“People say that, and then later change their mind.”

“Ooohhh, the mysterious ex. What did she go back on?”

“She said she wanted me to do something. I did it. It got thrown in my face. I don't want that to happen again.”

“I, Tatum O'Shea, solemnly swear not to -,”

“When Robert hit you, you were angry. You didn't like it.”

“There is a big difference between an abusive asshole knocking me to the ground, and you slapping me. You know me, I ask you to do it, we have sex. You don't want to hurt me, you want to fulfill me.”

“Mmm, fulfill you. I like that.”

“Is this a game?”

“No games, Tatum.”

“What are we, if we don't have games?”

“Something else.”

~12~

Jameson convinced her to stay with him for the next two weeks. That first night back, she had fallen asleep in the car, so he carried her up to his room. He stayed awake, watching her sleep. It was easy to forget while they played their little games, but she really was a very beautiful girl. Soft. Delicate.

Tatum woke up around three in the morning to catch him staring at her, and they started talking. They talked for a long time. It was the first time they had ever spent the night together and not had sex. Before, it would have seemed pointless.

It didn't seem so pointless anymore.

She didn't talk about her family, didn't really acknowledge that weekend at all. Though the next day, she did lock herself away in a guest room for about an hour, on the phone to Ang. When she emerged, she was smiling, but her eyes were puffy and red. Apparently she could discuss things with Ang, but not with Jameson. He tried not to let it bother him. They had gone to some different stage in their relationship, but they weren't quite ready to start sharing their feelings with each other.

It took her a while to get comfortable in her own skin again, but after a couple days, Tate was back to her old self. Running around in her underwear. Clipping coupons. Teasing Sanders. Begging Jameson to do unspeakable things to her. He spent most of his days in Boston, and she would go in to town with him, spend her days doing only god knew what with Ang and Rusty. But on the days she didn't work at the bar, she would always show up outside his office building at six o'clock. She always went home with him.

He wasn't sure exactly what was going on between them. Jameson hadn't been lying in the beginning, he didn't want a girlfriend – a girlfriend usually meant exclusivity, and he liked to have sex with other people. Though sometimes, knowing Tatum was at home and that she not only liked hearing about his one-night stands, but that they actually got her hot, made it even more enticing for him to go out and have sex with random women.

So point for her.

But he also wasn't in the market to get married, and say what she wanted, Tate was a chick, at her core. Sooner or later, she would want some sort of a commitment that he just wouldn't, and couldn't really, give her. Jameson liked his life exactly the way it was; every relationship he'd ever had, had ended on a sour note. If they tried to make their relationship in to something more, it would just end badly, too.

It was just fun and games between them, and it had to stay that way.

She and Sanders had also gotten ridiculously close, ever since the weekend get-away to the O'Shea compound. They would stay up till all hours, just sitting in the kitchen, Tate babbling on and onto him – as far as Jameson could tell, Sanders virtually never said anything back. But it seemed to work for them.

Sometimes, Jameson would come out of work to discover his car sitting alone at the curb, and the two of them would be at a restaurant somewhere. Or in a cafe. Milling around a shop. One time he couldn't find them at all, and it took forty-five minutes and eight phone calls to finally get ahold of Sanders – something that had never happened in the past. Sanders and Tate had gotten distracted by some live show in a park. When they came walking towards him down the street, arm in arm, he had a flash of anger and was shocked to realize something – he was jealous. Jealous of her easy going relationship with Sanders.

Jameson knew it was a ridiculous sentiment, especially since he knew he didn't make it easy for her to talk to him, or just be with him. And really, he knew he was the one she seemed to want to be with – he was the one who got tackled in the conservatory, he was the one who got violated in the pool, he was the one who woke up to blowjobs at two in the morning. Nobody else, she hadn't even talked about sleeping with other men. Hadn't even really mentioned Ang to him.

Winning.

*

“You never have time for me anymore,” Ang was whining. Tate rolled her eyes.

“I see you almost every day. If anything, I see you more now than I did before I started sleeping with him,” she pointed out. He pouted.

“You never have naked time for me anymore,” Ang amended his whine. She laughed.

“Hush. We talked about this.”

“But you're the only one who knows what I like, what I want, what I need.”

“Teach somebody else.”

“Bitch.”

She launched a pillow at him and he caught it, laughing. They were hanging out in his room on a Saturday night. She had to go to the bar in a little while, and she had swung by Ang's to use his laptop. She didn't have one of her own and they hadn't hung out, just the two of them, in a while. Two birds with one stone.

“Shut up, there are plenty of people out there wanting to ride the Angier train,” she assured him, sitting on the end of his bed and folding her legs up lotus style. He stretched out on the mattress behind her, kneading his toes in to her lower back.