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I grin. “You’re the goddess of all my hard-ons. No doubt about that.”
“Good.” She sighs again, her body softening against mine.
“Are you asleep?” I ask after a beat of silence, broken only by the soft, rhythmic rise and fall of her breath.
“Almost. With great sex-goddess power comes great tiredness,” she says, yawning. “And great need for sleep.”
“So, you’re going to make me wait until morning for an answer?”
“Of course not. The answer is yes. Yes, I will be your goddess girlfriend and kiss you and hug you and call you Handsome Sam the smexy god of my loins.”
Face aching with the force of yet another goofy smile so intense it threatens to crack my jaw, I hug her closer and whisper, “Good, but you can’t call me handsome as part of that nickname. That’s the cat’s name.”
“You can both be handsome. It isn’t a competition. I promise to love you both equally.”
“Sounds fair,” I say, my heart about to beat right out of my chest, even though I know she’s just joking. She doesn’t love me…yet. But my gut says it won’t take much to take our friend love to the next level. She’s open, she’s interested, and she feels the same electricity I feel whenever we touch.
Now to find a way to wiggle out of all your lies before you fuck up the thing that matters most to you in the whole world.
My heart drops into my stomach and the warmth filling my chest goes cold, leaving me awake, staring at the video game posters on the wall, long after Jess has gone to sleep.
The inner voice is right.
I have to fix this—fast.
Luckily, I know just the person to ask for advice.
* * *
By the timewe get back to the city on Monday night, it’s too late to call Jack.
Tuesday morning is spent prepping Jess for her interview and stressing about it from Cam’s room as I eavesdrop on her conversation with the board.
She kills the interview—I had no doubt she would, but I’m still relieved when it’s over—and we spend the rest of the day celebrating by making out, having a picnic on her roof, making out some more, and catching an early movie at an old art house theater we both love. During the film, dubbed in English, we learn how to say a few scandalous things in French we didn’t know before and whisper them to each other over a dinner of muscles and crusty French bread that is the perfect ending to another perfect day.
Perfect, except that I’m keeping secrets from the woman I love, secrets that are already coming between us.
Instead of going up to her place and taking our making out and “nearly having full-on sex” to its logical conclusion, I tell her I need to catch up on some work early in the morning and have to head back to my hotel to get my laptop and a good night’s rest. But we make plans for dinner again the next night at her place to celebrate Handsome’s big homecoming.
Which gives me the entire day on Wednesday to seek out Jack and his words of wisdom.
We meet at a coffee shop around the corner from his high-rise office in the financial district. Jack looks the same as ever—full-on corporate shark in a two-thousand-dollar suit and a vintage Armani briefcase that probably costs more than Jess’s rent—but I know a soft heart beats beneath that cool, expensive exterior, a fact he proves by wincing as I finish filling him in on the latest developments.
He sits back in his chair, dragging a hand through his shaggy, sandy-brown hair. “Fuck. Now I’m even more stressed out. How about you? Are you worried yet, or are you still foolishly thinking she’ll understand why you’ve sheltered her in a house of lies?”
“I haven’t sheltered her in a—”
“Nope,” he says with a shake of his head. “We’re not arguing about that part. There is a house. It’s made of lies. Well-intentioned lies, but lies all the same, and there’s nothing women hate more than lies. Trust me. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
I lace my fingers together around my steaming cappuccino. “I was hoping you could help me out with that part. I’ve only had two serious girlfriends and I never lied to either one of them. I don’t have any experience with this sort of thing.”
“And you assume I do?” Jack says with an offended snort, but before I can apologize, he adds, “Well, you’re right. I do. I’m not proud of it, but back in college I was a dumbass. I thought it was okay to secretly date several girls at a time without telling them about each other, as long as I informed each of them that I wasn’t looking for a relationship.”
I wince. “How’d that work out?”
“About as well as you would assume. They eventually found out about each other and joined forces to destroy me. Luckily, they were nice people and seemed satisfied with egging my SUV and writing ‘Jack is a Limp Dick Loser’ on the sidewalk outside my apartment, but it taught me a lesson: When it comes to intimate relationships, always err on the side of too much information.”
I nod. “Okay, so I’ll tell her everything, all the reasons I thought it was a good idea to blur the truth and let her misunderstanding about us both being virgins stand that first night. I’ll do a twenty-page PowerPoint with all the data, ending with reasons it would be a good idea to forgive me.”
