Page 75 of Whisking It All

“Not me. She and Mom still talk almost every day,” Ethan chuckled.

Of course.

“Anyway, thanks, man. You’re a good friend,” Ethan said. “The best, actually.”

Jamie just nodded, unable to speak past the lump in his throat as Ethan signed off and the computer screen went blank.

Jamie sank into his office chair, his elbows braced against his desk, and cradled his head in his hands. The leather of the chair across from his desk creaked as Gavin sank into it. Jamie knew Gavin wouldn’t be the first to speak.

“Say something,” Jamie begged, his head still in his hands.

“What would you like me to say?” Gavin asked, his voice calm.

It was the voice Jamie imagined Gavin might use when he caught a student cheating on a test or plagiarizing a paper. The voice he likely used when Brodie had tried to sneak in past curfew every Friday night in high school. It was a voice that said he already knew what you’d done wrong and was just waiting for you to admit it. Gavin’s brother had become a priest, but maybe it should have been Gavin who heard confessions for the way he wielded so much guilt with only seven words.

Jamie looked up at his friend, scraping his hand over his mouth. “Nothing,” he said. “Don’t say anything.”

They sat in silence, staring at each other, until Jamie could feel Gavin’s gaze crawling over him, assessing him. But somehow still not judging him.

It would have been easier if Gavin was judging him.

“It was her,” he said. “It was always her.” Gavin’s eyes narrowed in confusion and Jamie huffed out a breath, trying again. “I met Tessa the night before she turned up in Aster Bay. I went on a shitty blind date, and I wound up meeting Tessa.”

“The girl from the hotel,” Gavin said, the pieces slotting together.

“Except I didn’t meet her for the first time a month ago. I met her six months ago, in an internet fan forum where she went by the name WhiskyBusiness. Only I didn’t know it was her until Monday night.”

“When you gave her a ride home from trivia.”

He nodded, a strange sort of relief at finally saying it to someone mingling with his shame. Not just at what he’d done, but at the knowledge he was going to do it again.

“I didn’t know—” He broke off, the empathy in his friend’s face more damning than anything else. He didn’t deserve empathy.

“And now you do,” Gavin said. “Are you going to stop?”

Jamie shook his head, looking away. “I’ve been falling for this woman for months, and now she’s here... I don’t know how to stop.”

Gavin blew out a breath, tapping his knuckles on the arm of the chair.

“What happens when she leaves?”

Jamie’s gaze snapped to Gavin’s even as he fought back the growl that gathered at the base of his throat. If he was honest with himself, there was a small—or maybe not so small—part of him that thought, with time, he could convince her to stay. He could figure out how to keep her and Ethan, too.

Gavin’s eyes softened. “Jamie, she is going to leave again.”

“I know,” he said. He did know, he just wasn’t ready to believe it.

“You’ve never been the casual-dating kind of guy.”

“Maybe I’ve changed.”

“Have you?”

He leaned his forehead against his hand, rubbing his forefinger back and forth as though he could wipe away the electrical storm behind his eyes. “This conversation would be a hell of a lot easier if you fucked up every once in a while, you know?” he muttered with a half-hearted chuckle.

Gavin huffed out a breath that could almost have been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so bitter. Jamie glanced at him curiously, but Gavin was no longer looking at him. “We’ve all fucked up, Jamie.” He turned to Jamie with a strained half smile, then got to his feet. “I’m always here, man. If you want to talk.”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, struggling to decode the far-off look in Gavin’s eye. “Same.”

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