1 Cassie Three thoughts occurred to me that morning while stretching awake across my bed in Marigny. One, it had been six weeks since that incredible night with Will. Two, I had fallen asleep with my S.E.C.R.E.T. bracelet on again, which hadn't been a problem when it had only one or two charms on it. But there were ten now, so the gold pressed into the tender flesh of my wrists, leaving marks. And three, it was my birthday. My cat, Dixie, blinked at me from the foot of the bed. I reached down and pulled her into an embrace, where she purred herself back to sleep, a skill I wish I had. "I am thirty-six years old today, Dixie," I said, scratching her ears. Another year had snuck up on me like a bratty prankster. I hadn't been paying attention to time passing until after my night with Will. Time had begun to slow. Some days ached past, work at the Café Rose being both a major comfort and the salt in the very wound I needed to heal. How could I get over Will when I saw him every day? How could I continue acting like nothing had happened between us the night I'd danced in Les Filles de Frenchmen Revue and we'd kissed our way back to the Café, up the stairs to that dusty room, where he tore off my burlesque outfit and tossed me backwards on a mattress lit by moonlight? Though he didn't know it, I had chosen him that night as my final fantasy. He knew only how badly I wanted him. For me the lines between fact and fantasy had dissolved and he became real to me. His skin felt like home. We kissed like we'd been doing it for decades. We fit, our bodies perfectly molded for the things we did to each other naturally, wordlessly. It was beyond fantasy. And to think that all this time he had been right under my nose and I hadn't seen him, couldn't see him. But after a year of S.E.C.R.E.T., after a year of pushing myself past self-imposed boundaries, I had unleashed something very real inside of myself. And when Will told me he and Tracina had broken up, I felt the universe finally aligning in my favor. The morning after our magical night, I thought Will was my reward for coming back to life. I was wrong. More than any other memory from that night, it's Tracina's face that haunts me--ashen yet hopeful, her steady voice delivering the kind of hard facts that kill fantasies. She told me she was pregnant with Will's baby, and that he was thrilled when he found out. What do you do with that very real information just when you think you've found the love of your life? You feel the final bubble burst around your fantasy and you walk away. That's what I did. All the way across the city to the Coach House, where Matilda dried my tears. There she reminded me that embedded in every fantasy is reality. "People love the fantasy," she said. "But they ignore the facts to their detriment. And there's a price to pay when you do that. Always." Fact number one: Will and I were finally together. Fact number two: I was quite possibly in love with him. Fact number three: His ex-girlfriend was pregnant. Fact number four: When she told him, they got back together. Fact number five: Will and I cannot be together. Because Will was my boss, I had planned to quit my job right away, but Matilda urged me never to let heartbreak get in the way of very practical concerns, like work, paying rent, being responsible and fulfilling obligations. "Don't give men that much power, Cassie. Get on with the task of living. You've had a lot of practice this past year." I was such a tear-stained mess that morning. I wasn't certain whether joining S.E.C.R.E.T. was the right decision. But at least I was making a decision. That was new for me. Prior to S.E.C.R.E.T., I always went with the most powerful force governing my life at any given time, usually my late husband Scott's. He had brought us to New Orleans almost eight years ago, but his drinking erased any notion that we'd made a fresh start. We were separated when he died in a car wreck; he was sober at the time, but still a broken man. I was broken as well. And for five years after, I worked hard and slept fitfully, falling into a pattern of isolation and selfpity, until one day I found a diary detailing one woman's journey through a mysterious set of steps that seemed to have a lot to do with sex--a journey that was transformative, to say the least. Then I met Matilda Greene, the woman who became my Guide. She said she had come to the Café Rose for the diary her friend had dropped, but really she came for me, to introduce me to S.E.C.R.E.T., an underground group dedicated to helping women liberate themselves sexually, by granting them sexual fantasies of their choice. Joining the group, letting these women arrange fantasies for me, and finding the courage to go through with them, she said, would pull me out of my malaise. She told me she'd help me, guide me and support me. Finally, after a week of turning the idea over in my head, I said yes. It was a reluctant yes, but it was a yes nonetheless. After which my life changed completely. Over the course of a year, I had done fantastical things with unbelievably attractive men, things I would never have thought possible. I let a gorgeous masseur pleasure me without asking for a thing in return. I met a sexy British man in a dark bar who secretly brought me to orgasm in the middle of a boisterous jazz show. I was taken by surprise, in many ways, by a tattooed bad-boy chef, who stole a bit of my heart while ravaging me on a prep table in the Café's kitchen. I learned to give the most mind-blowing orgasm to a famous hip hop artist, who enthusiastically returned the favor, the memory of which still makes me tingle when I hear his songs on the radio. I took a helicopter to a yacht, then went overboard in a storm with the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on. Not only did he rescue me, but his whole (incredible) body restored my faith in mine. Then the Bayou Billionaire himself, Pierre Castille, took me in the back of a limousine, after making me feel like the most beautiful girl at the ball. I skied the risky black diamond runs with Theo, the adorable Frenchman who pushed my sexual limits further than anyone had before. Then I went into sensory overload with a man I could only feel, not see, during a night that was blindingly sexy in more ways than one. Then came my final fantasy, when I chose my beloved Will. I chose Will over S.E.C.R.E.T. and couldn't have had a happier night, or a more glorious morning after. Excerpted from SECRET Shared: A SECRET Novel by L. Marie Adeline All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
