Free L. A. Witt - Rules 1 - Rules of Engagement by L.A. Witt Page A

of time online, so I made a fake account, found her on some site or another, and responded to an ad she’d put up.”
“Wow, she had an ad up?”
     
I rolled my eyes. “Yep. Said she was single, looking for some hot action, the works.”
     
“Now that is brazen. And fucking cold.”
    “You’re telling me. Anyway, I thought finding the ad would be enough, but even that didn’t convince me that she was really doing it, so I responded to it. We kept e-mailing for a while. A long time, actually. I don’t know, I guess I was just in denial, kept telling myself I needed more evidence that she was really doing it. Or maybe I could figure out from her e-mails what she was missing. What I was doing wrong. And honestly….” I trailed off, and my thumb went to my ring finger again.
He squeezed my hand. “What?”
    Taking a deep breath, I said, “In a way, I guess I kind of enjoyed flirting with her again. Even though she didn’t know it was me, and I knew what she was doing—” I cut myself off, swallowing hard. “It’s pathetic, I know.”
    “Understandable, I think,” he said. “After that long, I’d probably have done the same thing in your position.” We were both quiet for a moment. Then he said, “So did you eventually call her on it?”
    “Not exactly.” I closed my eyes for a second. “She wanted to meet up, so I….”
“Jesus Christ, Dustin,” he said.
“I agreed to meet at a hotel. Told her to wear something sexy.” I laughed bitterly. “You’ve never seen a more stunned expression on a woman’s face than when she opened that door.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
     
“The really sad part was that I showed up a little bit early, and another guy was leaving the room as I was coming down the hall.”
    Brandon’s eyes widened. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.”
“Damn. I know what it’s like to be cheated on, but that….” He
shook his head.
    “Yeah, not the most pleasant day of my life. But it gave me the balls to finally get the fuck out.” I freed my hand just long enough to scratch the back of my neck, then laid it over his hand, letting our fingers lace together. “So there’s my sob story. What happened with you?”
    “When I was cheated on?”
“Yeah.”
Rolling his eyes, he grumbled, “Which time?”
“Ouch.”
    He shrugged. “It’s life. Happened a time or two in my early twenties. The last one, though….” His eyes took on a somewhat distant look for a moment.
I ran my thumb along the side of his hand. “What happened?”
    “One of my ex-girlfriends came to stay with me for a while. Going through a nasty divorce, needed a place to stay. We were still friends, so I didn’t think much of it.” He clicked his tongue and his lip twisted into a scowl. “Then I came home early and caught her with my boyfriend.”
My jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”
     
He nodded. “Dead serious. Last I heard, they’re still together too.”
    “That’s fucking brutal.” “You’re telling me.” He sighed. “I mean, he and I were probably on the way out anyway. I was getting ready to defend my dissertation, so I was wrapped up in all of that. Wasn’t really putting the effort into the relationship.”
    “That doesn’t justify cheating, though.”
“No, definitely not,” he said.
    The arm supporting my head was falling asleep, so I moved onto my back. Brandon followed, putting his forearm on my chest and resting his chin on it.
I ran my fingers through his hair. “Sounds like our women—and men—were cut from the same cloth.”
     
“Yeah, no shit.” He was silent for a moment. “I assume this all went down fairly recently? With your ex?”
     
“About six months ago.”
     
He pursed his lips. “So then it’s probably a safe assumption that you’re still on the rebound.”
    “You could say that.” It took me a second to figure out where he was going with that train of thought. Then guilt tugged at my gut, as if I should have told him all of this