“Oh,” he feigned surprise, finally letting me go. “I guess he was right then,” he called after me. “Sawyer told me never to tell you.”
I stopped in my tracks, wondering when my heart had begun to pound. Hating myself for the satisfaction I was providing, I turned back to face Dane. “What about Sawyer?” I asked reluctantly, my pride aching. Dane’s face was so smug now that I felt my fingers actually twitch with the need to slap it.
“Fuck, Lara. He’s gonna kill me, but I have to say it,” he said with a grin, his expression barely trying to match the phony regret of his words. “I was with Sawyer awhile back – we met this group of Brazilian girls at a party and went back to their hotel at night, fucked them, yada yada.” Satisfaction twitched on his lips as he watched me wince. I didn’t want to hear this part of the story but it was every bit like Dane to force others to hear about his sex life. “Fuckin’ great night. Sawyer took the brunette, I had her friends. I think it was three of them, but I don’t – ”
“You can skip this part, Dane,” I said between my teeth. He had to be wasted. He was always disrespectful but never to this degree.
“Right, right. Fast-forward then.” Dane ran his thumb along his lower lip, savoring my curiosity before dropping whatever bombshell he had. “I fucked them, left their room – and guess which pretty little thing I saw in the hallway? Lyle and Sofie’s Winter’s daughter. Poor girl, they still haven’t found her. What’s her name again?”
My body went cold but my cheeks were aflame. “Gabrielle,” her name barely choked from my lips.
“Yes. Gabrielle. She was wearing this lacey black dress, ended right about here.” Dane reached to draw a line on my upper thigh. I pushed him away, my eyes stinging. I didn’t anyone to know about Jackson’s affair but if I could pick the last person I wanted to know about it, it would be Dane. “You wanna take a guess who I saw open the door for her?” he laughed, following me as I stormed past him.
“No, thank you,” I muttered bitterly, tears brimming my eyes as I tried to speed past him despite my heels. He kept up effortlessly.
“So you already know about their affair and you’re still marrying the guy,” Dane marveled. “Christ, and here I thought you couldn’t get better.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stormed down Park Avenue. The knot in my throat felt like I’d swallowed a ping-pong ball. Dane knew. Dane and Sawyer both. I had hoped to forget the affair like it never happened but as it turned out, there were still others in the city besides Jackson and myself – others who knew about the ugliest thing to ever unfold between us.
Dane pretended to offer comfort. “Hey, don’t cry. At least you know for sure that he isn’t still fucking her,” he snickered.
The dark joke twisted my stomach. “Please just go, Dane,” I exhaled, fighting the knot in my throat. I was sure he couldn’t say anything worse at that point.
“Fine, I’ll go.” Clucking with mock sympathy, Dane rubbed my back and kissed my cheek. “But I don’t want you to cry, sweetheart, so try to take comfort in the fact that this is yesterday’s news. No need to dwell on something that happened two fuckin’ years ago.”
Chapter Nine
Two years ago.
I had frozen on the sidewalk and watched Dane walk away as I processed his last few words.
The fight about Jackson’s smoking habit. The trip to Italy with Sloane. That was five months ago, when Jackson told me the affair first started. I’d thought the infidelity lasted only three nights in the downtown W. Three nights over the course of four months. It had taken every painstaking fiber of my being to forgive him for that short but shattering period of time. Jackson had been weak and I had been forced be strong. Strong enough to take him back and get past those terrible four months.
But now I knew the truth.
He had first slept with Gabrielle long before that. Almost two years ago. Had she even fucking been eighteen yet? For the second time, I was horrified, blindsided and betrayed by the man I loved.
In the dark of our bedroom, a near-empty bottle of Bordeaux on my nightstand, I stared at nothing. I had tried to convince myself that Dane was lying but then I thought about Sawyer. I remembered how he’d acted strangely in Ibiza, right before Jackson’s proposal. “I know a lot of things,” he had said, drunk and morose. “Things that you’d want to know.”
He was referring to Gabrielle – to that night with Dane two years ago.
My heart twisted as I thought about Sawyer forcing Dane to keep his mouth shut. It was for my sake. I was friendly with everyone in Jackson’s boys club but Sawyer was an actual friend to me. With both Jackson and Sloane prone to overdrinking at parties, he was my savior – my replacement date-slash-best-friend with whom to laugh and dance when everyone else was too drunk to get out of their seats anymore.
“Lara?”
The light flicked on and my dark gaze moved toward the door, where Jackson stood.
“Babe?” he frowned. “What are you doing?”
“You slept with Gabrielle two years ago.”
Jackson froze. “What are you talking about?”
“I ran into Dane McNulty on Park Ave today.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And he told me that he saw you at the W with Gabrielle Winter – two fucking years ago, Jackson,” I snarled, my voice reedy as I pulled the words out of my tight throat. I swallowed hard, furious with the remorse creasing Jackson’s brow. It was the same one as last time and I wanted something new. I wanted him to look broken, devastated, like me. “What the fuck, Jackson?” I ripped my body out of bed. “What do you have to say for yourself? You said it started with Gabrielle when I was in Italy with Sloane but that was this fucking February, Jackson, and now I’m hearing that you first fucked her two years ago?” I shoved him away when he came to me, so hard that he stumbled backward. “What the fuck was she, Jackson? Seventeen?”