Twenty-Seven
Beck
The lock on the hotel room door whirred and Stella appeared in the doorway, grinning as if she’d been waiting to see me. Her expression hit me like a physical force, almost knocking me off my chair. It was like seeing me made her happy.
It felt fucking fantastic.
“How many defenseless little grouse did you murder today?” she asked as she kicked off her shoes. I put down my phone on the table to give her my full attention. Her hair was piled high on her head, and her face was free of make-up.
She looked beautiful.
“Funny. And you’d be proud.” I gestured her over with a nod of my head.
“I would?” When she was close enough, I grabbed her hand and pulled her between my thighs.
“I bonded with Henry. You have quite the fan there.”
She forked her fingers through my hair. “I do?”
“Yeah. He likes you a lot. Not Matt’s biggest fan from what I can tell.”
“Really? Well, that makes two of us.” She leaned against me as I rested my hands at the tops of her thighs.
“You sure about that?” I asked her. “If he dumped Karen and told you he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, what would you do?”
“Agree with him.”
“Would you take him back?” I asked. Stella had so much to offer—she didn’t need to waste that on an idiot who didn’t appreciate her.
“It’s never going to happen, so I don’t need to spend time and energy thinking about what-ifs.”
It was such an evasion—did she really not understand that she was worth more?
“You’d just go along with it?” I asked. Because that’s what Stella did. She went along with things to make other people happy, without really thinking about what she wanted.
“I’ve not given it much thought.” She paused. “But no.” She exhaled, her eyebrows pulling together as if she were deep in thought. “No, I don’t think I would. I’d always be waiting for it to happen again. And anyway, Matt’s not the man I thought he was. He’s . . . different. I mean, I was wrong about him. What he’s done is unforgivable, but . . .”
“There’s a ‘but’?” I asked. She couldn’t think that what he had done was justified.
“Yeah. There’s part of me—a very small part of me—that thinks it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. What if we had got married and then I’d found out he and Karen were sleeping together or that he didn’t love me the way I loved him. I don’t know if it’s being here at their wedding but, although it’s still painful, I believe things will get better for me. I’ll get to London and I’ll figure stuff out.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. I hoped I’d had a part to play in her believing the future held promise. I pulled her down onto my knee. Perhaps I’d show her how good things could be.
I slid my hand up her skirt. I was done talking about Matt. “How was the spa? What did they do to you?”
She squirmed as my hand dove between her thighs.
“Erm, I had a massage?”
“Who touched you? A girl or a guy?”
“A girl, why? Are you jealous?”
I nestled my finger underneath the lace of her knickers. “It depends,” I replied. “Did you have a happy ending?”
She threw her head back and laughed and I grinned—not at my question but at the glorious sound of Stella happy. It was indisputable that Matt was an idiot for cheating on her with her best friend. But what if I gave her up when we got back to London? What did that make me?
She gasped and grabbed my shoulder as my fingers delved into her. “No, you’re the only instigator of my orgasms this week.”