The Boss Upstairs - Roya Carmen Page 0,36
man who could be unfaithful.”
He shakes his head. “How do you mean?”
“The woman you mentioned…” I clarify. “The one you’re trying not to think about. Is she the reason you divorced your wife?”
He hesitates a long beat before speaking, and I wonder if I’ve just hit the nail on the head.
“Kind of… she had a lot to do with our separation,” he confesses. “Quite a lot in fact.”
“Were you having an affair with her?” I ask, desperate to know.
“No,” he says. “Not really. Not in the traditional sense.”
What the hell does that mean?
He blows out a huge breath. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
I don’t hesitate to answer. “Positive.”
He pulls me to the sitting area in front of the cozy fireplace. We both settle on the loveseat.
He rubs at his pant leg, clearly not wanting to get into this. But he can’t back down now. There’s no way he’s not telling me everything.
“Bridget and I… my ex-wife,” he clarifies. “We… we were polyamorous.”
I cock a brow, confused. “What?”
“It wasn’t what you might think. We weren’t swingers, sleeping around. No, we found couples we enjoyed, and we participated in couple exchanges.”
I’m almost speechless, but not quite. I’m too curious to be speechless. “Couple swapping?”
He smiles. “Yes… You make it sound so tawdry.”
“It is tawdry.” I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “How many times? How many couples?”
“Three times,” he tells me. “The third time was not the charm, it was rather problematic.”
“I can imagine.”
He dips his head and stares at the area rug under our feet. “Mirella, the woman I mentioned… she and I fell in love,” he confesses. “Love was never meant to be part of the equation.”
“Do you still love her?” I ask him, desperately wanting to know.
He stares at his feet for the longest time, and finally says, “I loved her for years.”
“But you don’t anymore?”
He turns to me. “I don’t think so.” He smiles. “All I can think about these days is a certain frisky blue haired beauty.”
I blush. I love his answer. I adore his answer. I want to marry his answer.
But I still have so many questions.
“So did you all have sex in the same room? Like an orgy? What were they like? Did you all get jealous?”
He laughs. “Settle down, little grasshopper.”
“What? I wanna know. This is fascinating.”
“No, we didn’t have sex in the same room. We went on separate dates, usually to dinner and our hotel suites. Details were kept confidential. And no, generally, we weren’t jealous, until things with Mirella and I got out of control. Her husband got violently jealous.”
“Violently jealous?”
“Yes… I ended up in the hospital.”
Jesus.
“Oh my God,” I blurt. “Where are they now?” I ask, hoping they’re very, very far away.
“They’re in Phoenix, and I haven’t talked to them in four years.”
I’m relieved by his answer. So this mysterious woman is no longer part of his life, and hasn’t been for the last four years. Why is he still thinking about her? “You haven’t spoken to her in four years, yet you still think about her,” I say. “That seems crazy.”
He smiles. “It is crazy. I am a little crazy,” he admits. “I told you this. I tend to obsess and I haven’t been able to keep away.”
“Keep away from what?”
“Keep away from her Instagram feed,” he confesses. “It’s where I get to see her every day. Her and her beautiful girls, and occasionally even him. I get to see how happy she is, how her girls are looking more like her every day.”
This breaks my heart. My heart bleeds for him, and for me. But it’s not that much different than what I’m doing. Almost every day, I still look at old photos of Donovan and I. I even look at his old Facebook profile, never taken down.
“Was she beautiful?” I ask, already knowing the answer. Of course she was.
He smiles. “Yes, I certainly thought so.”
I’m curious. “Do you have a photo of her?”
He turns to me. “You want to see?”
Of course I want to see. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away. “Yes.”
15
He takes my hand. “Come with me.”
I follow him out of his office and toward the far end of his penthouse. We walk into his bedroom and make our way to the built-in bookcase lining the entire width of one wall. There is a collection of photos; mostly family and friends and work events. He reaches for a small framed photo of a woman and hands it to me.
A pang of jealousy stabs me.