The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(73)

"Of course I wouldn't have approved! Married men, Jen! Married! And you kiss them?"

I bowed my head. "Uh-huh."

"And let them touch you?"

I could hear the disgust hanging between the syllables of her words. The images in her head were projecting onto the empty white walls of my bedroom, like a giant movie screen.

And at that moment...we were one. One mind. One thought. One vision.

I saw me as she saw me.

And I didn't like it.

"Uh-huh," I managed to get out, blinking back tears.

"I...I don't even know what to say."

I closed my eyes. "Sophie. Why don't I come over? We'll open a bottle of wine and we'll talk about this. I'll tell you everything. I'll start from the beginning and I won't stop until you understand where I'm coming from. All my motivations. All my reasons. They're in there, I promise. And they're good. I can prove it to you."

"I can't see you right now." Her words were fast and her tone was distant. Sophie may have only lived five minutes away from me by car, at almost any time of the day, but tonight she was a million miles from here.

And that was finally a distance this Southern Californian could understand.

"Okay," I said softly, the first tear successfully fighting its way from beneath my tightly shut eyelid and triumphantly making its slow victory parade down my cheek.

"I feel like I don't even know you."

I opened my eyes and several more tears followed closely behind. "But it's still me, Soph! I'm still the same person. I didn't change over the past two years; I shouldn't have to change over the past two minutes!"

"But you did change!" she fought back. "You're not even who you say you are. You're an entirely different person. With an entirely different name even!"

I sniffled. "It's just a stage name," I offered hopefully. "Like a character in a play. Or a TV show. Ellen Pompeo plays Meredith on Grey's Anatomy. Evangeline Lilly plays Kate on Lost. I play Ashlyn...in a weekly TV show about a girl whose job it is to expose cheating men to the women who love them!"

But Sophie wasn't convinced. "Those are TV shows! They're not real. This is real, Jen! These are real people! It's not pretend. It's not like when we were little, playing with my dad's psychology books or playing house." She paused. "Although I never thought you'd grow up to play the home wrecker."

"You wanted to hire me!" I shot back, wiping my running nose with the back of my hand. "You were going to call that home wrecker and hire her to wreck your home!"

"That's when it wasn't you!"

"What difference does it make whether it's me or the girl next door or Marilyn Fucking Monroe? You wanted the same thing that all my clients want. You wanted something that I give. Peace of mind." My voice softened and I stroked the white duvet cover underneath my knee. "And now you're going to hate me for giving it to other people?"

Sophie didn't respond right away. I could hear her breathing. Her breaths always got shorter and louder when she was upset. "I just need some time to think."

"Okay," I murmured. Because who was I to argue? There was nothing more I could say to convince her not to hate me. And there was definitely nothing I could add to convince her to accept me. Or accept what I did.

But as I hung up the phone I felt a small ounce of comfort in knowing that despite everything else, at least I could finally be certain that I had convinced her not to go through with it. She would never again even think about hiring anyone to seduce her fiancé. And it took the longest, bumpiest, most un-traveled road to get there. But I was finally there. In the clear. Sophie knew. There would be no more secrets. No more excuses. No more lies.

And even though I'd never felt such an unsettling hollowness in all my life, somewhere deep inside, beneath the frustration, beneath the horrific fear of losing my best friend, I felt my very first taste of serenity.

Until thirty minutes later, when I heard a knock at my door.

I peered through the peephole at Sophie's un-brushed hair, unmade-up face, and unadorned pink sweatpants. I attempted to paint a courageous smile on my face as I swung the door open wide.

She stood on my doormat, completely still, her mind clearly not made up yet as to whether or not she was actually going to come inside. As if MapQuest would only take her this far. What came next, she still wasn't sure.

So I rested my head against the side of the door and looked at her with pleading eyes. Not pleading for forgiveness, but pleading for understanding. Support. Unconditional friendship.

But what I didn't know at that very moment was that what she came here to say was ultimately not going to be a testament of her friendship... but a testament of mine.

Thinking back, I had underestimated her ability to adapt. Her ability to upgrade to a faster processing speed. And ultimately, her ability to not only accept the information she was provided, but to allow it to completely corrupt every ounce of logic in her entire system. Like a virus.

She stood up straight and looked me directly in the eye. Her voice never faltered as she recited the same line she must have rehearsed over and over again in the five-minute drive to my condo. "I still want you to test Eric."





17

The Origin of the Species (Part 3)