AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The surprise almost causes me to drop my phone to the ground, and I barely manage to save it with a last-minute grab.
"For fuck's sake, you scared the shit out of me!" I gasp, putting my hand on my chest, feeling my heart thumping madly. "Didn't you hear me calling?"
"I did," he nods, and his voice is so low I have to strain my ears to hear him right. There's a distant and cold quality to it I don’t like. “I just didn’t feel like answering.”
I gulp, frowning as an uneasy feeling floats through me. "What's wrong?"
He looks up, those ice blue eyes meeting mine, and there's reproach in them, anger, frustration, even sadness.
"You tell me."
"What? I don't understand a word you're saying. What's gotten into you?"
"I heard about your little meeting with Adam."
"You..." I pause, confused, furrowing my brows as I try to make sense of what's happening. "How on earth do you know about that?"
Without saying another word, he places his phone on the bed, its screen showing a series of tweets emanating from a few pictures some jackass uploaded not an hour ago.
I pick up his phone and start scrolling through the tweets, my heart sinking with each one. There are pictures of me and Adam at the coffee shop, clearly taken from a distance. The captions are crude and full of insinuations, suggesting that I'm cheating on Grayson.
"Grayson, I swear this isn't what it looks like," I blurt out, feeling the color drain from my face. Why am I apologizing? Are we even dating for real? It's all supposed to be fake, and yet, I still feel guilty for some reason, even though I wasn't there on a date or anything of the sort. "Adam and I met up to talk."
“You agreed to meet?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You can tell me if he forced you to go there, Ty.”
I swallow; the hurt look in his eyes gives me pause. He wants me to say Adam dragged me into that coffee shop by the arm or threatened me into listening to what he had to say.
But that’s not true.
“No, I was the one to call him. I wanted to try to put a stop to all this madness and talk some sense into him.”
"Bullshit!"
He jumps to his feet, so suddenly I take a step back, my heart beating faster still. There's a primal anger in his eyes that makes me feel small and defenseless.
"Just listen to me for crying out loud!" I protest, taking a step forward, refusing to let myself be intimidated. "After what he did last night at your fight, I decided I needed to do something. He keeps messing up, and I hoped... I don't know; I hoped I could talk some sense into him. I didn't think—"
"That's right, you didn't think!" he snaps back, bitter.
"Whoa, what did you just say?"
"Don't give me that bullshit—I'm entitled to be pissed off. Why didn't you tell me about your brilliant little plan, huh? Why did you go behind my back?"
I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself, but it's easier said than done. "I wanted to handle it on my own. I’m not going to be like my mom and hide behind other people, too afraid to confront a bully. I needed to fix this myself.”
"Well, congratulations, Tyley, you played right into his little game,” he retorts, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Calm down, will you?"
"That's not going to happen, doll face. Either you refuse to trust me the way I have trusted you, or you're messing with our contract, which—I can assure you—you don't want to do."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm saying that either we're fucking dating for real, and you’re sneaking around behind my back, or all of this is just a lie to you, and you're breaching your contract."
