Page 25 of Friends with Benefits (Club Risqué)

“I'm sorry," he finally whispered into Trinity's hair as he continued to hold her close, despite her obvious reluctance. "You'll never know how much I regret the way things played out."

"And yet you did nothing to change that." She laughed bitterly.

"It wasn't entirely my fault," he excused, desperately.

"Of course, it wasn't," Trinity replied sarcastically, pushing away from him. "I bet it was probably mine, wasn't it?"

"No," Christian said quietly. "None of it was your fault at all."

He stood soquiet and solemn that Trinity's yielding nature wanted to jump into his arms again and forgive him anything without a single word of explanation.

Nope! Not happening, she told her errant self-control.

"I admit, I handled things badly and took advantage of what you were willing to give," Christian said sadly, crossing the room to sit on one of the armchairs set up in the corner of her generous office, hoping she would follow and at least hear him out.

"I knew you had deeper feelings for me, even if I did think you were too young to know what you were doing, and I was fond of you, too."

"Oh, please!" Trinity exclaimed, stalking across the room after him. "Don't damn well patronise me, Christian," she spat defensively while his words lodged like barbs in her chest. Jesus, he'd be patting her on the head next and telling her to be a good girl.

The thought backfired and the tears welled up again. It wasn't like she wanted to hear those words from him, which had such a completely different connotation in the lifestyle.

It wasn't!

She wrapped her anger around her like it was a cloak, able to deflect the fonder feelings she had for him. She didn't want to be exposed and vulnerable to Christian again.

Trinity had put her life back together, piece by piece, when she’d left the East Coast five years ago.

She had rebuilt it, brick by painstaking brick—smoothing things out with her parents after she had let them down so badly. Mending fences with her siblings, whom she had neglected during the years she’d spent giving everything she had to Christian and his family instead of her own.

Not believing she had the right to move back in with her parents, she’d had to find herself a new home, and made do with another minimum wage job since she'd forfeited her education.

Finally, she’d worked her butt off to get herself through night school, in an attempt to better herself and to redeem some small amount of pride, for her parents as well as herself.

And all because she’d wasted years of her life doting on a man who had thrown her over without so much as a second thought.

Trinity didn't even realise that she had spewed the entire tirade out loud while shaking and sobbing. Not until Christian, his face horrified and drained of colour, jumped up from the chair, once her diatribe had subsided, and halted her jerky pacing.

Leading her back to the seating arrangement, he pulled her down onto the couch, settling her on his knee, then hushing, and shushing, and rocking her, in the way someone might try to soothe a distraught child.

"Damn it all, Trinity, why didn't you ever tell me any of this at the time? Why am I only now finding out you gave up your education to nursemaid my mother, and that you allowed yourself to become distanced from your own family while you took care of mine?"

"It wasn't planned; it just happened," Trinity defended heatedly. "I was upset when your father—when Ian—died." She just couldn't think of him in such distant terms, no matter what had transpired since his death. "And Krista needed so much care. She was so clingy, and I was just trying to make things a little easier for you, because I knew you had so much else going on, as well as your own grief."

"What? And you didn't think to talk any of this over with me? To let me do what I could to help you out in return? And what about all those times I asked how school was going and you told me everything was fine? Youliedto me! You quit but you carried on telling me everything was okay."

He sounded angry and indignant now, himself. "I could at least have funded your education since you gave it up for my benefit. You could have allowed me to ensure that you weren't at a disadvantage because of everything you did for us!"

He glowered, his beautiful face set in rock-hard lines, even while he held her on his knee, not allowing her to wriggle free.

It looked like they were having this out once and for all.

Once they'd cleared the air, perhaps they could both see where they stood and if there was anything left to salvage.

"You had enough problems without me adding to them," she replied before pressing her lips together to stop the tremble..

"Yeah? Well, guess what, Trinity, friendship is a two-way street which is supposed to flow both ways. But it sounds like you were too busy wallowing in your own self-sacrifice to remember that, and now you're dumping me with a boat load of guilt for something I knew nothing about, but which I could very easily have fixed."

That last retort, delivered with a perfectly justifiable anger, took the wind right out of Trinity's sails and her shoulders slumped as she acknowledged the truth of his words.

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