Page 58 of Chasing the Other Woman

Everyone in The Funnel Cloud is waiting for the answer, despite trying to appear as if they're invested in anything else. The surface of a bar top. The selection on the jukebox. The blinking beer sign behind the bar.

Sam stands a few feet away, waiting for an answer. Her hair is falling from its knot, her left hand is bare, and she looks achingly beautiful.

I feel the ring in my pocket as if it's burned through the denim.

“Not here,” I say.

Her face tightens.

“Please,” I add. “Somewhere quieter. I’ll tell you everything.”

For a second, I think she’ll refuse. I deserve it if she does. Then she turns without a word and walks toward the back hallway.

I follow her past stacked cases of bottled water, boxes of donated granola bars, and a clipboard hanging from a nail beside the office door. The room Petra calls an office is barely bigger than a storage closet.

Sam closes the door behind us, apparently no more interested in sharing the details of her life with the bar than I am.

She folds her arms. “Talk.”

I drag a hand over my mouth. My knuckles are still scraped from Tony’s face. That seems almost laughable now.

“Tony was involved in some sort of ill-conceived scheme with Luci.”

Sam doesn’t move.

“He helped her make things look like they weren’t what they were,” I say. “The texts he sent you. The coffee. The comments. Standing too close when he knew I could see. None of it was accidental.”

Her eyes flicker, but she stays silent.

“He said Luci wanted him to make it look like there might be something between you two. Harmless enough that you wouldn’t notice. Familiar enough that I would.” My throat works around the words. “At the same time, they were choosing clips and posts that made it look like Luci and I were getting closer. Like she was the one beside me. Like she belonged there.”

Sam’s arms tighten across her chest. “The social posts.”

“Yeah.”

“The comments online.”

“Yeah.”

“The clinic?”

I close my eyes for half a second.

“No,” I say. “That was me.”

Her breath catches so quietly I almost miss it.

“Tony and Luci set the stage,” I say. “But I was the one standing on it.”

Sam looks down at the floor.

Then she asks the question I’ve been waiting for since Tony opened his mouth outside that motel room.

“Did you believe it?”

My first instinct is still to reach for anything that would make it sound better. Any wording that might blunt the blade before I hand it to her.

But she's had enough of me trying to move around the truth.