Rogue (Real #4)(67)
Until he interrupts, softly, “I saw your lipstick on another man’s mouth and I can still go back and break it until he can’t find his f*cking teeth. Hell, I want you to watch me break it if only so you know, once and for all, that you’re my f*cking girl and the only lucky bastard getting a piece of my girl is me.”
“Was!” I drunkenly correct. “Was your girl.”
He laughs more darkly. “You are so f*cking mine you don’t even know how mine you are,” he says in a soft, threatening voice, and in my drunk brain, I suddenly register that he’s trembling with rage. He’s not worried about me having just caught him cheating. It seems all his thoughts are on his selfish jealousy. But I can’t even remember what happened in Riley’s room, all I keep remembering is Greyson and that bitch.
“You walked past me like you’d never seen me before!” I cry, hitting his chest.
He catches my wrist and squeezes. “Because I don’t want a woman like her to use you against me—anybody to use you against me. Do you understand me? Do you, baby?” he asks, lowering his voice, tender, almost pleading.
“I understand you are a liar and a cheater and you didn’t want HER to know you also had ME waiting on the side!”
“Fuck! Seriously? You were in another guy’s f*cking room, stripping for him! Were you trying to drive me insane?” Suddenly the vivid pain in his eyes is real. The pain in his voice is real, so real my chest cracks open like glass. “Were you really intending to go through with it? Were you honestly going to let that motherf*cker inside you?” he asks, every word like a shard inside me.
“YES!” I cry.
He shudders as if he’s breaking, and I start sobbing for real.
He releases me like he needs some distance, his voice trembling with more than anger. It’s pain, and it wrecks me. “Do you think you can f*ck someone to replace me? Do you think he’ll make you feel the way I do? Was I nothing special to you, Melanie? Do you fall in love with every * you date?”
A tear runs down my cheek.
He slams a hand to the window and curses. “Fuck this.”
“It hurts,” I sniffle, talking to myself as I lower my hands. “You hurt me like nobody’s ever hurt me, Greyson! I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you call her princess? Do you spend your weekdays with her and your weekends with me?”
He stays silent, gazing out the window, his shoulders tight. “I don’t call anyone else princess. I don’t spend time with any woman but you. Hell, I work my days around just so I can come home to you.”
“Then why are you here with her? I’m not big on second chances, you know! But I’ve given you every f*cking chance you’ve wanted!” I cry.
“She is nothing.” He grabs my face with his free hand, hissing through ground teeth, “She is nothing but a work contact. You are everything, you’ve been everything from the moment I saw you, screaming for Riptide. You didn’t see me, you didn’t see me, Melanie, but I’ve watched over you ever since—you are everything. Can you say the same about me? Can you say the same about him—that he’s nothing?”
I stare blankly at him for a moment. “He’s nothing, he’s a friend, I swear. He was a f*ck buddy when I came over to see Brooke sometimes, it meant nothing!”
He stares at his hands. “But he’s touched you.”
I suddenly can’t stop myself from touching my boobs. So much smaller than the redhead’s. “Who was she? What’s her name? How do you know her?”
He rubs his face with both hands. “Just a business contact. She gets the dirty on men I need to negotiate with. I’ve never had a relationship with her. I’ve had a thousand f*cks, but she hasn’t been one of them. My every single f*ck for weeks has been you.” He looks out and curses, and I wipe my tears.
I see his face and remember the way he smiled at her and my stomach roils with fresh jealousy. “I wanted to pull her f*cking hair out.”
“I want to pull his guts out!” He grabs me by the shoulders. “What part of you being my girl didn’t you understand?”
“I refuse to be yours if you’re not going to be mine. If you f*ck around I’m going to f*ck around—an eye for an eye!”
“Stop being a stubborn-fool drunk and listen to me. I am not cheating on you—but you were.”
I fall quiet.
“Were you?”
“You and I were over the moment you walked past me and I realized all this time you’ve been lying to me,” I cry, sniveling.
“Come here,” he rasps out.
“Why?”
When I edge a little close, he opens his arm, and my eyes blur more when I think about explaining to him what Riley knows about my secret. “I’m f*cking sorry, Melanie,” he says.
He pulls me into his chest and the familiarity in his embrace and the comfort I feel in his arms unexpectedly opens my floodgates.
“I’m sorry too, Grey,” I cry.
I start sobbing harder as he presses a very firm, almost desperate kiss to the crown of my head and squeezes me with almost enough force to break me and says, “It’s going to be okay. You’ll never have to run to another man again because I’m going to be right here. Right here for you, if you still want me after I tell you what I have to tell you.”