Page 4 of The One for Me
“Are you okay?” Oliver asks as I push the food around on my plate.
“I’m fine.”
I’m not fine. In fact, I’m a mess. It’s been four days of avoiding his calls. Four days of replaying that kiss over and over again in my mind. There’s no making sense of it.
Sean Arrowood kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. A lot.
“You seem a bit out of it.”
I plaster a smile on my face and shove all my confusion aside. It’s our monthly date night, and I should be happy. Oliver came to the office with flowers and a smile so warm it could have melted ice. He’s safe and good for me. I know this, and yet . . . I feel horrible.
He deserves to know.
“Oliver,” I say carefully. “I . . .”I kissed Sean.“I . . . I’m not sure what to say.”I kissed Sean, and I’m a horrible person.
“Just talk to me, Dev. There’s nothing you can’t tell me.”
I put the fork down and release a few heavy breaths. I already live with secrets, and they fester, eating away a bit of my soul each day. I can’t handle living with another one. While he may think there’s nothing we can’t discuss, there are some things that no one wants to hear.
Still, I won’t do this to him. I won’t agree to something more when everything is a lie.
I made a mistake.
I screwed up, and I have to own it.
“The other night, when I was with Sean.” I take a long pause, hating that I’m going to hurt him. He doesn’t deserve it, but more than anything, he deserves the truth. “We were drinking a lot.”
Oliver smiles and shakes his head. “If I remember correctly, you paid for it the next day.”
I’ve been paying for it since it happened.
“Yes, but there’s more . . .” God, I want to throw up. “We were really drunk. Both of us were, well, we should’ve stopped drinking much earlier. I need to tell you this because I love you. I do. I love you, and I love what we have.”
“Devney, did you . . . did you sleep together?”
I jerk back, eyes wide with shock. Why the hell did he make a leap like that so fast? “No,” I say quickly. “No, we didn’t. But we . . . well, we kissed.”
Oliver sits back, adjusting the napkin on his lap. “I see. Not like you normally do with hello or goodbye?”
I shake my head. “No.”
He swallows and then takes a drink of wine. “I’m not surprised.”
Well, I am. “Why do you say that?”
“Did anything else happen?” he asks with a shake of his head. “I’m assuming you’re telling me because there’s more.”
“No, I swear. It was stupid, and I haven’t talked to him since then, but I wanted to tell you. I’m so sorry. I love you. I hate that I hurt you and destroyed what we have. I wish I could go back and stop it. I’m sososorry, Oliver.”
Oliver, the sweetest man in the world, who has never once questioned or pushed me to do something I didn’t want to, the guy who put me back together when I was falling apart and no one else knew, is going to hate me. And the sad part is, he has every right to.
I wipe away the tear that hangs on the fringe of my lashes. There is no excuse for the choice I made.
“Do you love him?”
My stomach drops. Yes. No. I don’t know. The way I feel about him is muddy. “I have loved him for a long time, but I don’t love him the way I love you.”
“I’m asking if you’re in love with him. Not if you love Sean the way you always have.” There’s tension in his voice that I’ve never heard before. I hate that I’m breaking his trust—and his heart.
