Page 69 of Wild Card

“Yeah well… it wasn’t just us sleeping together. We kind of… made our own video?”

“What?” She drops her fork, and it’s her turn to almost choke on something. She coughs a few times, taking a big gulp of her water to try to stop it.

“Are you okay?” I look at her worried and our server even stops to look.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Wrong pipe there for a second. But I’m fine.” She looks at me and holds a hand up and smiles to assure everyone she’s good.

“Okay, if you’re sure…”

“I mean I’m not sure I’m fine about what you just told me. You made a sex tape? With Westfield?”

“Keep your voice down!” I say in a hushed tone, glancing around to make sure no one heard her.

“Sorry! That’s just a lot to digest… Wait. Oh shit. Does this mean yours could be next?”

“No. He found out that it got leaked by the woman, and he wasn’t hacked. So ours should be safe.”

“Oh wow. That’s fucking cold.”

“Right? I feel awful for him. It definitely isn’t helping his trust issues that started since that’s all happened either.”

“Well yeah… of course. Shit. That’s terrible.” She frowns and then looks up at me. “But I need you to elaborate on your situation… Does that mean you guys were a one-time thing or you’re together or…?”

“We’re in limbo, I guess. When the video came out it blew everything up between us. Then the accident happened immediately after, and well you know how hard all of that’s been on him. Any feelings I had seemed silly in comparison to everything he was going through.”

“Your feelings are important too,” she admonishes me.

“I mean I know that, but I wasn’t going to start asking how he felt about me when he was trying to figure out how he could play again.”

“Right.”

“And all indications felt like he was over it. Well… sort of. We kind of hooked up a bit that first week I was there, but then it was like awkward silence on the topic after.”

“Hooked up the first week? When he was still in bed? Um… not that it’s my business, but how exactly?”

“Creative solutions.” Because I’m not keen to explain how I rode a man’s face in the middle of a bistro in the daytime.

“Okay. Understood. So then there was silence and then?”

“When he found out I was trying to date again, he flipped out a little, I guess? I don’t know if he was jealous or what. But the night we were iced in together and I couldn’t make the date. We talked and it was good. Felt like we were getting along again and breaking through some of the awkward silence. And then he… kissed me. Which had not been a thing before. I mean in all the times we hooked up. It was insanely hot. But not like… romantic hot? You know?”

“Yeah. Sometimes it’s just a different kind of hot. Just as good but different. I get it. And I can see how Tobias wouldn’t exactly be romantic.”

“But that night, it was more. We talked about our feelings. Like a real adult conversation.”

“Huh. No fighting?”

“No. Well, a little bickering but you know that’s our thing.”

“Of course.”

“There’s so much I didn’t realize about him. How much we have in common. How alike we are in some ways. I really think I might have real feelings for him. I mean… I thought I did before but then it’s hard to tell when you’re having that kind of sex you know? Like is it the sex or is it deeper than that?”

“Oh, I know.” She grins. “Thankfully it was a lot more than that, but I had the same worries with Xander.”

“The two of them are both so freaking hard to read sometimes.”

“A lot of the time. Until they let their guard down, anyway. They’re so used to being walled off. And they were both raised by men who taught them it was work first and feelings later. Boys don’t cry. All that toxic stuff that doesn’t exactly lead to healthy emotions. Not exactly shocking that they ended up the way they did.”