Naked Read online

  I believe it’s possible to look back and pinpoint the moment when something good turns to shit in front of you. I know for a fact it’s also possible to know it’s going to happen even before it does. I didn’t want this to end. I didn’t want to lose Alex—and I didn’t want to give him up.

  But I knew I was going to.

  He brought me coffee, and I almost said nothing. He kissed the top of my head and nuzzled my neck, and I almost said nothing. I closed my eyes and felt his touch, heard the soft whisper of his breath. I pulled away.

  His sigh turned harsh. Resigned. “You’re pissed off.”

  I clicked carefully with my mouse to close my project. A dialogue box popped up. Changes have been detected in your document. Do you want to save? Yes or No.

  I’d spent a few hours working on this piece, and it was still crap—worse off than it had been before, as a matter of fact. Time wasted, but a lesson learned.

  I clicked No.

  I swiveled slowly around in my chair to face him. “We need to talk.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed the tiniest amount, followed by the smallest tightening of his mouth. He nodded, though, and pulled up the straight-backed chair to sit in front of me. He hadn’t yet dressed or even showered, and his rumpled hair and low-hanging pajama bottoms invited my caress.

  Everything about him still seduced me, and I had to look away.

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I know my father is an asshole. I’m sorry.”

  My breath actually hitched at his words, my throat closing so tightly I thought for a moment I wouldn’t be able to breathe. My head whipped up so fast my hair slapped my cheeks. I thought he was fucking with me, but one look at Alex’s face told me he really had no clue.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck about your dad, Alex.”

  “So…then what are you pissed off about?”

  I stood to get away from him. To move. To give my body reason and focus, so I didn’t give in totally to anger. I faced him, but from a safe distance. He couldn’t reach me—I couldn’t touch him.

  “How could you take me to that house, to meet those people, without telling me the truth?” Each word bit out, jagged and sharp. “How could you stand there and introduce me to her without telling me in advance who she was?”

  I’d seen him be many things, but never stupid. Even so, no matter what else he was, Alex was still a man. And any woman who’s ever had one knows how smart men are doesn’t have much to do with their IQs.

  “Who?”

  “Anne,” I said tightly.

  His face went a little blank—not as much as I’d seen it in the past, but enough to show me I’d poked him someplace tender.

  “Anne is Jamie’s wife.” He put the emphasis on “wife.”

  “And Jamie,” I said. “Christ, Alex. Did you think I wouldn’t see? Did you really think I wouldn’t figure it out?”

  “Jamie’s my friend.” He didn’t look away from me, though the intensity of his gaze made me wish he had. “My best friend.”

  “And what about her? Anne? What is she?” Without waiting for him to finish, I stepped forward. He retreated. “You took me to their house and you pushed me in front of her without telling me you’d slept with her, and then you dropped me to run off with your BFF. Do you know what an idiot I felt like? Do you even understand why it might have been important for you to tell me that hey, by the way, I fucked my best friend’s wife?”

  His mouth opened. Then shut. Alex straightened, his shoulders going impossibly broad as he put his hands on his hips. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t like…that.”

  I pulled in a breath that hurt my throat. “What was it like, then?”

  For the first time during our conversation, he dropped his gaze.

  I stepped back, my stomach sick. My heart sore. “You…love her.”

  “No,” he said at once. “Not anymore. And not like you.”

  I swallowed bitter bile. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Yes!”

  I could’ve stretched out my hand and he his, and we might’ve touched. But we didn’t. Vastness stretched between us, and there was more to come.

  “That you loved another woman you’ve never mentioned, not once. You gave me a laundry list of just about every other person you ever fucked, but you never once mentioned her. The one you loved.”

  “I just…” He shrugged, looking helpless. He scrubbed at his hair, making it wild. “Does it matter who I loved first, so long as you’re who I love last?”

  This went deeper than an ex-girlfriend. “Does your bestie know you fucked his wife?”

  “Yes. He knows.”

  I swallowed again, hard. Alex had told me many times he would tell me the truth, if I asked, and I’d spent too much time not asking. “Look at me.”

  He did. Many times I’d seen my Alex with blank eyes and smile, putting on a face for the world. He didn’t do that now. He gave me everything I hadn’t asked for, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see it.

  I thought of two men, standing too close for friendship. I thought of Anne, whose gaze had followed them, knowing and accepting…and loving despite what she knew.

  I could not be that woman.

  And I could no longer not ask.

  “The three of you?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “A few months. Years ago. It’s over, Olivia. I swear to you, it’s over.”

  I knew that without him telling me. I’d seen it in Anne’s face when she’d looked at him, and heard it in her voice when she’d told me to love him anyway.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Because I didn’t think you’d understand.”

  “Is she the reason you didn’t go home for so long?”

  He opened his mouth and I waited for the lie, but then he nodded. “Yeah. The shit with my family isn’t ever going to go away. But what happened with Jamie…”

  “And Anne,” I said, my tone challenging him to say her name in front of me.

  “Yes. With Anne. I didn’t think I should go back. But then I met you, and everything seemed different. Olivia,” Alex said, “I love you. I want to make a life with you. And I don’t want to never see Jamie again…but…I won’t, if you don’t want me to.”

  I couldn’t ask him to do that. I swallowed again, my throat sore from holding back screams and tears. “You should’ve told me anyway. I’d have been upset, but it would’ve been better than finding out the way I did. I felt stupid, Alex.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  I believed him, but that didn’t matter. I looked at the ring sparkling on my finger and twisted it back and forth from underneath with the pad of my thumb. I wouldn’t have minded crying, but though I felt the tears in my throat, behind my eyes, nothing would come. I looked at him with clear eyes—nothing blurred, nothing out of focus. I saw Alex for real, with nothing but truth between us.

  “Do you love him?”

  He hesitated again. “Yes. But I never fucked him, Olivia. I swear to you.”

  “Do you want to?”

  He moved closer then. “No. Not anymore.”

  “Does he want to fuck you?”

  “Jamie,” Alex said, “knows when to stop. Look, Olivia, Jamie and me…we’re a pair of douche bags when we get together. I know we can be fucktards.”

  I’d seen them together and knew there was something more than friendship between them. There’d always been; it seemed there would always be. And unlike Anne, I wasn’t sure I could ever just watch it happen.

  “Is Cam yours?”

  Alex said nothing, though his jaw dropped. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair to cup it at the back of his neck. He paced. “No. How…Fuck, no. That boy’s Jamie’s, through and through.”

  “He looks like you.”

  Alex whirled to face me. “He’s not mine.”

  “Are you sure?”

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