The Spiral Down (The Fall Up #2)(24)

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Evan,” she whispered.

“I know. But I still feel like I need to be apologizing. I hate that you’re hurting.”

She laughed without humor. “You always were a good guy.”

One corner of my mouth hiked. “Not good enough or we wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, come on. I’m not sure I’m going to have many more compliments for you in case you’re fishing for them.”

I chuckled. “No fishing. I swear.”

We sat in awkward silence for several seconds.

“Evan…” she trailed off.

“Right here, Nik.”

She sucked in a deep breath before whispering, “When did you know?”

I closed my eyes in defeat. I knew exactly what she was asking. It was the same question I’d asked myself every day since we’d broken up. I just didn’t want to tell her. I also didn’t want to lie to her anymore.

“Your birthday.”

“Yeah. I figured.”

Fuck. The defeat in her voice was slaying me.

After pushing to my feet, I began to pace the room. “Listen, Nik, it has nothing to do with you. Nothing,” I swore. And it was the God’s honest truth. “It’s me. You’re amazing. I’m just not built to be in a relationship.”

“With a woman, you mean.”

I froze midstep. “What…what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Evan, just because you call him Shannon doesn’t change the fact that he’s a man.”

Her verbal blow caused me to physically stumble.

I’d made no secret about the fact that I was bisexual with Nikki. It had even been her idea to invite another man into our bed a few months earlier on her birthday. It was a night we had both thoroughly enjoyed. It was also the night I realized I didn’t mind sharing her. I would have died a slow, torturous death before ever allowing another human to touch Shannon. I did not share what was mine. But, that night, I’d sat on the bed, drinking a beer, and watched a guy she worked with named Neil repeatedly take her.

I’d laid down ground rules before we’d started that I wouldn’t be sucking Neil’s dick or bottoming for him. Fucking around or not, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to expose myself like that to a man—and I feared I never would be again. My rules hadn’t seemed to hinder anyone’s enjoyment though. They’d both seemed to love it when I’d taken his ass while he’d been f*cking her. And my dirty little secret was that, while I’d been inside him, Nikki, a woman I’d thought I saw a future with, had ceased to exist.

I should have walked away from her the very next day. But I’d stayed for three months. Unsure of what it all meant. And, worse, unsure of how I’d felt about it. It dug up emotions and memories of Shannon I had blocked out years ago. And, with every day that passed, I drifted further and further out of Nikki’s reach. I had no clue what I wanted anymore. After as badly as I’d been burned, gay men scared the f*cking shit out of me. But, honestly, so did women.

So, as I stood frozen in middle of my hotel room, listening to her accusation across the line, I knew she was wrong. Man, woman, T. rex, or mythical god. I was not built to be in a relationship—with anyone.

“No. Not with a man, either.”

“Evan, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I resumed my pacing, but my steps became heavy with anger. “I’m not ashamed of anything, Nikki. How the hell do you even know about Shannon?”

“I went to your place tonight to get my stuff. I was cleaning my clothes out of your closet and your shoebox of pictures fell off the top shelf.”

“It fell,” I repeated sarcastically. “Bullshit. You were going through my shit.”

Her voice rose to match my own. “Maybe I was. But damn it, Evan, you didn’t think to tell me that you spent two years in a committed relationship with a man?”

“I told you about Shannon!”

“Never with the pronoun him or he!” she shot back. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew I’d assume he was a woman.”

I had no response. That was exactly what I’d done. I’d done it to every woman I’d ever been with since him. And her next statement explained exactly why.

“You don’t think I deserved to know that the man I was falling in love with is gay?”

Labels. Labels. Labels.

The entire f*cking world used them.

I f*cking loathed them.

For some reason, bisexuality was the black hole of labels. It didn’t mean you got two labels—gay and straight. It meant you got zero. To gays, you weren’t gay enough. But, to straights, you weren’t straight, either. You weren’t enough for anyone. Most would assume that enjoying both genders would mean your dating pool was so vast you’d have no trouble finding a mate. They would assume wrong.

For me, bisexuality was a curse. Despite the widespread theory amongst homophobes everywhere, it didn’t go hand in hand with promiscuity. It meant that an individual was attracted to both sexes. Nothing more. And nothing less. Some had a stronger preference. And, for a while, mine was men. But Shannon had more than fixed that. For the last ten years, I’d been living a relatively straight life. (See, even I used the labels!) But that did not mean I was suddenly straight. The one with Nikki wasn’t the first threesome I’d ever had. But I emotionally couldn’t handle anything more than a casual f*ck with a man.