After the Morning After Read Free Page A

to say, I’ve been holding out on you guys. The night I was dumped, I didn’t take it as easily as you might have thought.”
    “But I thought he was just someone you had sex with,” Addie said. “I know you didn’t know about the other women, but it was only about sex for both of you, right? You guys always got together on Wednesday nights, right?”
    “Yes,” Victoria confirmed and studied her nails. “I’m afraid when Keenan and I heard the term ‘hump day,’ we chose to interpret it literally,” she finished in a low, amused voice.
    The comment produced bawdy laughter and a few verbal responses.
    “I heard that!”
    “Get your freak on!”
    “I know that’s right!”
    “Go on, Tori,” Bella said when they had quieted.
    “Well, it’s like I told you all those months ago. Keenan chased me until he wore me down. At first I was just a challenge to him, and I knew that, but things changed. I wasn’t playing hard to get when I met him; I really didn’t want a relationship. I gave in to him because I thought I could trust him, and, well” —she hesitated and shrugged jerkily—“I was horny and I like sex,” she tried to say in a smooth voice, “and Keenan gave it to me in spades. I didn’t want, nor did I expect, the typical relationship with him, but I also didn’t expect him to be sleeping with two other women at the same time and treating us as if we were cars he had out on a test drive. We were supposed to be friends, and I trusted him.” She lifted her cup to drink more tea but found it empty.
    “Don’t stop now,” Addie demanded. “I’ll get you more tea. Bring a big pot of black cherry for her,” he called to one of his waitstaff as he pointed to Victoria. “And bring refills for Bella and me too.”
    Victoria started again. “He should have told me what he was doing so he could have made the choice as to whether or not I wanted to be included, which of course I wouldn’t have,” she said softly as she looked down at her hands, which had a tight grip on the cup.
    “And that’s why he didn’t tell you, hon,” Addie said. “He knew you’d bail the minute he suggested such a thing.”
    “Yes, I figured that out, but I trusted him. And what he did when he revealed his true self to me was take away something that I’d just started to get back when I met him. He took away my trust in my own judgment.” She smiled her thanks when the waitress brought the tea and refilled her mug.
    “Go on,” Bella encouraged her after she’d watched her doctor her tea with honey.
    Victoria looked at the two faces eagerly awaiting her story and grimaced. This was the hardest part. Given all that they’d shared with her, she shuddered to think how they’d react when they learned what she’d been holding back. She took a bracing sip of her tea. “Once upon a time, I was engaged to be married. I thought he was perfect for me. We wanted the same things: a family, our careers.
    “We’d grown up together, and what I really liked about him was that he was able to see beyond the senator’s and socialite’s daughter to me. And he was open to a little rough” —she cleared her throat and focused her gaze on a painting on the wall behind Addie—“uh…trying new things in the bedroom. I mean, he barely batted an eye when I told him that I wanted to try bondage. We had just started to dabble in it when, two days before the wedding, he left me,” she finished and looked down to stir her tea. She waited for their responses.
    Silence had never been so loud before.
    She looked up, and her eyes went wide. Well, good heavens, she thought with a wince as she studied her friends, I didn’t think the facial expression of horrified shock could exist anywhere but in pages of fiction. Mouths slack and preternaturally still, both of her friends had their unblinking, dazed eyes focused on her. Lord, she thought, involuntarily shivering, they look like a couple of cult followers.
    “Anyone for grape