Page 97 of Sexting His Assistant

“Because it’s true.”

“I plan your dates.”

“Yes.”

“They intensified,” I say. “You were meeting a different woman practically every other night.”

“Yes.”

I scowl. “Don’t yes me like that proves your innocence.”

“They were dates,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“I haven’t slept with Alina,” he says.

I laugh again, but weaker this time. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you keep scheduling them?”

“Because stopping would have made people ask questions I did not want answered.”

“What questions?”

He looks at me then, and something in his face breaks past control. “Why I could not stand the thought of touching another woman.”

My breath leaves me.

He continues, voice lower now, rougher. “Why I took them to dinner and could not hear them speak because I was thinking of you correcting my notes that morning. Why I sent them home early because their perfume was wrong. Why I sat across from beautiful women and felt nothing but irritation because none of them laughed at me with enough disrespect.”

My throat tightens painfully. “Luka.”

“No.” He shakes his head once, like he has started and now cannot stop, like the honesty has become its own kind of violence. “You called me vile. Perhaps I am. But I didn’t touch them. I could not.”

My hands curl into the sleeves of my sweater.

I cannot breathe properly.

This cannot be true. It cannot.

Because if it is true, then…

“Because of me?” I ask, barely audible.

His eyes darken. “Because I cannot stop thinking about one person.”

I hold my breath. He takes one step closer. This time I don’t move back.

“You,” he says.

I stare at him, heart pounding so hard it feels painful.

He looks almost angry with me for hearing it. With himself for saying it. With the whole world for making it true.

“And when you sent me that text,” he says, voice low and harsh now, “that dirty, reckless message in the middle of my board meeting, it gave me the permission I’d spent years denying myself.”

My lips part.