A Perfect Ten (Forbidden Men #5)(123)

She hurried from the room, and like the complete screw-up idiot I was, I just let her go. Then I slumped onto my bed and whispered, “Bye,” as I cradled my head in my hands and tried not to lose my f*cking mind.





Six days passed. I gave Caroline her space...and she f*cking took it. She didn’t call, she didn’t Facebook message, she didn’t come over.

I died a little inside every hour she stayed away.

I reached out to her exactly three times. The next morning, I texted, saying, I’m sorry.

The day after that, I added, I love you.

And on day three, I wrote, I still trust you. I trusted her to learn all this shit about me and not break my heart by leaving me. But my f*cking trust had been sorely tested, and shredded.

I reminded myself, she just needed time. She’d get over this, and she’d come back to me.

Yeah, I repeated that over and over in my head, not really believing any of it, while I clung to the hope of it anyway.

Caroline f*cking hated me now, and she was done with me. My life was f*cking over.

She didn’t even show up at Forbidden the next Friday to watch Hart’s band, and she always came to cheer on Non-Castrato.

After the bar closed, I was putting away the last bottle of liquor, when I just stopped and stared at it, tempted to drown all my sorrows like a typical brokenhearted douche.

I was still standing there like a complete dumbass, staring at the bottle, when Lowe paused beside me and leaned his forearms on the bar. He watched Hart and his band pack away their equipment before shaking his head. “I swear that one guy in Asher’s band, the one with the Mohawk, drops even more f-bombs than you do, Ten.”

I snorted, tipping my head to the side as I considered the bottle of tequila from a different angle. “Not even f*cking possible,” I said before I shrugged and flipped over a shot glass to pour myself a drink. Then I downed the shot with a single swallow.

“I think he’s more crude than you are, too.”

“Good for him.” I poured myself another.

Lowe finally looked at me, frowning. “You doing okay tonight?”

Shot three, down the hatch. “Just f*cking dandy. How’re you?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Uh…Asher,” he called.

Hart looked our way and then jogged over. “What’s up?”

Lowe hooked his thumb in my direction. “What is wrong with him?”

Hart studied me for a second, and then returned his attention to Lowe. “Women trouble. What else?” Then he grinned and patted the bar. “Why don’t you take care of this one?”

Lowe snorted. “As if I know what to do with a depressed Ten. That’s outside my scope of reality.”

With a chuckle, Hart seated himself on a stool. I started in on my fifth shot…or was it my sixth? Shit, I’d already lost count how many I’d downed while these two were talking about me right f*cking in front of my face.

“So last time I saw you, you were asking Noel if you could date his sister,” Hart murmured, thoughtfully.

“I wasn’t asking for permission,” I bit out.

“Whatever.” He didn’t seem to care. “Noel said no, you argued back, and then he threatened to tell Caroline about all your past…women, if you tried anything with her, so…I’m guessing he told her anyway.”

“No.” I swallowed more and hissed through my teeth as that one burned on the way down. “I told her.”

“You did what?” both guys shouted in unison.

“Oh, you stupid idiot.” Lowe sat his hand on my shoulder in commiseration. “Please don’t tell me you told her about all the women you’d ever been with.”

“No.” I gave a harsh laugh. “She walked out before I could get through the entire list.”

Lowe winced. Hart snickered. I shot them both a glare. “It was either I tell her or Gamble tell her. I thought it’d be better coming from me.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Hart asked.

“Last Saturday,” I uttered, feeling the pain of missing every little part of her: her voice, one of her cute little sexy texts, her arms around me, her smile.

“Shit.” Lowe shook his head. “Give her at least a week.”

I looked up at him. “What happens if she hasn’t talked to me within a week?”

He shrugged. “Then give her two weeks.”

“Then what happens if—”

“Just give her some time, man.”

I buried my face in my hands, abso-f*cking-lutely miserable. Time was going to tear me apart if I had to spend too much of it away from her. “I’m such an idiot,” I ranted. “The last words my sister ever said to me before she died were not to turn into a man-whore, and what’s the first thing I did? I turned into a f*cking man-whore to fight back the bad memories, and now it’s coming back to bite me in the ass.” Cupping the sides of my face in my hands, I looked up at Hart and Lowe, who gaped back at me as if I’d grown horns. Somewhere in my head, I realized I’d just spilled a bunch of shit about my sister, but at the moment, I couldn’t even care. There was more important shit going on. “What if I lose her?”

Unable to take the weight of this pain, I sank to the floor and rested my elbows on my knees as I concentrated on not falling apart.