Page 51 of Until Tomorrow (Love Doesn’t Cure All: The Ashwood Duet #1)

Logan

Elizabeth was easygoing, which made smoothing the whole Elliot situation easy.

A fight between friends—something I’d make sure never showed up at the office again.

That didn’t stop the nosy stares from my coworkers pointed in my direction as I talked to her.

I was all too aware of how Max—the most cutthroat lawyer in our firm—stood in the doorway to his office just watching me.

My heart hammered erratically in my chest. How much had he heard? How much had anyone heard? I was fairly certain that they couldn’t hear him with the door closed, but I wasn’t sure.

Did they hear his accusations of my cheating?

Did they hear his threat?

How the hell was I going to explain this to anyone?

I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. I shut the door to my office once more, needing a minute to get it together—if that was even possible. My hands shook something fierce as I pulled out my phone and called Eva.

“ What do we think of mauve as a color for the living room? ” Eva asked when she answered. “ I feel like it’s such an understated neutral pink color. It’s muted and warm… I think it’d look fantastic— ”

“Elliot knows,” I interrupted. I wanted to listen to my wife go on about living room colors—I really did—but I couldn’t handle it right now. Not when I was ready to crawl out of my skin and right into the deepest hole I could find.

“ Oh ,” she said. “ I didn’t know you were planning to tell him. ”

“I didn’t,” I replied. “He came across my profile on Tumble .”

“ I thought you said he wasn’t on that app. ”

“He is now!”

“ Breathe for me, Logan. ” Eva’s voice was calm and soothing as she spoke. “ I can feel your anxiety from here. Tell me what happened, sweetheart. ”

“He stormed into my office,” I told her. “Yelling and screaming about it—he thinks I’m cheating on you, Eva.”

“ Oh, good Lord, ”

“Yeah.” I exhaled heavily, feeling as if I couldn’t catch my breath.

I wasn’t ready for Elliot to know. I wasn’t ready to have this conversation.

And I hadn’t anticipated this becoming something that raged its way through my job.

“I sent him to lunch and told him I’d meet him.

I have to tell him—I know I have to tell him—but I don’t know how to tell him. I don’t…”

I couldn’t get all the words out as the air stuck in my lungs all over again.

“ What are you afraid of, Logan? ” she asked. Her question gave me pause, and I collapsed in my chair, suddenly exhausted by the weight of it all. “ Elliot will love you no matter what. I can promise you that. ”

“I don’t want to ruin our friendship,” I admitted quietly. I pinched the bridge of my nose, sighing.

“ How would this ruin your friendship, sweetheart? ”

“Because friends shouldn’t want to kiss their friends.” There. I said the fucking words out loud. To her. Maybe to myself.

“ It was one night, Logan, ” Eva reminded me, her tone gentle.

“Except it wasn’t just one night, Eva.” I swallowed. “And I wasn’t drunk that night. He was. Nothing happened, I swear—”

“ I’m not questioning that, ” she interrupted.

“ But I do think this is a bigger conversation for a different time when we can sit down and talk it all out. You and Elliot, I mean. I think right now you need to go talk to him. Just… tell him what you’re questioning about yourself, what you’re doing, and what we’re doing.

If he has an issue with any of it, I’ll come kick his giant ass myself.

We’re a team, Logan. This isn’t something you have to go through alone. ”

“Okay.” None of that made me feel any better.

“ I love you, ” she said. “ It’s going to be okay. I prom ise. ”

“I love you too,” I replied. Ending the call, I set my phone down and just sat there for another five minutes, trying to find the courage to go talk to Elliot.

Elliot sat in my usual spot, angrily drumming his fingers on the table as he waited for me. I used the café often for more casual business meetings, which meant the table was tucked out of the way from everyone else. It gave us the privacy we needed to have this conversation.

“Talk,” Elliot said the second my ass was in the chair. I said nothing as the waitress came over and put my usual iced tea on the table. When she tried to get his order, he just dismissed her.

“First and foremost,” I began when we were alone, “I’d never cheat on Eva, and if you think I would, you and I need to have a very different conversation because you clearly don’t think of me the way I thought you did.”

“I don’t know what I think of you right now,” he admitted with an angry edge in his voice. Once again, he pulled up my dating profile on Tumble. “What is this?”

“Did you read my profile?”

“I did, but it doesn’t answer my question.”

“I mean, it should,” I muttered. My profile seemed pretty self-explanatory. Bi-curious, polyamorous, unsure of exactly what I was looking for. I took a long sip of my tea as the waitress dropped it off.

“So, you’re telling me you’re bi-curious?” he asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know—”

“So, you’re just catfishing people—”

“No!” I exclaimed. “Jesus Christ, Elliot, is that what you think of me? Do you honestly think I could do something like that?”

“Up until today, you were my straight best friend, who was happily married to my other best friend,” Elliot said. “And now this . I don’t know what to think anymore, Logan. I don’t know a damn thing about you right now.”

Those words hurt. I told myself that he was just angry about being left out—that he didn’t actually think those things.

“ Yes, I’m interested in men,” I told him, feeling my chest tighten with the admission. I did my best to sit still and tried not to let my anxiety get the better of me. “But I don’t know that I’m bi-curious. I’m still trying to figure that one out with my therapist.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“I started going after Eva and I got back together,” I said. “She specializes in non-traditional relationships, and she’s been helping me figure out my sexuality.”

“Is this why you tried to divorce Eva?” he asked.

“Yeah. I wanted to figure myself out, and I didn’t want to cheat on Eva to do so.

I don’t expect you to understand, Elliot,” I whispered.

“You’ve always been so sure of yourself.

You questioned yourself for all of a minute, and then, everything was fine.

It’s not like that for me. There was a moment that just…

changed shit for me… and I’m trying to figure out what it all means. ”

Something inexplicable rolled through his expression as he sat back and crossed his arms. It morphed into explicit understanding.

“My birthday… when I tried to kiss you,” he replied. “You tried to divorce Eva not too long after that.”

“You remember that?”

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping we’d pretend it never happened if I pretended I didn’t remember it,” Elliot admitted. “But it was one stupid moment between us, Logan. It doesn’t mean a thing. We were drunk.”

“You were drunk,” I corrected. “I wasn’t drunk. And it wasn’t just a stupid moment. Maybe it was. I don’t know. But either way, it brought a lot of things to the surface for me.”

“I’m not trying to question you—I hope you know that—but do you think that makes you interested in men? Are you actually wanting to date men and—”

“I am dating a man,” I interjected. My words stopped him short, and his eyes widened slightly. “I’ve gone out with a few different guys, but I’ve been dating Loren for a few weeks.”

“Loren…” he repeated.

“Yes.” I nodded. “It’s nothing serious. He’s looking for a more casual relationship right now, which honestly works for me. We’ve gone out on a few dates and done… some things, but that’s it.”

My ears burned painfully hot at that admission.

I’d never been a PDA kind of person, and talking about sex in general wasn’t a conversation I enjoye d.

It’d always been something private between Eva and me.

Even now, with the addition of Loren, I still found that I didn’t want to talk about it. Ashamed? No. Private. Yes.

“ Oh. ” Elliot pressed his lips together, nodding slowly.

I would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking.

We sat in silence while he processed everything.

I did my best to keep from rambling to fill that space because the silence was slowly killing me.

Finally, he asked, “And where does Eva fall in this? Does she know—I’m assuming she knows. She better fucking know, Logan.”

“She knows,” I assured him. “Eva was introduced to the concept of polyamory through a woman she met—the woman who is my therapist now. We went to a seminar together. It was an interview with a polycule talking about how they make it work and the benefits and such. She and I talked about a lot afterward and decided to try that route. I never wanted to leave her, Elliot. I just… this gives me the chance to figure myself out and still maintain my marriage.”

“And is she dating?”

“She is. She’s dating the guy who punched out one of her dates.”

“Oh, Jesus fuck.”

“To be fair, the date he punched insinuated that she owed him sex because he was throwing her a bone and that women of her size couldn’t be picky,” I said.

“I’m going to need his full name and address,” Elliot snapped, his tone dark. “I’m about to go burn a house down.”

“I got him fired and blacklisted in his industry, but he doesn’t know it was me.

I blackmailed him into dropping the assault charges against her partner—my silence for him dropping them.

But that didn’t stop his boss, a very body-positive, progressive woman, from receiving an anonymous tip about her employee’s behavior. ”

Was it probably the wrong thing to do? Maybe. But I didn’t care. The man didn’t deserve to be let off without consequences.

“God, I fucking love you.” He laughed. While I knew how he meant the words, that didn’t stop them from doing something to my stomach. “Is she happy?”

“We’re working on it,” I admitted. When he frowned, I elaborated, “I think we’re at a crossroads as a couple.

Not that our marriage is in trouble… not really.

I think this whole thing has made us realize that we’re not…

happy. We got comfortable. We lost our way, and just…

we’re trying to find our way back to each other.

We’re trying to figure ourselves out. Eva’s… trying to find herself again.”

“And you? Are you happy?”

“I’m not unhappy. I don’t know that I’d say I’m happy, though, but I’m working on it.

It’s not just my sexuality. I’ve become painfully aware of how much I don’t like my job.

I don’t like the people we’re around—the people I’m trying to impress, and for what reason?

I’ve taken off more days of work this year than I have in the entire time I’ve been at my job.

I’ve realized that for my success, I’ve sacrificed my relationship with Eva, my friendship with you…

I don’t see my family except maybe once a year.

I don’t know… yeah, I just don’t know.” That was a lot of word vomit.

“It kind of sounds like you’re having an early midlife crisis, Logan,” Elliot commented.

“Aren’t midlife crises just realizing that you’re not happy and wanting to do something about it, so you don’t spend the rest of your life unhappy?

” I said. Honestly, the more I reflected on Loren’s words, the more they made sense.

I clung to them because I just wanted to be happy.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.

“I guess so. Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

I just shrugged, unable to say the words to him.

How was I supposed to tell my best friend that I fantasized about that damn almost kiss on repeat?

That wasn’t something friends did. Sure, he’d been drunk, and it’d been a mistake, but I wanted it.

And that was wrong. “You’re a shit liar, Logan. Even when you say nothing.”

“I wasn’t ready,” I replied. “I planned to tell you at some point. I just didn’t know when.”

He scrutinized me, those hazel eyes narrowing. Yeah, he could see right through me. I didn’t want him to push the matter. I wasn’t sure what I’d say if he did.

“Okay,” he relented quietly, much to my surprise. The conversation dropped as he focused on his water glass, twirling the ice around. He was a million miles away. I should’ve asked him why, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that either.

Honestly, the whole thing was a mess, and it was my fault. If I could just wrap my head around my feelings for Elliot and what to do with them, this whole thing would be easier.