IRL: In Real Life (After Oscar Book 1) by Lucy Lennox & Molly Maddox

Author:Lucy Lennox & Molly Maddox [Lennox, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2019-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

16

Wells

I sat there staring at my phone—at the last text I’d sent. I couldn’t bear to have Conor out there thinking Trace didn’t care about him. I quickly typed out another message.

Wells: Wait, hold on. Let me explain.

I waited for him to respond. Obviously we couldn’t meet, that much was clear. But I could have found a better way of telling him. This was all going wrong. This wasn’t my plan—not that I’d had a plan… yet.

I’d been stupid. I’d pushed things too far, sitting across the conference room table from him while playing at being both Wells and Trace simultaneously. Essentially, I’d been lying to his face, and if there was one thing my day in the city with Conor had made crystal clear, it was that he would never forgive me for not confessing to being his anonymous sext partner. He’d been very forthcoming with his feelings about dishonesty and had admitted to initially having concerns about my own integrity.

Not only would admitting to him I was Trace make him feel betrayed personally, it would also support his assumption that Wells Grange was a liar, an unethical user. Based on how he felt about me coming into this whole negotiation situation, there was no way he’d give me the benefit of the doubt.

And it wasn’t like I deserved it anyway. Because I had lied to him. I had led him on.

I’d even let the personal information I’d learned as Trace affect the negotiations. Albeit in Conor’s favor, but still. I’d blurred the lines between the two. Used what I’d learned in one relationship to impact the other.

Because of that, Trace and Conor could never meet. He could never learn the truth. Which is why I’d had to break off the “anonymous” text conversation. It was the only way to protect him from inadvertently revealing anything else personal to me when I knew that had to be the last thing he wanted.

After his reluctance to tell me in person about his mother, I realized I could no longer play both roles with him. I couldn’t continue to hear his innermost confessions about his fears for his mother as Trace and be denied the same intimacy as Wells. It was like only getting half of him, when I wanted so much more.

There was no easy solution. I could possibly continue working on getting to know him better in person, but even that felt like a lie now. The texts we’d shared sat heavily between us like a fat, cumbersome elephant that was impossible to deal with but too sweet to ignore.

I left the office with a lead weight in my gut and a hole in my chest the size of the Holland Tunnel.

I kept my phone gripped in my hand, waiting for it to buzz that he’d responded, but it stayed silent. When I got into the car, I flicked open the messages app. Still nothing. I bounced my knee up and down, nervous energy curling inside me. It wasn’t like him to ignore my—Trace’s—texts.

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