“I love you.” I tell him instantly. “I miss you. How are you?”

“Where are you?” he asks and I frown that he didn’t respond to any of the things I said.

“At a bar with Chlo,” I tell him and he sighs in response. “What’s wrong? I told you I was going out.”

“You’re just with Chlo?”

I freeze. There are moments in life where you’re forced to make a decision where the choice isn’t obvious but you don’t have a chance to weigh the pros and cons because you only have about a second to give an answer. The lie comes out before I have a chance to stop it. “Yep. Mason is still at my parents’, I think.”

Guilt washes over me at the idea of lying to him. But what was the alternative? Tell him I was here on what is shaping up to be some kind of double date? Or even if I left out the tidbit about Trey and Chloe getting back together, he’d still question what I was doing drinking with my parents’ friend without my parents or even Mason. It would lead to questions and perhaps accusations that would be well warranted.

I’ll tell him the truth when he gets home. I’ll tell him everything. Just not on the phone while he’s across the country and working. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“When are you going home?”

I frown, also recalling my earlier conversations today. I feel like I’ve been interrogated all day and I’m officially over it. “Parker, stop it. I asked you a question, one I’m realizing you’ve been avoiding answering all day.”

“I’m working, Whitney. What do you think?”

“I think it’s past midnight in New York on a Friday night,” I say, looking at my watch. “There’s no way you’re still at the office. You run a chain of clubs.”

“I’m the financial advisor for a chain of clubs, you act like I spend much time at any of them.” And that was true, I went to his clubs with Chloe more than he did. He didn’t mind me going, my guess because everyone knows I’m his fiancée and he has people keeping an eye on me. That wayward thought comes out of nowhere and throws me off slightly.

“It still doesn’t change the fact that I asked what you’re doing and your response is to continue to interrogate me like you’ve been doing all day.”

There’s a door where I’m standing that leads out onto the patio and I push through it and I’m happy to have some fresh air. There are people taking pictures and drinking, some rowdier than others but it’s still quieter than it is inside.

He lets out a sigh and I can already picture him pulling at his hair like he always does when he’s agitated. “We went to dinner earlier at a steakhouse owned by one of the investors. Now we’re just at a rooftop bar. I wish you were here,” he says finally. “Everyone has their significant other here and I just… miss you.”