Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(19)

I licked my lips. “I don’t know if it’s fair to say I screwed everything up. You’re the one who left.”

“I left because you were messing around behind my back.”

“But I wasn’t,” I said. “You were paranoid.”

“You were pissed at me.” He put his finger in my face. “You were mad, because you wanted to have sex like seven times a day—”

“No, it was only that things had slowed down,” I said. “At the beginning, we were all over each other. But it had been nine months, and we were slowing down. I didn’t realize it was normal. Griffin, I never had a relationship that long before.”

He laughed bitterly. “I wasn’t enough for you.”

“No,” I said. “I was... I shouldn’t have put pressure on you.”

He turned away from me. “You really shouldn’t have.”

“Because it made it worse,” I said.

He still wasn’t looking at me. “Because I can’t handle that. Because it made me feel like you were forcing me to do it, and I don’t like that.”

“I know,” I said. “I screwed up. About that, I did. I’m sorry.” I chewed on my lip. “But I said I was sorry about it before New Year’s. And things were getting better.”

He stiffened at the mention of New Year’s Eve. “Things weren’t getting better, Leigh. That’s the night I caught you. I saw you with him.”

“You didn’t see anything,” I said.

He looked at me. His expression was fierce. “He was kissing you.”

“He was hugging me,” I said. “I was hugging him. It was innocent.”

Griffin went into the kitchen. “I know what I saw.”

“You saw it wrong,” I said. It was the most heartbreaking thing on earth to me that he refused to believe me. I followed him into the kitchen. “Clint was telling me that he stopped doing coke, and I was happy for him. He used to be my friend, and the cocaine made him greedy and selfish, and I was happy he was rid of it. And so I hugged him. Why don’t you believe me?”

He opened the refrigerator and dug through it. “Because it’s not like you hadn’t screwed him before.” He came out with a bottle of Newcastle.

“It’s a little early, isn’t it?” I said.

“You want one?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He handed me a beer, shut the refrigerator door, and went over to a drawer. “That guy was the weasel that was in your apartment the first day I got there. The one who you ran off with that one night. The night when I had to beat up the other guy who was slamming you up against a wall and calling you names? You remember that?”

“I do,” I said.

He came out with a bottle opener. He opened his beer and tossed it to me. “That’s the guy who you were kissing. Clint.”

I tried to catch it, but I missed. It fell on the floor, and I had to pick it up. “I wasn’t kissing him.” I opened my beer. “I don’t know why you think you saw that. Maybe from the angle you were looking at, it looked like a kiss, but I swear to God, Griffin, I wasn’t kissing him.”

Griffin leaned against the counter and took a long draught of his beer. “Why won’t you admit it, doll? After all this time, after everything, you could come clean. Stop lying to me.”

“I’m not lying!” I took a drink of my beer, and the cold, thick liquid felt good going down. “I didn’t kiss Clint. I haven’t kissed anyone but you in over a year. You don’t want me to be telling the truth. Because then you look like a bad guy for running out on me.”

He drained the rest of the beer and slammed it on the counter. “I came back.”

“You came back too late,” I said.

He looked down at his hands. His voice was quiet. “Yeah, I did.”

I drank some more Newcastle. It still tasted good. I couldn’t look at Griffin.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter, doll,” he said. “Maybe you were hugging him. Maybe I believe you.”

I raised my gaze to meet his.

He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the floor. “The fact of the matter is, we were already broken then. Because if we hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have run. And you wouldn’t have...” He swallowed. “But it all happened the way it did, didn’t it? And it’s... it’s f*cked now.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I said.

He was quiet for a minute. “I think it does.”

“Griffin—”

“Don’t.” He sighed. “You were right about one thing, though.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you should stay here. Maybe Sloane and Silas won’t mind after all.”

*

I readjusted the backpack on my shoulder as we walked up the sidewalk to a brick house. “I don’t like this, Griffin. If you and I just talked about what’s going on between us, then maybe everything would be okay.”

He was at least three steps ahead of me. “There’s nothing going on between us, doll. We used to be together. We aren’t anymore. We have nothing to talk about.”

“We do, though. I’m still in love with you.”