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“I didn’t sleep with them all,” she whispers, and I laugh under my breath, not prepared to give my mind time to agonize over whether that’s true. Lies. My gut says it’s all lies. I’m so done now.
I shake my head, whether in anger, denial, fatigue, pain . . . I don’t know.
“And all this because you were burned by your husband?”
“Burned?” She gawks at me. “I wasn’t burned, Tyler. I was fucking destroyed.” She stands up, outraged by my blasé attitude. “I devoted years of my life to him while he fucked anything with a pulse. I wasted precious time listening to his apologies, telling myself he loved me. He didn’t love me. That was proven when I lost—” Her eyes widen, her mouth snaps shut.
She nearly spilled something then. Something else she’s kept hidden in her damaged heart. “Lost what?”
“My mind.” She coughs over a sob, her eyes exploding with tears. “He made me lose my mind.”
She’s not wrong. I turn away from Lainey, struggling to see her looking so hopeless. Fuck, I still hate her ex for what he did to her, but she’s willingly done the same to other women. Other women have been put in her position. She’s made her pain worse. All of it.
“Tyler.” Her hand rests on my arm, but the heat still finds its way past my suit jacket into my flesh. I shrug her off, closing my eyes in a search for strength. “I know I’m a vengeful, hateful woman. All I wanted to do was destroy every man I could. Then I met you. And . . . I started hating me too. Hating what I was doing. And Sal? He’s one of the good ones, and there was no way I could follow through for Moya.” She feels for my hand, gently and carefully, and I look down, seeing her fingers weaving through mine. “And I wanted you. I’ve felt so empty for so long. Then I met you. I tried to push you away, but you were relentless. And so were my feelings. I love you, Tyler. You have to believe that. Because it’s the only thing I care about now. That you know how much you mean to me. Tell me, Tyler.” She squeezes my hand. “Even if it means you’re still going to walk away from me, tell me you know that.”
My lungs balloon from my inhale, my mind and my heart in a tangle, fighting each other. Her hand looks so right in mine. She feels so right against me. Her presence is still world shaking. All of the good times—the laughs we’ve shared, our moments in the pool, the conversations we’ve had, and every second of each of our intimacies are flashing through my mind at a rate so rapid I’m getting a migraine. But, inevitably, the devastating overshadows the amazing. Sal, the other men, Lainey’s secrets and lies. Marriage is sacred, and she’s made a mockery of it. It’ll plague me forever, and I know for damn sure that every time I look at her, I’ll see only that. Lies. I can’t do that to myself. I’ll never trust her, because she’s lied to me about who she is too many times now. How do you get past that? I’ve already fucked myself over one time too many. Hating her will be easier than loving her.
All out.
“Goodbye, Lainey.” I flex my hand, forcing her to drop her hold, and walk away from her in a haze of ruin, wondering how I’m going to get over this. Fuck. That’s what I’m going to do. Fuck until I’ve wiped any memory of her.
“Tyler, wait.”
I hear her coming after me, but I don’t stop, my need to escape now urgent. I’ve heard enough.
“Tyler, please.” She grabs me, and I swing around, gently detaching her from me.
“No,” I state calmly, backing away from her, ignoring the tears and her shaking body. “I can’t tell you what you need to hear to ease your fucked-up conscience. And if I could, I fucking wouldn’t. Bask in your misery, Lainey. Enjoy it. You shouldn’t find it hard since you’ve been hell-bent on making your life miserable with no help from me.”
She flinches, wounded, but it doesn’t stop me.
I stare her square in the eye. “But what I can say is thank you. Thank you for making me realize that fucking a woman is more satisfying than risking letting them fuck with your head. I’ll be doing plenty of the former to make up for lost time.”
“Don’t say that,” she begs. “Please don’t say that.”
I look away from her pleading eyes and stalk out, slamming the door behind me. I punch five walls before I make it to my car, but find that no matter how hard I hit anything in my path, my attempts to expel the infuriation has failed. Rage is still coursing through my veins like a damaging poison.
