Page 65 of It Hurts Me
“You didn’t?”
“I’m not cruel. I’m not going to tell my brother that his woman cooked for me and tried to fuck me afterward.”
I’d liked Scarlett the moment I met her, and even if I had the right to feel jealous, I shouldn’t. Every woman who set her eyes on this man fell under his spell. She wanted him—and not just for a night, but for as many nights as she could get.
My fingers traced the lines of his arm, feeling the mountains of muscle and the valleys in between.
His eyes didn’t close to go to sleep. He continued his stare.
I felt the heat of his intrusion, felt the question he failed to voice.
“Does he know about me?”
Bolton had never asked me about how I spent my nights when he was away. It became an unspoken agreement between us, to pretend we were faithful to each other even though we were sleeping in other places with other people. “No.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “This has been going on a while now.”
“Honestly, he’s never asked. Nor have I.”
His eyes continued to absorb my stare. “He said something that pushed you into my arms. What was it?”
“I-I said I didn’t want to talk about him.”
“I’m not asking about him. I’m asking how he made you feel.”
Whenever I thought about Bolton, it was always with a cloud of gloom over my head. Whenever he came home, it took days to get back into normalcy. Every touch and kiss felt foreign until they finally felt familiar again. But even then, it was with a note of bitterness, the sweetness sucked out of the fruit, dried and desiccated while it was ravaged by fruit flies.
“What did he say, sweetheart?”
I’d pried into his personal life and pursued a comment I probably shouldn’t have heard in the first place, so I felt obligated to reciprocate. “He’d already been with multiple women…and I hadn’t even been with one man.”
His dark eyes took me in with a note of sympathy.
“It was hard for me, but it didn’t seem hard for him.”
A heavy silence passed, his hard stare burning into my face. “This is one of those moments…”
“One of the moments, what?”
“Where you have to decide whether the truth is worth cruelty.”
I was in his soft bed that felt like a cloud, and whenever I was in the presence of this man, I was cocooned in safety. But now, I was in free fall once again. “What truth do you speak of?” My voice had been strong a moment ago, but now it wavered…like I didn’t want him to hear me.
His eyes shifted back and forth between mine, but he didn’t answer.
I didn’t ask the question again because I didn’t have the spine. A small part of me wanted the truth, but a bigger part of me wanted the lies if they were preferable. I was already broken…and another hit or bruise might make me irreparable.
He seemed to read the fear in my eyes because he didn’t pursue it. Instead, he pulled me close, my face planted into the top of his chest, and released a breath as he prepared to fall asleep.
Despite the weight in my heart, I drifted away into sleep, lighter than air.
After I finished work, I headed home to our villa in the city. I grabbed some groceries along the way then turned my key in the door and headed inside to the kitchen island. The two paper bags were set on the granite countertop, and I placed my purse beside them. I hadn’t been home in almost three days, and I couldn’t even remember what we had to eat around here.
“What did you get?”
“Jesus.” I nearly jumped out of my skin because I jolted so hard. I’d assumed the house was empty because Bolton didn’t usually come home until the evening. My hand immediately flew to my heart as if that was about to jump out of my skin too. “I-I didn’t expect you to be home so early.”
He came to my side. “I’ll give you a hand.” He pulled the items out of the bags and put them in the refrigerator and the cabinets.