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I look at myself in the mirror before walking back out, finding Christopher’s eyes on the bathroom door. I walk to him and pull out my chair. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “It’s just I’ve not been on a date in a long, long time.” I pull my chair in.
“We can get out of here and go get pizza if you want.” He puts his hands down on the table, ready to get up and just walk out.
“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.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
christopher
All I can do is look at this woman in front of me. This strong, independent, classy woman. The nerves that were all in my stomach bringing her here have turned into bile, listening to her tell me her story. My hands clench into fists with each word that comes out. “So before this goes forward, you have to make a decision. Will you ever be okay knowing I was Benji’s once?” I start to open my mouth, not sure what I’m going to say, but wanting to say at least something. “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.” All I can do is smirk at her. “If you give me anything, at least give me tonight.”
“Are you done?” I finally ask when she reaches over to grab her glass of wine and bring it to her lips.
“Yes.” She nods, smirking back at me. “For now, I think.”
“Good.” I tap the table with my finger. “Before I say anything else, it needs to be said that you are way hotter than me tonight and every other day.” She rolls her eyes at that. “With that said, I also have to tell you I had no idea what Benji was up to with the women.” I shake my head. “Never, and I mean never, would I have been okay with that.”
“I kind of figured that,” she says softly. “Again, it wasn’t your place to do anything about it. He did that. I mean, in the last couple of months, he didn’t really try to hide it from me. Some nights, he didn’t even come home until six o’clock in the morning.”
I hold my hand up. “You are going to need to stop talking because, at this very minute, I’m wishing I could drag him back up and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.” I swallow back the anger. “You said that I have to make a decision, and you’re right.” Her eyes just watch me, and all I want is to lean over and kiss her, except I’m not sure if I should. I’m not sure she wants me to. “But with that said, you also have to decide what you want in all this. You kept saying I had to make a decision, and you are wholeheartedly right, I do. You have a say in this also, so what do you want?” I move my hand on the table to put it on hers. “You don’t have to decide now. For tonight, I want to sit down at a table with the woman who drives me crazy. With the woman who, with just one look, gets me so hot and bothered I don’t even know what is going on around us.” I wink at her. “For tonight, it’s just you and me. Good food, with great fucking company.” She smiles bigger. “Also, you’re not taking off that jacket because I swear to God I’ve already been at half-mast since you opened the door, and it’s about to go from fifty to a hundred.” She puts her head back and giggles, making my cock immediately go to one hundred and fifty. “Well, it’s at a hundred.” I lean over and kiss her neck. “I like you wearing your hair like that.”
“Yeah?” she asks as she moves her hand from under mine, to put it on top. “Why is that?”
“Easy access to this part.” I move my hand from the table to touch the back of her ear, and she shivers under my touch. “Then it leads to this.” I move my finger down her neck to underneath her jaw. “Then right about here, where I can feel how your heart beats for me.”
“I know you said you were at half-mast before.” She looks around, speaking softly, “I’d like to let you know, even if I wanted to, I can’t take off my jacket because my nipples have been hard since the minute you touched my hand.” She leans into me, and my body moves to her. “And I can tell you right now,” she whispers in my ear, “I’m wet for you.” She kisses behind my ear, and now it’s my turn to shiver. “I guess you can say I’m at a hundred.”
