Us. In a way, the word is almost freeing. The crack of the protective wall. Our rules gone, the battlefield wide open. “Us?” I tilt my head at her. “What us?” I step forward, ignoring her start, the way she peels away from me. “There is no us.”

“You know what I mean,” she whispers. “Our friendship.”

“No, I don’t think that’s what you meant.” I watch her mouth, the nervous way she licks her lips, her eyes darting from my mouth to my eyes. She’s done it a hundred times before, the tensing for my kiss, the kiss that I have never delivered, but this time it is all wrong. It isn’t breathless or hopeful. It is panicked and frustrated. It is … I straighten, stepping back, away from her. It is filled with disgust.

Incredible how quickly a world can change. How my entire person, our friendship, can be reduced to nothing, with just one confession. I’ve worried for years about her judging me for this. And now that it’s happening, I’m as disappointed in her as I am mad at myself.

Is this who I fell in love with? A woman who would toss me aside so easily? Is she that judgmental, that close-minded? She isn’t even asking the right questions. She isn’t even giving me, giving us, a chance.

I turn away, my words tight and controlled when I allow them out.

“I love you, Kate. I am in love with you. I’m sorry that you don’t like this. Or that you don’t understand it. But it doesn’t change who I am.”

Her words stop me, their edges as sharp as broken glass. “Don’t do that. Don’t use those words right now, as you are walking away, you fucking coward.”

I turn and regard her. My beautiful woman, the smartest woman I’ve ever known, the only person on Earth with the capacity to hurt me like this. “You’re right, I should have told you a long time ago. But that wouldn’t have changed this.”

She swallows, her eyes wet, and says nothing. And this time, when I turn and walk away, she doesn’t say anything to stop me.

I step into my bedroom and shut the door with a trembling hand. When she leaves, slamming the front door behind her, I can almost feel the vibration in my soul.

Chapter 18

Her

We’ve fought before. We’ve screamed, we’ve sworn, we’ve said things that neither of us meant. But it’s never been like this. It’s never been this somber, this quiet. When he looks at me, all I see is sadness and disappointment in his eyes. When I look at him, all I can hear are his words.

Sometimes they just like to watch.

It doesn’t change who I am.

He walks by, and I wait for him to turn his head, to glance in my office, but he doesn’t.

“Harrods placed a new order.”

“I saw it in your email this morning. It looks good.”

“Trey, it’s better than good. It’s twice what they sold last month.”

“I can do the math. I’m happy about it. Do you want a fucking gold star?”

“Don’t be an asshole about it. I just thought it was worth mentioning.”

“Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

Yeah. This. Us. Why we’re suddenly strangers. I swallow. “No. That’s it.”

He stands, leaving his chair out, and pushes through the conference room door.

I don’t understand why he is mad at me. I’m the one who is supposed to be mad, I’m the one who has been lied to for almost three years. I’m the one who fell in love with an unattainable man. I’m the one whose heart is breaking.

Part of me believes that. Part of me feels that I’m being a bitch right now.

Me: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for judging you.

Trey: I’m not accepting your apology via text. That’s beneath us.

Me: Well I’m not accepting your lack of apology at all.

Trey: That doesn’t even make sense.

Me: You know what I mean.

Trey: Come over.

Come over. It’s been eight days since I walked out of his house. I stare at the phone for a long moment, then stand up and grab my purse.

Fifteen minutes later, when he opens his front door, I launch myself into his arms.

His chest is stiff, his body wooden, and I wrap my arms him, hugging my face to his chest, willing his stance to soften, his arms to move. When they do, when one hand settles gently on my hair, his other on my back, I almost cry in relief. He exhales, his breath warm against my neck, and he squeezes me tightly. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Me too.” He pulls me inside and shuts the door.

It’s barely cold enough outside, but he still builds a fire, and I make hot chocolate. We both finish and sit on the couch, our shoulders touching as we watch the fire. Trey peers into his coffee cup. “No marshmallows?”

“You were out.” I rest my head on his shoulder. “I don’t ever want to fight like that again.”

“Deal.” He holds out his mug and I clink my own against it. There is a moment of silence, his body shifting on the couch, before he speaks. “Talk to me.”

“What do you want? Another apology?”

“I’m assuming you have questions.”

“Some.” Some is a bit of an understatement. I have piles, a list that is growing the more that I think about it, the more that I try to match the man I know with the fetish I don’t.

“So ask.” He sets his mug on the side table and reaches down, pulling my legs onto his lap, his fingers working at the laces of my boots. There is an unnatural tightness to his body, and as nervous as I am about discussing this, he seems worse.

“We don’t have to talk about it. I know it’s personal.” I flex my toes as he pulls off the first boot, his chest brushing against my socked foot as he leans down and sets it on the floor.

He sits back up and moves to the next boot. “I want you to feel comfortable with it. I want us to be less…” He grimaces. “Less awkward about it.”

“Okay.” I watch as he frees my second foot. “Tell me about your first time. Like … did you always like that kind of thing?”

“My first time was when I was twenty-six. A bunch of us from work were out drinking. We drank too much, and my coworker offered for some of us to crash at her place.” He glances at me. “It was Mira. And me.” He pauses. “And this guy from the New York office.”

“Mira?” I sit up straighter, and some of my hot chocolate almost sloshes over the rim.

He chuckles. “Yes. Mira. She all but stripped us both naked and dragged us into her bedroom. And when I saw him there, when I saw him touch her…” He pauses, looks at me. “There was just this moment of possessiveness. Like he was touching someone of mine. It was like I was suddenly in high school again, with my hormones raging and my need—like a ravenous need to compete, to win.” He runs a hand slowly up my jeans, to my knee, and then back down again. “The guy didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. But Mira did. I remember her smiling at me as I fucked her. As he sat there with his dick in his hand. And at the end, she told me that she and I were going to have so much fun.”

A piece of the puzzle fits together. “Wait. That night, in Vegas…”

“I met her and Edward,” he confirmed.

“So Edward knew? She wasn’t cheating on him?”

He nods, and I try to picture dignified Edward in a threesome with Mira and Trey. I shake my head. “You’re full of shit.”

His hand stills along the top of my wool socks. “Excuse me?”

“There’s no way Edward would do anything like that.”

His eyes darken. “Because it’s disgusting.”

Yeah. Disgusting is a great word for it. But probably not the best time to say that. “It’s not disgusting,” I hedge. “It’s just … kinky. And Edward wasn’t like that.” He wasn’t. He was refined, and polite, and certainly wouldn’t have had Trey fuck his wife, much less join in on it.

“I assure you, Edward is very much like that.”

“But doesn’t he get jealous?”

“He’s a realist. He can’t fuck Mira and go down on her at the same time. And he can’t create the energy of two people, the attention of two people at once. With both of us, she has four hands, two mouths, two cocks.” He slides his hands down, under my socks, and pulls them off. “I’m not an emotional player in their life. I come in, we have fun, and I leave. It’s not messy. I get to please a woman, I release some sexual tension, and then I go back to life.”