Capital Lies (Their First Lady Book 3) Page 10

  He gave me a look when my mouth opened slightly. Of course, they reported to him. I knew they would. That’s exactly why I kept it quiet. But the confirmation still stung.

  “Yes, they told me, Tessa. Don’t be naïve.” He sighed. “And we’ve talked about this before. I let it happen to begin with because I knew you wanted it. I wanted it. So did Preston. That night, it was fun. And that’s all it could be. All eyes are on us now. We can’t have anything happening between you two, and nothing can happen between the three of us. It’s not a permanent real-life situation. Threesomes don’t work like that. We have to keep appearances clean. Even more so now than ever because Libby is involved.”

  “Fair enough . . .” I said. I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like sandpaper. Part of me felt ashamed. Ashamed for wanting more to happen between us. Ashamed for wanting and loving both of them. Ashamed for feeling selfish. Another part of me felt grief. For the loss of something I wanted so badly my heart ached. Grief that I couldn’t have them both, and that I had a tiny sliver of that possibility, only to be told it wasn’t okay.

  “Good.” He nodded. “That’s settled . . .” he said, getting up from the bed.

  I looked up. He was moving on. He had successfully turned the entire conversation on me. “You never answered my question, Cal.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He disappeared into the closet.

  “But I want to talk about it.”

  When he came back into view, he was tying the sash of his black robe.

  Cal picked up his empty glass, walked out of the bedroom, and I followed after him, though I wasn’t sure why.

  He headed straight for the bar and then the need for a room change became very clear. He poured himself another bourbon. Just the slight hint of the scent of it turned my stomach. I clutched on to the highly polished edge of the marble bar.

  “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “An answer, to start with.

  “Drop it, Tessa,” he said, putter the stopper in the decanter.

  “I will not drop it, Cal. You’re keeping a secret. I want you to answer my question.”

  He took a long swig of his drink. “I can’t,” he started, holding up a hand when I opened my mouth to protest. “I can’t tell you about Annabelle without Preston. It’s not entirely my secret to tell.”

  “What about me?”

  I jumped slightly when I heard his voice. I turned to see him standing in our living room holding a manilla file folder two inches thick, still in his suit from being at the White House.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I needed to get some papers from Cal.” His blue eyes darted back and forth between the two of us, taking in the situation. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Tessa was just asking me about Annabelle.”

  “Oh?” he said, coming to stand near me.

  “Yes,” Cal said. “Specifically, about what Annabelle meant to me.”

  Cal took another long sip of his drink and then set it back down on the counter to punctuate his point while Preston dropped his files.

  We both bent down to pick them up at the same time, but my hands were shaking, and my thoughts were racing.

  “Have a seat. We’ll get this,” Cal said, as he and Preston collected the papers.

  When they were done, Cal sat next to me on the couch while Preston sat on the coffee table across from us. He put his folder aside and had an almost wistful expression on his face before they turned to each other and nodded.

  “Will someone say something?” I asked, my nerves setting me on edge.

  “Go ahead,” Cal said. “Tell her.”

  He swallowed so hard the veins in his neck strained. “Cal, Annabelle, and I used to live together. We came to New York City together, the three of us. We had an apartment in the Village. Cal was working on furthering his political career. Knew he wanted to be mayor one day. Annabelle was working at this tiny private school, and I was reluctantly working on my own political advances.”

  “Okay.” I realized I’d practically wrung my hands in knots and shook them loose. “That’s it? You three were really close. So what?”

  Cal nodded. “It was more than just close.”

  I grasped onto the edge of the couch cushions to steady myself. I had a feeling I knew what was coming, but that didn’t mean I was prepared for it.

  “So then what was it?” I asked.

  “We were . . .” Cal paused. “We were in a relationship together.”

  Chapter 13

  The whole entire world ceased to exist for a moment.

  My fingers no longer grasped onto the edge of the couch cushion and Cal no longer sat next to me. One second Preston rested on the coffee table right across from me but then the next he might as well have never been there. I was nothing more than thoughts and feelings zigzagging through an emotionally exhausted mind. Then it shifted.

  All I saw was red.

  All I felt was anger.

  Cal and Preston had once been in a relationship with one woman. That woman wasn’t me.

  Most women probably would’ve had a strong reaction to the news that her husband and his best friend used to date the same woman at the same time, but this was different. I wasn’t just mad, or even simply surprised. I was furious, and not for the same reason most women would be.

  “How could you—why didn’t you—you should’ve told me—” My vision had hardly cleared, and my body just barely returned to its senses. I wanted to say so many things at once that almost nothing would come out. I pictured my thoughts all trying to get through a door at once and elbowing each other as they tried to pass.

  “Neither of us have disclosed our dating past to each other, Tessa,” Cal said. “Frankly, I don’t want to hear about your ex-lovers, and you’ve never asked about mine.”

  “Bull-fucking-shit, Cal.” I pressed up from the couch, nearly knocking Preston over in the wake of my fury as I did. I headed straight for the bar. “How was I to know to ask about something you told me was totally out of the question? You literally just made it out like a threesome relationship—what is that, a throuple?—you made it out to be impossible. Wrong. And you’d already done the same exact thing!”

  “Tessa—” Cal started to say something, but I cut him off. His tone was light and patronizing, I could tell just from him saying my name, and I was in no mood to be spoken to that way. I wasn’t in the mood for much of anything.

  “No, Cal.” I slammed an unopened bottle of tequila on the counter with a loud clink of the glass against the marble. I tugged at the rounded topper, but because of the bottle's square design and my trembling fingers, I couldn’t get it open. “I don’t want to hear you say anything unless it’s a goddamn apology.”

  “Tessa,” Preston said, “everything is fine. Just calm down.”

  Well, that just fired me up more.

  “Word of advice, Preston. Never in the history of humanity has a woman calmed down after being told to calm down. And don’t you dare think you’re off the hook over there.” I continued to tug at the bottle and eventually loosened the stopper with a satisfying pop. “I’m just as mad at you, if not more. You and I just had a talk about Annabelle; a real talk that lasted a long time. I asked you to tell me about her and you never mentioned anything about this.”

  I brought the bottle to my lips, careful to avoid the pungent smell that warned me not to drink the stuff, and I gulped down more than a shot’s worth in one swallow.

  “Easy, Tessa,” Cal warned. “I think we have a long night ahead of us, and you’ll want to sober for it.”

  I glared at him and in a testament to just how powerful my stare had become, Cal balked slightly. “Will I, Cal?” I took another swig of the tequila. It was hardly a shot the second time around, and it burned as it traveled down my throat, but I had a point to prove.

  “We don’t have to talk about this at all if you don’t want to,” he said flippantly.

  “No. W
e’re talking about this right now. And I want the whole truth. You can’t say I didn’t ask for it this time because I’m asking for it now.”

  “What do you want to know?” Preston asked.

  I ignored him, pointedly staring at Cal. He said nothing, just staring back at me.

  “You made me feel like shit this whole time. You made it out that how I’ve been feeling about the three of us is totally wrong. That it wasn’t okay.” My heart pounded in my chest as if it were trying to run away. It wasn’t just that he never told me about Annabelle. It was that I wanted to be with both of them, and he told me it could never happen.

  “It’s not like I did that on purpose,” Cal said.

  I moved out from behind the bar and closer to them in the living room. We hadn’t bothered to turn on many lights, so only the dim glow of the lamp on the end table next to Cal and the twinkle of city lights through the windows lit the space.

  I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back on the bar. I needed something to stabilize me. I needed something solid. I was shaking mad, and so far, I hadn’t heard anything to change that.

  “But you knew. You knew this whole time. You know how I feel about Preston. You knew when I told you what happened between us in the beginning. You’ve known for months that I’ve been torn up about it. You knew full well I wanted both of you. And you knew how guilty I felt about Tennessee, and you still didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s not fair,” Cal said. “I couldn’t have been sure exactly how you felt. And how do you think it made me feel knowing I wasn’t the only man you wanted? You’re my wife, Tessa. My wife.”

  “Don’t try to bullshit me. You know me better than I think, remember? You damn well knew how I felt. And you used it against me.” I raised my voice and threw my hands up in the air. “You made it seem like the three of us would never, ever happen. That it was only for play. Nothing more. That’s not how it happens in real life, right? But it’s not only for play, is it? It was a real relationship with a real woman. You made me feel like it was wrong to want more than one of you. That I had to choose. That’s what’s wrong here. I’ve been lonely and guilty, and I didn’t have to be.”

  Cal nodded as I finished my rant. His voice softened. “Will you come sit down?” His body posture changed, and he wasn’t trying to dismiss me anymore. He patted the cushion next to him, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to be that close. I took a deep breath, telling myself to try to calm down enough so I could listen to what he had to say.

  Slowly, I walked on my tiptoes back over to the couch and sat down with my back against the armrest so I could face them. I folded my legs under me as I sat and kept as much distance between both of them and me as I could.

  “We had two choices when this deal got put together. We could go through the motions and tolerate each other. Or we could try. And we tried. And it worked. I understand the anger in the beginning. When I told you what had been happening with me and Preston. You made it clear to me that you’re possessive, and I get it. I accepted that early on. Part of me craves that dominate side of you and it makes me feel so damn wanted when you own me like that. It’s part of who you are, or at least who I thought you were. But then we shared that night with Preston in the Bahamas.”

  “Yes,” Cal nodded and seemed to consider his next words carefully. “But that was one time.”

  Preston wasn’t an idiot. He was keeping his mouth shut but watching us intently. He’d been on the outside of my relationship with Cal and I knew how hard being on the outside was.

  “That’s beside the point. You enjoyed yourself as much as I did. You acted like you could never share me permanently, or that at least you weren’t willing to. But now I find out you’ve shared a woman before. In a relationship, I mean.”

  I paused. The tears of anger and even despair that had been building behind my eyes threatened to spill over. I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to cry, but this storm inside me had been brewing for months. Cal was willing to share with Annabelle. He wanted more with Annabelle, but he wasn’t willing to do that with me. That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that I felt alone in wanting the three of us to be together like it was something shameful or completely out of line when it wasn’t.

  “You’re right,” Cal said to my surprise. “But it wasn’t always that way.” He scratched at the strong line of his jaw and Preston blew out a breath like this difficult conversation was only going to get harder. “ I like to be in control of things; people, business, sex. We all know that, but I wasn’t unwilling to share. I—uh—I loved Annabelle,” he hedged. “It didn’t work out very well for me last time.”

  I blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Preston loved Annabelle. Cal loved Annabelle. Part of me felt vindicated. My feelings were almost natural when it came to the two of them. They were used to sharing a woman, so my wanting them to share me only seemed right, but the other part of me, the larger part, was just hurt.

  If Cal didn’t want to be a part of a three-way relationship . . . then I didn’t know what that meant. I guessed she was just special in a way I wasn’t. She got to have them both, and not in the one night, sex-only way that I did, but in a real way. They were in love. Together. I couldn’t even imagine how that felt for her. How happy it must have made her. And, they had to have been happy too, at least at some point, or they never would have been willing to share me for even that one night.

  My fingers turned numb as the apartment grew chilly, so I shoved my hands under my legs. Just when I thought I would shiver with the cold, or with the hurt I was feeling, the heat kicked on with a click and surged through the vents.

  “Clearly, things are different now,” I said, the ice in my voice difficult to hide. “I’m not her, and you’re not the same person you used to be. But you should’ve told me.”

  “Yes, I should’ve told you. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re right. Things are different now, and that kind of relationship just isn’t an option anymore.”

  “But,” Preston said, breaking his silence for the first time in a long time. “It doesn’t have to end that way again. Like it did with Annabelle. I love Tessa too. You know that. I want it all with her, everything. The good and the bad, and yes, the sex, but I love her, Cal. I’m willing to try again if you are.”

  My eyes shot up.

  “What?”

  Chapter 14

  Preston was willing to try.

  I was willing to try.

  That only left Cal.

  The anger slowly started to seep out of my body and back out into the universe, or wherever displaced feelings went. Bubbling hope started to take over. In the beginning, being with both of them was something I never imagined I would have wanted, but here I was, the possibility of it in my grasp.

  I knew what it was like to be with both of them separately, I knew what it was like to be with them together, and I had to admit that together was what felt most right. It wasn’t just the sex, though that was phenomenal. It was the love I had for both of them. It was so different, yet the same. It was so deep, it was unfathomable.

  “I—uh—” Cal shifted on the couch, pulling his already tightly closed robe even more tightly together. “I’m not saying I’m against it.”

  “There’s a ‘but’ coming,” I said, waiting for him to drop the rest of his sentence.

  “I’m just not sure I can do it again, the true poly relationship. A threesome in bed is fun. There’s no commitment to it. There’s no relationship. I’m not sure I want it to be more than that. Like it was with Annabelle,” he admitted.

  “Why not?” Preston and I said at the same time. He looked at me, nodding for me to go first.

  “You’re lying to yourself if you think you’re not already there. Look at our sex, Cal. How many times have we role played that Preston was there? How many times have I—”

  “Wait, what?” Preston interjected.

  I answered. “Oh, yeah. We role play. We talk dirty and
role play that you’re there fucking me and he’s watching. Or that he’s in on it. I tell him what I want you to do to me. And he knows we slept together in Tennessee. Said he knew it was going to happen.”

  Preston looked shocked. He shifted on the coffee table and cleared his throat. “That’s . . . news.”

  I looked back to Cal. “You know damn well he’s already a part of our life in just about every way. And I love him. So, you may not want it to be a poly relationship, but in many ways, it would seem that’s what this already is.”

  He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. “It wouldn’t be easy,” he said, looking up.

  Preston barked a laugh. “I don’t think anyone in this room is under the impression it would be an easy relationship. What relationship is?”

  “I don’t know what happened last time, but I’m not the Annabelle—” I started.

  “I know you’re not,” Cal interrupted. But his voice wasn’t harsh. He just didn’t want me to say whatever came next. He gave me a sad smile. “I didn’t know how to be in the relationship back then. Things got serious. So, I backed away from it.”

  “Don’t you think I’m scared out of my mind right now?” I asked. I made sure to look pointedly at Preston, so he knew he was included in my disclosure. “I don’t know how to do any of this, and you’ve both done it before. The way I feel right now is so overwhelming I wish I could run away from it.”

  All the cold from before had vanished and I wished the damn heat would turn off. I was burning up. I knew my face had to have been flush with pink cheeks.

  “I did run.” He looked at Preston as if he were waiting for a sign of disagreement, but Preston simply shrugged and nodded his head.

  “You did,” Preston said. “Things had become more difficult, so you focused on your career. Pushed us away.”

  I moved away from Cal a bit and turned to face Preston fully. If we were going to do this, or at least if we were going to try, I’d have to work on being attentive to both of them.