I glared at her, ignoring her hand. The woman had her mouth on Sam a second ago and had the balls tosmileat me, and all he could do was scrub the lipstick from his palm like he was Lady fucking Macbeth.
Ugly silence settled over us as I glanced between them, but I wasn’t running away. Not yet.
“This is mygirlfriend,Tiel,” Sam finally said, stammering as he attempted to pretend this situation was really fucking innocent, and God, I wanted to believe there was an explanation. I’d always wondered whether Sam could handle monogamy, and even though the answer was staring me in the face at this moment, I wanted it to be a mistake. I wanted to believe the past three months weren’t a figment of my imagination, but the way they looked at each other was too familiar to ignore. “It’s not what you think.”
Right. Sam—with all his personal space issues and unwillingness to touch a fucking salt shaker without first dipping it in bleach—was kissing a random chick and it wasn’t what I thought.
“I had no idea you were seeing someone!” She made a show of looking horrified, maybe a little embarrassed, and it would have helped if she didn’t then whack Sam on the elbow. She needed to keep her fucking hands to herself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Of course you didn’t,” I said.
“This is all my fault,” she said, waving frantically. “Sam didnothingwrong. Seriously, Tiel, this was all me.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. My entire body was shaking with a torrent of rage and hurt and confusion, and I was a breath away from losing it.
“Erroneous, Gigi,” Riley said as he came up behind me. “It’s always Sam’s fault. He’s the master of weaseling out of things.” He paused, glancing between me, Sam, and that bitch. To her credit, she had backed away from Sam and was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Uh, what is the crime in question?”
“Tiel, I am so, so,sosorry,” she said. She stepped toward me, her hands spread in front of her, pleading. “Honestly, this is on me and I might actually die from humiliation now.”
I pointed at Sam. “Can I speak to you outside?”
“We should let the grown-ups have a little chitchat, Gigi,” Riley murmured. He brought his hands to her shoulders and steered her away.
I didn’t wait for Sam’s response, instead turning on my heel and storming through the restaurant. I burst through the door, sending it snapping back and clattering against the restaurant’s front window.
“Goddamn it, Tiel, stop,” he yelled. “Just stop.”
He stepped in front of me, his hand on my elbow, and I promptly shook it off. “Don’t,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell meeverything,and please do not lie to me.”
He sighed, shaking his head and gesturing frantically until the words sputtered out. “Tiel, I’m sorry, sweetheart. She’s a friend and colleague, and I was congratulating her on a magazine feature, and she got the wrong idea. That’s all.” He dragged his hands through his hair, and he was all the way desperate. “Just a misunderstanding.”
There was always a simple, pretty explanation.
“If it was such a misunderstanding, why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you say, ‘Hey lady, get your tongue out of my mouth’?” I could buy that argument if I hadn’t stood there, staring at them kissing while full seconds ticked by.
“I just . . . I don’t know. I fucked up. I didn’t realize she was into me, and I thought Riley was going to handle it. They started hanging out and going to football games together and it seemed like she was over it, but—”
“Wait,” I interrupted, holding my hands up for silence. I couldn’t keep up with this ridiculous story. “Wait. How long has this been going on with her?”
“We’ve been working on the Turlan project since October,” he said. “Butnothingis going on. Nothing happened.”
All this time.
I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid, so fucking foolish. This was Sam after all, the man who made no illusions about what he wanted from a woman, the man who once told me that love and forever were nonexistent, bullshit notions.
That was probably the only true thing he’d ever said.
“Sam,” I sighed, his name falling from my lips in a low sob.
I didn’t know how else to explain that this wasdestroyingme but there had to be something. I looked around, desperate to find the answer in the shop windows, the street, the curious eyes watching us from inside the restaurant, but my search turned up empty. There was nothing to stop the fracture growing between us, nowhere to hold on.
“But you didn’t tell her about me. You didn’t mention that you were seeing someone. I didn’t matter enough—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I fucked up and I’m so sorry, but please, let’s go inside, you’re freezing—”
“I’m not pregnant. Just so you know. That’s why you’re putting on this concerned act, I get that, and you can stop now.”
His face fell, the hard lines of frustration dissolving, and he murmured a soft “Oh.”
