Free Push Me (To The Edge series, #1) by Jill Macintosh

of lust. He moved toward his office door.
    “Don’t worry,” I said, “they’re all locked up again.”
    He stopped, didn’t turn his body, only his head, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, then looked away.
    “Say something,” I said.
    “Not now, Dawn.”
    “No. You don’t get to do that anymore. For the entire time we’ve been together you’ve been a closed boo k. Pun intended. You’ve never opened up to me. I guess now I know why.” I crossed my arms across my chest, a defiant, determined pose.
    He just looked at me.
    “Who are you?” I asked him. “Do you even know? What would you be like if it weren’t for those books?”
    He glared at me for a moment, then said, “ Dawn. Leave. You have no idea what’s going on—”
    “ Oh, I know exactly what’s going on. You’re a fraud and I feel sorry for you.” I went into the bedroom, grabbed the couple of bags I’d packed, then made my way to the front door. I stopped when I got to his office door. He was sitting in the chair, looking out the window, his back to me. My last words to him were, “Don’t ever contact me again.”
     
    .  .  .  .  .
     
    “Kitchen’s on your right, bathroom’s down the hall, around the corner…I’m just kidding,” Rachel said. “You know where everything is. Mi casa and all that. Although, this is kind of a small casa. But, we’ll make it work.”
    I’d called her from the limo and told her I was on my way over, and that I’d tell her everything when I got there.
    When she opened the door, I burst out crying . She hugged me and we stood there for several minutes until she kissed me on the cheek, looked at me, smiled, and said, “I’ll make us some margaritas and you can drink right out of the blender.”
    I loved her like a sister. I could always count on her to do anything for me, and most of the time it was the simple but beautiful and rare gift of humor in a bad moment.
    “ That’s so fucking weird,” she said when I finished telling her how it all went down.
    We were sitting on her couch, each holding big glasses of margaritas. She had also heated up some experimental hors d’oeuvres she’d made as a test batch for an upcoming catering event. The oven bell dinged and we went over to the kitchen area where I sat on a stool at the bar.
    “Look at it this way,” she said, opening the oven and pulling out the baking sheet. “You didn’t have to break up with him out of the blue. So now you don’t have to deal with any guilt.”
    “I don’t think I would have felt guilty. And that doesn’t even matter n ow. I wanted out and I got out. Finding the books just made it easier. He knew right when he walked in and saw the office door open. I could see it in his eyes.”
    Rachel got some plates out of the cabinet. “Do we need plates or is this more of an eat-like-cavegirls night?”
    “No plates.”
    She put them back, then handed me a napkin. “These are spinach, tomato and feta wrapped in filo dough. Give them a minute to cool off.”
    They smelled wonderful, and I thought right then that I could eat all two dozen of them.
    “What are these called?” I asked.
    “Not sure. Just some kind of stuffed pocket, I guess.”
    “ Mmm. Stuffed pocket. So elegant.”
    “Maybe he’s crazy or something,” she said. “Maybe…hell, I don’t know.”
    She asked me which books I’d found in his drawer, and we’d both read them all.
    “Damn,” she said. “I never thought men would read books like that, let alone use them as instructional books. Do you think other men are doing that? I mean, aside from the one we already know about.”
    I shrugged. “If they are, I hope they’re doing it better than Ian did. It’s like he missed the emotional aspects of the characters. All he took away from it was how they wooed the female characters, and all the sex stuff. Or maybe he was into that before he read the books.”
    “Who knows?”
    I shook my head. “Obviously not me. I was in the dark