“Because it happened.”
She shook her head. “I just thought…”
“You’re a liar. Most of all to yourself, Samantha Parker.”
She felt like he’d gone and bodily thrown her off the back of the bull himself.
“I… I’m not. I… What I was—am—is a married woman, Logan, and I had a moment of insanity. I had a moment of it, and I didn’t do anything. You… Maybe you misunderstood.”
“Oh, that is bullshit. We both know I didn’tmisunderstandanything. We both know you wanted me.”
“Themisunderstandingwas in the fact that I wasn’t prepared to cheat on my husband. I wastempted, but I didn’t do anything. Even Jesus was tempted. Isn’t that what they always say in church? Temptation isn’t the sin, it’s what you do about it, and I walked away. I think you would have too.”
“Do you? I guess we don’t have a way of knowing that for sure.”
“He’s your best friend.”
“And you’reyou.” He said it with such ferocity. Such conviction. Like she mattered.
“Logan…”
“Samantha. For the love of God. I don’t need you to kiss me. I don’t need you to… I just need you to stop lying. Toyourselfif not to me.”
Panic fluttered in her chest like a trapped bird. “What good does it do?”
She couldn’t say why it scared her so much except it felt like she was holding something back. A wall of understanding. She didn’t want it to give. She didn’t think she wanted to know more.
There was already too much. Life had already changed too much.
It was the ridiculousness of what he’d said earlier that stuck there.
The one you had, or the one you pretend you have?
“I don’t care if it’s good, bad or indifferent, it’s the truth. I don’t understand how you think you’re going to spend this summer away from Will, and go back to a marriage where neither of you knows the other, and it’s just fine.”
“I know him,” she said.
She knew it was a lie, because she’d have never said her husband would ask for an open relationship, and she frankly still didn’t know why he had.
He talked about new experiences and freedom. But why? What did it mean to him? Why was sex freedom?
He doesn’t know you want his best friend.
I do not want him. I almost kissed him once. I am not immune to his good looks, but what woman is?
“Sam,” Logan bit out.
“Fine. I don’t know him. Not how I thought I did. He doesn’t know everything about me, and I don’t know how… I don’t know how the hell you’re supposed to have a happy, smooth relationship and share everything. Like, I was supposed to go to him and say, ‘Will, so I think I maybe almost kissed Logan’?”
“You could have talked to me about it.”
“You aren’t my husband.”
“I’m clear on that.”
She felt enraged and small. She wanted to curl into the nearest alcove and disappear into a ball of frightened outrage. But given that wasn’t possible, and he was her ride, she had to have the conversation.
Or get an Uber.
