PROLOGUE
Asa
“You knew.”
I stare at the woman standing on my front porch. It’s almost midnight, and though it’s the last week of October and the air carries a bite with razor-sharp teeth, she’s clothed in nothing but a thin, long-sleeved T-shirt and skinny jeans ripped at the thigh and knees. She’s shown up unannounced on my doorstep in the middle of the night, looking as if she just threw on clothes, ran out of the house, and jumped in the car.
Yet, I don’t ask India Roberts what she’s doing here or what she wants.
And I don’t ask her what she means by her cryptic “you knew.”
Because she’s right. I know.
One look into those wide but shattered penny-brown eyes, and I know.
Instead of answering, I step back and hold the door open wider, silently inviting her to come in. She doesn’t release me from her gaze as she steps into my house, and part of me wishes she would. For my sake. Because she’s ripping me to bloody, jagged shreds with those eyes. Eyes that should only shine with delight, laughter, and love, but are now so dark with pain it’s like looking into an abyss.
I close the door behind her, and she slowly turns around to face me. And that’s how we stand in the small foyer—my arms down at my sides and hers crossed over her chest. Friends turned adversaries, hovering on either side of an imaginary line drawn in the proverbial sand.
Me, the betrayer. Her, the betrayed.
At least in her eyes.
“You knew,” she accuses again, in that hoarse voice that sounds as if a carpenter took several feet of sandpaper to it.
“It wasn’t mine to tell.” My voice, even and deep, doesn’t reveal how there’s an angry, wounded animal howling inside me. It’s demanding I go to her, wrap myself around her like a living blanket to soak up the hurt, that agony that damn near vibrates in her husky tone.
“Wasn’t yours to tell?” she repeats. A harsh, hollow bark of laughter follows as she tips her head back and stares at the ceiling for a brief moment. When she looks at me again, anger flickers, mingling bright and hot with the pain. “You were supposed to be my friend.”
“I am, India.” The fingers of my right hand curl into a fist. One I wish I could plow into the nearest wall. Or my best friend Jessie’s face. “I am your friend. Never doubt that.”
“Yeah,” she scoffs, her full mouth with its plump bottom lip twisting into a bitter caricature of a smile. “That’s why you let me walk around with my head up my ass for how long? You let me live a lie. You let me be a fool.” She shakes her head so hard, her dark brown, tight curls brush her cheekbones. “And for the life of me, I can’t figure out which one is worse. Finding out the man I loved—the life I lived with him—was a figment of my dumb ass Pollyanna imagination. Or that I was a willfully blind idiot, and everyone I trusted was in on the joke. The joke being me.”
“Baby girl,” I murmur, risking her wrath, her disgust, and stepping across that line in the sand to stand in front of her. To… touch her.
I’ve been very careful about touching this woman. Brief hugs. Deliberate but friendly distance. Even a fucking pat on the head. But now, with her hurt beating off of her in red-tinged waves, I can’t not put my hands on her. Even if it’s just her slim shoulders. But it might as well be on those just-less-than-a-handful and utterly perfect breasts. Or those feminine, rounded hips. Or that ripe peach of an ass.
It doesn’t matter where my palms skate or where my fingertips press into her gleaming chestnut skin. It’s all sexual. It’s all dirty.
Because it’s all her.
For me, it’s always been her.
My fantasy. My sin.
My joy. My regret.
My best friend’s woman.
Jessie’s girl.
She bats my hands away from her, whirling around to pace to the other side of my small foyer. Which takes about four steps before she’s headed back my way. Her arms cradle her chest as if they’re the only things holding her together. If she uncrossed them, she might splinter into pieces all over my dark hardwood floor.
“Jessie told you tonight?” I ask, studying her, wanting to stop her frenetic motion, but I’ve risked putting my hands on her once. No way in hell am I chancing it again. Besides, the way she jerked out of my hold, she would probably claw and scratch my fucking eyes out if I tried to touch her again.
She shakes her head, another of those horrible, empty chuckles escaping her. “No, he didn’t tell me. His side-chick DM’d me. She decided it was high time I found out about her existence. For my own good, you see. She thought it only right that I knew what my long-time boyfriend was up to when he wasn’t with me. And just in case I didn’t believe her, she provided pictures.”
What a thoughtful bitch.