Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2)(12)

But he’d lost her.

She was right there. Maybe fifty feet away from him, but he’d lost her.

He’d lost her the moment she’d tried to kiss him, touch him, be with him again, and he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because he couldn’t look at her without seeing Frankie. Without wanting to throw up. Without wanting to strangle Eva because, goddamn her, she’d f*cking gotten off on it.

Kami saw him first. She nudged Eva, said something, and jerked her chin in his direction.

Eva didn’t turn right away; instead she looked down at the grass and her shoulders sagged, and he felt that shit all the way to his bones. She didn’t want to see him.

It was slow going as she dragged her feet toward him. She stopped a good five feet away from him but it felt like a mile, and his chest ached fiercely because of it.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t blame her, that he was going to get over this shit. He wanted to tell her a whole shitload of things, none of which he ever said because he honestly didn’t know if any of them were true anymore.

He knew he loved her. But he’d never told her that either.

He should tell her, he could tell her. All he had to do was open his mouth and say three little words, and maybe shit could start moving forward instead of backpedaling into the ugly cycle the two of them always seemed to get caught up in.

It was on the tip of his tongue, he was going to tell her…

But then he found himself wondering why she had so much makeup on and why her sundress was so damn short and where the f*ck she’d been spending her nights. So instead of telling her he loved her, he opened up his mouth and an angry, “Where the f*ck you been?” came out instead.

“Kami’s,” she said softly.

He watched her eyes, waiting for some sort of sign that she was lying. But she kept those big gray soul-suckers trained on him, didn’t so much as blink, and he knew she was telling the truth. Which, for some ungodly reason, pissed him off even more.

“You give a f*ck about Danny bein’ home all alone?” he continued, wishing the words back the moment they’d spewed out of his mouth.

“Do you?” she asked, and he internally winced.

“I got shit to do,” he shot back.

She stared at him and he stared back. Fuck, she was beautiful and he wanted her. He wanted to hold her, touch her, he wanted inside her, but the second he thought it, he saw Frankie…inside her…and his stomach cramped.

“Fuck,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, trying to think of something to say to her, something that didn’t result in her crying and him feeling like an * afterward. “Listen, D’s birthday is on Saturday. You gonna be there?”

She nodded.

“You bringin’ Ivy?”

She nodded again.

And, yeah, he was out of shit to say.

“I’m out,” he muttered, sitting up straight. “Got shit to do.”

And he left. Feeling like an *.

? ? ?

Feeling a chill that had nothing at all to do with the weather, Eva walked back to Kami with her arms wrapped around herself.

Things were bad, so very bad, and she didn’t know how to fix them. She wasn’t even sure that this time they could be fixed.

Which wasn’t fair. She and Deuce had gone through hell and they deserved some peace. And she wanted that peace with him. All she’d ever wanted was him.

“Aw, Evie,” Kami whispered after taking one look at her, probably seeing on her face how heartbroken she felt. “What are you going to do?”

For a moment she said nothing, just stared down at her daughter, the spitting image of her father with her white-blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and multi-dimpled smile. She viewed Ivy as a gift, the culmination of her and Deuce’s misspent years, the phoenix rising from the ashes of their devastation, the one good that shone so brightly against all the bad, it made the bad bearable.

She shrugged. “I’m going to wait. I’m just going to wait and hope he comes back to me.”

Because he had to come back.

“He’s a proud man, Evie. Men like him, they don’t…” Kami trailed off and took a deep breath. “What if he doesn’t get over this, what will you do?”

Eva swallowed hard. He had to come back.

There just wasn’t any other option for her. She loved him too much.

CHAPTER SIX
I wasn’t sure if Ripper was staring at me or glaring at me. Either way, I could feel his gaze burning holes in the back of my head, and because of it I had broken out in a cold sweat during a perfectly mild afternoon.

“You okay?” Eva asked me, touching her palm to my forehead. “You feel clammy.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Fine,” I choked out.

Fine. I was fine. It was a party and I was perfectly fine. I wasn’t freaking out or anything. So I’d had a one-night stand. What was the big deal? But usually when people had one-night stands, they never saw the person again, right? But those people probably hadn’t had one-night stands with a man fourteen years older than them who worked for their father, a father that would probably, no definitely freak out if he ever found out. So, what was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to act like everything between us was the same as it had been before?

Which had virtually been nothing, aside from an occasional random conversation that happened in passing.