Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(80)

“Auntie!” Liz shouts and jumps down from Clare’s back. She rushes towards me and hugs my leg tightly before pushing her way inside and heading for the colouring book and crayons I left out for her on the couch.

“She’ll be busy all night now. Smart move.” Clares steps inside, shutting the door behind her. “It looks awful in here. Are you sure you’re leaving in two days?”

“Don’t remind me,” I sigh and walk to the kitchen. “Want something to drink? I have water or wine.”

“Go easy with all the options, sis.” She laughs. “Did you leave any glasses unpacked or are we drinking it from the bottle?”

Pulling open my cupboard door, my lip slips between my teeth when I realize I haven’t been drinking from a glass for a few days now. “Bottle?”

“From the look of your overflowing recycle bin, it looks like tonight isn’t the only time this week you’ve been drinking straight from the bottle,” she says, attempting to hide her curiosity with an otherwise harmless poke.

“You caught me.” I shut the cupboard again before pulling a mostly full bottle of red wine from the fridge and slamming back a few gulps.

“On second thought, you can enjoy that on your own.”

I try to find the judgment in her voice but come up short. Not that I’m surprised. My sister is the least judgmental person I know. If anybody is going to understand my sudden obsession with booze, it’s her.

“Thanks.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and hold the bottle by my side.

“Wanna talk about it?” Clare pulls a barstool away from the small kitchen island and sits down, her brows pulled in tight, round eyes locked on mine.

“There isn’t anything more to talk about.” I lift one shoulder and sit in the seat beside her. The bottle rests on the countertop as I lean forward on my elbows and close my eyes.

“That’s a lie,” she scoffs. “Have you talked to him since? If you leave without at least trying to talk to him you know that you’ll regret it, S.”

Right. I forgot that she was the one who brought me home Sunday morning. There was no way that I could have avoided explaining the situation to her after I started sobbing in her SUV. "He doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s probably banging someone else as we speak.”

The thought alone of another girl in his bed makes my skin burn and my top teeth scrape the bottom ones in an almost animalistic action. I know that I lost the right to care about who he spends his nights with, but I can’t help that I still care. I care way too much, and I have no idea when or if I’ll be able to stop.

I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t tell him because I was scared of losing him. It seems ridiculous now, seeing as how keeping it from him turned out even worse. I just wanted to enjoy the rest of our time together without the knot in my stomach that wound so damn tight whenever I thought of him staying behind and moving on. But he deserved to know. I know that.

His words still echo in my ears, burning fresh in my mind when I try to fall asleep at night. “As much as I love fucking you, I’m not going to fly across the country to have an endless tap of your pussy.”

The crack in my chest deepens, my love for him burning a hole inside of me. I hoped that he had felt even relatively similar feelings for me, but I know that it was a far-fetched idea. We were never meant to be forever. I was just a step in the right direction for him. A reminder that he doesn’t always have to hide that big heart of his behind that playboy facade.

“I doubt that.” Clare’s soothing voice breaks me out of my jumbled thoughts. “If he felt even remotely close to what you felt for him, I guarantee he’s wondering how to reach out to you.”

A laugh breaks through my frown. “You don’t know him. He’s not the type.”

“No?” she asks, lifting a brow. “Well, I know you. And there’s no way you were spending your time and effort on someone who didn’t deserve it. That fact alone makes me believe that he isn’t as bad as you’re trying to convince the both of us he is. I don’t need to know him to know that.”

My eyes bulge as I stare at my sister, a feeling of gratefulness swelling behind my chest bone. What happened to the thirteen-year-old girl who spent three hours on hold with the oven company because she couldn’t figure out how to turn the oven on and needed to bake me a birthday cake? Or the seventeen-year-old who went to the drugstore in the middle of the night to buy me my own pack of pads when I got my first period because “every grown woman should have her own set of hygiene products.”

I would do anything to go back and relive those moments.

“I always forget how old and wise you’ve gotten,” I grumble and press my warm forehead to the cool island.

She shrugs away my compliment. “Sometimes people surprise you, Sierra. You have to at least give him a chance to.”

“Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. I would be setting myself up for an even worse heartbreak down the road. I want to get married someday, Clare. He doesn’t believe in that sort of thing.”

Clare surprises me by laughing.

“What’s funny about that?” I narrow my eyes and tilt my head.

“You love him, right? And don’t lie to me.”

“I do,” I reply softly. There's no doubt about it. If I didn’t, losing him wouldn’t feel like having my heart wrung out like a wet towel.