Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Faith looks at me, answering after I shake my head. “No, thank you. Have a good lunch.”
Pauline disappears from the doorway, but we know the woman well enough not to start talking until we hear her car start up in the parking lot. Once we made the mistake of speaking when we heard the front office door open, only to discover her still standing in the reception area when we left for lunch.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Faith says on a sigh when I raise an eyebrow at her. “She’s trustworthy. For the most part. She’d never betray confidences. She just likes to listen to the details of other people’s lives. I think she’s been lonely since Roger left her.”
“Does she spread what she hears?”
Faith shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I know I can trust her about work stuff. Confidentiality is sort of required in a law office, but I’m not so sure about personal stuff. I don’t think she has any friends. All she ever talks about is her dog. But you need to quit wasting time. I’m not spending my lunch hour talking about Pauline.”
“Speaking of people who want in on the gossip,” I mutter.
Faith leans further across her desk, a conspiratorial look in her eyes. “Tell me all the gossip.”
There isn’t much I don’t share with my best friend. If anything, I usually get a little too descriptive about my adventures, and Faith has to tell me that I’m sharing too much, but there’s a certain level of shame, not something I feel very often, about spending a night with a man who doesn’t even remember it.
I spent way too long scrutinizing myself in the mirror after getting home yesterday, trying to determine whether anything drastic had changed about me over the last several months, something that would make me appear different to the man. That led me to ordering way too many new face creams due to the three new wrinkles I noticed at the corners of my eyes.
Faith leans back in her chair, hands splayed out on the desk in front of her. “Maybe I don’t want to know the details.”
I shake my head.
“I don’t? Did you hook up with another of the Cerberus guys?”
I scoff. “No.”
“Did you hook up with Spade again?”
I somehow manage not to growl at my best friend, but considering how astute she is, she easily recognizes my irritation.
“Did he shoot you down?” She shakes her head as if she feels sorry for me. “You know most of those guys don’t really do repeats.”
I’m well aware of this. I’ve heard the stories, witnessed firsthand women at Jake’s thinking they were a shoo-in for another night just because they were allowed into the clubhouse once.
“If you flirted with him and—”
“He didn’t even remember me,” I mumble, shame heating my cheeks.
One night of fun is no big deal, but being forgotten is a certain kind of hell I’ve never felt before. I didn’t feel used that night. I was as active a participant as he was. I didn’t even feel ashamed when he called me babe the next morning, making it abundantly clear he didn’t know my name.
Being forgotten completely? That’s a knife to the chest.
“Did you even tell him your name?”
I shake my head. “Not my name. Me. He didn’t even remember we were together.”
Faith’s eyes dart away, and I know that’s her tell, the way she acts when she knows more but doesn’t want to say anything.
“What?”
She shakes her head.
“What, Faith?”
She seems a little sad when she looks back at me, and a layer of trepidation coats my already wounded spirit.
“I overheard some of them giving Spade a hard time, but I didn’t know it was about you.”
Dread swims in my stomach. “What were they saying?”
“It isn’t important.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugs, giving me a weak smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I heard one of the guys giving him a hard time for striking out. I didn’t think you’d turn him down if he hit on you, so I stopped listening because it didn’t really concern me.”
It’s my turn to look away. How fucking humiliating.
“The Cerberus guys are gossiping about me?”
“The conversation was between Aro, Ugly, and Spade.”
“What about Boomer?”
“Boomer doesn’t get in the middle of stuff like that. I hardly see him around the clubhouse, and when I do, he doesn’t get involved in conversations like that unless it’s to voice his opinion when one of the other guys is taking things a little too far for his liking.”
“Boomer seems like a good guy,” I say absently, reeling from the fact that grown-ass men are gossiping like cackling old hens.
“They’re all good guys,” Faith says. “But before you snap back at me about Spade, it’s incredibly shitty that he doesn’t remember you.”
I swallow thickly, more upset that I’m letting his lack of memory bother me than anything else. I’m a confident woman. I had an incredible night with him. It was what I wanted. I didn’t see it as an opportunity to get something started with the man, although until I realized he didn’t remember me, I might have revisited that night with him on more than one occasion. But that’s about great sex, not about seeing myself as a permanent fixture at the Cerberus clubhouse.