He Practiced Loving Me on Other Women

My boyfriend had refused to sleep with me for years.

I thought he was shy, inexperienced, or hiding something painful.

Then I found his journal.

In it, Adrian Shaw wrote that my stepsister had warned him I would despise a virgin who didn't know how to please me.

He hated the thought of touching another woman, he said.

He loved me.

But he had decided to practice anyway—for my sake.

I still believed we could fix it, right up until I heard him agree to meet another woman in secret.

So I gave him one last chance to tell me the truth.

He lied, crossed the line he knew mattered most to me, and expected love to erase the choice.

By the time he understood what I had actually wanted, another man was already waiting at my door—a man who had heard my standard years ago and remembered every word.

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Adrian Shaw's journal was open in my lap when I looked across the room and saw him talking to a woman he had never met before.

He usually avoided small talk with strangers, especially women. At charity dinners, gallery openings, and the endless family events our parents considered mandatory, he would stand beside me with one hand in his pocket and answer anyone else in the fewest words possible.

Tonight, though, the woman beside him said something, and he replied. She laughed. He didn't smile, but he stayed.

I lowered my gaze to the page again.

Evie's stepsister says being a virgin at my age isn't sweet. It's embarrassing. She says Evie will hate how clumsy I am.

The entry below it was dated three days later.

Do I really have to sleep with someone else first? The thought makes me sick.

The last entry had been written so hard the pen had nearly torn the paper.

I can't let Evie's first night with me be disappointing. I'll find someone to practice with.

For several seconds, I couldn't hear the music or the conversations around me. The private lounge at the hotel blurred into polished wood, dim lamps, and moving mouths.

Then anger arrived, clean and hot.

So that was why Adrian had rejected me every time I tried to take our relationship further.

Not because he didn't want me. Not because he had a medical problem. Not because some old trauma made intimacy difficult.

Because Chloe Lane, my stepsister, had told him he would be bad in bed.

And instead of asking me what I wanted, he had apparently decided to rehearse with strangers.

I closed the journal before I crushed the spine.

The book had slipped from Adrian's coat when one of the event staff moved it from a chair. I had picked it up to return it. I hadn't gone searching through his things, but once I saw my nickname on the exposed page, I read on.

Maybe I should have felt guilty.

I didn't.

I watched him from across the lounge. He stood tall and immaculate in a black suit, his expression cool enough to discourage almost anyone. The woman kept trying. One question, one answer. Another question, another answer.

It was more effort than I had seen him make with any unfamiliar woman in the four years we had been together.

I almost laughed.

I had spent months wondering whether I was the problem. I had chosen dresses he liked, booked quiet weekends, tried teasing him, tried being direct, and finally asked if something about sex frightened him. Every time, he kissed my forehead, held me until I stopped asking, and said, "Not yet."

I had begun to dread those words.

My family had already introduced me to a potential marriage match, Julian Tate, the son of people my father trusted. I had refused to meet him because I was in love with Adrian. The Shaws were as wealthy and well connected as the Harts, so my parents had eventually accepted that I wanted a relationship of my own choosing.

But I was twenty-seven. Adrian and I had been together long enough to discuss marriage. If he couldn't tell me why he wouldn't let me close, what exactly were we building?

Five minutes ago, I had been close to giving up.

Now I knew the answer, and absurdly, hope returned with it.

Inexperience didn't bother me. I didn't want the benefit of some other woman's labor. I wanted the awkward first attempts, the laughter, the learning. I wanted us to discover each other together.

If Adrian had misunderstood me, I could correct him.

If Chloe had poisoned his confidence, I could tell him she was lying.

This could still be fixed.

I stood and crossed the room.

Adrian saw me before I reached him. His dark eyes lifted, and the reserve in his face softened. His fingers moved as if he had nearly reached for me from several feet away.

When I came close, he took my hand and drew me into the empty seat beside him.

The woman smiled at me. She was pretty in a glossy, practiced way, with a champagne flute balanced between two fingers.

"What were you two talking about?" I asked.

"A secret." She gave Adrian a playful look. "Ask Mr. Shaw. Maybe he'll tell you."

I turned to him.

"Nothing important," he said.

His hand tightened around mine. He pulled my chair closer until our shoulders touched.

He smelled faintly of cedar, familiar enough to loosen the knot in my chest. Whatever he had written, whatever ridiculous advice Chloe had given him, this was still Adrian. The man who remembered how I took my coffee. The man who drove across town at two in the morning when I had a fever because he didn't trust anyone else to look after me.

"Can we talk?" I asked.

He rose at once and led me toward the quiet hallway outside the lounge.

Under the warmer light, his face was as striking as the first day I met him: sharp cheekbones, straight nose, dark eyes fixed entirely on me. My anger weakened around the edges.

I chose my words carefully. "Chloe's home from school for break. Has she been bothering you?"

"No."

The answer came too quickly, but before I could press him, he lowered his head and rested his chin against my shoulder.

"I love you," he said.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

"I love you too."

His ears turned red. They always did when we were this close.

That shy, involuntary flush was one of the reasons I had believed him incapable of deceiving me.

I touched the edge of his ear and tried to sound like myself. "Still blushing, husband?"

We weren't married, but I had called him that when I wanted to fluster him. His throat moved. He laced our fingers together and said nothing.

I decided I would stop bringing him to Hart family dinners while Chloe was home. If she couldn't get near him, she couldn't keep feeding him garbage.

It wasn't a solution, but it would buy me time to talk to him properly.

The next afternoon, I learned that Adrian didn't need my help avoiding Chloe.

He had gone to meet her himself.