Or maybe I won’t. Maybe he hasn’t sent me a single thing since he apologized for bailing on me last night.
My stomach flips and nausea rolls over me. How long have I been convinced that it was Sam I was talking to? I kept telling myself that it was, but now that I’m forced to accept that it wasn’t Sam, I feel . . . violated.
That’s not fair. River never claimed to be Sam. That’s on me. And yet now that I know, I wish I gave heed to all those moments we’d been chatting and I’d grown cold, all the times I’d get that off feeling in my gut. Any time I found myself questioning who my anonymous friend was, I’d remind myself of all the reasons I thought he was Sam. River was looking for an investment; Sam does investment banking. River likes to talk dirty; Sam likes to talk dirty. River has a little brother; Sam has a little brother. River wants to tie me up; Sam likes to tie me up.
But maybe that’s a more common fantasy than I realize. And the other things? A background in finance, a little brother? What an idiot am I? There have to be thousands of guys who fit that description.
Holding my breath, I open my laptop and turn it on. As it does with every startup, the messenger client loads and my missed messages fill my screen.
Riverrat69: I don’t blame you for being pissed. The ball’s in your court now, just know I would have rather been with you last night.
I press my hands to my hot cheeks. How can I tell River what has me so upset? How can I tell Sam?
I shake my head. I can’t. Telling Sam would be suicide. There’s nothing between us and no reason I should hurt him by admitting I went to the cabin to meet someone else.
“But I only went because I thought that someone else was him,” I whisper. God, what a convoluted mess I’ve created.
I place my hands on the keyboard to reply to River. But instead of replying, I scroll back through our message history, to a month ago around the time when things started crossing the friendship line.
Riverrat69: Tell me what turns you on.
Tink24: Kissing. Secret meetings in dark corners. Strong men who pursue what they want but aren’t too proud to ask for permission before taking it. What about you?
Riverrat69: Blondes, beautiful women in short skirts, sassy-mouthed vixens.
Tink24: Oh, so I turn you on?
Riverrat69: Yes. You do. But you already knew that.
Tink24: I hoped. Anything else?
Riverrat69: So much. The curve of a woman’s ass. Hearing her scream my name as I drive into her. The way she stops breathing just before she comes. Your turn.
Tink24: This conversation turns me on. And if the moment is right and I feel safe . . . being tied up.
Riverrat69: I would love to tie you up. I’ve fantasized about it more than once.
It was after that conversation that I’d begun to convince myself Sam was the one I was talking to. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how that all played out. I remembered it as him bringing up bondage first. But it had been me. And wouldn’t most guys play along if a woman said she’d like to be tied up?
The doorbell rings, and I jump.
After closing my laptop, I hurry toward the door and look out the window. Hanna, Nix, Cally, and Maggie are standing on my porch, their arms loaded with grocery bags.
I open the door and my throat goes thick with tears. I am so grateful for my friends. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Cheering you up,” Hanna says, pushing past me.
Cally follows her to the kitchen and chimes in with, “Pretending to be something more than a diaper-changing milk machine for a few minutes.”
Maggie wraps me in a hug. “Hanna said we needed a girls’ night. So here we are.”
“Yeah, here we are,” Nix says with a grin.
My smile wobbles. “You guys are the best.”
“We know,” the girls say in unison.
I follow them to my kitchen, where Hanna is producing the ingredients for chocolate martinis. When she was going through everything with Nate and Max last year, this was how we cheered her up. Since Cally and Hanna both have babies at home now, martini nights are a rare occurrence. “It means a lot to me that you guys came,” I say as we gather in the kitchen. “Now give me vodka.”
Hanna pours dark brown liquid from the martini shaker into a glass then thrusts it in my hand. She makes more for the other girls as I drink.
“So I’ve decided this is the creepiest thing ever,” Nix says after draining half of her martini. “You need to tell Sam about this Riverrat guy so you can get to the bottom of this.”
Cally shivers. “Someone was meeting at you at their cabin. Nix is right. That’s just creepy.”
I can’t disagree. The whole thing is just too coincidental and weird. I might think that it was some big scheme to trick me, and Sam was in on it, but that doesn’t make sense. What would he get out of that?