He purred, bumped his head against my chin, and kept kneading.
I just chuckled and petted him. Eh, there were worse things than a purring cat’s claws.
Behind me, the sliding glass door opened wider, and I turned to see Jesse.
He peered through the gap and chuckled. “Ah, that’s where Chili went.” He rolled his eyes. “Traitor.”
I laughed softly, petting the fluffy black cat. “Not my fault he likes me better.”
Jesse scoffed. Then he sobered a little, and his expression turned… shy? Uneasy? It was hard to tell. Gesturing at the empty chair with a beer bottle I hadn’t noticed in his hand, he asked, “Do you, uh… Do you mind if I join you?”
My first instinct was to find a polite way to say I’d rather be alone. After today, that was all I wanted.
But Jesse was putting me up. And with him, I didn’t feel like I had to pretend to be stronger than I was.
I nodded at the other chair. “Not at all. Sit down.” I paused. “I, uh… I can’t promise I’m the best company right now.”
“That’s all right.” He came all the way out onto the balcony and eased into the other chair. Bringing the bottle up to his lips, he murmured, “I probably won’t be either.”
That was fair. Sometimes I had to stop and remind myself that Jesse had every reason to be heartbroken right now too. I’d been with Selena longer, and I’d been in the process of marrying her, but he’d obviously been invested in her too. The revelation that he was her sidepiece had hit him hard.
Hell, I couldn’t even imagine that. Not just realizing he’d been cheated on, but thathewas the affair partner. What did that do to someone? How did someone process being the other man to someone he’d thought was his partner?
Shit. And I thought having to cancel a wedding hurt.
I sipped my drink. “Do you mind if I ask about you and her?”
He winced, dropping his gaze to the bottle in his hands. After a moment, he turned to me and shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t want to pour salt in your wounds, though.”
“There is that.” I watched myself petting Chili, who had flopped down in my lap. “I don’t know if I’m feeling extra masochistic today, or if I’m just trying to get it all out of my system.”
Jesse grunted. “Eh. Sometimes you have to drag it all out and deal with it to get past it.”
I laughed humorlessly. “Is that why my previous ex was always trying to get me to talk about feelings?”
He turned to me with a halfhearted grin. “Yours too, huh?”
“Yep. He wanted couples counseling—the whole nine yards.”
Jesse’s eyebrows jumped. “Yeah? Did it help?”
I shrugged. “I mean, we ended up splitting up, obviously, but I think it helped us split up more peacefully. We went from screaming matches and cold shoulders to calmly spelling out why we weren’t good for each other.”
His lips quirked and he mirrored my shrug. “I can see that.”
“Made me a better partner, too, I think.” I huffed a dry laugh as I brought up my glass. “Lot of good that did me.”
“Probably did you plenty of good. Not your fault it was wasted on someone who treated you like shit.”
I held up my glass. He clinked his beer bottle against it. We both sipped, and we sat in silence for a moment.
After a while, he cautiously asked, “So… me and her. What do you want to know?”
I chewed my lip and gazed down at the cat in my lap. Where to even start? I didn’twantto know anything. At the same time, I thought it might help me put some of this to bed. Eventually. Or, hell, maybe I really was feeling masochistic, and the alcohol was soaking in enough to dissolve my filters and inhibitions, so why the fuck not?
Finally, I whispered, “How did you find out?” I looked at him. “About me?”
Jesse pushed out a long, harsh breath, and he watched himself thumbing the label on his beer bottle. “She asked me to fix something on her laptop. When I pulled up her browser to download a driver, one of the tabs that opened automatically was her Instagram. But it wasn’t an account I recognized.”
