Sunlight cut through the hotel blinds, striping the wreckage of the bed. Robin’s head pounded with the rhythm of last night’s tequila and today’s regret. A warm, naked body was curled against his side—soft skin, the scent of coconut sunscreen and sex. He stared at the ceiling, the memory of Paula’s final, cold voice louder than the ocean outside. His hand, resting on the girl’s hip, felt like a betrayal all its own.

He didn’t move it. The weight of his palm on the curve of her waist was an anchor. If he lifted it, the room would spin. If he lifted it, he’d have to look at her. Remember her. The tequila had sandblasted the details, leaving only impressions: loud music, a flash of a sequined top, the give of her ass under his hands as he’d pulled her against him in the dark. He’d kissed her like he was trying to swallow the noise in his own head. She’d tasted like cherry lip gloss and vodka soda.

Now, the silence was a physical pressure. The AC hummed. A seagull cried outside. Her breath was a soft, even tide against his ribs. He closed his eyes. Paula’s lawyer’s voice replaced the seagull. *The restraining order is granted, Mr. Thicke. Any attempt to contact her will result in…* He’d signed the papers with a gold-plated pen that felt like a toy in his hand.

The girl—woman, Christ, she was a person—stirred. A small sigh. The arm she had thrown across his chest tightened, her fingers curling lightly into the hair there. Her knee nudged higher against his thigh. The comforter slipped, revealing the smooth, tanned line of her shoulder. The strap of a tattoo—a delicate, winding vine—peeked out. He didn’t know that tattoo. He knew every freckle, every scar on Paula’s body.

Regret, hot and sour, climbed his throat. This was the thing. This was the exact thing that had ended it. Not the first time, or the second, but the last time. Paula’s face in the greenroom doorway, not angry, just empty. Finished. He’d been between sets, his hand on the lower back of a girl in a sparkly bra who’d brought him a shot. He hadn’t even gotten her name.

“Mmm.”

The sound was sleep-rough and close. Her voice. He held himself perfectly still, a statue of guilt in a thousand-thread-count sheet. Play dead, maybe she’d go back to sleep. Maybe he could vanish.

She nuzzled her face against his bicep. Her lips were soft. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

He hadn’t realized. It was hammering against his ribs, a trapped bird. He cleared his throat, the sound like gravel. “Yeah.”

She shifted, lifting her head. The morning light caught her then, and the last fuzzy frame of memory snapped into brutal, high-definition focus. Big, dark eyes, still smudged with last night’s mascara. Full lips, slightly swollen. Hair the color of wheat fields, tangled and wild around a face so young it made his stomach clench. Nineteen. The profile had said nineteen. A model. April.

She smiled. It was a slow, sleepy, intimate thing that didn’t belong between strangers. It held a secret. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he echoed, his voice flat.

Her smile didn’t falter. She propped herself up on an elbow, letting the sheet fall to her waist. The sunlight painted her bare breasts, the peaks tight and pink in the cool air. She wasn’t shy. She watched him watch her, that wondering look in her eyes deepening. “Last night was…” She searched for the word, her gaze drifting over his face. “Wild.”

He remembered the weight of her in his lap in the back of the town car. The frantic, clumsy struggle with her tiny dress. The way she’d gasped his name—not “Robin,” but “Robin Thicke”—like she’d won a prize. He’d been so deep inside his own need to feel nothing that he’d barely felt her.

“Yeah,” he said again. A useless word. He needed water. He needed aspirin. He needed to be alone.

She traced a finger down the center of his chest, over the tattoo there, a music staff that disappeared into his sweatpants. He’d slept in his pants. A small mercy. “You were… intense,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I liked it.”

Her touch was a brand. He caught her wrist, not roughly, but firmly. Stopping its progress. Her skin was so soft under his calloused fingers. She blinked, surprised.

“April, right?” he asked, though he knew.

She nodded, her eyes locked on his hand around her wrist. A faint blush colored her cheeks. “You remember.”

“I need you to listen to me.” His tone was the one he used with band managers and sound engineers. Direct. Final. It felt alien in this sunlit bed. “Last night… I was drunk. Out of my mind. You understand?”

The wonder in her eyes flickered, but didn’t die. She misunderstood. She thought this was a prelude to an apology, to sweetness. She shifted closer, her bare thigh pressing against his hip. The heat of her was shocking. “I’m not complaining,” she murmured. Her free hand came up to his jaw, her thumb stroking the stubble there. “We don’t have to talk.”

She leaned in. Her breath smelled of sleep and mint toothpaste from the hotel bathroom. She was going to kiss him. In the brutal clarity of the morning, with his divorce decree sitting in an email on his phone and this girl’s youthful hope shining in her eyes, she was going to kiss him. And a part of him, the hollowed-out, starving part, wanted to let her. Wanted to lose himself in her warmth and her simple, uncomplicated want.

He turned his face away. Her lips brushed his cheek.

She froze. The silence that followed was different. The air left the room. He felt her whole body go still against his side.

“Oh,” she said softly. The word was small. Deflating.

He released her wrist. “It’s not you.” The cliché tasted like ash. “I’m… in the middle of some things. This was a mistake.”

She pulled back, sitting up fully. The sheet pooled in her lap. She didn’t grab it for cover. She just looked at him, the morning light etching the confusion and the dawning hurt on her face. She was so naked. In every way. “A mistake,” she repeated, not a question.

Robin sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold. A champagne flute lay on its side by his foot, a dried pink smear on the rim. He put his head in his hands. The pounding was a drum solo now. “Yeah.”

He heard the rustle of sheets behind him. The soft pad of her feet on the marble. She stood there, for a moment, a silhouette against the bright window. Then she bent, picking up her discarded dress from the floor. The sequins scattered light like broken glass. She didn’t say another word. She just walked, naked and quiet, into the bathroom. The lock clicked.

He stared at the closed door. The shower didn’t turn on. There was only silence, thicker and heavier than before. He had gotten what he wanted. He was alone. The emptiness of it was vast, and it echoed with the sound of two different women walking away from him, for good.