Page 87 of Even Exchange

“I feel ridiculous…”

Trailing my fingertips along her arm, I ask, “Why?”

“I swore I wouldn’t care what he says anymore. But he talks shit one time, and I’m ready to throw up.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She scoffs. “What are you sorry for? I’m the one who forced you into all this. I should’ve asked you before pimping you out to be my fake boyfriend.”

Fake.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I say, and she shakes her head, her pretty brown eyes glistening. “Please, don’t cry.”

“I don’t want to, but I’m so angry.” She rubs a tear away. “What if he was right?”

Turning on my side, I face her, and she matches my position so we’re lying nose to nose. I tuck a dark strand of hair behind her ear and rest my palm on her neck. “You are perfectexactlythe way you are.” She sucks in a breath. “Don’t let your shithead ex, or anyone else for that matter, ever make you believe otherwise.” I rub my thumb along her jaw. “There’s nothing he said that could be right about you.”

“You don’t know that.” She presses her forehead to my chest. “Not about this.”

An uneasy feeling settles in my stomach. “What exactly is ‘this’?’” She lets out a heavy breath, and I take her chin between my fingers, tilting it up till her eyes meet mine. “You can tell me anything.”

She nibbles on her lower lip. “It’s embarrassing.”

“And you can still tell me. I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

She looks down at her hands, releasing a defeated sigh. “I’m not good at sex.”

She’s not… what?Anger floods my veins at how much he’s screwed up her self-esteem.

“I can’t—well, couldn’t—get Jonathan off unless he told me exactly what to do,” she continues. “And when I’d try my own things, he said it didn’t feel good.”

“Well, I imagine it’s hard to be confident when you’re constantly told you’re not any good.”

She nods. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

Their relationship was so much worse than I even realized.“Anything else?”

She twists her mouth. “He always said I was too vanilla.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to do more…” I clear my throat. “Erotic things in the bedroom.”

“But that’s the thing,” she says, looking at me. “He only said it when I didn’t want to be physical.”So he manipulated her to sleep with him.“Whenever I brought up anything even remotely kinky,he’sthe one who’d look at me like I had six heads. Or accuse me of needing role play to get off and that I wasn’t attracted to him.”

The thought of her dressed as a sexy professor slapping my ass with a ruler pops in my head, and I’m immediately hard.

Not the time.

“I’m so sorry he’s made you feel this way.”I’m also sorry I didn’t knock his ass out when I had the chance.

She shrugs. “I keep trying to reassure myself I’m not the problem, but I don’t really have any other data to go off of. Jonathan is the only person I’ve been with.”

Realization hits me. “Is that why you asked me to fuck you in Miami?” I ask timidly, pushing away the memory of her beautiful naked body begging for my touch. “So you had more… data?”

“Yeah.” She cringes. “It was a stupid idea.”

I shake my head. It was a lot of things, but—“It wasn’t stupid.”

“It was,” she assures me. “And it was unfair I tried to use you for that. You were right to say no.”

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