Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95393 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95393 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
“Not a chance in hell.” I smile at him. “I’m here, and you’re here, and we are going to talk about a couple of things.”
“Okay, but if at any time you want to go, we can go.” He puts his hand on mine. “Even if we are mid meal.”
I laugh as the server comes over and asks us if we want still or sparkling water. I listen to the special but my head is more focused on the way his fingertips are playing with mine. “Are you going to drink wine?” Christopher asks while he picks up the menu.
“I can have a glass or two,” I reply, picking up my own menu. “Are you going to have one?”
“I would, but from the minute I got my driver’s license, my parents said if I had even one drop of alcohol, I wasn’t allowed to drive. It’s silly, I know, but”—he shrugs—“I won’t put you in danger. I won’t put myself in danger, and I won’t put anyone else in danger.”
“Have you always been this perfect?” I ask, shocked at his confession.
“I mean, you did tell me to fuck off last week, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.” He leans back, making his shirt go tight on his chest.
“I did.” I close the menu. “I think we should get that out of the way.”
“You mean you want to hear my excuses before we continue, in case you want to kick me in the balls?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Something like that.”
“Listen, I know I could have worded it differently, but the fact is still that no matter who lives in the house now, it was Benji’s.”
I swallow when I see the guilt all over his face. “Let me share a couple of things with you. Last October, Benji got home from out of town. I think you guys were in Vegas, maybe LA, not sure, but at least in one of those places, he had a threesome.” I watch his face to make sure he didn’t know about it and just didn’t tell me, but the way his eyes darken, I know he would never have been okay with Benji doing that to me. “The reason I know is that he butt dialed me.” I blink. “I heard the three of them. Not for long. I got the gist of it, so I hung up.”
“Dakota,” he says my name, and it feels like it’s being ripped from his chest.
I hold up my hand. “Then he got home, and I pretended nothing happened. I smiled at him and let him kiss my lips. Until the kids went to bed, and then I walked into our bedroom where he was lying on the bed, somehow thinking I would have sex with him, I’m not even sure. He looked up, and all I did was toss him my phone. He didn’t understand what I was saying, so I told him to check my call log. When he did, he knew. I also told him I would never forgive him for doing that to me. He then informed me that not only was it not his first time, he’d been doing it to me since we started dating.” Christopher hangs his head. “He pulled up his phone like it was a trophy and showed me every single girl he had stored in his phone by state. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he showed me pictures. Because what good is show-and-tell without the showing. It was then I knew my marriage was over, but then I knew something else was going on with him. So the cheating was the least of my worries.”
“Can you stop, please?” he says, his eyes filled with tears.
“That’s the man you are comparing yourself to.” I don’t stop. “I’ve known you as a friend for a long fucking time, Christopher. I don’t know you as well as I knew Benji, but I can bet on my life that you would never, ever do that to someone you say you love. So when you stood there and told me you couldn’t do that to him, it made me angry for two reasons. One, because it’s not his house. It hasn’t been his house for a while, and two, I was pissed he was taking something else from me.” I take a deep breath, and I’m proud I did all that without sobbing. “Now, that’s to say you aren’t the only one who is feeling guilty about this. So before this goes forward, you have to make a decision. Will you ever be okay knowing I was Benji’s once?” He opens his mouth. “You don’t have to decide now. For tonight, I want to sit down at a table with a hot man who thinks I’m just as hot as him. I want to drink wine and see if I can still flirt.” He smirks at me. “If you give me anything, at least give me tonight.”