The Favor

I’d never heard of it.

I brought up an online search engine on my cell and typed in the name of the club. I scanned the list of results that then came up, finding a club of that name based in Redwater City. A sex club. It was a fucking sex club.

The urge to send the computer crashing to the floor was so strong I had to back away from the desk. Breathing hard, I rubbed at my aching chest. Really, I could be getting wound up over nothing, couldn’t I? These could easily be old photos.

Grasping that thought hard, I checked the meta data of each picture. Allegedly, they were taken in the last month. But that info could be faked, right? Maybe. I didn’t know enough about meta data to be sure.

When would he have a chance to sneak around with other women anyway? He was busy all the time, going to meeting after meeting.

And, up until a week ago, spending many of his evenings alone at o-Verve. And then there were those external dinner meetings that had run late.

My blood ran cold. What if he hadn’t truly spent so many evenings at o-Verve, and what if those meetings hadn’t truly run so late? What if he’d been going to see her? The brunette. Or what if he’d been indulging himself at the club?

Grabbing the planner, I checked the dates on the photos alongside the dates on his schedule. My stomach sank. He had indeed had external dinner meetings on the evenings he’d—if the photos were to be believed—been visiting the brunette.

There’d been no scheduled meeting on the evening he was supposedly at the sex club, though. Closing my eyes, I thought back to that day; remembered how Dane had curtly turned down my offer to share a pizza with him; remembered how he’d claimed he needed to return to o-Verve and would eat there. And if the photos were dated correctly, he’d fucking lied.

Even as it hurt to do it, I flipped through the pictures again, as if I might somehow see something that would convince me I was being played by whoever was holding the camera. They might have put the flash drive in a jewelry box as if the info was a gift to me, but they’d done it with the intent of hurting me enough to make me walk away from Dane.

I took a closer look at each of the images, trying to read the expressions on his face. No matter how close he stood to the brunette, he never looked turned-on or like a man who was anticipating sex. But he was touching her.

It was possible that these pictures were taken before I began “dating” Dane; that the meta data had somehow been tampered with.

My instincts were pricking at me, telling me I was missing something. Something small and obvious—

The tie. The tie he was wearing on the first three photos was new. The personal shopper brought it to his house on the very same day she brought me a bunch of new clothes to replace the ones that had been stolen. Which meant that the first three pictures couldn’t be old, and so the others probably weren’t either.

God, I was going to be sick.

The bastard. The lying, deceitful, horrible bastard.

We weren’t a true couple, so he hadn’t exactly cheated on me. But it felt like a betrayal. Emotional betrayal, more than anything else, because he’d lied to me … and I’d believed him. He’d said we’d both need to take a vow of celibacy until after the divorce. Either he’d only ever intended for that to apply to me, or he’d been unable to last and so he’d sought pleasure elsewhere—like from his sub.

Jealousy speared me so hard it hurt. More, it pierced right through the lies I’d told myself. I wasn’t close to crossing an emotional line with him. I’d already done it. I’d grown to care for this man who’d never feel the same way for me. And he’d played me like a cheap harmonica.

Did he really have so little respect for me? Apparently so. Because he had no qualms with repaying my loyalty to him—a loyalty I didn’t actually owe him, given that the marriage wasn’t real—by sneaking around with other women and making a fool of me.

It was really a good thing he wasn’t in his office or I’d have stormed in there and fucked his shit up. I didn’t want to do this at o-Verve. Others might overhear, and I didn’t fancy sharing with everyone else just how stupid I’d been. It was goddamn embarrassing to think that he’d had me so fooled.

I should have known better than to buy into his bullshit. I’d known he was a master at deception. I’d known he played people well. I’d been dumb to assume he wouldn’t deceive me in such a way. The devil always lied, didn’t he?