He rounds the couch and sits again, this time leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “They’re going to test her,” he says, all trace of humor gone. “Your parents. They’re going to test you, too. You can’t pass the test by hiding her from it. All you can do is bring her into the room and bluff your way through.”
I drain my second whiskey. “What if she hates me when she sees how fucked up it is?”
Dominic grins. “Then she wasn’t the right one, and you save yourself some drama. But I don’t think that’s what’ll happen.”
“Why?”
He shrugs as if it’s obvious. “Because you love her like a motherfucker, and people feel that shit, even if it’s in the middle of an emotional abattoir.”
Love. The word sits there, obvious and terrifying. I haven’t said it to her. Haven’t let myself think in those terms. But Dominic just drops it into the conversation like it’s a given, like everyone can see it except me.
Maybe everyone can.
He refills my glass and clinks it against mine. “Audrey’s a grown woman with a titanium backbone. She’ll be fine. If anything, by the end of the night, your parents will probably be scared of her.”
I snort, whiskey burning my sinuses. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it?”
“It sure would.” We clink glasses and lapse into a comfortable silence, broken only by the clink of ice and the distant hum of the city coming through the steel-framed windows.
“I heard you went to see David a while back,” Dominic says carefully. “Before you and Audrey got together.”
I go still. “Who told you that?”
“Bennett.”
“How’d he know?”
“David told Caleb, Caleb told Bennett, Bennett told me.” He shrugs. “You know how it works. We’re like a bunch of gossiping grandmothers, except with better suits.”
“Great. So everyone knows I was a thirty-four-year-old virgin at the time. Fuck. Thanks, David.”
“What? Whoa. No one knew that. Just that you needed advice. The details stayed private.”
My ears burn.Fuck.
Dominic swirls his whiskey, watching the light catch the liquid. “It’s all good. I’m not here to give you shit about it—I never have. But I get why you went to him. David’s been through the wringer—marriage, divorce, kid, the whole catastrophe. He’s got perspective I don’t have.”
“Dom—”
“But I gotta be honest with you.” He looks up, and there’s something unguarded in his expression that I rarely see. “It stung a little. That you didn’t come to me.”
“It wasn’t about you. It was about—” I stop, not sure how to explain without explaining everything.
“About the fact that you’d never even kissed a girl before?”
I stare at him, glass frozen halfway to my mouth.
“You know something?” he says, almost gently. “I always knew. Or at least, I figured.”
“How?”
“Logan, we’ve been best friends since college. I’ve seen you turn down more women than I can count. You’ve never once left a bar with anyone, never mentioned a girlfriend, never had anyone stay over. And you’re not the type to pay for it on the side—you’d find that transactional and weird.” He shrugs. “And I know you’re not gay. So… I did the math. The odds pointed to V-card. Then when you did the hand block thing with Audrey, well, that told me you’ve never kissed a girl, either.”
I don’t know what to say. All these years of carefully guarding that secret. Convinced that if anyone found out, they’d see me differently—as broken, as defective, as less than. And he just… knew. This whole time.
And he’s still here. Still my best friend. Still looking at me like nothing’s changed.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
