Things had moved even faster from that point. Buttons had ripped and a trail of clothes was strewn through the hallway as they stumbled into the bedroom. There was no sign of their previous awkwardness as their bodies came together like perfect matching halves. The first time had been frantic and fast, but the second had been a slow, gradual buildup as they explored each other thoroughly. Thankfully, all condom systems were go, and there had been no malfunctions of the latex.

Dominic had left just a few minutes ago while she was still half-asleep. As far as taking things slowly went, she wasn’t sure how to rank the previous evening. She didn’t think she’d made the first move toward sex last night—but she couldn’t rule it out. After being afraid that she was losing him, it had felt so good to reconnect on any level. In hindsight, she knew that probably hadn’t been the wisest decision. It was hard to be objective though when a man like Dominic started touching and kissing you. Yeah, she’d never stood a chance.

Gwen had another hour before she needed to dress for work so she was drifting off when she heard a chime that sounded like a text alert. She grumbled under her breath, wondering who it could be this early. She fumbled around on her nightstand until she found her phone. She’d had Dominic wait for her in his truck last night while she ran into her cell phone provider and replaced the one she’d destroyed. There was no way she wanted him to see the broken phone. When she finally managed to hit the button to light the screen, it showed no missed calls or texts.

Just as she was wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing, the sound came again, only this time it was clearly coming from the other side of the bed. Huffing as she crawled to reach the other nightstand, she found Dominic’s phone there. He’d obviously forgotten it while trying to dress in the dark earlier. The phone chimed and the screen lit. Trying to convince herself it was because there might be some kind of emergency and not just because she was nosy, Gwen picked up the phone and saw a couple of texts on the screen. The first one was the most recent and was from Gage telling Dominic to stop for coffee and doughnuts. Gwen was smiling until she got to the next one from a contact called simply K. “Got something special planned for you and Gage. Back in Charleston this week?” As Gwen reread the message, suddenly it hit her—Kandi! It had to be from the stripper. What was she doing in Charleston? Maybe the entire work emergency had been a lie.

She could blame what she did next only on a severe case of woman-scorned anger. Clicking on his phone once again, she was surprised to find that it wasn’t password protected. A part of her had hoped that it would be because there was no way she could stop herself from flipping through his call history and text messages now. Feeling like a teenager checking up on her boyfriend, Gwen thumbed through the phone finding nothing at all suspicious except the text message that had made her invade Dominic’s privacy. When her fingers brought the message up, she paused for a second before hitting the DELETE button. A warning popped up asking if she was sure . . . Oh crap, she shouldn’t do it, should she? The phone was practically telling her to stop. It wasn’t as if she was removing Kandi from the picture simply by deleting her message. What purpose did it even serve other than to do something completely childish? She was old enough to know better. She’d simply give the phone back and let that be it. She wouldn’t break it as she did hers or confront him about the message. No, she was an adult. “Oh, fuck it.” She cringed as she hit YES on the warning and watched the offending text disappear. Gwen dropped his phone like a hot rock, when a chime sounded from the other side of the bed. “Are you kidding me?” she murmured to the empty room as she crawled back to her phone.

“Hey, babe, I think I left my phone at your place. I’m already on the road so could you bring it with you to the office?”

She began to laugh hysterically as she sat on her heels clutching her phone. It wasn’t even eight in the morning and already she’d lost all of the relationship maturity that she’d promised both Wendy and herself. Now, thanks to her trigger-happy finger, she couldn’t just simply tell Dominic that she’d seen the message from K—who was quite possibly Kandi. Shit, why had she deleted it? Realizing that he was probably waiting for a response from her, she typed out, “Okay, I’ll bring it.” Maybe she should have added, “Don’t worry; I’ve already looked at everything on it.”

Falling backward onto the bed, Gwen kicked her feet against the mattress in frustration. Surely, Kandi being in Charleston with Dominic was no coincidence and she hadn’t gotten one call while he was gone. And then, being the forgiving and desperate person that she was, she’d fallen into bed with him promptly last night. Yes, she had vowed to be mature and let Dominic walk away if he wanted to, but she was getting damned tired of being the girl that NEVER got the guy! She’d even tried to make herself into someone she wasn’t because she felt she was the one who needed to change to make things work.

In theory, there was always something about a person that wasn’t perfect and could be improved upon, but you couldn’t and shouldn’t have to change the core of who you were for anyone. That was what she was finished doing. She had no problem fighting for her man—she might not be able to work a stripper pole, but she brought plenty to the table and one of those things was honesty.

Jumping to her feet, she headed to the shower. She was tired of not knowing where things stood with Dominic. She would deliver his phone and confess what she had done. Really, how much worse could things get? At this point, being officially dumped would be rather anticlimactic, to say the least. She was walking into the bathroom when the phone chimed again. Freezing, she muttered under her breath, “You have got to be kidding me,” as she stalked back to his phone, thinking it was another text for him. She sagged in relief when she found nothing on his screen. Thank God, she didn’t think she could handle seeing a sext from Kandi at this point.