The Pretend Boyfriend (The Pretend Boyfriend #3)(6)
Author: Artemis Hunt

That is an odd thing to say, Sam thinks.

She says carefully, “Did anyone . . . hurt you . . . enough for that to happen?”

Delilah arrests her gaze for a long time, before murmuring, “Once, maybe, a long time ago . . . but not anymore. Nowadays, if anyone tries to hurt me, I just get even. What is it Ivana Trump once said? ‘Don’t get even, get everything’. Yeah, I can subscribe to that.”

She laughs softly.

A mild shudder worms down Sam’s spine. She suppresses it.

“What about you?” Delilah says. “Any boyfriend?”

Her eyes are attentive upon Sam’s face, as if she’s watching every twitch, every tic. Heat climbs up Sam’s collar.

“No,” she replies truthfully. “I used to have one, but we broke up.”

“Cheating? Lying?”

Incompatibility.

To force the camaraderie of shared ground, Sam says, “Yeah, something like that.”

Delilah smiles, as if she knows more than what Sam is letting on.

She declares, “The only good thing about men is the sex.”

“Hear, hear,” Sam says, laughing.

They raise their ice lemon teas and clink glasses. Sam feels her tensed muscles relaxing. They make more small talk about movies and theatre and stuff they generally like. Then Sam carefully makes the move to apartments.

“Where do you live?” she asks, even though she knows full well where Delilah lives.

Delilah smiles mysteriously. “In a secret bat cave with my butler and handsome blond sidekick. Why do you want to know?”

Sam is taken aback. But she recovers quickly. “Just making talk. I just bought a new apartment myself.” She gives the address, hoping Delilah would not think anything of it.

Of course, if Delilah were to tail her with a private investigator, just as she had done, it would be easy to note that Brian Morton – the very object of Delilah’s accusation – spends the night there every now and again. But Sam doesn’t think Delilah would tail her. She’s not the object of suspicion. Yet.

Or maybe I’m getting paranoid.

Come on, Sammie. You’ve got to be strong for Brian.

They continue to talk into the night. Sam tries to steer the topic of conversation back to boyfriends. She’s pu**yfooting around, dipping her toe into dangerous waters. One false move, and she’d be outed.

Sam says, “I had a boyfriend once . . . a long time ago . . . who was a real jerk. Even when he was dating me, he was seeing other girls behind my back. At first I thought it was just one girl, but then it turned out to be a whole cheerleading squad of them. He was the college whore, but I refused to see it, you know, because I was just so thrilled he was dating me.”

She watches Delilah’s face surreptitiously when she says this.

After a while, Delilah nods. “I knew of someone like that once.”

“Did you date him?”

Delilah ponders this for a while, and then she nods. “He was an amazing lover. Handsome like the devil himself.” Her eyes wear a faraway look. “He made me feel . . . like . . . he really cared about me.”

Sam’s gut does an about turn. She can feel the undercurrents gathering, together with a sinister undertow that threatens to drag at her kicking feet. She has no idea if Delilah is talking about Brian, but she has to press on.

“What happened?”

“He had this way of capturing your eyes when he was making love to you. Like you were the only one for him, even when he wasn’t saying the words.”

Sam thinks of Brian’s melting brown eyes. She has felt that way many times.

“And the things he did to your body,” Delilah goes on, that misty look even more evident, “I have never come so much with a man before, you know? Never had and never will.”

Sam says tentatively, “Was it just all sex?”

She knows she wonders about that with Brian when it comes to herself. The fact he stuck around with her. Is it all just sex? Or something more? Even now, when he’s monogamous with her, she finds herself wondering. Brian would never come right out and say stuff. It is all a guess with him. Will he? Won’t he? Does he?

Christ.

Delilah’s expression changes, and suddenly, Sam experiences a pang for what the other woman must have gone through. She herself is the recipient of such a maddening and yet enthralling relationship. She knows well the heartaches and agonies and sublime happiness and rollercoaster emotions that go with it.

“No,” Delilah declares. “It wasn’t just all sex. There was always more.”

The impression of more. Sam understands this well.

“When did you have this relationship? College?”

Delilah nods.

That figures. Brian might not remember someone he slept with in college, especially if it had been a brief encounter. And especially if Delilah no longer looks like what she once did. Then again, Delilah might not have been talking about Brian. But somehow, Sam senses that she is, and her intuition about these things is usually spot on.

“Then it was over . . . before college ended?”

Delilah affirms it. Knowing Brian, Sam thinks it could have been over in a week. Two weeks, tops. He had a way of making you feel as though there was something more – some unresolved issues – even though he had no intention of doing so. Brian affected people in conscious and subconscious ways. When he was with you, your world spun dizzily on its axis. When he dumped you . . . or when he told you that you never had a thing in the first place . . . it’s hell on earth.

You became besotted with him. Convinced yourself you had more with him that you ever did, because he was a trophy in himself – remarkably handsome, rich, sophisticated, charming, everything you ever wanted in a butterfly sort of man . . . a man you just couldn’t pin down, but knew that if you could, he would be yours forever because such men gave their hearts but only once. And when he did, it would be forever.

Except for the fact you didn’t have his heart and you never will.

But it doesn’t stop you from wishing. And hoping. And trying. And giving more and more of yourself to him, until you were almost doing anything to keep him. And willing with all the passion in the world that it would happen.

Sam finds herself trembling slightly. She hides her hands beneath the table to prevent Delilah from noticing them. She knows how Delilah feels now. Can even empathize with her.

But knowing is one thing. There’s that little thing about what Delilah decided to do about it.

Delilah gets up. There’s an abrupt shift in her mood now. Just moments ago, she has been pensive and almost reachable. Now she sort of closes up on herself – a clam that is teasing you with some new insight, and then snaps the lid of its shell before you can catch a glimpse.