I might make it up for her.
“You want anything to drink?” she asked as she walked into the kitchen.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having.” I took a seat on the couch beside my suit.
“I can still only have water,” she called back. “So are you sure about that?”
I cringed. “Give me a single malt.”
She grabbed her glass and made my drink at the bar before she returned. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen you drink water since I’ve known you…”
“Because I don’t,” I teased.
“I can imagine how your conversations go with your doctor…”
“Not well,” I said with a chuckle. I took a long drink, feeling the burn down my throat and all the way into my stomach. The heat followed immediately afterward, giving me a jolt of energy to push through this. “Titan, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m gonna be up front with you…you aren’t going to like it.”
She crossed her legs and set her glass on the table. “Too bad I can’t have an Old Fashioned to prepare for it.” She leaned forward and rested her arms on her knee. “What is it, Thorn? And please tell me it has nothing to do with Diesel.”
“Actually, it doesn’t.”
She sighed in relief. “Well, that makes it a little easier, I guess.”
I rubbed my palms together and tried to find the right sentence to start with, but there wasn’t a good option.
Titan looked at me expectantly.
I felt her hard gaze. “I’m sleeping with Autumn.” Now it was out in the open. My secret was no longer a secret, and it actually felt good to get off my chest. “It started almost a month ago.” I avoided her gaze because I already knew what her expression would look like.
She was pissed. “Since before I made her a partner?”
I nodded. “I went to her office to negotiate your terms, and…the attraction was there. Every time I was around her, it kept building. Then we were both at a party, and she made a move on me.” I didn’t tell her the specifics, that Autumn stared at my package without shame and became a big admirer of my dick.
When Titan sighed, I knew she was livid. She wasn’t the kind of person who screamed her head off when she was angry. Her silence was sharper than a steak knife. It cut through the air with the sting of salt on an open wound. “This is unbelievable…I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t need to tell you every single detail of my personal life, Titan.” I rounded on her, reminding her that we had our own lives despite how close we were. “I didn’t want you to think less of her because she wanted to sleep with me.”
“I don’t care about what you do with your dick, Thorn. But I relied on you to tell me if she was a good fit for the company. You were my eyes and ears. And now I find out your objectivity was compromised because you were screwing her the entire time. I trusted you.”
This was something I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t even realize she would feel that way until she said it, and now I realized it was a legitimate concern. “My objectivity was never compromised. Autumn is a humble genius. You couldn’t find anyone better. And frankly, you couldn’t compete against her. This was the only option.”
She jumped to her feet then started pacing across the room, her arms crossed over her chest. “You didn’t tell me to protect her privacy, but you didn’t protect my goals. Your allegiance should have been to me, Thorn. Not her. And you really think I would judge a woman for wanting to sleep with a man? Come on, you must not know me at all.” She shook her head and released another sigh.
“I thought it would be a one-time thing, so I didn’t think I needed to tell you that.”
“And when did it stop being a one-time thing?”
Immediately. “I can’t recall.”
She stopped walking and glared at me.
When I had Autumn once, I wanted her again. I knew it the second I fucked her. “A few days afterward…”
“So this became a relationship?”
“Not a relationship. An arrangement. She didn’t want a relationship, and neither did I…but we didn’t want to see other people either.”
“Which makes it a relationship,” she snapped. “If it were a one-time thing, it probably wouldn’t matter. But you actually know this woman. You share thoughts and feelings. It clouds your ability to make valid decisions. You could have pushed for it just because of your infatuation.”
“Give me more credit than that, Titan.” I stood up and started to pace. “I’m not some idiot that will fall for anything a woman will say. I can keep things separate. I know she’s the perfect partner for you, and regardless of what happens between us, that will never change. That’s not just a gut instinct. That’s a claim backed up by evidence.”
Titan shifted her weight to one leg, her arms crossed and the fiery look still in her eyes. She tapped her fingers against her arm as she considered what I said. I knew she was thinking because of the focused look on her face. She was debating with herself, going over everything that was said with a critical approach. “In the end, it doesn’t change anything. This is where we are now, and we have to make the best of it…I suppose.”
“It’ll be great, Titan. Autumn is the supergenius you need to rise to the next level.”
“I sincerely hope you’re right.” She finally looked at me again, calm but irritated.
We’d gotten through the first obstacle. Hopefully, we’d get through the next one. “There’s something else…”
She sighed in preparation.
“We’d been spending a lot of time together, and she believed the romance you and I had. It came up a lot, and she told me something very personal about herself because of it. Her opinion of you started to change because she couldn’t understand why
