Another pause.
“And did Rainer require emotional support in the form of you not coming home last night?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. I know exactly where she is going with this and there is no road that does not end with me having this conversation.
Zane’s eyes narrow with interest. He can hear enough to enjoy it and he absolutely is. Bastard. He has the audacity to look entertained, standing there in the morning light.
“Rainer wasn’t here,” I say.
Cassie inhales. Deeply. Dramatically. The kind that signals she is preparing to deliver a comprehensive summary of events and that she wants everyone present to know she has done the math.
“So,” she says. “Let me just place my pieces on the board. You went for a drive and somehow ended up at the workshop. Rainer was not there, but Zane was. You did not come home. And you currently sound like a woman who has had sex and possibly a minor spiritual experience, though, knowing Zane Rivera, God probably showed himself after the first cocky comment.”
My face heats in a way that has nothing to do with the morning light and everything to do with the fact that I have told Cassie things over the years, specific, detailed sexual things about Zane, in the way you tell your best friend things at two in the morning when wine is involved and the past feels safely distant.
But it’s not distant right now.
Zane’s mouth spreads into a full, slow grin. Absolute asshole.
“Cassie,” I say.
“Oh, my God. You did. You actually fucked him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. Your shame is breathing directly into the phone, Sky. I can hear it. It has its own ZIP code.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“You are not hanging up. I have questions, concerns, and a moral obligation to be annoying about this. You were aware of that when you answered, so here we are.”
Zane’s grin has not shifted. If anything, it has deepened, which should be illegal at this hour without prior warning.
“Stop listening,” I tell him.
“Not a chance,” he says.
He walks toward the kitchen with the kind of ease that has nothing to do with the teenage swagger I remember and everything to do with a man who has learned how to make silence do half the damage. Less noise. More weight. And it’s somehow worse.
He reaches for the coffee jar.
I watch the muscles shift across his back and make absolutely no apology for it.
“You’re staring again, aren’t you?” Cassie says in my ear.
“No.”
“You are such a liar. Is he naked?”
“No.”
“Was he naked?”
I don’t respond.
She makes a sound that can only be described as delighted asphyxiation. “Skylar Elizabeth Louise Mayfair Tullah James.”
“That’s not my name,” I say, pulling the sheet up over my bare legs, even though Cassie can’t see me and the gesture is entirelyfor my own dignity. Which, if we are being honest, is hanging by a thread. “I’m safe. That is all you need.”
