Page 41 of Floodgates

“I let myself be seduced.”

“Isn’t that what happened with Sean?”

He shook his head. “No. Sean… you know…. We’d been flirting for a year, just fun, didn’t mean anything until that day. But we had a history.”

Good to know.

“But with Celia—it just happened. Like I said, for once I let someone pick me up.”

“Meaning that you’re approached often and lots of people try to get you into bed,” I concluded.

“You know it’s true.”

I did. He was eye candy. Both men and women always looked at him. “Go on.”

“She was different and I was drunk.”

“You’ve been drunk before.”

“She was different, then.”

“A surgeon, right?”

“Cord?” he asked, wanting to know how I knew.

“Of course Cord,” I told him. “So she’s a surgeon and really smart like you.”

“Like me,” he echoed, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the palm of his hand. “Yeah, I’m fucking brilliant all right.”

It was funny to think that I had been defending his brain to Eric the night before. “So she comes on to you, and you, what, ended up going with her to her room?”

“No,” he sighed, letting out a deep breath. “We talked for hours. We closed the bar.”

“Really,” I murmured. “Those are the best kinds of talks.”

“Tracy, it wasn’t like—”

“What did you talk about?” I interrupted, ignoring him completely.

“I don’t remember,” he said, seeming to dismiss the idea that it was important enough to recall. “I just know that after that, she suggested we continue our conversation in her room.”

“Oh,” I breathed. “I see. What then?”

His gaze flicked to mine, and I saw the misery there and felt how acute it was. “Is this really necessary?”

“Oh yes,” I replied, my voice sounding half-strangled. “It is.”

His sigh was deep. He looked exhausted. “We were in the room, and we were sitting on her bed….” He trailed off, watching me, and I saw him deflate suddenly, the look in his eyes, the expression, pleading for me to stop. But I had to hear it all. “And then she said I was the most beautiful man she had ever seen,” he finished solemnly.

“As I’m sure you were and still are.” I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. Once I could breathe I prodded him to finish.

He squeezed the chair back, turning his knuckles white for a moment. “I remember laughing, and she leaned over and kissed me, and I didn’t stop her.”

I couldn’t speak. I could barely continue to look at him.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” he told me, emphasizing the word “sleep.” “I left as soon as it was finished.”

Meaning he had not held her next to his heart as he did me. He had not snuggled her up tight against his chest; she had not slept in the crook of his neck. He had not woken with her tangled around him.