It’s not like that.
My phone was on its way back into my pocket when it started to vibrate again, this time the incessant hum of an incoming call, not a text message. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know it was her. I didn’t need to lie to myself about how badly I wanted to answer either.
“I can’t do it,” I said instead of hello. “I won’t.”
“It’s not like that,” she said quickly, and fuck, how had I forgotten how much her voice felt like silk. I closed my eyes and banged my head against the wall, wondering if a concussion would be enough to wipe the gnawing want from me. This need to have everything and to have it all at once.
If I’d learned anything from Neil and Annette, besides what a horrible idea it was to fuck a married couple who hated each other, it was that Ilikedthe idea of having two partners. I liked men and I liked women, and Ireallyliked being able to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe it was because I’d grown up attention starved—something probably better discussed with a therapist—but when things had been good with them…fuck, it had been so good.
“What is it like, then?” I asked, against all my better judgment.
“Can we FaceTime or something?”
Groaning, I pulled the phone away from my face and pressed the video button. The screen flashed to life, Sophie’s gorgeous green bedroom behind her, her hair loose from the bun she’d worn the day I met her. Unfairly enough, she looked evenprettier, sitting there on her bed with a silk blouse on and the remnants of lipstick on her mouth.
“What?” I asked.
Her brows scrunched together and she huffed out a breath. “Where are you?”
“I’m in an alley behind a restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m getting dinner with my brothers, and one of them was annoying me and I needed some air.”
A soft smile flickered across her face. “I have good timing.”
“Or not. Since you’re on your way to marriage.”
“Finn,” she said my name with a gentle kind of correction that stirred something uncomfortably deep inside of me. My heart was still in my stomach, battering its way around, desperate for something that may or may not have been an escape.
“Sophie.”
A real smile, and my throat went dry.
“I am engaged,” she said, holding her left hand up and flashing a nice sized ring that would have made any woman jealous.
“Then what are we doing?”
“I’ve…we’ve…” She glanced off camera. “We have an open relationship.”
Fuck, I sure knew how to pick them.
“Open how?”
“That’s the thing. We’re still trying to figure that out.”
“Yeah, no.” I frowned and shook my head, wondering what the odds were of a freak electrical storm passing over and sending a bolt of lightning that would take me out of this miserable world once and for all. “I’ve done that before. Not looking to do it again.”
“Done what before?”
“Been a test run.”
“That’s…that’s not what I meant.”
I should have just hung up the phone. Instead I asked her, “What did you mean?”
“We’re open,” she repeated. “We’ve been open. For nearly a decade.”