“Breakup?” The word hauls me to my elbows. “Breakup? Is that what you’re calling it?”
He angles his head and regards me with a calculating gaze. “What would you call it?”
I enunciate slowly. “Total emotional annihilation.”
“Uh huh.” He rocks back and sits himself down on the carpet next to me, cross-legged. His shiny leather shoes squeak as they rub against each other. “Tell me about it.”
I look at him squarely, and I swear he flinches. My heartbeat kicks up. He’s guilty of something, all right. “Why don’t you tell me? I was going to have the wedding of my dreams, and my perfectly happy, perfectly perfect soul mate runs away with a stripper the night before our wedding. You were there. What happened?”
He nods, thoughtful, looking down at me with those blue-green eyes of his. I watch for the tell that he’s lying—his nostrils flaring—but it doesn’t come. “I…was…there. That is true.”
“What did she look like?” Inside I cringe at my patheticness even as I ask. “Was she beautiful? Was she a redhead?” Liam has always had a thing for redheads. “Did she sparkle? I’ve heard strippers sparkle. Maybe he’ll come back once the glitter washes off.”
The look he gives me is so raw with pity that I feel it like a punch to my solar plexus. I want to cover his eyes with my hands so he won’t look at me like that. So he can’t see whatever it is about me that’s making him look that way.
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what she looked like. The point is that he was capable of leaving you the night before your wedding all along and in the end, that’s what he chose to do.”
Tarek’s words—he chose to—wrap around my heart like a blood pressure cuff and start squeezing. As if, when it comes down to it, no one would choose me.
He takes a deep breath. “I think it’s time for some tough love, Duchess. I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a big brother, and I’m going to be straight with you. Liam didn’t love you.”
The blood pressure cuff around my heart inflates further until I’m sure my heart will burst.
“He wasn’t perfectly happy. In fact, he was miserable.”
“What? No, we—”
“He told me about medium spicy,” he interrupts. Medium spicy was my code word for wearing cotton instead of silk nighties and not serving him dinner on the good china after we were engaged—all the ways you don’t have to try so hard once you’re in an established relationship. It’s a good thing. No one can sustain super hot and spicy in everyday reality. Real women don’t wear makeup and stilettos to bed. But apparently Tarek disagrees. “No man wants medium spicy before he even makes it to the getting-your-balls-cut-off-at-the-altar part.”
I suck in a breath. “That’s commitment. That’s love. That’s being comfortable with each other so every moment doesn’t have to be spicy.” I don’t even want to think about the heights of heat Tarek’s sordid love life achieves on the Scoville scale.
“No, that’s boring, and that’s not what men want.”
I sit up and face him. “How do you know what men want?”
“Oh, I know what men want. I am one, remember? Men want variety. A lot of different women. And they don’t want to be shackled to one woman for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re a pig.”
“And you’re naïve.”
I feel like I’m running on sand. I want to fight him, but the ground is shifting under my feet. “It’s not naïve to believe in love.”
“Oh, it is. It so is. And stupid.” He punctuates the word with a jab of his chin in my direction.
“I’m not stupid.”
“You’re being stupid. Loving Liam was stupid.” His lip curls. “And you smell.”
“I don’t smell!” I probably do. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been living on the floor.
“You do. You smell terrible.” He shakes his head at me. “How long have you been like this?”
“For as long as you’ve been an asshole! Forever! This is your fault. Tell me, did you hand him condoms on his walk over to the stripper?”
“Duchess, he didn’t walk over to the stripper. He ran.”
I feel the prickle of tears behind my eyes, but I choke them back. “Where’s Kya? I need Kya and you’re no Kya.” I shove hard on his muscular thigh with my two hands, trying to push him toward the door. He doesn’t move.
“You’re damn right I’m no Kya. She’d just bring you more wine and wipe your tears.”
“Yes, and that’s what I need right now. A friend.”
He grabs my arm and focuses on me with strange intensity. “No, I’m your friend because I’m telling you the way things are and not letting you have stupid illusions that will keep you from moving on. You look pathetic, you smell awful, and you’re stupid for loving Liam. Get over it.”
“You get over it!” I yell inanely. I turn and put my feet on his thigh and try to push him toward the door.
“Oh, I’m over it. Believe me. And you know who else is over it? Liam. He’s over it. He’s over the nagging and the no makeup and the no-sex-before-work-on-a-weekday rule.”
I gasp and sit up. “He told you that?”
“Yes, he did. And when I told him life didn’t have to be like that—”
My blood slows, freezing to crystallized ice in my veins. “You what?”
Tarek closes his mouth. Oh, he knows what he said.
I chomp down on my back teeth and feel the tightness travel down my neck and straight across my shoulders. I could pounce on him from my spot on the comforting floor. I am a caged animal, cornered by heartache and despair. And Tarek is in my home, where I live, attacking me.
My voice gets low and dangerous. “You told him what, exactly? That he could do better? That he didn’t have to settle for love and commitment and a lifetime with a woman who doesn’t wear makeup to bed and might be too rushed before work to help him get it up?”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, I think you did. I think you meant exactly what you just said.” I poke him in the chest.
He flicks my hand away. “Stop it.”
“I think you told him that a life like yours was so awesome. A life where you could have any woman you want, hell, two at a time, and things like feelings and love don’t enter into it.” I poke him again.
He grabs my hand this time and holds it. Hard. He’s hunkered down next to me and puts his face right in mine. “I did. You caught me, Marissa. I told him the truth. I told him that marriage was for chumps and even a guy like him could tap some hot ass if he could get to it before all his hair was gone. In the next five years, maybe, tops.”
“You son of a bitch.”
I’d like to say that I jump on top of him and land a right hook, but it’s more accurate to say I kind of push him off balance and flop on top of him.
He laughs. “Duchess, you still fight like a girl.”
“I am a girl, you asshole.”
He laughs again. “You don’t smell like one. God, you stink.”