AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Your helpful friend Ned.’
‘Ned told you Amelie and I were an item?’
‘Stop pretending you weren’t.’ Really? We’re going to play this game?
Maybe she had misjudged his reliability as a father, but she knew exactly how fickle he had been as a life partner. And she certainly wasn’t the gullible nitwit any more who believed everything he told her.
‘Amelie and I were never lovers. And Ned knows we weren’t,’ Luke said. ‘I always knew he had the hots for you. That son of a bitch.’ He sounded furious.
‘Bugger off, Luke. What were you doing living in her apartment for six months if you weren’t banging her? I happen to have first-hand knowledge of exactly how much sex you need.’
Because I’m fairly sure the fact I stopped supplying it whenever you wanted it was the real reason you left me.
The accusation echoed off the rocks and sharpened the pain in her chest.
Why was the pain still so raw? At the thought of all the times he’d come on to her and all the times she’d turned him down because she was exhausted after Lizzie’s birth?
And all the times she’d been forced to regret that after he’d left. God, it was lowering to realise she could still be angry at how much she’d berated herself for not being more accommodating, more considerate of his sexual needs … And how long it had taken her to finally realise Luke was the one who had been insensitive to her needs. Not the other way round.
‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘I was sleeping in Amelie’s spare room while she and her girlfriend went at it every night in the room next door. And while that was certainly an education in sexual frustration, because the walls in that apartment were paper-thin and the two of them were both screamers, I didn’t get any, either, for three years. And I never got any with Amelie.’
‘You’re kidding. Amelie was a lesbian?’ The outrage blossomed anew. Spurred on by indignation. Had she been angry at Amelie the French tart for sixteen years, for no good reason?
‘She wasn’t a lesbian, exactly,’ he clarified. ‘She had a girlfriend, but she was into guys, too. And they did offer to have a threesome a couple of times.’
That bitch. ‘How accommodating of her.’
He shrugged, and the tinge of colour hit his cheeks. ‘But I turned them down.’
‘How very noble of you,’ she said waspishly, not sure now whether she was more annoyed with Luke or Amelie. Or his shit-stirring friend Ned. ‘I never would have expected you of all people to be such a prude.’
Am I actually hoping he had a threesome with her now?
‘It wasn’t that.’ The pink tinge touched the top of his ears. ‘I mean, it wasn’t that I wouldn’t have been up for it, so to speak. It’s just I couldn’t do it.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I don’t know, I guess because it felt like cheating, on you.’
She sat perfectly still, listening to the quiet hum of a passing insect. With no clue what to say to that. Or how to deal with the squeezing pain in her ribs.
‘Luke, you left me,’ she said at last, settling on pointing out the glaringly obvious. ‘You didn’t even contact me for two weeks. And when you did, I got exactly six torturous words that explained exactly nothing. I had to find out from your wanky friend Ned where you were living over a month later. How on earth could you have felt like you were cheating on me? For three years? Can’t you see how ridiculous that is?’
And not all that believable.
But somehow she did believe him. Which made his confession only all the more ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as the feeling of something warm and fluid in her abdomen.
Apparently, I’m glad he didn’t have that threesome.
How could the fact he hadn’t left her for another woman be important now?
‘It’s not ridiculous at all.’ He stretched his neck, looking more uncomfortable by the second. ‘I didn’t walk out on you because of our sex life. I know it changed a lot after Lizzie, and it took me a while to adjust to that … but I’m not that much of a shallow jerk.’
‘Then why did you leave?’
‘I told you, it had nothing to do with you. It was me.’
Well, hooray, that tells me precisely sod all.
