Page 36 of Embraced at Seaside
She considered answering him honestly—No, Hunter, we’re not. I’m a mess, and right now I need a bed buddy more than ever.After last night, she figured if Hunter read that response, he’d want to know why, and why wasn’t something she could understand, much less make him understand.
Instead, she texted an answer he couldn’t argue with.We make great bed buddies. Why mess with perfection?She bit back the pain that caused, which was made worse by the guilt threatening to strangle her over the blatant lie. But how could she offer him anything else?
She was working through administrative paperwork for the ads she’d scheduled when he responded.
Exactly. We’re perfect together.
Yeah, they kind of were, but how long would Hunter really be happy with just one woman? She wasn’t sure she even knew how to be someone’s girlfriend anymore. She sent him a response that she hoped would end his pursuit for more. She wanted to be with him, but her life was complicated enough, and what they’d had before she’d been dumb enough to challenge him to be romantic wasn’t complicated at all. They had hot sex. No questions, no strings. It was perfect.
Last night was fun, thank you. But I think I liked you better when you promised me sunsets and gave me pleasure.
She turned off her phone, crossed her arms over her desk, and rested her forehead on them. Jana hated liars, and she hated people who hurt others.
Right then, she hated herself most of all.
Chapter Fifteen
UNDERCOVER WAS PACKED. Hunter had forgotten that it was open mic night. At the moment, a redhead was butchering a Maroon Five song. Hunter and Clark had ordered a pizza and a pitcher of soda and they’d been talking for the past two hours, but every time Hunter brought up Nina, Clark skirted the issue. Hunter felt himself losing patience, and he knew it wasn’t Clark’s fault. It was the messages he’d received from Jana. She liked him better when he promised her sunsets and gave her pleasure? What the heck was that supposed to mean? She was the one who wanted sunsets. He wondered if he would ever understand women.
He topped off their drinks and looked at Clark. Clark wasn’t a drunk, and the soda tonight was more to make a point than anything else, but he was getting the impression that there was more to his and Nina’s separation than he was letting on.
“Just tell me this,” Hunter said. “I’m trying to figure out how two people who loved each other so much that they couldn’t imagine a future apart ended up where you two are now.”
Clark shook his head and splayed his hands toward the ceiling, as if he had no idea. “I’ve been wondering the same thing for months. It’s like…” His eyes searched the bar, but Hunter could tell he wasn’t searching for someone. He was searching for answers.
“You really don’t have any idea? You just woke up one morning and realized you felt trapped? You had to get out?”
Clark’s brows drew together, and he stared into his drink for a minute before answering. “You know how you guys heat up the metal, and then you pound it on the anvil until it’s the way you want it?”
“Sure.”
“And when it cools, sometimes you have to reheat it and reconfigure it because you’re not really happy with what you got out of it?”
Clark was speaking Hunter’s language. This he could understand. “Yeah.”
“Well, you know I adore Nina. My love for her hasn’t changed, and to be honest, going through this—” Clark looked away, his eyes suspiciously damp. When he looked back, his voice was stronger. “Going through this has made me see her in a whole new light.”
“But you hardly see her anymore. You’ve spent more time getting hammered than you have with Nina.” That might not be true, but it was pretty close.
“Maybe so. But do you know how much I miss her? Do you know why I poured my guts out to a stranger?”
Hunter shook his head, hoping Clark wasn’t going to admit he’d cheated on Nina, because that was something Hunter didn’t think he could get past. Loyalty was everything when it came to family.
Clark leaned across the table and said with a serious tone, “Because I’m afraid that if I tell Nina how I really feel, it will make me seem weak and pathetic, and she might not take me back. But I have to get this off my back or I’m going to go crazy.”
Hunter looked at him for a long time before responding. As much as he didn’t want to hear that his buddy had cheated, Clark was like family to him, and he couldn’t turn him away. “What did you do?”
“Why do you jump to that conclusion? I didn’tdoanything. I left for the exact reasons I told you I did. But come on, Hunter. How pathetic is that?”
“I don’t get it. If you left because you felt like you were boxed in, like you weren’t appreciated or noticed and you missed being intimate with your wife, why didn’t you just tell her? Hire a babysitter? Fix it?” Hunter glanced up toward the bar. He could no longer see Colton serving drinks, or the stage for that matter. The crowd was standing room only, and his mind moved to Jana again. When they’d decided to come to Undercover, he’d hoped she might be working, but she was nowhere in sight.
“Because on the surface it was all those things.” Clark leaned back. “But it wasn’t until I was talking to that chick on the phone that I realized the rest, and the rest of it is what makes me really look like a jerk.”
“You lost me. What’s therestof it?”
“I’m spilling my guts about how Nina doesn’t notice me anymore to this woman, telling her how nice it is to hear someone ask me how my day was and stuff like that, and she moves straight from that to asking me if my wife still has sex with me. She says that’s how I’d know if Nina loved me.”
Hunter swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Please tell me you didn’t discuss the details of your sex life with her.” His mind turned to Jana. Those were the types of details he’d share with Grayson or Clark about any other woman, but the thought of sharing those intimate details with them about Jana? That made his blood boil, and she wasn’t even his wife.
