“Calm the fuck down, Wood.”
My pulse pounds in my ears, my head all over the place, and my chest hurts even worse. “Just let me the fuck go, Sam,” I grit out, my only thought is: Fuck the race tomorrow, I need to visit with Jack and Jim for a bit.
“Nope,” he says, ushering me into an elevator in this damn maze of a resort. All I want to do is walk, run, pound out this anger then get fucking plastered so I can’t feel the emptiness inside of me right now.
We’re done.
She just made it clear as day and I don’t want us to be done.
But it really doesn’t fucking matter what I want or don’t want because she doesn’t fucking believe me. And why the fuck should she, Donavan, when you go kissing bimbos to spite her?
I groan, run a hand through my hair fucking beside myself as Sammy pushes me out of the elevator car and down the hall.
“She’s irrational and fuck she was going to sleep with that asshole and … motherfucker!” I shout into the hallway, not caring who the hell is asleep or if anyone is listening. I’m feeling everything all at once when I’m so fucking used to feeling nothing that I can’t concentrate.
Anger vibrates through me.
My teeth grind. My hands fisted. My blood pounding.
Fucking Rylee.
Sammy points to the door to his right and when I stop he puts both hands on my shoulders. “Get your fucking hands off of me, Sammy!”
He just laughs and at me in that snarky way he has, and I’ve just added him to the list of people I want to punch. Right after that fucking bar-boy he prevented me from plowing. I try to jerk my shoulders from his hands as he steers me down the hall, but I should know better by now. He’s stronger than a fucking ox.
I’m so angry at him.
So pissed at her.
So disgusted with myself for the shit I pulled earlier without trying to make things right.
Rage blinds me and since every fucking room in this resort looks the same, I don’t even realize what room Sammy shoves me into. By the time I look up, it’s too fucking late.
“Uh-uh! No way! Get that egotistical asshole out of here!”
My head snaps up the minute I hear her voice. Sugar and spice laced together. Rage and lust and pure need collide momentarily until my mind flashes back to the image of Rylee with that fucker in the bar. The emotion hits me like a freight train.
I hate her.
I want her.
I hate that I want her so much that this is fucking killing me.
And she comes into view but without the dim light of the bar, I really see her. Hurt staining her face and defiance in her eyes, and I do the only thing I know how to do … push away the good and prepare for the pain. “Fuckin’ A, Becks! What the fuck is this?” I yell, furious that I was coerced into a confrontation that I don’t want. That I do want. I don’t know what the fuck I want because she doesn’t want me anymore.
I notice her packed suitcase and my heart fucking constricts in my chest. She’s leaving me? The part of me that hoped this was all just a show dies a fast fucking death. And I thought her always saying she’d stay meant she would. That she understood I’d push and hurt to prove otherwise. I guess she doesn’t understand me as much as I thought she did.
I say the only thing I can to hide the hurt lancing through me, to lash out. To hide the unexpected let down that drops through my soul knowing she doesn’t want to be here and watch me chase the green flag tomorrow.
I confessed that I use pleasure to bury the pain … but fuck, right now, I’m about to use anger to hide the foreshadowed devastation.
“Thank Christ! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, sweetheart!”
She steps toward me and I can see the fire in her eyes, the fury in her lips, and that goddamn defiance in her posture. That defiance that makes me ache to take her like no other fucking woman I’ve ever met before, ever had before.
“This is over here and now!” Beckett’s voice booms at us in a tone I’ve heard very few times during our friendship. Instinct has me turning to look at him because last time I heard him like this he threw a punch at me. I don’t need this shit right now. Not Becks pissed and sure as hell not him interfering. “I don’t care if I have to lock you in this fucking room together, but you two are going to figure your shit out or you’re not leaving. Is that understood?”
I start to argue with him the same time that Rylee’s voice rises, but he cuts us both off. “Is that understood?”
The anger in his voice stuns me momentarily, and fuck me, Rylee gets the first word in. “No way, Becks! I’m not staying in this room another second with this asshole!”
“Asshole?” It rolls of my tongue as if it’s a question, but she’s right. Fucking right in every sense of the word but I’m so beyond angry right now. First her and now Becks turning against me? The hairpin trigger had been pulled tight in the bar, and I’m primed and ready to fight.
I whip around to face Rylee, only to find her body fucking inches from mine. How can I hate and hurt right now but my body vibrates from her nearness? Fuck me, she’s my kryptonite.
Where are the fucking superheroes now?
And I’m so grateful when she speaks because it pulls me from my thoughts—thoughts that are so fucking scattered I can’t figure out which one to focus on. The woman makes me have more personalities than the splintered images of my reflection in that shattered mirror. For some reason though, I don’t think all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will be able to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.
She snorts in disgust. The sound forces me to focus on the here and now rather than the memories of what she feels like against me. Beneath me. Part of me.
“Yeah! Asshole!” She sneers at me with such derision that I can feel it pulse in waves off her.
Good. The wall’s back up. Right where I need it to be. Fucking Christ! If she thinks that’s going to hurt me, she’s gonna have to try a whole fucking lot harder. It’s hard to hurt a man that died inside years ago.
But I swear to God she brought me back to life.
Get your head straight, Donavan. Hurt her before she hurts you. You told her the truth. You chased. You tried. She wouldn’t listen. Still isn’t going to listen.
Which means she’s not going to hear me. She’s going to believe whatever the fuck she wants to. And in turn she’s going to leave me.
Broken.
Shattered.
Irreparable.
Break her before she’ll break me.
“You want to talk about assholes? Try that stunt you pulled with bar-boy back there. I believe you claimed the title right then, sweetheart.”
“Bar-boy? Wow, because having a harmless drink is so much worse than you with your gaggle of whores earlier, right?”
She shoves at my chest like she did downstairs and I accept her anger. I welcome the physicality that comes with the force of the push. I welcome the sting in my heart from that goddamn look in her eyes that says she hates me, loves me, is hurt by me.
I need a fucking minute, a pit stop second. I need to stop that burn in my gut and get my fucking head back in the game. I pace back and forth, blowing out a breath to shove the emotion aside and bury it down deep with the rest of my secrets.
I notice the smirk on Becks’s face out of the corner of my eye—the one telling me I’m in so fucking deep and the cement’s starting to harden around my feet … and around my heart—and I can’t help the words that fly out of my mouth. “She’s driving me fucking crazy!”
I’m talking to Beckett, friend to friend, searching for some kind of help here to quiet the confliction within and of course Rylee latches on to the one word I leave hanging out there for her like a checkered flag in the wind.