Molly nods and does as she was asked, and when the door clicks closed, my sister and I are left sitting on the floor, face to face in nothing but the light from the street lamps outside the window.
“Rich and Sabrina left,” she says softly. “Mom asked Rich to leave, and Sabrina threw a fit and went with him.”
I take a breath, trying to imagine my mom, who loves Rich so much, asking him to leave her daughter’s wedding.
“I will always choose you.”
I should have given her more credit.
I swallow. “Saanvi, I’m so sorry about all of this. I ruined your wedding day.”
“To be fair, Sabrina’s the one who gave the drunken revenge speech.” She smiles, actually smiles at me, as if she’s more worried about cheering me up than the mess my drama made of her special day. “Did Carter leave?”
I nod. I’m shaking. “He didn’t let me explain.” I swallow. “And I’m afraid that even if I make him listen, he still won’t want me.”
“Explain to me.” She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes hard. “Tell me everything.”
I take a deep breath, and for the first time, I tell someone the whole story.
Carter
Teagan: Are you home?
Me: Yeah.
Teagan: Will you let me in?
I stare at my phone for a long time before heading to the door to unlock it. It’s after midnight, and Teagan is at my house. I almost don’t trust myself. I’m afraid I’ll say fuck everything and pull her into my arms before either of us knows if that’s really what’s best. Just because it’s what I want right now doesn’t mean it’s what I need.
When I pull open the door, my breath hitches at the sight of her in the soft glow of my porch light. She’s changed out of her bridesmaid dress and into a pair of jeans and a Jackson Brews T-shirt. Her face is scrubbed free of makeup, and her hair is tied into a sloppy bun on top of her head.
And she looks so fucking beautiful like this—so much like the woman I’ve been falling for slowly over the last four years that I’m not sure I do have the willpower to keep my distance.
“I know I’m the last person you want to see right now,” she says. She’s so wrong about that. She’s the only person I want to see right now. “But you accused me of lying to you, so now you have to listen.”
I close my eyes for a beat, then pull the door wide. “Come on in.”
“I was in love with Heath. Desperately in love with him.” She crosses into the living room and stares out the window. I hate how hard I have to fight the instinct to hold her. I want to tell her it doesn’t matter. I want to beg her not to say a word and to forget about everything so we can be together. But I know I’ll hate myself later. And our relationship would be doomed from the start. “I would’ve done anything for him. We say that about people we love like it’s a good thing—as if ignoring our own instincts and fears is commendable. I thought it was. I thought it proved how much I loved him. I didn’t understand that giving him that kind of control over me would be the end of us.”
I sit on the couch, needing the distance. I’m not sure what to say, but she seems content to carry on without my input.
“We told each other everything. Our secrets, our hopes and dreams, and our fantasies. I told you he was a bit of a player before we got together, and one of his days of the week, as I called them, was Sabrina. We’d been living together a couple of months when Heath came home late and confessed he’d gotten a blow job from her. A relapse, he called it.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if she has to fight to keep the memory from taking her under. “He had the perfect solution, though, so it was going to be fine.”
“A solution?” Sounds like a load of shit to me.
“If I slept with someone else, we’d be even and could start over.”
I sit back. “What? That’s insane.”
She laughs, low and a little jaded. “I know, right? I told him that would only be throwing gas on the fire. It would make things worse, but he said he’d be there, he’d be part of it, and it would be good—for both of us. I thought he was nuts, but he pushed for weeks. Eventually, he admitted it wasn’t about evening the score between us. He was turned on by the idea of sharing me with someone—of watching me with another man.”
I swallow. I know some guys are into that, but I’ve never understood it. Maybe it’s unenlightened or some base caveman instinct to possess, to claim a woman as my own, but when I have Teagan in my arms, there’s not a single cell in my body that wants to share her with anyone else. But if they were both into it . . . “Did you like the idea?”