I understand what Tamia’s hinting at.
Alexis deserves to have some fun…
Considering we’re sneaking around behind her back.
“Dad, will you give Tamia a ride to work again? She’s too polite to ask.”
I stare down at my coffee. I can’t look Alexis in the eye, not when she’s talking like this, as though Tamia and I are strangers. It feels too much like lying, going along with the story. But then, to Alexis, it isn’t a story.
“Sure,” I say.
Alexis is staying in the house until the concert later, working on some photography stuff, so it’s just me and Tamia in the car.
We say nothing for the first couple of minutes, as we climb in and drive away from the house. I drive us down the street, glancing over at Tamia, at the way her fingernails worry at her cleaner’s uniform, pulling a piece of thread loose.
“Tonight should be interesting,” I say, the first words either of us has spoken.
The sound she makes is almost enough to cause me to crumble. It’s somewhere between a sigh and a breath of pleasure, but I can tell she’s trying to hold it back too. It’s like she can’t decide whether or not she wants to give in.
And that just makes me even harder because I know how badly she wants to. I know I could reach across and find her ready for me.
“Yeah, that’s one word for it,” she murmurs.
“How would you describe it?” I smirk.
She glances at me, biting her lip in that tempting fuck-me way. She wants it, wants me. I can sense it in the way her body moves, but that’s not the problem. I know the desire to be together will never die.
“What are we going to do, Triston? We can’t do anything before we tell her.”
I have to stare forward, not at her, or her words will lose all meaning. I won’t be able to think about restraint, about being civilized.
Just her, only her.
“I know. You’re right.”
“I guess we’ll have to be good,” she murmurs. “It’s either that, or we tell her before the concert.”
I swallow, the thought striking me again like it did at breakfast. I see Alexis clutching her chest. I see the pain in her eyes, wide and filled with betrayal.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, though,” Tamia adds. “It seems cruel, telling before she’s going to have a nice evening with her friend.”
Her words sound like an excuse, but I nod, making a sound of agreement.
We both know the truth.
We both know it’s the idea of causing Alexis pain that's really holding us back.
“We can be good,” I say, wondering if I’m lying. “We’ll just watch a movie or something. It will be fine.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
“I’m driving,” I growl.
“Triston…”
I glance at her when there’s a break in traffic, reading the message in her rosy-cheeked face. She knows why I can’t look at her. She can read me the same way I can read her. She can sense the lust and the boiling desire, the same way I can.
Turning back to the road, I grit my teeth.
“This would be a lot easier if you told me you were lying,” she murmurs. “You could say you were tricking me. You didn’t mean anything you said. You don’t want a family with me.”
“Maybe it would,” I snarl. “But just the thought of saying that makes me want to be sick.”
We drive in silence for a time, both of us thinking about tonight, about how difficult it’s going to be. I know Tamia is thinking the same every time I look at her, the uncertainty evident in how tightly wound her body is, in how ready she looks to melt for me.
But no.
Not until after we’ve told Alexis.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tamia
I wait on the street corner, leaning against the wall, my arms folded across my middle. The workday has been long, four hours cleaning and then another four hours at the restaurant, with a frantic, power-walk across the city in-between.
My body feels sore, but it feels even wearier when I look at Alexis’s text again.
Heading out now, Tam. See you tomorrow xx
She sent it thirty minutes ago. I immediately responded, telling her to have fun, adding kisses at the end. It’s like I think I can make up for everything her dad and I have done – and might still do – with some X’s in a text.
Triston texted me earlier, asking what time I finished, saying he wanted to pick me up. My body pulses, tempting me, firing fantasies into my mind.
All the things that could happen in an empty house, with nobody around to catch us…
I close my eyes and warn myself for the thousandth time that we’re not doing anything. We agreed this morning.
Nothing until we’ve told Alexis, and we’re not telling her tonight. So tonight we’re going to be friends, roommates, nothing more.