Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(16)

“We did exactly what I intended tonight,” Chris continues.

“We worked on trust, and you gave me enough to lie down naked in the middle of this rug and completely submit to me.

Trust is everything, Sara.”

He curls around me and I shut my eyes, absorbing the sensation of being wrapped in his strong arms, and I hope that he can ind the same trust in me, and us, as I have.

I blink into the beam of sunlight from the balcony and inhale the warm, musky scent of Chris, who is still wrapped around me. But rather than feeling warm and wonderful, there’s a vague sense of unease inside me. Something feels of. Maybe it’s the new place or the time zone change, and I wonder how long we’ve been asleep.

“Chris! Oh, Chris, baby, where are you?”

The female voice echoes from the stairwell, approaching quickly, and the sound is like a bucket of ice water. I go cold, aware that this is my source of unease and what woke me.

“Oh holy hell,” the female says, and I can tell she’s at the top of the stairs now, no doubt gaping at us where we lie on the rug. “Wow. Chris. A little early in this trip for female friends, isn’t it?”

I linch at her obvious meaning and try to sit up, but Chris’s leg and arm shackle me. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong.

Please, baby. Don’t assume anything.”

I don’t have to assume—not when there’s a woman who clearly knows him intimately enough to have access to his home standing a few feet from us.





Six


I can’t lie naked on the loor like this one more second. “Let me up, Chris,” I hiss.

“Not until you promise me not to jump to conclusions.”

He shifts slightly. I try to push against him but he holds on to me. I growl low in my throat. “We are naked in front of her, Chris. You are naked in front of her.”

He hesitates but lets me go. I twist around to my hands and knees to get up, and freeze. Standing at the top of the stairs is a striking, Barbie-doll-looking blonde wearing skintight black jeans and a tank top, with long, silky hair, a body to kill for, and tattoos on both bare arms. Her red “f*ck me” heels are outra-geously high, which on me would ensure a certain stumble, and a wave of nausea overcomes me. Why am I here? She is everything I’m not and can never be.

“What the f*ck are you doing here, Amber?” Chris demands, then drops his shirt by my hands. “Here, baby.”



I can’t seem to move. Amber. An American name, and pretty.

And Chris is walking around naked in front of her. I lean back on my heels to snatch the shirt and pull it on. When I try to stand I stumble, and Chris catches me, his hand closing on my arm. All I see is his bare foot and naked calf.

“Let go,” I hiss again, and I manage to look directly at Amber, who glances from Chris to me with a gloating amusement in her eyes. I’m hurt. I’m embarrassed. I feel completely sideswiped and betrayed. There’s so much more to this woman than Chris has told me.

“Sara.” Chris has stepped close to me, his hip pressed to mine. His naked damn hip.

“Let go.” I barely recognize the deep timbre of my own voice. “Now.”

His hand slips away and I launch myself forward. Since forward is directly toward Amber, I regret my path, but I’ll be damned if I’m backing down. I lift my chin and walk straight for her, and she smirks with her pretty pink lips and steps aside.

Of course she does. I’m leaving her with Chris. Who is naked. That fact keeps replaying in my head like a stuck record.

She has a key. He doesn’t care if she walks in when he’s naked. She’s already seen him naked long before now.

This doesn’t compute with what I know of myself and Chris, but I won’t be able to think straight until I’m alone. I’m not a confrontational person. I’m a “leave and never look back”

person, and the possibility that I might have to leave forever twists me in knots.

I nearly run up the stairs and storm into Chris’s bedroom.

At this moment I can’t call it mine, for fear that it, like him, will be stripped away from me. A gnawing worry that he never was mine in the irst place begins to form, and I can’t seem to move forward.

Stopping in the entryway, I fall against the wall and just stand there, breathing hard, the sound of my heart drumming in my ears. I expect some sort of outburst. I expect to cry, but I don’t. Based on my earlier blackout, I’m fairly certain that not only am I on emotional overload, but that my mind and body are protecting me from complete collapse. It is almost as if I’m standing outside myself looking in, and seeing nothing but a gaping, empty hole. All I feel is a fear of what will soon be inside it.

“Sara.”

I whirl around to face Chris. My gaze sweeps him from head to toe, as I’m sure Amber’s did plenty of times. He’s in jeans that aren’t buttoned, bare feet and no shirt, and his half-dressed state is enough to make me combust. “I didn’t come here to play with you and your tattoo-artist girlfriend, Chris.”

“She’s nothing more than a friend, Sara. A friend with piss-poor timing.”

My ingers curl, my nails digging into my palms. “With beneits and a key? Is this how you deine the trust you and I just talked about? Having another woman on the side, when you said there was no one? Or maybe I didn’t ask if you had friends with beneits—so you didn’t tell me about her.”