Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(11)

“I don’t care. I don’t want their services. I just want you.”

I hiccup over the sob I emit. “I just need—” To believe you. To trust what you’re saying. To know this was real. “Time.” The lump in my throat now almost chokes me. “Can you please just go now? Haven’t you caused enough hurt already?”

“Don’t throw this away. Us away.”

You already did.

“Please . . .”

My back is to him, my hand on the door. My emotions turbulent. My heart breaking.

“I’ve fallen in love with you, Vaughn.”

And if anything is going to spark the fight back in me, it would be those unexpected words.

“No!” I spin around and stare at him, not caring about the tears suddenly painting my face. “You don’t get to say that to me! You don’t get to use those words to fix things.” I suck in a ragged breath.

“But it’s true.” He gives me the most nonchalant of shrugs to match his matter-of-fact tone.

I push my fingers against my eyes and shake my head back and forth as I try to reject the words I’ve never allowed anyone to say to me. The ones I’d never wanted anyone to say until twenty-four hours ago. The ones that just twisted the knife in my chest and made this whole thing hurt that much more.

Because I love him too.

But not like this.

Not after he used me. Not after he showed me that a woman at his disposal is all he’ll ever see. Not after he thought it was okay, regardless of the circumstances.

“Please leave or I’ll call the cops. I don’t love you in return,” I lie.

Emotions play over every muscle in his gorgeous face. Without another word, he turns around and walks out the front door, never seeing my hand in the “hang loose” sign hidden behind my back.





CHAPTER THREE

Ryker

You said you loved her.

I stare at the city streets twenty floors below my penthouse. Taillights brighten and dim, steam rises and dissipates, and people move quickly in and out of my line of sight, but all I see is the turned-off front porch light of her house when I stood on her driveway. How there was a blue hue on the other side of the closed curtains where she probably had those beloved black-and-white movies of hers playing to comfort her. All I can feel is the goddamn panic I felt when I forced myself to drive away after sitting there for an hour after she kicked me out.

You used those damn words out of desperation to salvage your fucking colossal mistake.

When my fist slams through the drywall, I don’t feel an ounce of pain. Hell, I didn’t even realize I threw it.

All I know is the hole in the wall has nothing on the hole currently eating its way through my fucking chest.

Dignified and always-in-control Ryker Lockhart just punched the wall like a thug.

That’s what this woman does to me. She makes me lose all sense of myself, every ounce of reason . . . and fuck if she hasn’t made me love every second of it.

Love.

There’s that damn word again.

The fucked-up term that people throw around just so they can get back at someone else. The one they wield like a weapon to hold over their lover’s head in the future.

It’s not real. I think of my mom, of the way she needed the word and then hated the obligations that came with it after it was said. The demands and the conformity and the constant hurt I watched her hide because of that one damn emotion.

Vaughn.

The expressions on her face tonight are snapshots in my mind. Hurt. Shame. Disbelief. Anger. Love. One after another.

What’s between us can’t really be love. That shit doesn’t exist. Falling for a woman? Yes. Actually loving her? Not a chance in hell.

This is not me.

Never has been.

Never will be.

And yet here I am. Fucked and furious and a failure because I screwed up.

Big time.

I wasn’t cut out for relationships. For love. For anything that has to do with thinking about someone else before I think of myself. Doesn’t this prove that point?

Walk away. Do the one thing you know how to do when it comes to a woman—create space and distance to prove to her and yourself that she doesn’t matter. That she’s disposable. That you are the heartless son of a bitch you know yourself to be.

Walk away.

Fuck you, Lockhart. You’re being a coward.

Walk the fuck away.

Easier said than done.





CHAPTER FOUR

Vaughn

The dull throb of the bass echoes around me and irritates me when it shouldn’t.

I chose to pick up yet another extra shift. Anything to busy my mind so that I stop thinking about Ryker and what happened last week and what exactly the senator might do with any information he might have on me.

So I opted to lose myself in my job. In the people around me. In the music and dark lights. Too bad I didn’t realize all of that was going to amplify my bad mood rather than abate it.

Love. It’s everywhere I look tonight. In the familiarity in the simple touch of a man’s hand to a woman’s lower back as he leans in and whispers in her ear. In the soft smiles and knowing looks across the space between a couple.

All things I miss about being with Ryker. All things I don’t want to miss but do.

It’s only been a few days. I hope it gets easier. I fear it won’t.