Even with work and all of the chaos that came along with it, he’d been unable to stop thinking about that night.
It had been incredible.
Beyond incredible.
But that was what sex was supposed to be like, right?
Sure. Didn’t mean that it always was.
Not since Beth and James.
Shit.
Elijah dropped into one of the overstuffed chairs, running his hand through his hair.
The current erotic movie running through his head was superimposed with the memories of so many years ago. It had to have been close to six years ago, now that he thought about it.
Before Beth got sick.
He and James, his best friend since college, had surprised her one night. She had called Elijah at work that morning to let him know she would be home early so he had made a point to get home before her.
“You made me dinner,” Beth said when she came into the house just a little after four in the afternoon.
“We did,” James told her, passing Elijah as he went to greet her appropriately.
“I’m not sure if I should be happy or scared,” Beth told him when James pulled her to him, softly kissing her on the mouth.
“Scared,” James mumbled. “You should be very, very scared. Because tonight, it’s all about you. The things we’re going to do to you…”
That night they had been observing an anniversary of sorts. One that celebrated the very first time the three of them had been together. Had they really been together that long? Yes, they had. That night marked the third anniversary although, at the time, it had felt like it had all began not long ago.
Yeah, it wasn’t long after that third anniversary that Beth got sick and James… Well, James had a meltdown.
“I can’t do it, Eli. Can’t. It breaks my heart to watch her. I want to take away her pain, but there’s nothing I can do to help her. She told me to go, told me to move on.”
“She needs you, J. She needs us both,” Elijah argued.
“She needs you, not me. She needs someone strong enough to help her through this. I’m not that man.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t turn your back on her, goddammit!”
“I have to,” James said, defeated.
“You’re a bastard, you know that?” Elijah barked.
“I know,” James answered, not an ounce of anger in his voice. “I know.”
There was no doubt that James had fallen in love with Beth the same way that Elijah had. But according to Beth, she had never loved James that way which was why she’d asked him to go before the worst of it had ever hit, before Beth was nothing more than a shell of her former self.
Elijah wasn’t sure that was the case, not even now, but he knew Beth. She’d been trying to protect him and James. When she’d first found out about the cancer, it had been advanced. Far more advanced than they had expected. For the two years before she died, Beth had insisted that she live life to its fullest.
With Elijah. And only him.
James had fallen apart at the news that Beth had been sick and shortly after their argument, he had disappeared from their lives. When Beth died, Elijah had tried to find him, needing his best friend to lean on; someone who could understand the brutal loss that he was consumed by. But to no avail.
His heart hurt just from the memories.
His beautiful Beth.
She’d been the love of his life. No woman would ever be able to take her place. No woman would ever reach that part of him that had been reserved solely for her.
That didn’t mean that Samantha hadn’t touched another part of him. One that was looking for her, hoping for what she could offer him and it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with that other part of him that needed to be needed.
Elijah’s phone rang, pulling him from his thoughts. He pushed out of the chair, and headed for the kitchen where he’d left his phone.
Fully expecting it to be some major emergency that required him to get his ass into the office, Elijah snatched the phone up, hit the talk button without even looking at the screen.
“Hello,” he greeted formally.
“Hey, man. How’s it going?”
Logan. Not work.
“Good,” Elijah said, hoping he didn’t sound like he was lying.
“Hey, I know it’s Friday and you’re probably at work, but I wanted to see if you could get away early. We’ll go out and catch a ball game tonight? I have box seats and they’re just going to go to waste if we don’t use them. My brother and his husband are going with.”
Elijah had turned down Logan’s previous invitation to play golf because he’d had to leave town, but this time there wasn’t anything that would get in his way. He definitely had enough vacation time to afford to take a few hours off on a Friday. Hell, he ought to take the whole day. His mind was that messed up.