SECRET Revealed (32 page)

I looked at him helplessly bound like that, his shirt flapping open, his erection heavy across his taut thigh, his lips glistening with me.

“I can’t, Will,” I said, feeling the moment slide away and the tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “I can’t do this. Not with you. I’m sorry.”

I ran to him. My fingers shook as I untied him, and his head hung in quiet disappointment.

“Don’t apologize, Cassie,” he said softly, as I liberated each of his arms.

Before I could dress and flee, he stood and looped one of his arms around my waist, pulling me hard to him. I squirmed. He gently tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear.

“Don’t ever apologize to me again, Cassie.”

“I feel so stupid for thinking that I could—”

“Can it be my turn to talk now?”

He took his thumb and rubbed what must have been smudged makeup off my cheek. Then he kissed my mouth, sweetly, firmly. Both arms now wrapped around my waist, he held me so tightly he squeezed the tears right out of me.

“I feel like an idiot. This was supposed to be sexy. It wasn’t supposed to end in tears.”

“Um, believe me, Cassie, that was … what you did, that was … seriously sexy.”

He kissed my forehead.

“Do you think you learned enough?”

“For what?”

“To pull off the fantasy?”

“Right. The fantasy. Well, this is no criticism of you, Cassie, because you’re a great teacher. But I’m a lousy student. So I don’t think I was able to learn enough to successfully graduate to full-fledged fantasy man.”

“No?”

“No. So you’re going to have to bench me, unless I can get some more training. Maybe there’s some special tutorial session for dummies. Do you guys do that here?”

“I could ask,” I said, realizing his joke.

“ ’Cause I’m really no one’s idea of a fantasy man.”

“Well … you are mine.”

He kissed me for that, once, twice.

“So what happens to us S.E.C.R.E.T. rejects? Do you have to kill me or something?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“Can we at least have sex one last time?”

“Yeah, but not here,” I said, looking around. “It’s beautiful, this place, but I want you to take me home.”

Before I could finish my sentence, he flung my dress at me and gathered up his pants. We dressed faster than a couple of firemen called to a five-alarm emergency. He extended his hand and in one swift move threw me over his shoulder, and I kicked and laughed as he carried me down the hallway and out the front door of the Mansion.

It was the last time I’d set foot in that place for several months. And even then, I wouldn’t be alone. We’d both return, for a different kind of fantasy altogether.

The truth came out that night in bits and pieces, between sex and kisses, between bites of pizza and a bottle and a half of wine we took from the restaurant and drank while sitting on my kitchen floor, where we had sex one more time before the sun came up. We both knew we’d be wrecked the next day, but two of us hobbled by hangovers had to add up to at least one stellar restaurateur.

He came out with it first.

“It’s been awful not having you in my life, Cassie. And by life I mean my heart, my side, my bed. So I had secretly hoped this would happen. That’s the real reason I volunteered with S.E.C.R.E.T. I meant everything I said before about the good I think the organization does. I was wrong before. But I hoped I’d either make you jealous if we didn’t get paired up, or make you crazy for missing me if we did.”

“So you were never going to go through with the fantasy?”

“Well, let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t have gone through the training with anyone else, and I knew I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else if the training was going to be with you.”

“Mission accomplished,” I said, leaning on his shoulder. “I was surprised you volunteered with S.E.C.R.E.T. I thought the whole thing disgusted you. I thought
I
disgusted you.”

“You’ve
never
disgusted me. The truth is more embarrassing than that. I felt … threatened. I was an idiot.”

Will threw his arm around me and pulled me closer. My hand slid down his warm, familiar stomach, then farther
down, and I softly cupped my hand over him, making him erect again.

“I thought you were dating up a storm. I thought you were happy. And then when I discovered your … I don’t want to call it a ‘secret life’ … my first thought was not
What a slut
, but
I can’t compete
. I couldn’t take being dumped
again
for a better guy, for someone more … I don’t know … powerful, I guess. You
saw
Carruthers. His watch is the size of a fucking six-pack. You saw the car he drove, the job he has. Guys pay attention to that shit—the things we aren’t, the stuff we don’t have. I may not have been madly in love with Tracina, but I was geared up to be her partner and a parent and a provider, and when I was thrown over for Mr. Fucking Big, it hurt. I mean, you know me. I struggle. Then your boyfriend with the great left hook shows up and does what
I
should have done to fucking Castille.
He
stepped up when I should have.” He paused. “By the way, are you still seeing him? That Jesse guy?”

Dixie came over and nestled between us like a fur island.

“No. We’re just friends. We’ve really always been just friends.”

“You’re not in love with him?”

“Never was. And he’s not in love with me. He loves someone else. And so do I,” I said, beginning my aching assault on his body.

The thing about Will was that he had no idea how sexy he was, which is precisely what made him so sexy, even when he struggled.
Especially
when he struggled. On the
floor of my kitchen, we unspooled our legs from the sheets we’d dragged there, moving the cat over in a loving but firm way. Will laid me down on that floor at dawn and entered me again while kissing me, saying my name over and over, holding my face between his hands, while I clutched his gorgeous ass and pressed my knees back, opening myself to him, inviting him all the way inside.

While he thrust into me, reintroducing himself to my body, it felt like we’d never been away from each other. I shifted my hips and reached back to press the cupboard doors so I could arch for him. He felt so right, so perfect inside me, our bodies formed just for this.

“How’s this for a fantasy,” he whispered. “Sex with me on your kitchen floor.”

“This is the only fantasy I’ve ever really wanted. The only one I ever hoped would come true.”

H
aving fantastical, dramatic, exquisite sex with gorgeous strangers reminded me of what was potent about having great sex with just one good man. That wasn’t the goal of S.E.C.R.E.T.; that wasn’t even my goal. But that was my epiphany on my flight home, as I shook off the sickening Pierre interlude with every mile I put between us, rocking my body to make the plane go faster. I had people waiting for me. My people: my boy and my man.

I almost steamrolled everyone at the arrivals gate, everyone keeping me away from Gus a second longer. My need to grab my son and smell him and squeeze him was so overwhelming, I was worried I’d break him. And there, standing behind Gus, was my impossibly handsome ex-husband, his smile full of questions.
Why are you home early, Solange? Why did you insist I pick you up at the airport? Why are you wearing your hair the way I love? And why are you looking at me with those brown eyes as though you’re seeing me for the first time?

The answers to those questions would naturally surface
over the next few weeks and months. But that day, I didn’t have words for my feelings, which is why I said very little on the way home. I just stole glances at Julius from the passenger side of the food truck. He had had to park the truck far away because it was too tall for the short-term airport garage. Instead of feeling frustrated, hypervigilant and over-competent, I let that man carry all my luggage. I let him be the man he wanted to be, instead of molding him into the one I had thought he should be. It is a strange revelation to look at someone you know well and see a whole dimension you have been blind to.

While Gus sat buckled in the trundle seat behind his dad, playing a game on my phone, Julius caught me up on his business, which had expanded yet again for Jazz Fest.

“Three trucks total. After Jazz Fest, two are fully paid for so it’s all profit from now on. It’s crazy, Solange. But I’m thinking of opening a small, permanent kiosk off Jackson Square. I’ve been talking to other franchises to see if we can share space.”

“Congratulations, Julius. You found your niche.”

“It took me a while. But yeah, I did.”

“It takes what it takes.”

He looked at me, on his face another unspoken question:
Who are you and what have you done with my hyper-critical ex-wife?
I was noticing how happiness made him even more handsome, and how success had made him sexier. It wasn’t that Julius was now worthy of my attention because he had found some confidence and security. It was that he finally seemed
worthy to himself. And for some reason, this … relaxed me. I would take a bumpy, lumbering ride in a glossy food truck over a carriage ride in Paris any day.

When he pulled into my driveway on State Street, he was as shocked at the invitation to stay for dinner as I was when he accepted. We ordered pizza. We chatted about the week, what they did, what I did, what Paris was like, what I was like in Paris. I told them I sang, that it was a lark and a fluke, but it was something I needed to try to do again, even just for me. And I told Julius the truth, that the interview with the elusive, infamous Bayou Billionaire was a total bust, that it hadn’t yielded what I had hoped it would.

“Turns out that the man doesn’t have much to say. Not much worth listening to anyway,” I said, tossing crust into the pizza box. The truth might come out, and it might shatter my world. But all I felt in that moment was gratitude and confidence. And at least for now, all my secrets were still safe.

After Gus went to bed, my ex-husband stood in the darkened doorway of my childhood home saying good night to me for far too long. At one point I was laughing at something he said, unconsciously hooking my index finger in the waist of his jeans, an intimacy so automatic it was like breathing.

He looked down at my hand with a note of alarm and I pulled it away like I’d touched a hot flame.

“I should … 
go
,” he said, looking slightly concerned.

“Okay.”

“Good night then.” He turned.

“Right,” I said, waving to the back of his head. He was hurriedly making his way to his food truck parked in front of the house. I was the one who had ended our marriage. I had to remember that. Trust wasn’t going to come easy. And Pierre was a loaded gun. Once he exposed my involvement in S.E.C.R.E.T., a reunion might be out of the question anyway. Julius may not judge me, but the revelations wouldn’t endear me to him either. Still, I had come to a kind of peace with that on the plane ride home. I decided I had meant the words I said to Pierre; I had done nothing to be ashamed of; this was a great story with a happy ending, regardless of whether Julius and I reunited. Over time, I came to realize that mine was a story that mirrored the experience of every woman in S.E.C.R.E.T. We were all made better for its existence, me, Cassie, Dauphine, Matilda, Angela, Bernice, all of us.

In fact, far from being diminished or tarnished by S.E.C.R.E.T., our lives had been greatly enhanced.

If I was to be exposed, so be it.

If there were consequences, I’d face them.

If I lost my second chance with Julius, I might as well find out sooner rather than later.