His fine brows drew together. “No?”
“You don’t get to break up with me. You don’t get to blame me, to make this my fault.” I stepped toward him as I spoke, my voice deadly calm and my body tight as a bowstring. “You weren’t happy? Fine. But don’t pretend like fucking a twenty-year-old child in the apartment we shared was the way to handle it. Self-destruct, if that makes you feel in control of your life. But you don’t get to break up with me. Because I’m leaving you.”
His face was still as he watched me approach, unafraid and unfazed. Pity flashed behind his eyes, and I resisted the impulse to grab the closest inanimate object and brain him with it.
“I don’t give a shit why you did it or what revelations you had when you had my goddamn client nailed to the wall of our foyer. Just leave me alone so I can pack my things in peace and go.”
A sigh, thick and deep, set his chest in a rise, then a fall. “I should have expected this,” he said, pushing himself upright. “But deep down, I thought you might actually show some emotion. Be vulnerable. Be honest. I always was a sucker.”
And he turned and walked away.
“That makes two of us,” I said quietly to his back, my tears caught in my chest, in my throat, in the tip of my nose and the corners of my eyes.
I turned back to my closet in a haze of thought, a fog of emotion, blindly gathering suits and my garment bag, then shoes and silken pajamas. Into the bathroom I went, grateful it was joined to the room so I wouldn’t have to venture out until I was ready. The light was too bright, overly harsh, and I avoided my reflection, afraid of what I’d see. And when the counter and medicine cabinet were half empty in ghostly equal, I walked out of the bathroom, then our room like a stranger.
He thought me invulnerable. Unfeeling. Dishonest with my emotions.
For all the years we’d spent together, it seemed he really didn’t know me after all.
Brock glanced up from an armchair when I entered, scotch in his hand and brow smooth.
“I’m keeping the key until I’ve gotten the rest of my things. I’ll be here Saturday from noon to three. Please, don’t be here.”
Another nod. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t give a damn.”
I turned before he could speak again, before my tears fell, racing down my cheeks the moment I was shielded. I didn’t move to wipe them away, not wanting him to know, content to leave him thinking me stony and cold. The truth—that I was molten pain, pooling lava, white-hot and searing—was none of his business.
Not anymore, whether I liked it or not.
8
The Curious Case of the Missing Orgasms
KASH
I should have known I was walking into trouble the second I saw Ivy and Tess eyeing each other across the work table the next morning.
“Kash,” Ivy started, arms folded, “settle something for us.”
I set down the buckets of zinnias on the table. “Lay it on me.”
“How many times would you let your girlfriend go without an orgasm before you upped your game?” Ivy said without batting a lash.
A surprised snort. “Zero.”
“See?” Ivy gestured to me. “Good guys don’t let their ladies go orgasmless.”
Tess laughed, rolling her eyes. “You don’t think Lila at least faked it? How do you know he knew she wasn’t orgasming?”
The knowledge that we were talking about Lila struck me like a bell, reverberating down my spine. I caught myself frowning and schooled my face.
“Because she told me, you ninny. He’s a doctor, Tess. He should understand female anatomy.”
“I mean, in theory,” Tess answered.
“Lila thinks it’s because he’s too hot to have to try,” Ivy noted.
“Is that a thing?” I asked dubiously.
“Oh, it’s a thing,” she assured me. “The really hot ones go one of two ways—either they’re gods or complete duds. There is no in-between. Size of ego usually has something to do with it. Any man who would take a woman to bed thinking she was the lucky one has it all wrong.”
“I think you’re just mad at Brock,” Tess said, turning back to the arrangement she was working on.
“Damn right I’m mad at Brock. She came home last night a mess, and it’s his fault. He wasted her time and her love. I shudder to think what he said to her to have shaken her up like he did.”
“You don’t even know if he was there,” Tess argued.
“Oh, he was there. I know my sister.” Ivy huffed. “Stupid jerk. Of all the low down, dirty ways he could have played her, that was the worst.”
This time when I frowned, there was no stopping it. “Brock?”
“Her stupid boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.” Ivy sulked, grabbing a zinnia and snipping its stem like it was Brock’s inattentive member. “She walked in on him nailing a Felix Femme in their entryway last week. After she busted her ass in the flower bed.”
I leaned a hip on the table, folding my arms. A flash of rage burned through my chest like a meteor. “Which Femme?”
“Natasha. And worse—Lila has to see her practically daily, what with her sister’s wedding and all. God, you should have seen her when she came over after she caught him, still covered in greenhouse dirt.”
“She must have been furious,” Tess said.
“The opposite. She was matter-of-fact, completely calm and collected and in fixer mode. But that’s Lila. Whatever she felt, she kept it locked up or reserved it for when she was alone. In fact, she insisted it was a good thing. That she’d somehow learned something vital, thus saving herself. But I know she’s hurting. She thought they were going to get married, for God’s sake.” Ivy shook her head, brows drawn with concern. “I’ve always hated him, but now I could rip his face off and shove it down his throat like baloney.”
“How long were they together?” I asked carefully, hungry for details and shocked that any man could be so ungrateful.
“Two years. I always thought he was a douchebag, but I never suspected he’d sleep with a girl who couldn’t even drink—and right there in their apartment.”
“And what makes him such a douche? He sounds like a stupid asshole, but not exactly a douchebag.”
“Let me count the ways,” Ivy said, ticking off points on her fingers. “He’s a poor little rich boy, obsessed with status. Constantly talks about himself. Tells bad jokes. Didn’t give my sister the orgasms she so clearly deserves. Wears too much cologne. Cheats on her with reality TV stars. His name belongs to a weatherman—Brock Bancroft,” she scoffed. “Should I go on?”
I chuckled, imagining some weatherman type with a booming voice and too many teeth. I couldn’t picture Lila with a man like that. She was too immaculate, too enterprising to settle for anything less than equal to her. Not that I knew her, I reminded myself once again. But the woman she chose to show the world was solid and unflinching. A woman who took no shit and accepted nothing less than the best.
How she’d ended up with some shitbag who didn’t even give her orgasms was beyond me, a nonsensical concept with no grounds in reality.