Page 104 of Stags

Bruin rubbed his forehead. “Well, it’s late, so…”

“Yeah,” said Stockton.

Bruin caught her gaze for just a second, looking concerned, looking devastated. Then he backed into the study and pulled the door firmly shut.

Rora’s heart was pounding.

It pounded all the way down the elevator and it pounded when Stockton kissed her goodbye and it pounded as she drove home.

When she got back, her mother wasn’t even awake, so maybe no one would have noticed if she had stayed out all night. There were two texts. One from Stockton, saying that he missed her already. And one from Bruin.

It’s Bruin. I got your number off his phone. Borrowed it with some other excuse and wrote it down. I wanted to say to you that I’m sorry for what happened between us. I don’t know what I did that made you leave that night, but I can guess. I’m not asking for forgiveness, but I need to tell you I know I was wrong.

She felt an two warring tugs within herself—one to reassure Bruin that she was all right and another feeling, that she should ignore his texts, that Stockton would feel betrayed if she communicated with another man, one she’d been intimate with.

But it was Bruin who’d put her in this position, forced her to lie to a man she was building trust with.

So, she texted back,We shouldn’t have lied to him.

There was no immediate response.

She texted,I’m going to text him now and tell him the truth.

She left that text conversation and pulled up her texts with Stockton. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Her phone beeped. It was a response from Bruin.He can never know.

She bit down on her lip.

Three dots came up at the bottom. Bruin was typing something.

When it appeared, it said,Can I call you? I’m not good at expressing myself in text form. Guess I’m too old.

No! She did not want her phone to ring in this house and she did not want other people to hear and possibly wake up.

She made a split second decision to dial the number that Bruin was texting her from.

As it was ringing, she thought that she could have simply turned down the ringer on her phone. Damn it.

“Hello?” said Bruin on the other end.

Oh, sun and moon, that voice. A flood of strange sensations went through her, hearing it again, and they were not all unpleasant. She felt awful and confused. “Hello,” she said. “Look, I left that night because I was too timid to wake you up and tell you to scoot over or move your leg. I simply didn’t have room on the bed. And then I tried to leave you a note, but I couldn’t find a pen. I don’t know what you think you did, but I’m fine.”

He let out an audible breath on the other side of the phone. “Oh, I see. I’m very sorry, then. You should have woken me, because—”

“Oh, none of that matters!” She was speaking in what amounted to a forceful whisper, because she didn’t want to be too loud. “Ihaveto tell him.”

“You can’t,” he said, firm. “Listen, regardless of your reasoning for leaving that night, what I did with you was selfish. There was a moment when I almost stopped it all, because I was seeing what I was doing with you, using you, thinking only of my own pleasure. You didn’t deserve that experience as your first time. You deserved something else. I—”

“No, no,” she said, insistent. “If you had rejected me, it would have only confirmed my worst fears. I thought no one would ever want me. I needed someone to want me, to take me, I needed to know that I was worth having. I don’t regret it, Bruin. I wouldn’t have been ready for Stockton if you and I hadn’t—” But she broke off, her voice twisting at the awful irony of that. “But now everything is ruined.”

“It doesn’t have to be ruined. We simply don’t tell him, and you and I never speak of it again. I needed to convey my apologies, and if you truly don’t regret it, then everything is all right.”

“Nothing is all right. If he ever finds out that I lied to him about this, he will never trust me again.”

“If he finds out that I had sex with you, it will destroy him. I don’t know how well you know my son. If you just met him at the rite—”

“No, we know each other from school. I know him pretty well, actually. I’ve known him for over a year, at least.”

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