Turning to Stone (Heart of Stone: Book 2)

Chapter 2: Confession

"Okay, so you at least applied some common sense to the situation, then."

Rather than snap back, his shoulders sagged as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

"I didn't go there looking for anything. But we got talking, started flirting... It was a complete lapse of judgement."

"I'll say. You were thinking with your dick rather than your brain."

His eyes flashed with irritation at that, narrowing. "Yes. I was. Happy?"

"No. Not even a little bit." I tapped my pen against the soft cover of my notebook. "For fuck's sake, Ed. You've never done anything like this before. Why now?"

"I told you—I didn't plan for it to happen." He muttered the words through gritted teeth as his fist clenched around the edge of the table. "It wasn't like I went to that bar looking for sex. Unlike you, I don't have that privilege."

My grip on the pen tightened as we stared each other down, but Ed crumbled first, bowing his head.

"Sorry, Soph. I didn't mean it like that." He then lifted his head and cocked it to the side as he reconsidered. "Actually, yes. Maybe I did mean it like that. Because you can go out and sleep with whoever you want. I can't do that. I can't be a normal, horny, twenty-six-year-old. So when the opportunity presented itself on a platter, I took it. But I only took it because I genuinely believed she didn't know who I was."

I leaned back in my chair and raked my eyes over his restless body. All signs of his previous confidence and ease had disappeared. No matter how badly I'd fallen for his poker face earlier, I knew I was seeing the genuine reaction now. Even with everything we'd been through, he still trusted me enough to let down his guard, and I couldn't throw that privilege back in his face.

Trying not to come across as patronising, I softened my voice. 

"Ed, everyone knows who you are. And I know that must suck at times—" I stopped, wincing at my choice of words, but he cracked a tiny smile at least.

"I know I should be grateful," he said. "And I am. Most of the time. Just every now and then..."

"I understand. Okay... So, if there's no evidence, we can keep to our response of it never happening. You gave her a fake name. She doesn't have your phone number. It can't come back to bite us, right?"

He lifted one shoulder in a hesitant shrug. "There's probably CCTV."

"Probably, but I don't think bars hand out CCTV footage without good reason."

"Can we pay her off, just in case? That's got to be all she's after, right?"

Typical. Throw money at a problem and it'll go away. That was the solution to everything in this world.

"We'd have to go through official channels for that with Legal involved," I said.

"I just don't want her to be painted as a liar. That's not fair. I consented to it, too."

Sighing, I forced a gentle smile. "You didn't consent to it being shared with the world."

As we fell into silence, I tried to organise my thoughts, separating my personal feelings from my professional ones, so I could decide on the best course of action. I didn't want to let him down, but I also knew we had to be realistic about the implications of doing this alone.

"Can we give the reporter something better?" Ed suggested. "There must be something they've requested that we've previously refused to do?"

"When we refuse to do something, it's usually for a good reason."