Page 112 of The Liar's Reckoning

His question lights me up. “Are you on your way there now?”

“Yeah.”

“I can be there in an hour.”

“The ballet gala?”Silas asks. “Next Thursday?”

I blink up at him. I’m lying on the couch with my head in his lap. “Yeah. Why?”

He grimaces. “Since it’s gala season, we might be running into each other.”

I frown, confused. “How’s that?”

“I’m a good date?”

I put my hand over my face, covering my eyes while the puzzle pieces slot together. “Fuck.”

His hand moves slowly back and forth over my abs in the same rhythm as before I brought up the gala. We’re still dressed because we’ve been talking since I got here. I feel like I know his roommate Drew now as well as I know my wife. He doesn’t want to talk about Christian, but he did ask how Avery was doing, and now we’re here—with me facing the prospect of running into my boyfriend with a man who’s paying to fuck him next Thursday night.

It’s all fun and games in theory, but seeing it? Someone else’s hands on him? In a tux? I might be sick.

“What if Avery sees you?” I ask.

“What if she does?”

“Won’t that…” I trail off, realizing he couldn’t care less who Avery sees him out with or what she assumes. I’m the one who might puke in front of Sarah Jessica Parker.

I curl onto my side, wrapping my arms around his waist and burying my face against his stomach. “Don’t women ever hire you?”

“Not often. I’ll get a closeted lesbian from time to time, but it’s rare.”

“Do men who’ve been with you before ever see you at some other event with someone else?”

“I guess it’s possible,” he says, his hand now moving through my hair and sending chills down my arms. “No one’s ever said anything to me.”

“Why are you being so casual about this?”

“I think it’s fair to say we both wish the other had a different job. But here we are, and we’ll deal with it. Right?”

I answer by hugging him tighter.

“We can do this, baby,” he says.

“If I quit in six years, will you?”

He laughs. “I fucking hope I’m not still doing this in six years.”

At that I look up at him.

“Not you,” he says, pressing a fingertip between my eyes. “I plan to do you indefinitely.”

“It’s like that?”

He nods. “It’s like that. Not that I want anything to happen to my mom or Trix, I just… You know what I mean.”

I do. I completely know what he means. A lot can change in six years. He could open a gym. He could get a degree. God forbid, I could inherit, come out, and stop living a lie every single second of every damn day.

When he leans down and kisses me, that, at least, feels like the truth.

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