She had stirred up all these feelings, and when they spilled out, it brought other ones into play. She’d changed me for the better, more or less.
Was it possible? Could I do the same to her?
Chapter
FORTY-TWO
RUBY
I sent the text message to Kyle yesterday in a moment of weakness. His radio silence was torture, but not receiving a response from him after? That was pure agony.
I’d called Grant in a panic this afternoon, and after work was over, he’d gotten us a spot at the back of the gastro-pub one block over from my apartment. It was tiny, like they’d tried to cram too many booths along the wall, and he looked uncomfortable. He barely fit in the space.
The tabletop was decorated with our empty drinks, more of them his than mine. The place was dark and our booth was tucked in at the end, so the server rarely came around to check on us or clear away our empties. I was glad. It gave me privacy to explain my fuck-up.
“There’s a place here in town,” I said. “It’s an illegal, high-end brothel.”
Grant’s stunned gaze flicked up to me. “Sorry?”
“I can’t talk about the situation, other than to tell you I made the very wrong assumption Kyle was a client, even when my gut was telling me otherwise.” I should have trusted myself. No, fuck that. I should have trusted him. “Now, a normal, sane person would call their boyfriend and talk to him about it. They wouldn’t go to his office and accuse him in front of his boss, who also happens to be his father.”
“Rube, you didn’t.” He appeared horrified on my behalf.
The words were full of self-loathing as they came out. “I don’t even know what happened. Sometimes I get carried away, but with him . . . it’s a whole new level. He disables my brain.” My gaze drifted down so I could stare vacantly at the paper coaster pinned beneath my drink. “He explained what he was doing at the blindfold club, and I believe him. I apologized a bunch of times, but . . . I don’t know. He asked for time, and I haven’t heard from him since.” Could Grant hear the tremble in my voice? Could he see how close I was to breaking down? “I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose him over this.”
A long moment passed with no words between us. There was only the sound of the noisy bar in the background.
“You recognize you made a mistake,” he said finally. “Can you take back what happened? No, but you apologized. If he loves you, he needs to not be a McAsshole about it, yeah?”
Grant’s expression skewed, as if he wasn’t sure what else to say, and I couldn’t blame him. He took a sip of his beer, shifted in his seat, and opened his mouth, only to snap it shut a second later.
“Out with it,” I prompted.
“The place he went to . . .”
“The club?” I scanned his face, finding curiosity there. My mouth went dry. “If you’re thinking you want to do a story on it, you can’t.” I’d made sure to leave both Tariq and Payton out of it, but I couldn’t have my friend digging. “This conversation is off the record.”
“It’s off the record,” he said, nodding. “How much do you know about it, the club?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
He looked disappointed, but not ready to give up. The high-class brothel had attracted Tariq Crawford. It stood to reason there were other celebrities frequenting it, maybe even politicians. The story could be a goldmine.
“You called it the blindfold club. Why?”
“I’m told the girls wear blindfolds.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Sorry, no idea.” We needed to get off this line of questioning. “I didn’t mean to hijack this evening and make it all
about me. We came to help you get back up on the horse, so to speak. I see two options for rebounding, the redhead by the—”
“Nah.”
“Oh, yeah. You like blondes.” My sister had been blonde when they’d dated, as was Morgan.
“I meant, not sure I want to pick someone up tonight.” He glanced around, surveying the bar crowd. “People who go out to the bars on a Wednesday night are strange.”