“Leave it for the waitress then,” he said, then grabbed his phone. Ethan gathered up his papers and exited a few minutes later.

When Nate left the diner he was seeing red. Dark clouds billowed from behind his eyes. Anger lashed his body, fueled by a latent shame. Fine, he understood on a rational level—though that level was much harder for him to access right now—that this situation was not the same as Joanna sleeping with her professor.

And yet, somehow it had the makings to be precisely the same. Because Casey knew how important trust was to him. She knew that it was the cornerstone of their friendship and the foundation of their love.

He breathed out hard, huffing through his nostrils. He fumbled at his phone as he marched along the crowded avenue, late morning foot traffic clogging the sidewalk. He slid his thumb across the screen to unlock it but the heat beat down, and he missed, his fingers slippery with sweat.

He cursed, and was damn near ready to slam his fist into a streetlamp again as he replayed the conversation with Ethan. Though something felt off about Ethan’s take on the events, that email seemed to reveal the Casey had been up to something.

Cutthroat.

Was she truly that cutthroat in business? He flashed back to what Scott had said about her. Good at business, bad at relationships.

No, his heart screamed. But his head warned him that he’d been fucked with before, and not to let it happen again. He’d learned his lesson, hadn’t he?

His chest felt heavy, and his pulse beat with fury as he pushed his way around crowds of New Yorkers. He jostled past a group of hipsters, barely caring that he nearly knocked into one of them. Tension coiled in his muscles as his brain went wild, racing through the possibility that Casey had subverted their deal. Because of one sentence. One line. One phrase from Ethan.

“It’s like being licked and fucked at the same time.”

Casey had said that to him the night in London. Said it in the throes of passion the time she came undone courtesy of that toy. That’s what rankled him the most. She’d made such a big deal about never using those words outside of the bedroom, but somehow that private description had made its way back to Ethan. The kernel of doubt inside of him ballooned as he turned the corner, heading towards the high-rise building. All rational thought fled his brain, and he was reduced to raw, exposed nerves, and the fear that he’d chosen the wrong person to love yet again.

He reached for his phone once more, ready to call her, to confront her, to ask her what the hell was up, but as he started to dial her number, his phone beeped.

The guy Jack had put him in touch was calling. Crap. Nate answered, not wanting to deal with it, but knowing he had to. He gave the guy the necessary details for the delivery, then hung up. Was he really going to stick to the plan to give this gift to Casey tonight after what Ethan had shared?