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“Look, I don’t have a car. I took a cab here. I really can’t talk to you about this over the phone.” Tears misted in my eyes. “Tomorrow? Please?” After the dinner I’d just shared with my mother and her boyfriend, Nico Kostas, I was exhausted. Marj deserved better than dealing with me in this state. Hell, I was lucky she was still talking to me after this secret I’d kept.
“Nope. Sorry. We’re having this conversation now.”
I nodded, knowing full well that Marj couldn’t see me. “All right. Where do I start?”
“Start with why the hell my brother asked you to leave my house.”
“The answer to that question is a big, resounding ‘I don’t know.’”
“I don’t buy it, Jade. You say you’re in love with my brother.”
“Yes.” I gulped.
“Then why in the world would he ask you to leave? Does he not share your feelings?”
“I have no idea. I never told him my feelings.”
Silence again. Then, “Is he in love with you?”
A jackknife slid into my heart. “No. He’s not.”
“I’m not understanding any of this.”
“I don’t understand either. Let me just start at the beginning.”
For the next hour, I chronicled my time with Talon. I left out the specifics of our incredible sex, but other than that, I spar
ed no detail to my best friend. I told her how we’d met in the kitchen during the night and talked, how he kissed me, how he told me he’d never love me but that he needed me, craved me…right up until last night, when he’d treated me to an elegant dinner in his room.
“I can’t believe all this was going on under my own roof and I had no idea,” Marj said.
“Well, it was mostly at night, and you know you can sleep through anything.”
“But Jade, why would you keep this from me? We tell each other everything.”
I sniffed. “I know. It’s just… He’s your brother, and something about him… I guess I just didn’t feel like I was at liberty to say anything. You know how closed off he is.”
“He’s not as closed off as I thought he was. Frankly, I’m thrilled that he connected with you. I’m not sure Talon has ever connected with anyone before.”
“But that’s just the problem. I’m not sure we really ever did connect. I mean, he would shut me out at every turn. Even after an…intimacy.”
“You mean a fuck? You can say the word, Jade. You were fucking my brother. I can take it. I just don’t understand why you couldn’t confide in me.”
I didn’t know how else to explain it to her. I had wanted to confide in her, but Talon was so impenetrable sometimes. He had so many walls built up around him. I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone about what was going on between us, not even my best friend. How could I make her understand that?
“Please don’t be mad at me, Marj. I couldn’t handle losing you too.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. You haven’t lost me. And you probably haven’t lost Talon. Just tell me why he asked you to leave.”
“I’ve told you. I don’t know. I was in the middle of giving him a massage, and all of a sudden he had this meltdown. He started screaming, and I couldn’t make out any words other than ‘make it stop.’ Frankly, it scared me a little. When I finally got him calmed down, he wouldn’t talk to me. He just said that I needed to leave. I told him I couldn’t until morning, and he told me to leave then. This morning, when I was done in the shower, I came out to find a red rose on my bed.”
“A red rose?”
“Yeah. No note or anything. I assumed it was from him since you weren’t home.”
“Even if I had been home I wouldn’t have left you a red rose. Don’t you know what that means?”
I didn’t know what anything Talon did meant, and he wasn’t exactly the floral type. “No. Do you?”
