Breaking Away (Assassins, #5)(52)

“Uh yeah, have been since the beginning.”

The air was thick with tension. His heart was pounding, but also breaking at the same time. He said he wasn’t in love with her, but maybe he was. He thought they had something. He thought she liked him, could maybe even love him. Why wasn’t he f*cking enough? Wow, this blew his ego to shit. Looking down at the ground, he reached for his boxers and slowly slid them up. He couldn’t trust himself to say anything else, so he continued to get dressed without even a glance at her. When he pulled the zipper to his jeans up, he turned to look at her.

“This doesn’t affect you and Claire, okay? Give me that.”

“No problem,” she said after clearing her throat. He thought maybe her eyes were glossy, but he knew that couldn’t be true. She didn’t care about him.

Her walls, her heart, were solid rock. There was no breaking through that. No matter how hard he tried to score.

“Okay, well, it was good while it lasted.”

“It was.”

But now it was over.





PHILLIP WOULD like to say that for the next two weeks, he slept with anything with tits and completely forgot about Reese but if he did, the good Lord above would shoot him down with lightning. So instead, he would admit that he was miserable. For two weeks, every single porn he watched, every single girl he touched, anything Claire said and did, reminded him of Reese. He was an * to everyone. Yelling, slamming things around. He knew no one wanted to be around him, and it was all Reese’s fault. He missed her. So bad it hurt. He had so many drafts started with just simple texts like:

Hey, what’s up?

How ya doing?

Wanna meet up, f*ck this out?

I miss you so much.

The last one he deleted, but he had typed it and almost sent it. He knew it would do nothing but cause her to push him away even more, but it was true. He craved her touch, her kisses, her eyes, her body, her mouth, everything… he needed her. It didn’t matter what he did, who he f*cked, he just couldn’t come. He wasn’t a Miley Cyrus fan by a landslide, but it was easy to say her song, “Wrecking Ball” was on repeat on his iPod because Reese had wrecked him.

And it was killing him.

He just couldn’t wrap his brain around it. Did he not matter? Was he not enough and if so, why? He f*cked her good. He could make her body sing for him, and he knew that she cared for him. Was it all lies? Was it all in his head? Did he crave her love so much he started imaging it? Would he never be enough? Ugh, he was so tired of thinking of this; he was so tired of doubting himself. He was a great-looking guy, could f*ck a girl any way she wanted, and damn it, he was the best damn hockey player in the league. He was a catch! So why couldn’t a woman f*cking love him? He wasn’t good enough for his mom, he wasn’t good enough for his first love, and now he wasn’t good enough for Reese. He knew he could find a girl and she would make him believe he was enough, but he wanted it to be real.

He f*cking wanted Reese.

With a groan, he let his head fall back, hoping that Erik would think it was because he died in Call of Duty and not that he was emotionally f*cked up over a girl. This was the first time this had happened in ten years and did Reese care? No, mostly because she didn’t know, but if she did, he knew she still wouldn’t care. He was usually a rush-the-goal kind of guy, but he didn’t know how to win this game. He didn’t know how to make Reese his.

This was that ballerina’s fault! Phillip wanted nothing more than to find the * that broke her and kill him, but what would that do? He doubted it would help, so instead, he drank a little more than he should, tried to have sex with girls that did nothing for him, and played video games with his best friend.

Pathetic.

Erik threw his controller down and leaned back into the couch. “Okay, want to tell me what’s up? You’ve been off for the last two weeks. The huffing and puffing you are doing is annoying. Also, you’ve been sucking on the ice.”

“Fuck you, I have not!” Phillip yelled, causing his buddy, Dimitri, to look up at him with wide eyes from his playpen. “Sorry bud.”

“Yes, you have. You completely missed the goal last game.”

He did, but he would never admit that. “Did not, someone tipped it.”

“No one was around you.”

“Ugh, f*ck you, shut up,” he growled, but then saw that Dimitri was still watching him. “Sorry bud.”

Erik chuckled beside him before saying, “Reese has you in knots, huh?”

He let out a breath as he slowly nodded his head. He really didn’t want to talk about this, but it was Erik. Erik knew everything. They both came from shit ass parents, bad home lives, and had actually made something of themselves. While Erik let his childhood ruin him for most his life, until he allowed himself to love Piper, Phillip did the opposite. He learned from everything. He worked hard to never end up like his dead-beat dad, and f*cked-up mom. He was going to succeed. He was going to be happy. Even though he lost his first love, he didn’t let it ruin him. He knew it had happened for a reason. He knew that she, Alana, wasn’t the one, because she allowed her father to make the decision for them, and he was fine with that. Got over her quickly but even then, he didn’t feel the way he did now.

He just felt empty now.

It was scary and with a nod, he said, “Yeah. She broke off what little we had. She had apparently been screwing other people while with me.”