Page 64 of Cinderella Is Faking It

Del laughed and lowered the phone camera. “It’s different in the books, Brody. I promise you; Henry is actuallynotboring.”

“Fine. Fine. Give me, please.” Brody plopped down on the floor and stretched her hand out for her phone. “Downloading right now. If they’re not as good as you say, I will sue you.”

“Oh, wait.” Del’s hand flew out and she snatched the phone back from Brody fast enough to make me think she might have a future in boxing after all. Her wide eyes flew to me. “Uh. Is she… allowed?”

“Is she allowed to read?” I asked, leaning against the wall, since I was clearly not doing a lot of coaching today.

“Grown-up books, foradults,” Del added.

“Oh my god. I’ll survive a few sex scenes.” Brody grabbed the phone again and Del shot me a panicked look. “I have the internet and I have a girlfriend.”

“You have a girlfriend?” I asked. This was the first time I was hearing about this. Not thegirl- part. Brody had never been very covert about her bisexuality, considering how hard she’d been swooning over both leads in that Miraculous Ladybug cartoon. After I tracked that, and she brought up topics like dating and marriage, I’d just made sure to use non-gendered terms. It had never been a point of contention. The girlfriend-part was new though.

Brody shrugged and smiled up at Del. “FYI Uncle Auggie’s sex talk was way more efficient than my dad’s ramblings about bees and flowers. You’re in good hands.”

“Uncle Auggie?” Del grinned and raised her brows at me.

I shook my head before she could get any ideas.

“Yeah, so, it’s fine.” Brody tapped away on her screen. “I’m not a virgin. I can read sex scenes.”

My pulse spiked. “You’re not-” I cut myself off, turned around, and headed straight for the water cooler. Brody’s giggles erupted behind me. If she was planning on giving me a heart-attack, she was doing a good job.

Last year, after Julian had called me at 10pm one night, uncharacteristically lost for words after a disastrous discussion about pollen and bees technically representing artificial insemination between two flowers, when you considered the process, I had scraped together a fact-based sex talk. Brody had hated the idea, but I had put my coach face on, and had talked her through it like I talked her through fights. It had been informative. Not… I didn’t need to know whether… Jesus.

I threw back a cup of cold water like a shot, and narrowed my eyes at Del nodding and smiling at something Brody was saying. Bringing Del to girls’ night was supposed to show her that I wanted her in my life, not just my bed. I hadn’t considered that Brody’s enthusiasm about the woman in my life could be the bigger issue. If Brody needed a woman to talk to, about girlfriends and sex, then this might not only be overwhelming for Del, but it would also mess with Brody if I fucked this up.

“What did you do?” Isaac leaned against the water cooler.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you know how many single mothers I’ve seen throw themselves at you over the last few years? And what did you tell me, time and again?You don’t shit where you eat, Isaac.” His American accent was good, but he dropped his voice low enough to sound like a bad Darth Vader.

“Are you trying to impersonate me?”

“Why did you bring Del?” He pulled a cup from the water cooler and twisted it in his hands. He wasn’t even close to breaking out in a sweat and needing refreshments. In fact, he looked like he’d just walked in.

“What the hell are you doing here? It’s girls’ night.” Most members would have been turned away at the door. Maybe I should have a talk with Michelle about what privileges she afforded Isaac just because he usually came here with me.

Isaac pointed at Gabriella, one of the kids’ coaches, with long dark curls and an hourglass body. “I don’t really carewhereI eat as long as it’s her.” She looked up as if she’d heard him and gave him a flirty wave over her shoulder.

“There are children around,” I dead panned. Not that it seemed to matter. Because the very child I was here for was apparently sexually active. Fucking hell.

“I can wait. They’ll all be gone in two hours and then Gabby can show me the staff changing rooms.” He wiggled his brows, but his grin died when I didn’t react. “So, it’s that bad, huh?”

“She wanted to kiss me,” I admitted.

“That’s great. Good job, mate.”

“I pulled away.”

“Are you daft?” Isaac whirled around. If I needed a reminder of how bad this was, Isaac turning his back on the woman he was planning to fuck tonight, would be a massive, red, flashing sign. “That’s not how you get a woman to fall in love with you.”

“And you’d know about that how?” It was a cheap, deflective blow since he had never shown an interest in romantic attachments.

To his credit, Isaac knew me well enough not to take the bait. “Are you having second thoughts? You can call the whole thing off, you know.”

“It was a slip-up,” I said because I couldn’t tell him what I’d realized last night. Not without sounding absolutely pathetic. Every good strategy required some sort of sacrifice. You lost one fight to win the war. You sacrificed your personal life to further your career. To get the Montgomery merger, I’d agree to marry Cordelia. I accepted that trade-off. I just hadn’t considered the next step. To make Del fall in love with me, I’d have to… Yeah, fuck. Turned out Sternberg’s triangular theory of falling in love worked in both directions. And if I kissed Blondie, I’d be sealing a trade deal I wasn’t ready to make.

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