“You made yourself crystal clear. They called you a motherfucking cutthroat on their way out the door.”
He grunts. “If they want to keep their balls intact, they better not come back with another ludicrous proposal. Waste of our goddamn time…”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “But that isn’t what’s bothering me.”
He frowns. “What’s up?”
I’ve debated whether I should say something all afternoon. Marcus will probably get angry. The reminders will drag me into a black hole of regret. But I need to get this off my chest. He’s the only other person on the planet capable of understanding the reason I’m unsettled.
I knock back my whiskey and set down the glass. “I ran into Taylor today.”
Marcus tenses. “She’s back in town?”
“Temporarily, yeah.”
He doesn’t look pleased. “And? How did she look?”
Still beautiful. Still confident. Still like the woman who once held my heart.
She held Marcus’s, too.
“Happy.” I swallow, bracing to spit out the worst. “She’s getting married.”
“Fuck.” He abandons all pretense of interest in the blonde and sits back, looking like someone punched him.
I understand. It’s how I feel, too. “We knew it would happen someday.”
Marcus snorts. “I expected it to take her longer than twenty-two months.”
“Given how in love we were with her? Same.”
“But that was the problem. She didn’t love us. She never saw the three of us as more than a fling.”
“I remember.” Taylor made herselfveryclear. But we should have realized her feelings much sooner. The fact that she didn’t want us to meet her family and never managed to introduce us to her friends should have been our first clue. I still resent that.
“Was she with her fiancé?”
I smile tightly. “She even introduced us. Bruce Something, a real estate mogul from London. Urbane. Rich. Cultured.”
“And not sharing her with his best friend, I’ll bet.”
I nod. “All the things she wanted.”
“Good for her.” But Marcus sounds bitter.
I can’t blame him. I am, too.
“She introduced me as a former neighbor. Can you believe it?”
His lips twist acidly. “That’s a lot less awkward than introducing you as the man who popped her anal cherry.”
“True.” But I hate it.
We showered that woman with our attention, affection, and devotion. We told her we loved her. She recoiled, thanked us for scratching her itch, and walked away.
“I assume she didn’t ask about me.”
Since she acted like she only knew me in passing? “No.”