AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And you were happy to discuss him.”
“Not happy, exactly,” she fired back.
“What happened with Katie is personal. Private. I won’t discuss her.”
Bronte nodded quickly, hoping it would cover the searing pain beneath her ribs. The rejection was intense. He’d drawn a line sharply, putting her back in her box completely. They might be lying in bed together, naked and intimate, but this was just sex. There were parts of him that weren’t open to her, and nor should they be.
Just because she felt as though she would tell him anything he asked – give him anything he asked – didn’t mean he felt the same way. It was a timely reminder.
His voice softened, but it did nothing to undo the painful stitch in the region of her heart. “I’m not proud of my behaviour back then. But it’s done, and talking about it can’t change what happened.”
She nodded uneasily. “I understand.”
Silence fell, but it wasn’t a comfortable silence. The intimacy of a few moments ago was gone, lost to the awareness that this was all a ruse. A sense of emptiness flooded her, because he was wrong about friendship, wrong about it being a poor basis for a relationship. If sex was all that you shared, what happened when the sex was finished?
She propped up on her elbow, so that she could see him better. “When you usually do this, I guess you don’t spend the night.”
He scanned her face, waiting for her to explain further.
“Is it like – you go to a woman’s home, or hotel, or whatever, have sex, then leave?”
He laughed, a short sound. “There’s not really a rule book.”
“But you don’t do this – stick around for the weekend, making small talk about past relationships.”
“There’s nothing ‘small’ about what happened with you and Ashton.”
“Or you and Katie,” she jabbed back, her eyes darkening to a shade that was like the ocean in the wake of an electrical storm.
“No.” A short concession.
“I guess I don’t know how to have sex with someone then pretend I barely know them. Is that…is that what you expect me to do?”
Consternation was obvious in his features.
“I expect you to be yourself.”
“No, you don’t.”
His lips twisted into a semi-frown.
“I can’t box up my curiosity. You’ve told me about some woman whose heart you broke and you’ve told me more than you realise, too. You’ve told me that she’s the reason you don’t get close to women, she’s the reason you don’t trust yourself to care for someone. You think being myself isn’t wanting to understand what happened?”
“I get your curiosity; that’s perfectly normal. But I won’t indulge it. End of story.”
“Got it.” She nodded a little jerkily, wondering at the strange painful sensation besieging her entire body. She pushed away from him, out of the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“To brush my teeth. It’s late. I have to be a bridesmaid in the morning, remember?”
At the bathroom she paused to offer him a smile, aiming to defuse the growing tension. She wondered if it was realistic, suspected it wasn’t, and decided she didn’t care.
She was pissed. And she had every right to be. He’d shut her down with a sledgehammer, because he hadn’t expected the question. He hadn’t wanted to be reminded of Katie again. He’d already thought of her too much this weekend, thought of what he’d done, how he’d treated her, what they’d lost, what could have been. How he’d hurt her.
It was something he’d never told a
nother soul. Not his brothers, cousins, Yaya, friends, no one. Oh, they’d known about the engagement, and then when it had been called off. But when anyone had asked for details, he’d simply said ‘it didn’t work out’. As though that encompassed the true horror of it all.
