Page 30 of Free Agent

In the best possible way, I felt wrung out, and downright giddy about what had just happened. It was exciting, a whole new frontier, which I grinned over as I replied to the five texts from Sierra asking if I was okay.

I was more than that, I was…

Don’t say happy.

It wasn’t even that, not exactly.

Probably just the surge of post-orgasm hormones still doing their job, bolstered by a text from Shannon confirming that everything had gone smoothly when they pushed the update. We always did it pretty late at night, so an outage would affect the fewest number of users.

Hearing that it had gone well was quite a lovely icing on tonight’s cake.

I should have had cake.

Shit.

That reminded me about the skipped dinner, and after all that… I was starving. I used the tablet set up near the bed to order a little tapas plate from the room service menu—I could share with Tatum if he woke up—and then realized it would take a bit for it to arrive.

So I needed something to do to keep me from simply falling asleep waiting.

I knew it was a bad idea, but I went to social media.

Where I was immediately inundated with Monty’s name.

Everywhere.

My name?

Everywhere.

My face?

Everywhere.

Instant knots filled my stomach as I realized what I was looking at, the view from the woman at the table’s camera. As the video looped to the beginning, it was clear filming me hadn’t been the original goal. She was filming herself and Monty.

He was so happy.

They were so happy.

Laughing.

Celebrating.

And then I appeared at the table, looking like some kind of fucking stalker, which was, I could be sure, the story the media would spin about it. When really, I’d just wanted to have a nice dinner with a view.

Huh.

I certainly ended up with one of those.

The supposed love of my life, celebrating something with a bottle of champagne with another woman.

As much as I’d tried to play it cool in that moment, the hurt—the devastation—on my face was so palpable it brought tears to my eyes now.

And it made me angry all over again.

I did not deserve that.

And I especially didn’t deserve this moment splashed across the internet, but apparently even that wasn’t a courtesy this woman felt like she could give.

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