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The text from Maddie flashes on my phone. She doesn't addfor phone sex, please, but we both know the ask.
This is our routine. Once or twice a week, one of us sends a request. The other calls or reschedules.
Mine are more to the point—do you want to come for me?—but they're no different, really.
We both know better.
This is over.
There's no reason to hold on.
This is too intimate. This is fucked up. This is a bad decision on top of a bad decision.
But that only makes it more appealing.
In every other area of my life, I do the smart thing every single time. For my entire life, I've done the smart thing every time.
As a kid, I did my homework after school. I went to jujitsu practice twice a week. I studied for every test well before the night before.
I carried that through college, law school, the first three years of practice. Responsibilities, first. School, first. Then work, first. Family trumps all of that, of course. If Mom or Dad or Cass, or even Laurel or Zack, need me, I'm there.
That's what a good man does. That's the right way to behave. And now I'm close to everything I want, everything I've been working for—
A partnership at the firm.
The success and recognition I need. Enough security to set up my entire future. Money to pay off the house, finance my wife's dreams, fill a college fund for my kids.
Only I'm no closer to any of those things.
Every relationship ends the same way.
You're such a great guy, Jackson. Responsible and kind. A caretaker. You'll make a great father and husband one day. For someone else.
We make perfect sense on paper, but it just doesn't work.
I don't love her, and she—
Well, that isn't true. A lot of the women say they love me. But I can never say it back. I can never find the words.
Why are we so devoted to this abstract idea anyway? Where does following our heart get us?
To pain and chaos and turmoil.
Better to do what makes sense—
But I don't. Not right now.
I don't sayno, I can't. I don't do the smart thing and protect both our hearts. Sex is the one place I give into my desires. Even when they don't make sense. Even when they're dirty or twisted or wrong.
And talking my ex-girlfriend off twenty minutes before my family arrives to carpool to Las Vegas—
That's fucked up in a sexy as fuck sort of way.
She sends a picture of her white shirt, unbuttoned to show off her mesh bra. It's sheer enough I can see her nipples.
Can people see them through the shirt?
She wouldn't wear this out. Only to toy with me.
