by Carina Adams
I played dumb. “What?”
“Livie mentioned it earlier,” he reminded me. “The two of you dated?”
I didn’t want to think about Livie or anything she’d said and I certainly didn’t want to talk about her. Or Chance. “Nope. We’re not talking about it.”
I thought he was going to argue, but his phone rang again. I didn’t look to see who it was as he silenced it and shoved it into his pocket. Our food was delivered and we had a few moments of peace. I stabbed at my salad and chased a tomato around my plate. My stomach was far too upset to eat much.
“The meatloaf is actually really good,” he admitted with a laugh. “You want a bite?”
I shook my head but my eyes never left my salad.
“Okay, what’s wrong?” He set his fork down and squinted at me when I hesitated. “I let the Lucky question slide, but this one I’m asking outright. Brutal honesty, remember?”
I almost lied. My automatic answer of ‘nothing’ on my lips. “Are you still sleeping with Liv?”
He ran his tongue over his teeth as he tried to hide his surprise. “No.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? That’s all you wanted to ask?” His voice held a hint of warning and his eyes narrowed. “No, I don’t think it is. If you want to know something, you have to ask the question.”
I swallowed. That was the issue. I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answer or if I was ready to hear it.
“When?” I didn’t need too explain. He understood.
“A few months ago. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“You mean when you were engaged to someone else? When Livie was in a relationship with my best friend?”
His jaw ticked. “That’s hard to answer.”
“No, it isn’t,” I scoffed. “Those are the facts.”
“Because everything is always black and white, right? Come on. You know things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Don’t twist this. Did you have sex with Livie?”
He had the decency to look ashamed. “Yes.”
“While you were engaged to Brooke?”
“We were having problems.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He inhaled slowly and let it out even slower. “Yeah, we were engaged.”
“Then it’s pretty black and white, isn’t it?”
His eyebrows lifted for a moment then he nodded slightly. “Guess it is.”
His answer made me uneasy. He’d agreed too quickly. He was attempting to pacify me, to distract me from something else.
“Does Frankie know?”
“That’s none of my business.”
“The impact your actions had, and still have, are your business. Now they’ve become mine, too, because hiding things from my best friend is tearing me apart.”
“Then don’t. It’s not your secret to keep.”
“It isn’t that simple. I don’t want to hurt her. If I tell her, and she doesn’t know, then it will destroy her. If she does know, then she didn’t tell me for a reason. I don’t know what to do. The rules for this are unclear.”
He reached out and laid his palm over my hand. “You should talk to Liv.”
“I don’t want to talk to Olivia,” I grumbled like an angry toddler who didn’t want to take a bath. “You really don’t know?”
He thought about it for a minute. “I never asked. I know Liv, though, and I can’t imagine her not telling Frankie. She’s head over heels in love with that woman.
“Yeah, well, if you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would’ve said that she’d never cheat. Seems like she has us all fooled.”
His entire demeanor transformed, the softness disappeared, and took my friend with it. In it’s place was the rough and miserable ass I’d first met. “Liv didn’t cheat.”
I felt my face scrunch up in disbelief.
“No,” he objected before I could say anything. “Think what you want about me. I fucked up. I knew we’d had too much to drink. I had a fiancé at home who hated both my job and Olivia. I was pissed and didn’t know if I wanted to marry her anymore. Liv, though, was single.”
“No she wasn’t,” I argued automatically. “I live with Frankie. I see her everyday. Half the time I see Livie every day, too. I would have known if they’d broken up.” The way his lips tightened spoke volumes. “You’re telling me they broke up and I didn’t know? Is that Olivia’s excuse? Well, that’s convenient.”
“You can answer that yourself. Think. There wasn’t one time in the last six months when something felt wrong?”
I didn’t like the picture he had attempted to paint, how he was trying to make me doubt my memories. I skimmed over the past few months. It had been a rough spring. I’d been fired and had to testify against my old boss, finals had kicked my ass, the loss of job after job… I’d been in a bad space.
A memory crashed forward. I’d been on the couch wallowing and Frankie had brought home pizza, wings, Ben & Jerry’s and wine. We’d rented movies and binged. We’d spent the entire night and all the next day on our couch.
I’d thought she was being supportive. I’d been devastated and ashamed and lost in my own head. Yet, she’d put her head on my shoulder and cried with me. I’d asked her if she was okay and she’d assured me she was just sad for me. I hadn’t looked deeper.
Then there were the conversations I’d had with Livie. She’d told me she left Soiree because she’d gotten caught up in the fantasy, that something had happened she couldn’t take back, and quitting had been her only option. She hated Brooke with a ferocity that I’d never seen from her before. And she’d always been clear about how much she loved Frankie.
How many times had they told me without saying the actual words? “They broke up.”
It happened in a blink. The ass was gone and my friend was back. “For almost a month.”
Guilt and shame washed over me. Frankie had lost the one person she loved more than anything and I hadn’t been there to support her. Just like I hadn’t offered her help that morning when she’d been so upset about her job. “I’m a shit friend.”
“Go talk to Frankie.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s still early.” He slid out of his chair. “I’ll pay and drive you home.”
I watched him go, completely confused. He was a mystery I couldn’t begin to understand. There wasn’t another soul on earth who could make me so angry one minute and then grateful for his friendship the next.
He smiled at me over his shoulder as the waitress spoke to him. When he looked at me that way it gave me more than butterflies. It made me tingle all over. I grinned back automatically before I could stop myself.
There were moments where I hated every single thing about him. Then, there were others where I couldn’t find a thing wrong with him and trusted him more than anyone. I liked having him around. I adored our friendship most days. All those emotions swirled together and confused me so much I didn’t know how I felt about him. That scared me.
As I stood up, my phone rang. Reid’s name made me hesitate. I adored him, too. He made me laugh and didn’t frustrate me. Time spent with him was easy and fun. I didn’t have to worry about him misleading me because he said what he thought and didn’t hide. I knew I wanted him. It didn’t scare me.
Rome called my name and beckoned me toward the door. Without thinking I silenced my phone and slid it into the back pocket of my jeans. I’d call Reid back later.
Thirty-Two
Reid
I drummed my thumb against the steering wheel while Violet danced in her seat next to me and we both sang along to “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons. I’d slept like shit, and I was anxious as hell to get home, but I let the music relax me. For a few minutes, it felt like old times.
As soon as the song finished, Vi turned the radio down. “I miss this. Just the two of us driving home from a show, singing, talking about everything or nothing at all.”
“It hasn’t been that long, you goof.” I lifted my coffee to my lips and
glanced at my phone in the holder on my dash. Cady hadn’t called me back yet and I’d started to worry.
“Like two months, since right after Ruffles started. That’s forever in stripper years.”
“Stripper years?” I choked as I laughed. “What in the hell are stripper years?”
“Like dog years, only for those of us who take our clothes off for money.”
“So, you age seven years for every one calendar year?”
“No,” she snorted. “The career span of an employee in a normal industry is forty-five years, give or take. In this one, we’re lucky to get ten. We max out at fifteen. Average the two together and you get four years per every human year. So, basically, it’s like eight months since we’ve done this.”
I tried to follow along, but she lost me. “I don’t think your math is right.”
“Shut up!” She shoved my shoulder. “You know what I mean.”
“I understand where you’re trying to go,” I assured her. “You’re way off course, though. You’re not planning a career that requires math, right?”
“Ass.”
“And,” I talked over her, “we were just alone a few weeks ago. Remember the train ride from hell? The one where you hurled all over my favorite shoes.”
She groaned. “I thought we’d agreed to never speak of that again.”
“No. I promised to stop harassing you about it once you promised to replace the shoes. I still don’t have them.”
“That’s not my fault,” she argued playfully. “I had a hangover from hell. I forgot.” She plucked her own coffee out of the cup-holder and pulled her legs up onto the seat.
“It was a pretty shitty weekend. I wish I could forget it,” I joked.
“You only think that ‘cause you didn’t get laid. But, it was a horrific weekend.” She sighed. “That’s actually a really good segue. Now that we have a few minutes alone, we should talk.”
I agreed. I’d been avoiding the topic, but we needed to figure out how we were going to end our fictional relationship. Cady had made a really great point the other day and I didn’t want to put Violet in that position. The best thing for us to do would be to tell people we’d broken up amicably. That way if we were spotted together, there wouldn’t be so many questions.
I wasn’t sure what was on Violet’s mind, though. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I’ve been seeing someone.”
I did a double take. That was the last thing I’d expected her to say. Between work and school, she was busier than I was, and I barely had time to spend with Cady.
The big brother-figure in me had questions. Lots of them. One was more important than the rest.
“Is he good to you?”
She didn’t answer immediately so I glanced at her. She was doing her best to ignore me, messing with the lid to her coffee. It was the way she chewed on her lip that made me worry.
“Violet.” The edge in my voice made her glance up.
“He is.”
I growled at how pathetic and weak her argument sounded.
“No, he is.” She defended. “Things are just… tough right now.”
That didn’t ease my fears. “Why?”
“Take your pick. This job. School. His job. Life. You name it, it feels like it’s against us.” She sighed. “Dating is hard.”
I couldn’t argue. Dating was a hell that made you realize you’d rather spend your night sitting on the couch Face Timing with your best friend while you both binged on Netflix, ate take-out from the container and drank tequila from the bottle than attempt go to dinner and make small talk about your job. And it was a hundred times more difficult when that job was as a dancer.
Which was one major reason I’d been single for so long.
“So he knows what you do?”
A long, sad sigh. “Yes.”
She didn’t have to say the words for me to know he hated that she danced. “Is it serious?”
“I want it to be.”
I didn’t like that answer. Violet was too fantastic to waste her time on some douche who was so petty and insecure he found an issue with her job. I focused on the one thing that would counteract his commitment in my eyes.
“Are you happy? Because that’s what’s important.” As long as she was, and he didn’t hurt her, he and I wouldn’t have a problem. I’d be supportive.
“I am. But,” she swallowed audibly, “you’re not going to be.”
“Me?” I looked over at her again. “Fuck, he wants you to quit, doesn’t he?”
“Well, he does. But—,”
I cut her off. “Vi, think about it. You can’t quit for a man.”
“Why not? Myra just did.”
“No, she didn’t.” The idea was laughable. Myra would never quit because her partner suggested it. She’d be more likely to stab them instead. “She’s been dancing for almost ten years. According to your little model, she’s getting ready to age out. She’s reached retirement age. You’re just a young pup.”
“I was going to say he wants me to quit, but I’d never leave for that reason. You and I have a plan. Get through school. Muck through the first year in the corporate jungle. Then I’ll give notice.”
“Then why will I be unhappy?”
“Because it’s Alastair.”
I swerved into the other lane, overcorrected, and then veered in the opposite direction. It took me a few me a few seconds to straighten out. Then I slammed on my blinker and pulled into the breakdown lane, ignoring the blaring horns.
As soon as the truck stopped rolling, I shifted into park and turned to her. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“Reid,” she tried to pacify.
“Alastair MacGregor? The prick I’d rather knock out than talk to. That Alastair?”
“You know there’s only one.”
That didn’t help. In fact, it only pissed me off more. “Why? He’s a goddamn tool, Vi! And he’s engaged. You know he’s never going to leave Victoria. She’s too important to his image, his pathetic excuse for a career.”
“Are you,” she waved her wands at me frantically, “of all people, really asking me why I love a man who is engaged to someone else? I’m not the only one who loves someone I can’t have, am I?”
“Love?” I scoffed. “Let me guess. That’s where you disappeared to the night we were at the MacGregor Inn. So, you’ve been sleeping with him, what, two months? That’s a record, even for you. He’s using you. Either to get to me or Roman. The asshole hates us. You’re just a pawn to him. A means to an end.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Four years.”
“What?”
“We’ve been seeing each other on and off for four years. I’ve been sleeping with him for four years.”
That wasn’t possible. She’d barely made a move I hadn’t known about since we started working together. Yet, I hadn’t known her four years ago. She’d danced at Sway… suddenly, it all made sense. Memories flashed through my mind, a little movie that put all the pieces together.
The night she came to my apartment a mess because her long term boyfriend had decided they were in different places and she was holding him back. The afternoon we got drunk because she’d seen a picture of her ex and his new girlfriend on Facebook, just so happened to be the same day Alastair’s engagement photo was in the news. The secret phone calls. The panicked way she’d reacted when she realized she was performing at Alastair’s thirtieth party. Her unexplained breakdown at Sway.
I’d missed it. My world was so fucking small I’d never seen it coming. I wanted to hit him. Hit anything, really. Unable to control the rage, I punched the steering wheel.
“Stop being so dramatic,” Violet snapped, barely able to hold onto her own anger.
“He’s using you.”
“For what gain? I don’t have anything. I’m nobody.”
“Your grandparents. Their money.”
“Their money may rival what he’s got right now, but it’s a drop in t
he bucket compared to what he’ll have in a few years.”
Ah, yes. The MacGregor millions and the fact they go to the first born of the first born. “Are you using him, then? Is this about the money?”
“No. When I met him, he was with his friends at Sway. Not his fake Washington friends, his childhood friends. They were celebrating an engagement. He was dressed in ratty blue jeans and an old sweater. He was shy, unsure of himself. He told me his name was Alex. I thought he was just a regular guy.”
Alex. The man she’d told me she was going to marry one day. The same one she’d repeated countless stories about, the one she’d always refused to let me meet.
“That’s why you hate Brooke.”
“Because she’s a money seeking whore who strung you along for years and exploited the fact you were in love with Roman?”
I couldn’t argue with her description, but I had another reason in mind. “Because she’s sleeping with Alastair.”
Violet laughed. “No, she’s not.”
“Oh, she is. She has been for years.”
“Who told you that?” Her doubtful tone made it clear she thought I was way out in left field.
“Roman. Brooke told him.”
“She’s pathological. And you’re gullible. She lies just to hear herself talk.”
“So does Alastair.”
“Yes, he’s a liar. He lies to himself constantly. He’s not the person he pretends to be. You should be able to relate.”
“I don’t hide who I am. I don’t pretend to be different.”
“No? Does Ruffles know you’re pan? Have you told her you’re in love with Roman and the only reason you didn’t get the hell out of here was because you couldn’t leave him behind? Have you considered the idea that maybe you’re so enamored with her because he is, too, and she’s another way to get close to him? She’s not a substitute for the one you want but can’t have.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“No, we’re not. Because you’d rather pretend everything is fine instead of facing your problems. Things don’t go away just because we act like they’re not there.”
“You’re right. They don’t. Alastair is going to marry Victoria. No matter how you twist your little affair in your mind, you’re still the other woman. You can pretend you’re in love, but what’s going to happen when he shows up with a ring on his finger? Are you okay with being the woman always waiting for her man to leave his wife?”
