“I freaked out because showing the letter to Mathias meant outing you, but if I didn’t show it to Mathias, we couldn’t help you.”
I sighed anoh,dragging it out for a moment. “Why did Gulliver freak?”
She motioned at the air with her hands, her shoulders hunched. “Because someone was blackmailing you for the formula. His best friend and his employee were both in jeopardy. The I’ve-always-loved-you part didn’t cross his mind until he saw you together.”
“Stupid,” I groaned on a grimace. “Just plain stupid is what that was. I honestly thought I was going to die.”
She tapped the scar on my arm pointedly. “I would have too. They’d already broken your arm. It wasn’t a stretch to think they’d take you out if you didn’t give them what they wanted. I’m a woman, and I understand why you did it. That night I was shot, and I woke up to find him protecting you,” she said, motioning to her leg, and I nodded. “The look on his face when he held you wasn’t one a friend wears when concerned for another friend. That’s the only way I can explain it. Mathias changed on a dime that night.”
“Changed?”
“Yeah, like suddenly there were no more lavish parties, dinner cruises, sleeping with beautiful women, snapping up business after business kind of change. It just ended the moment that letter came to light.”
“Mathias swears he hasn’t slept with anyone in a year.”
Her brow went up and then down in some strange spider dance of confusion. “This is according to Mathias himself?”
“Yep,” I said slowly.
“According to his Instagram, he might be lying.”
“I stopped checking his social media pages a long time ago,” I admitted. “I couldn’t handle the images anymore. I suppose it’s filled with skinny, gorgeous blondes.”
“And brunettes.”
“Is he kissing them?” I asked on a heavy sigh.
She pulled out her phone and opened an app, pecking around on it like a chicken looking for feed. When she turned the phone to show me Mathias’s Instagram page, it was filled with him partying or dining with a different woman by his side every time. I took the phone from her hand and started opening each picture. “Look, though,” I said, pointing at the images while I flipped through them. “There are always women around him, but he’s never touching them or indicating he’s actually with them.” I sucked in a breath when I got to the last three. “He hasn’t put anything up since last July, and then look.” I flipped the phone so she could see the last three images.
She took the phone back and stared at it. “You on the Fourth of July, you and him at Christmas, and a picture of the house. Weird. Okay, even I’m a little freaked out now.”
She put the phone back in her pocket as I laughed. “Why?”
“Suddenly all I can see is the look he wore that night in our apartment. Now it makes sense.”
“Your cryptic sentences are killing me, Charity.”
“I wish I could explain it,” she admitted. “I can’t, though. The closest I can get is to say he’s an alpha male marking his territory every time he glances in your direction.”
“Mathias kissed me.” I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and let out the breath I was holding. The weight of it was too much to keep to myself. I could trust Charity, and I needed someone to talk to about everything that was going on.
“What?” she asked, her voice high and squeaky. Her hands were at her lips, and her eyes were bugging out. “Like kissed-kissed or friend-kissed?”
My chest rumbled with a half-laugh, half-moan sound. “Definitely a kiss-kiss with lots and lots of tongue. I don’t have a lot of experience with men, but I don’t think friends normally kiss that way.”
Her hands went into her hair. “Good gravy, girl. You’re just mentioning this now?” She was attempting to be quiet, but it wasn’t working. “Were you drunk?”
I shook my head slightly. “Stone-cold sober.”
“Did you initiate it?”
I started to giggle, hysterically, until she had to smack me on the back a couple of times to get me breathing again. When I gathered myself, she gave me the spill-it look.
“I didn’t initiate it. I don’t initiate anything. You know this.” She grasped my hand in hers as if unity of girl power was a real thing. Maybe it was. I wouldn’t know. Up until I met Charity, I’d only had one close friend and he was a guy. “We were in the orchard, and he kissed me. I asked him why, and he said he was curious.” She grimaced, which got a nod from me, and I pointed at her face. “Exactly. Exactly. He saidIoverreacted by ditching him in the orchard and walking home.”
“Good Lord, men are so amazingly stupid sometimes. You don’t tell a woman you kissed her out of curiosity, even if you did.” She shook her head on a laugh of disbelief.
I gave her theseehands, my head turning right and left as if playing to an audience. “Which is what I said when he showed up here mad that I’d taken off.”
