Stitches

1

Sebastian

This is not how I wanted to end my work day.

This is not how I want to end any day.

I drag the little bar at the bottom of my computer screen backward and hit play one more time, filled to the brim with irritation and dread. I know I wasn’t mistaken. I know what I’m going to see; I just don’t know what the hell to do about it.

The grainy footage shows an attractive blonde woman standing in a hall, a random man pressed right up against her. She fists her hands in the fabric of his T-shirt and looks up at him, her eyes swimming with manufactured conflict—anything to raise the stakes and make the stolen moment more exciting. She wavers, grabs the back of his neck, and pulls him in for a kiss. The man wastes no time, palming her breast over the material of her slinky dress, then hiking her thigh up and pushing between her legs. She moans and tilts her head back, as if in ecstasy.

“We can’t,” she says. It’s so flimsy. It’s not an objection, really, it’s an invitation for him to show her how much he wants her, how nothing could possibly stop him from having her, even if only for a fleeting encounter.

Not even the $27,000 worth of commitment jewelry on her left hand.

Not even her husband.

Luckily, I am not that husband.

Unluckily, my best friend is.

I watch the screen for a another minute, just to verify my mind isn’t playing tricks on me—Ashley did, in fact, let another man fuck her in the hallway of the club her husband and I co-own together, knowing full-well we have security cameras on the place.

This is a fucking disaster.

This is going to crush him into a million tiny pieces that I’m going to have to sweep up.

Five years together and she pulls this shit. Cuckolds my best friend like an asshole. Personally, I never thought this bitch was right for him, but she could at least have the decency to appreciate her good fortune. Griff has gone out of his way for Ashley from the moment he met her—love at first sight, if such a thing ever existed—and she never seems to give anything back.

This isn’t even the first time I’ve had to deal with this shit. The first time was two years ago. She hooked up with a drunken customer after the place closed. I confronted her the next morning and she sobbed, told me it had been a mistake. Me, I don’t believe in that kind of mistake. In the five years I’ve been with Moira, I’ve had more than a few women try tempting me to fuck around on her. I’ve never considered it for a single second.

Ashley has now fucked around on Griff at least twice.

I never told him the first time. The knowledge would have crushed him, and if it was really a mistake—even if I don’t believe in that shit—I didn’t want to wreck his life over it. I also didn’t want to be the messenger who delivered that kind of news. I didn’t want to deal with the inevitable fallout.

But now here I sit, reliving the same fucking bullshit. If she’s put me here twice, she’ll put me here a third time; I’m gonna have to tell him.

The office door swings open, and Griff peeks his head inside. Sympathy hits me right in the gut. I hastily stop the video, closing the feed altogether and sitting forward. “You need something?”

Griff gives me a funny look, since I just acted a little like he walked in on me watching porn. “You done yet? We’re supposed to pick up the girls in less than an hour.”

Of course. Motherfucking date night. Our wives didn’t always get along—Ashley is jealous, hilariously enough, and my stunning wife attracts the gaze of any man in the room, married or not. Griff would never cheat, has never admitted to having any kind of attraction to Moira, but I know he does. It’s harmless, but it’s there. It’s not just the long raven locks that cascade down her creamy shoulders, drawing the eye to her magnificent breasts. It’s not her narrow waist and flared hips, or the magnificent ass on that woman. Moira’s got a good heart. She’d give you the shirt off her back, the shoes off her feet. She would open our front door to the sketchiest fucking vagrant and ask them in for a nice, hot shower and a warm meal. She loves and she loves, and she never asks for anything in return.

I shower her with everything, though. She deserves everything.

I’m the luckiest bastard in this city, maybe in the world.

And then there’s Griff, stuck with Ashley—this skank who can’t keep her legs closed despite being married to a man who would do literally anything for her.

Since Griff doesn’t know any of this, he cocks a golden brow and awaits my response.

“Yeah, just give me a minute.”