on a cheerful smile and take the glass of champagne a server offers me. I laugh with the co-workers I pass on my way over to Sloane and the rest of the crew. As intended, the act fools everyone. Not a single person on this roof, my girls included, would think anything was amiss with my behavior.
But Sonja…I feel her eyes follow me for the rest of the night.
What the hell was I thinking?!
No more escapes with Ryder. That’s it. We’re done. The whole thing is too risky. That trapdoor is sealed shut. Cemented over.
Back to reality.
Permanently.
And now I get why Wendy Darling went home.
Neverland was just too good to be true.
Real Talk Romance, Episode 31
“Welcome back to another episode of RTR, all you beautiful people,” Kennedy begins her show. “Today, we’re talking with three married couples, all who’ve recently celebrated milestone anniversaries. Deon and Trinity just made it through their first blissful year of marriage together. Harrison and Katie hit their twenty-five-year mile marker and have two teenagers at home. And Archie and June have now made it fifty glorious years together, with five children and nine grandchildren to show for it.”
Everyone applauds the oldest couple.
“We’re going to learn all their secrets for how they make marriage work and keep that flame burning bright,” Kennedy continues. “Let’s kick it off with one of the questions I hear most often: what do you consider to be the most important aspect of a relationship?”
“I think having enough of the same interests is critical,” Deon answers. “You have to enjoy doing a lot of the same things together because that’s when all the best memories are made.”
“And not just similar interests, but similar goals,” Trinity chimes in. “If you’re not both going in the same direction in life, you’ll end up growing apart.”
“For us, I think it’s mostly been about balancing each other out,” Katies pipes up. “Your personalities have to complement each other, not combat each other.”
“You have to make a good team,” Harrison says in agreement. “Especially when life gets more hectic and stressful. You’ve got to be able to work well together or else every little thing will turn into a fight.”
“It might be an old adage,” June says, “but communication is key. It does neither person any good if they keep all their thoughts and feelings to themselves. If you never talk, you’ll never be completely in tune with each other.”
Archie grunts. “Eventually, you’ll talk so much that you won’t need her to say anything to know exactly what she’s thinking. Which is both a blessing and a curse.”
Everyone chuckles.
“What’s your wife thinking right now, Archie?” Kennedy asks.
“Well, she’s tempted to hide my reading glasses from me when we get home for that comment, but…she knows how much I love her.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because she can read my mind, too.”
“So, are you going to tell me why you haven’t said more than five words to me this week? Or does Twenty Questions start now?”
Ryder’s voice snaps me out of the weird daze I’ve been in. It’s like falling asleep with your eyes open. I don’t even think I’ve blinked for the last five minutes while staring out the small window on the plane.
“I was preoccupied with family at Christmas,” I answer in a low voice. “That coupled with end of the year deadlines and getting everything ready for this expo, I’ve been a little busy.”
He doesn’t look up from the laptop sitting on the tray table in front of him. “Too busy to answer your texts? Or calls, for that matter?”
Yeah, so I might have been ignoring his after-hours messages ever since the Christmas party. And doing so might have felt like waxing your upper lip with hot bacon grease, but it was necessary. Putting distance between us was the right thing to do, even if he can’t see that now.
“The fact that you sent those texts and made those calls outside of the office imply that they weren’t work-related.”
His finger clicks the mouse on the keyboard, his focus remaining on the screen. “So what if they weren’t?”
“That’s against the rules.”
“Giving me a blowjob at the office Christmas party was against the rules, yet you had no problem going to your knees for me then.”
When my head swivels around, he mirrors the action, pinning me with his all-too-familiar glare. Jaw clenched, eyes hard, mouth tight.
“Is that what those messages were about?” I fume. “You wanting to get me on my knees again?”
I can’t even blame him