“I should just let her drag your name through the mud?”
“Who cares about my name?I’m a nobody.If we have to put Roxie at the head of Hope—”
“I already told you that’s not an option.”
“It is.I’d rather that than see you kowtowed by Diva because of me.I can work in the background, behind the scenes.”
“You need to be up front.”
“Why?”she asked.“Why are you hellbent on—”
“I’m the fucking boss, okay?What I say goes and I’m telling you I want you at the forefront of Huddle Hope.No backchat.I make the damn rules.”
Pulling rank?She wasn’t the only one not kidding around.“Then go to her.”Her chest hurt.“Persuade her.Wine her, dine her, screw her, but know that’s the end of this, us, whatever it is.”She exhaled an unamused laugh and stopped walking.“And you thought you misjudged this when all along it was me.I got this wrong.”
“Radley—”
“No, I won’t do it.I won’t watch you be broken by a woman who almost took your soul the last time.I don’t regret what I did at the fundraiser.If I have to quit my job to take responsibility, that’s exactly what I’ll do.If you go to her now and she sinks her teeth in, you’ll resent me for the rest of your life.”
And she couldn’t wait around while their friendship, which had once held so much value, was reduced to ashes.Diva would do it.“He’ll choose me over you.”Diva, it turned out, was right.She’d been so damn cocky, so damn sure that it was her right to speak for him, to protect him, when she should have stepped aside.
What had her actions caused?His pain.And friends didn’t do that to each other.
“Don’t blow this up into something it’s not,” he said.“I’ll have dinner with her, we’ll talk—”
“Have sex.”
“Is that what’s juiced your snatch?There is no way I’ll have sex with her.I don’t want to have sex with her.”
“Until you’re sitting in your lair with alcohol, reminiscing, and she leans in…”
“No sex, Radley.She was never allowed to hang out in the lair.Not that she’d have wanted to.Entertaining was her thing; she’d always rather be downstairs surrounded by a hundred people than alone with me in my sweats.”
“Another reason you shouldn’t be doing this.Is that why you throw those parties?Because she wanted them?It’s like learned behavior.Stockholm Syndrome.”The guy was actually traumatized.“If you know you’re incompatible, why open the door again?”
“This is not me opening the door.This is one night.I’m not getting back with her.You don’t mean that much to me.”
“Stop, this is not funny.You want to joke, and you want me to quip back so we can fall into us.Except us never was an us if you’d do something like this without talking to me.”
“We’ve both acted on our own before.This is what we are.What we do.We protect each other.”
“I got in front of Diva to protect you and it cost me nothing.You get in front of Diva now and she’ll never let go.You’ll lose everything, who you are, what you love, what you value in life.I can’t watch it happen.”
“No one’s asking you to watch anything.You’re in New York.”
“But you will call me after, the next day, a week later, and you’ll want to tell me what happened.I’ll want to know, because I always want to know, but I can’t do that to myself.God, it makes me feel sick just imagining it.”
Them together in the moonlight.Alone.Intimate.A smile.A touch.And all because she’d got mouthy.She could’ve handled Diva better, been more personable or calmer, less confrontational.Damn her mood.It got riled so easily and that was a button she needed to ease off more often.
“There’s no point fighting about it.It’s done.It’s happening.”
“Tonight?”she asked.“Are you taking her out or eating in?”
“Whichever she prefers.”
Of course.“Because she makes the rules.”It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.“She’s going to hurt you.”
“But she won’t hurt you.I accept those odds.”
