CHAPTER ELEVEN
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
LEO
“ARE YOU FUCKING MYwife?” Adam asks, spinning from his closed office door to face me. His tone isn’t enraged like I’d expect it to be with such a rash accusation. It’s a firm ask. A man seeking information.
I’m under his roof, eating dinner at his table. I owe the man honesty. “The fact you have to ask me that question tells more than my answer does.” I throw myself down in a leather chair in the corner of the room and eye a bottle of booze sitting on his desk. I could go for multiple, stiff mother fucking drinks right now.
“That may be, but I’m still asking it.” Adam approaches and leans against his desk. “Are you?”
I widen my legs and lean over to place my elbows on them, steepling my fingers. “I’m not, man.” I shake my head. “I know what it looks like.” I know what I would think if my wife was spending time with a man like me. “We are just friends. We’ve always only been friends.” Adam hates that Kendall knows me from before. Before him. His face contorts with agony. Ah, so he wishes Iwasfucking her. He needs me to bethe reason. I can read him like a book. Average people can’t hide their feelings like I can.
He drags a hand through his hair and exhales. “I don’t understand it.”
Kendall wants to fuck me. I want to fuck Kendall. That’s a technicality I won’t broach, but it would help in his understanding—if I offered that information. He continues, “She is a different person when you’re around. It doesn’t make any sense at all. If I was a betting man, I’d have put it all on red that she was messing around with you.”
I lift and lower my shoulders. Nonchalant. I’m a man who isn’t a threat in the least. “Maybe she just needs our friendship. You sound like you wish she was having an affair.”
“I do. I fucking do. It’s an impossible situation to be in love with a person and also hate them at the same time.”
I chuckle. “Isn’t that marriage?”
He grimaces. I put up my palms. “Sorry. Sorry. Now isn’t the time for jokes.”
Adam groans. “I’m trying to be a good guy and she’s making it unbearable. She’s getting through the mass exodus of grief over the loss of the baby, or she says she is, but she’s still avoiding me, and is miserable when she’s not in your goddamn presence. How is that a friendship she needs? She doesn’t need friendship, she needs you.” He jabs a finger in my direction. My heart swells in an irrational way. It’s not every day the husband of the woman you love admits his wife loves you more. “You know her,” he adds. “The cat made her so ecstatic. You knew it.”
Just like I told him it would when I talked to him the first time. “It was a lucky suggestion,” I say.
“Bullshit. You know her.”
“I’ve known her in the past.”
Adam folds his arms across his chest. I stay seated, giving the illusion of him having control of this situation and conversation. “Do you feel anything for Kendall other than friendship? Honesty here. It’s important for what I need to ask of you next.”
I swallow hard. “Am I attracted to her? Is that what you want to know? Look at her. That’s a stupid question, dude. All men are attracted to her.” I hear Juliet and Kendall talking in the kitchen and try to speak louder so Adam doesn’t key in.
“You know what I’m asking. Looks aside. Do you have feelings for her?”
I meet his gaze dead on. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever envision having a conversation like this.”
“You think I did? That this is a fucking conversation I relish in? We’re talking about my wife. The woman who made vows to me.” Adam hikes a thumb at himself.
“When you put it that way,” I say, trailing off. “Just friends.” I scratch my head and internally wince at my lie.
“She’s in love with you, Callaway,” Adam says. “Not like ‘oh, I love you, you’re a great guy and would make a great husband and daddy.’ She looks at you like a savior. She loves you like she can’t live without you for another second. You have to see it, you’re not blind. The way she orbits around you. The way her posture changes when you merely look at her. I’d fathom a guess it’s been over since the moment she laid eyes on you back in Bronze Bay. This isn’t a love I can compete with. Not that I even want to try, but here the fuck I am stuck in a marriage with a ghost and her obsession.”
Fidgeting in my seat, I eye his booze again, avoiding his gaze. “What is it you want me to admit?” The awkward atmosphere ratchets up to an unbearable thickness. “That I’m in love with her?” I throw up my arms. “Sure. I am. But that doesn’t matter, because despite what you’ve heard, I live by a code of ethics and I’d never fuck around with a married woman no matter how long I’ve loved her. How I feel doesn’t matter in the least. She’s yours. I’m her friend. I have the ability to compartmentalize my feelings for her and give her friendship…and bury the rest.” What did I just admit to? My stomach knocks back and forth with my confession. I might actually be sick.
Adam hangs his head. “I fucking knew it. Thank you for telling me.”
“What does it change?”
He shakes his head. “It changes everything. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but I need her to come to her senses. I need for her to come to the realization herself. However that may happen.”
“What exactly are you saying? You can’t dangle me like a dog toy in front of her.”
He grins. It’s sad. “I won’t have to. She already loves you. You love her. It’s a matter of her realizing she doesn’t want me like she wants you. I don’t look like a bad guy in this mess if it happens organically.” He puts his hand on a stack of papers as a tortured look crosses his face. I’d fathom a guess what those papers are.
