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The only damper was my meetup with Bentley. I hadn’t told Xavier about it because there was nothingtotell until I figured out what my ex wanted.
So here I was, on a freezing Sunday in the middle of a bar that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Reagan was in office, just to meet the man who’d cheated on me and broken my heart.
I’m an idiot.
Bentley was already waiting for me in a corner booth, his blue polo and clean-shaven face a startling contrast against the grunge decor.
He rose when he saw me. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.”
“Get to the point.” I took the seat opposite his and kept my coat on. I wasn’t planning on staying long. “I’m busy.”
Bentley’s brow pinched as he sat down again. The son of a big-time financier, he possessed the preppy, all-American good looks of a Ralph Lauren model and the arrogance of someone who’d been rich, popular, and good-looking his entire life. He wasn’t used to being treated like an inconvenience, which was too fucking bad because that was what this was.
“It’s Georgia.” To his credit, Bentley recovered from my insult remarkably quickly. “She’s having…difficulties with her pregnancy.”
Of everything I’d expected him to say, that hadn’t been one of them.
I cocked an eyebrow, confusion mingling with a smidge of concern. I despised Georgia as much as one could despise their sister, but I wasn’t a monster.
I was, however, confused as to why her husband was telling me instead of literally anyone else in her orbit.
“Has she seen a doctor?” I asked.
Bentley blinked, then laughed. “No, notmedicalconcerns,” he said. “She and the baby are fine. She’s just been so temperamental. You grew up with her. You know how she can be. She’s constantly screaming at me over the stupidest things, like the other day when I didn’t get her a frozen hot chocolate at three in the morning and she threw a Lalique vase at my head. ALaliquevase. Do you know how expensive that was?”
Any sympathy I had vanished, replaced by an urge to knock Bentley’s head against the wall until an iota of common sense rattled in that thick skull of his.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You called me out here on a holiday weekend tocomplain about being yelled at?”
“I could’ve died from that vase,” he said defensively. “She’s out of control.”
“She’s pregnant, Bentley, which means she’s growing an entirehumaninside her. It’s understandable if her hormones get a bit out of control.”Especially when her husband is a shithead.
I couldn’t believe I was defending Georgia, but Bentley had his head so far up his own ass, he could give himself a root canal— preferablywithoutNovocain.
“Yes, well, I didn’t expect the pregnancy process to be so messy,” Bentley said, as if he were discussing a misbehaving pet instead of his wife and unborn child. “But that’s not all. Ever since we saw you at the hospital, she’s gotten more paranoid. She accused me of checking you out and said I still had feelings for you. She said she was my second choice and that I’m always comparing her to you. The thing is…” He leaned forward, his face earnest. “She’s not wrong.”
Pin-drop silence.
I gaped at him, sure I’d heard wrong. There was no way he was bold enough andstupidenough to say that to my face.
Our server approached before I could respond. Bentley ordered a beer, and after a small pause, I ordered a glass of red wine.
After the server left, Bentley continued. “I didn’t mean for things between us to blow up the way they did. You have to understand, you were working all the time. When youwerehome, all you talked about was Kensington PR. We barely had sex. I felt like I was living with a roommate instead of my fiancée. I needed more of a human connection, you know? Georgia was there, and she was so understanding of my concerns, and…well, she reminded me of you. Except she was a little warmer at the time.” He let out another laugh.
A muscle beneath my eye spasmed as our drinks arrived. Our server gave me a sympathetic look—people who worked in bars had a finely tuned asshole radar—but I didn’t say a word.
Let him dig his own grave deeper.
“I thought she was what I wanted,” Bentley said. “But things aren’t the same as they used to be. After we got married, she became so demanding. She’s always complaining about this or that, and we don’t have sex as much as we used to. Plus, she’s obsessed with tracking your every move. Did you know she set up a news alert for your name? It’s unhealthy. When we saw you at the hospital and she found out you were dating Xavier Castillo, she lost it.”
“I see.” I didn’t touch my wine.
The news alert revelation was a surprise, but it was exactly the type of thing Georgia would do. She was a huge believer in monitoring her “competition.”
“I miss you, Sloane.” Bentley gave me a mournful look. “You were always so calm and rational about things. You’d never throw a vase at my head. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, and I should’ve.”
“Interesting,” I said coolly. “Because I distinctly remember you calling me an‘ice queen’and telling me that dating me was like dating a block of ice.”
