“Her best friend is unwell. She’s gone to look after her,” I explained in a stiff tone. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Nah, it’s just a quick check in. I’ve still got to pack and hopefully catch some shut eye tonight. It’s a shit departure time tomorrow morning. Thank fuck for first class, right?” He chuckled to himself. I took down two glasses and filled them with chilled water from the tap at the sink. I passed one to him.
“Not even first class can save you from air travel dehydration.”
He tilted his glass towards me in a cheeky toast, before taking a slug.
“You seem in good spirits. Did you sort everything out with the investor?” I asked before taking a sip and setting my glass down.
Atlas’s grin widened. “I’ve got my ‘talk him down off the ledge’ speech all sorted. I decided it was better to have the conversation face to face, you know?”
I tried to keep the disbelief off my face, but I must have failed because Atlas guffawed. “Ah, Chewy, I’m trying to put on my big boy pants here. At least pretend like you believe in me.”
I sipped my water rather than replying. Atlas watched me for several painful seconds, and then sighed.
“You managed to talk Irina out of Tickle, I see.”
I coughed as I sucked icy water halfway down my windpipe. Atlas watched me with amusement as I pounded on my chest until I was finally able to take a proper breath again.
“I did what?” I gasped, eyes watering.
Atlas cocked an eyebrow. “She disabled her Tickle account. I assumed it had been an ongoing discussion since I raised my concerns with you … did you not know?”
I schooled my features into passivity. “No, I knew,” I lied woodenly. “But I was shocked that you thought I’d had something to do with it. What Irina does with her Tickle account is totally her choice. I don’t discuss it with her.”
What had happened to make her shut it down? I had deliberately avoided her Tickle account since the night we’d slept together. The thought of watching her, after having had her, felt grossly inappropriate.
Nausea swirled in my stomach, and I longed to race into my bedroom, log into the back end of Tickle and work out when it had happened. To try and decipher what it meant.
But I couldn’t do that until Atlas left, or he would immediately gloat that he’d known before I did.
“How did you know?” I asked. “Do you keep tabs on my wife’s content?”
Atlas winked over the top of his water glass. “She’s very good atwhat she does. But you’d know that, wouldn’t you? You’re getting the front-row, hands-on experience.”
My stressed-out brain snapped. “That’s enough!”
Atlas’s smile froze. “I’m sorry?”
I snatched the glass from him, tipping the remaining water into the sink. “You are not welcome to come into my home and make remarks about my wife and our sex life.”
“Oh, so thereisa sex life? You finally fucked Cadence out of your system! Good work, bro!” He raised his hand in what I assumed was a request for a high five. I stared at him, mouth agape.
“You haven’t fucked her?” he asked, his hand dropping.
“What I do when I’m in bed with my wife is none of your business. You need to leave. You have a very early flight and lots of extremely important parties to get drunk at.”
I was being unfair, but everything he said struck such a nerve, and I was already on edge for so many reasons that I couldn’t stop myself.
Atlas’s eyes went steely, but he raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, I can see that I’ve hit a bit too close to home. My apologies, I thought we’d been friends long enough that engaging in a bit of locker-room banter wouldn’t be all that terrible. I forgot I was talking to Mr Prude.”
“I’ll see you out.” Lucian emerged at the bottom of the stairs, and I turned, finding his eyes locked on Atlas, mouth a hard line.
Atlas scoffed but headed for the stairs. “See ya, Chewy.”
As soon as their footsteps faded, I surged out of the kitchen, breathing hard as I headed for my computer. It took less than thirty seconds to get into the back end and scan through the activity on Ri’s account.
The date she’d turned it to private matched the last night she’d stayed with Kat. I frowned, scrubbing at my face. That next morning, she’d been very emotional and had asked to know how her visa application was going.
