Faked (Ward Family #2)(62)

"That she said something." He looked behind me at the house. "I don't fit here any more than I fit in my own home. This isn't my scene, and I don't know why I thought it would be."

The pain I felt was staggering, and it threatened to buckle my knees, if I'd let it.

"Don't do this," I whispered. "I see exactly what you're trying to do, and I don't believe you."

"It's the truth whether you want to believe it or not." Bauer could hardly look me in the eye now. "We had a great weekend, princess, and it's probably best that that's where we leave it."

My eyes dried, and my heart curled in on itself while a roaring, angry beast took over my head. "You are the biggest coward I've ever met."

Oh, he didn't like that. But if Bauer got to fling little darts at me, let them find purchase in my skin over and over, but I would not be the only one bleeding by the time we were done with this awful, insane conversation.

"Feel better calling me names?"

"I've met children with more emotional maturity than you, Bauer Davis," I told him.

He started nodding, pulling his keys out of his front pocket. "Good, get pissed at me, princess. It'll make it easier for me to leave."

"Don't call me that," I snapped. "I'm not a princess. I'm not some untouchable, pristine thing up in a tower, and I will get pissed because I see an intelligent man who means a lot to me throwing away the possibility for something amazing because he's too chicken shit to work past his problems." I marched the final steps between us and grabbed his face with my hands. His jaw was granite hard beneath my fingers, that was how tightly he was clenching his teeth. "I'm not trying to make it easy for you to leave, Bauer, because I know that's not what you really want to do. You felt exactly what I did this weekend, and you are running scared at the first available chance."

His eyes were zeroed in on mine, and for a moment, I thought he'd relent. He curled his hands around my wrists and carefully tugged until I had no choice but to release his face.

My hands fell when he let go, and quite strangely, I felt nothing the moment they did.

No anger.

No fear.

No pain.

Inside me was a strange quiet, a sudden stillness that could only be self-protective clarity.

"I was a fool to trust you with any piece of me," I told him. "Wasn't I?"

He conceded that with a slow nod, and my hand itched to slap that placid mask off his face.

"Finn's the trustworthy brother, princess." He smiled, and it looked cruel and cold, and I hated it. "I'm the one you come to for a good time, and I think you got that in spades."

The ice in my bones hardened to steel, and I lifted my chin as I took a step back from him. "You should be gone by the time I walk inside that house because the second I do, I can't be held accountable for what happens to you."

He laughed under his breath, twirling his keys around one finger. "Not a problem, Miss Ward. Your wish is my command."

This time, it was me showing him my back, and I hoped to hell that he didn't see the tear that slid down my face when I did. The slam of his car door sounded like a gunshot, and I kept my pace even as I walked into the dark garage. My heart uncurled painfully as I opened the door, and I found myself wrapped into my big brother's waiting arms.

I never heard the Jeep leave because I couldn't hear a thing over the breaking of my heart.





Chapter Twenty-Three





Claire





"You can't ignore me forever."

My nose stayed glued in my textbook, and I ran a highlighter under a sentence I wanted to remember.

Lia plopped on my bed even though I hadn't invited her into my bedroom. Forty-eight hours after we'd driven home from Logan and Paige's—me in stony silence, Lia begging me to talk to her, Finn glancing uncomfortably at me in the rearview mirror—I was proving to my sister that I could, in fact, ignore her forever.

I'd never gone this long without a word to her.

But I was pissed.

At her.

At Bauer.

At myself.

And unfortunately for Lia, as my roommate, she became the most convenient scapegoat for that anger.

"Claire, come on," she begged. "I don't know how else to apologize, okay? I'm sorry. You know I run my mouth sometimes, and I shouldn't have said anything to him, but I swear, I thought he knew. I thought ... I thought you knew that I knew."

My highlighter froze on the page, and I had to clench my teeth tightly to keep from screaming at her that there was no conceivable way I could have known that when we'd never freaking talked about it.

Lia, like a rabid dog, saw the pause in my motion and pounced on it. "He said you talked about it, okay? About why you went. And I just ... I was trying to make conversation because seriously, I was trying to be nice to him."

By telling him I had a crush on his brother! I wanted to scream. My eyes pinched shut.

This was killing me.

Because no matter how pissed I was, I could feel it seeping through my skin, how miserable Lia was.

She was sad.

She was frustrated.

She was scared.

Between the two of us, I was always the one who caved first. Who tried to keep the peace. Who let things slide.