“Look,” he said, “I was totally shocked. I never expected she’d pull the deal out from under me like that.”
Nate knit his brow together and stared at Ethan as if he were speaking a foreign language. The silence worried him so he kept talking.
“She’s got a good rep,” Ethan said, words spilling out quickly.
“She does,” he grumbled, finally saying something.
“That’s why I was so surprised. That’s why I went looking for other opportunities. I didn’t think she’d screw me over like that. But you know what they say about women in business,” he said, with a scoff.
Nate stared at him, narrowing his eyes. He shook his head. “No. What do they say about women in business?”
Ethan gulped. A tinge of red splashed across his cheeks. Then, he sucked down his embarrassment and kept piling on. Truth and lies began to blend. Everything he said felt true because it sure as hell seemed to him that Casey Sullivan had stolen his idea. “I just mean she’s kind of a ball breaker. She’s tough. She’s cutthroat. She goes after exactly what she wants, no matter what.”
Nate pushed his fingers against his temple and rubbed. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head, and let out a frustrated sigh. Then he looked up. “Hey man, I need to go. I have a board meeting. Was there something particular you wanted to talk about? I thought you wanted advice on something.”
Ethan waved a hand in the air. “We’ll talk another time.”
Nate rose, tossed a few bills on the table, and turned to go.
Ethan called after him, plastering a smile on his face. “Your money is no good here. I’ll take care of the coffee.”
“Leave it for the waitress then,” he said, then grabbed his phone. Ethan gathered up his papers and exited a few minutes later.
* * *
When Nate left the diner he was seeing red. Dark clouds billowed from behind his eyes. Anger lashed his body, fueled by a latent shame. Fine, he understood on a rational level—though that level was much harder for him to access right now—that this situation was not the same as Joanna sleeping with her professor.
And yet, somehow it had the makings to be precisely the same. Because Casey knew how important trust was to him. She knew that it was the cornerstone of their friendship and the foundation of their love.
He breathed out hard, huffing through his nostrils. He fumbled at his phone as he marched along the crowded avenue, late morning foot traffic clogging the sidewalk. He slid his thumb across the screen to unlock it but the heat beat down, and he missed, his fingers slippery with sweat.
He cursed, and was damn near ready to slam his fist into a streetlamp again as he replayed the conversation with Ethan. Though something felt off about Ethan’s take on the events, that email seemed to reveal the Casey had been up to something.
Cutthroat.
Was she truly that cutthroat in business? He flashed back to what Scott had said about her. Good at business, bad at relationships.
No, his heart screamed. But his head warned him that he’d been fucked with before, and not to let it happen again. He’d learned his lesson, hadn’t he?
His chest felt heavy, and his pulse beat with fury as he pushed his way around crowds of New Yorkers. He jostled past a group of hipsters, barely caring that he nearly knocked into one of them. Tension coiled in his muscles as his brain went wild, racing through the possibility that Casey had subverted their deal. Because of one sentence. One line. One phrase from Ethan.
“It’s like being licked and fucked at the same time.”
Casey had said that to him the night in London. Said it in the throes of passion the time she came undone courtesy of that toy. That’s what rankled him the most. She’d made such a big deal about never using those words outside of the bedroom, but somehow that private description had made its way back to Ethan. The kernel of doubt inside of him ballooned as he turned the corner, heading towards the high-rise building. All rational thought fled his brain, and he was reduced to raw, exposed nerves, and the fear that he’d chosen the wrong person to love yet again.
He reached for his phone once more, ready to call her, to confront her, to ask her what the hell was up, but as he started to dial her number, his phone beeped.
The guy Jack had put him in touch was calling. Crap. Nate answered, not wanting to deal with it, but knowing he had to. He gave the guy the necessary details for the delivery, then hung up. Was he really going to stick to the plan to give this gift to Casey tonight after what Ethan had shared?
When he reached the building he wasn’t ready to go into the board meeting, so he parked himself on a brass bench in the lobby, thinking about tonight, and what he’d planned for her. If Ethan was right, he was the ultimate chump.
But then, another voice spoke up. A louder voice. That of his sister in the park, saying you have to make a choice to move into the future.
It was that simple.
That easy.
That important.
He took a deep breath, reminding himself that he wasn’t the same person who had been blindsided by Joanna. Casey wasn’t Joanna. Nate didn’t have to act on this anger. He didn’t have to call her furiously and demand an answer. He had made a choice to trust her, and that meant not flying off the handle. That also meant he needed to call her, tell her what had happened, and ask her what she thought. Calmly. Carefully.
He stripped the anger from his voice, he let go of his pride, and he decided to do what they’d pledged to do the night they returned to each other in the Maldives.
Dirty talking, and sexy talking, and honest talking.
It was a time to be honest and to speak the truth.
When she answered, he heard the rattle of a subway train leaving the station.
“Hey! I’m downtown and heading back to work. The connection here is terrible,” she said.
What a shitty time to have this conversation. But even so, he had to do it. “Hey. So I just met with Ethan Holmes and he seemed to think you were doing a deal with him, then with the Pierson for your new product. He went on and on about how he pitched it to you and you stole it from him or something,” Nate said, and he felt terribly vulnerable saying these words. He felt stripped naked as if he were admitting his fears to her. But he pressed on. “He’s crazy, right?”
“What the hell?” she shouted. “He said that?”
Nate shared more of the conversation, keeping his tone even, his voice free of accusation. “He made a few comments that made it seem as if you and he had talked, then he showed me an email,” he said, then he stopped himself. He hadn’t seen the entire email. He’d only seen a few words. “Actually, it was a line or two about exploring possibilities.”