Page 34 of Edged
Always coming back for a taste.
“Tell me about this guy,” Flynn finally said, after it must have become clear I wasn’t going to break the silence.
“What about him?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Archie. What’s important to know? What do you want to tell me?”
“I don’t want to tell you anything,” I said quietly. The hummingbird was gone. “I don’t want to talk about him at all.”
“If you hadn’t parked your car in front of my house for over an hour, I’d believe that.”
I laughed, arching a brow at him. “How do you know how long I was out there for?”
“Cameras.” He patted the pocket of his navy blue sleep pants. “Phone alerts. You know."
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I said. “That’s why I sat outside instead of knocking.”
“Well, you’re here now and we’re both awake. So, say what you need to say.”
“I used to love him.” I forced the truth out before I could swallow it down. It wasn’t like I felt better about saying it, but Owen deserved my honesty, even if he wasn’t around to hear it. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I did. And after we…you know—”
“Fucked.”
“I’d hardly call it fucking,” I murmured, chasing that confession down with a mouthful of coffee. “But what’s done is done, and he and I are done.”
“Don’t lie.”
“Back then, the last thing he said to me, after I…after we gave up our virginities or whatever you want to call it, the last thing he told me was that he hated me.”
“What was the last thing he said this time?” Flynn prompted.
“He asked me if I wanted to watch him shower.”
I covered my face with my hands and flung my head back, letting out a frustrated, tired, and somehow still horny shout. Beside me, Flynn just laughed and stared out the window at his yard while I struggled to muffle myself and regain my composure.
“And?”
“He didn’t mean it in a nice way. He was being short and snappy. As mad at himself about what we’d done as I was, I think.”
Replaying the encounter with Owen back in my head, it was easy to see where things had gone right and things had gone wrong. The teasing, the edging, the denial—it was the physical manifestation of what the relationship between us had always been. And just like before, I told him no when it suited me to tell him no. When it pleased me to tell him no. But it pleased him too. He loved it just as he had our very first time.
He said that he’d listened to the way I talked to Mandy, and I didn’t think there was any real way to tell if how I clearly got off on denial was what spurned his attraction to the kink or if he’d liked it from the start. That thought left an unwelcome idea in my head, a dream of a life that could have been so different for the two of us. A future that would have seen us together instead of apart.
But that was a pipe dream.
Because there was no world where I could have broken up with Mandy and then moved on to Owen without there being the same number of casualties. No matter how you sliced it, all three of us would have been ruined. At least the way things had gone, I’d given them something to push them out of the heartbreak.
I’d given them anger which, in hindsight, felt like a gift.
Anger was more manageable than sadness, than guilt, even regret.
“Why are you mad about it?” Flynn asked.
I bit the tip of my tongue while I thought about an answer.
“Because it’s safer to be mad,” I said, the truth of that feeling like a bulletproof vest I could wear. “Because it shouldn’t have happened, but it’s hard to think right around him.”
“Are you mad that he’s gone?”
