggingInto the tanned sand of my skinSearching for a way inAnd I’ve missed the blissOf your persistent kissAs you go southYour mouthHungry and insistentWords inte...

Lia wasn’t old enough to remember the wall being built and until recently, she’d never even been near it. Standing twenty feet tall and stretching hundreds of miles along the border, it separated the two countries perfectly. Khaki-uniformed soldiers patrolled at thirty feet intervals, sweating under the weight of heavy guns. It must have been a lonely job, Lia thought, standing alone in the hot sun all day. Soldiers. So m...

For a while after she woke, Macy didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she thought very hard about her bedroom, recreating it in her mind. Magnolia walls and venetian blinds. The cluttered dressing table and the chair with her clothes on it. Her clothes. The first giveaway was the feel of the sheet against her skin. Naked. But that didn’t mean anything. She frowned, eyes still closed as she tried to focus. Her room. The mirror l...