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The man who had given up on love thanks to emotionally absent parents and Amie ripping my heart out and stomping it into that sandy Sleeping Bear Dunes hiking trail.
Something occurred to me then, and I was beginning to wonder…did I actually hate Amara? Have I actually hated her this whole time? Or did I simply hate that I shouldn’t want or have her? Because even now, after only one fuck, I was feeling things for her that I knew now had been glaringly absent from my relationship with Amie. Things I shouldn’t be feeling so soon after five years of “hating” her and everything she stood for.
“It wasn’t serious.”
“Serious enough that you’re bringing it up now.”
“You’re my friend,” Owen said with a shrug. “You deserve to know. I don’t want it to come up later and be this whole thing. It ended a while ago.”
“If it wasn’t serious, then what was it?”
God, sometimes I wished I could just staple my mouth shut instead of asking stupid questions Ireallydidn’t need answered.
“Look, there’s no other way to say it than to just say it. We didn’t do the whole boyfriend-girlfriend, dates and sunset walks on the beach shit. I had just opened the restaurant and was busy as fuck that summer. She had just graduated college and was gearing up to head to London. She approached me about bringing Delatou wines into Birdie’s. One thing led to another, and we just…”
“You just what?” I prompted, hating myself for prying, and hating the jealousy bubbling in my chest.
“We just fucked. For three months, the only time we really saw each other was when we wound up in bed together at the end of a long day. She was a good way for me to blow off some stress, and I got the feeling she was just using me to forget something.”
Forget something?Could it be…
No. There’s no way that one night affected her like that. There’s no way my rejection had driven her right into Owen’s arms. I was reading too much into it.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ve seen her grow up a lot in the last five years. She’s fucking impressive, and I’m excited to see what she does as head of the Delatou empire. We weren’t right for each other, but maybe that’s because she was holding out for someone better.”
My next thought came to me unbidden.
Someone like me.
Thankfully, Owen saved me from diving too deep down that rabbit hole.
“So…what exactly happened?”
“You really want to know?”
He shrugged. “Of course. You’re my friend. Just because I have…intimate knowledge of the girl shouldn’t stop you from spilling your guts to me.”
“Mention that again and I’m going to punch you a lot higher than your shoulder.”
Owen held his hands in front of my face. “Please, not the face! It’s my money maker.”
I burst out laughing, the tension in my shoulders easing fractionally.
With a deep sigh, I launched into the story. Of that night five years ago, of dancing around each other for the last five months, of how much harder it had grown over the last few weeks to keep my eyes—and my hands—to myself.
How today, I just…snapped.
“She’s so goddamn infuriating, but that body…fuck.”
“I know,” Owen said, a little too wistfully for my liking.
“Watch it.”
“Right, sorry. Truthfully, we didn’t really do much talking. We didn’t really do much of anything but fuck.”
“Then what good are you? The sex is definitely not the problem.”
Well, the sexwasa problem, not because it hadn’t been mind-blowing and life-altering, but because we shouldn’t have done it.
