“Let go of my arm.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is the one advantage of having learned very young how to keep your face composed while everything underneath it is going sideways.
“Lower your voice.”
“I am not raising my voice.” I hold his gaze, keep my voice level, and fight the panic rising in my chest because showing him that he has rattled me is the last thing I am going to do. “I am asking you for the last time to let go of me.”
Damien’s grip holds. His eyes move over my face with the look of a man who has decided composure no longer serves him and is reaching for something uglier.
“You wouldn’t let me fuck you for three months,” he says, quietly, each word placed with precision. “Three months, Skylar. And then you walk out and come back with someone else’s mouth on your neck.”
He leans in slightly. “You are a little slut.”
The word lands the way he intends it to.
I feel it hit with the specific shame he aims for, that old reflexive flinch of a girl who spent years being told, in various ways by various people, that she was less than and simply not worth the trouble.
His face is now close to mine. Too close.
“You think I couldn’t tell you were never really there,” he says. “Two years of you going through the motions, looking straight through me. And now you are out here parading someone else’s mouth on your neck like it’s fucking nothing.”
I don’t say anything because the panic is loud enough that I don’t trust what comes out if I open my mouth.
Chapter 17
Zane
The text arrives at half past four.
I’m in the middle of a set when my phone buzzes on the floor beside the bench. The sound of it goes straight through my chest. Pathetic, I know. One little vibration and my heart lifts like a dumb fucker who has been sitting around all day, waiting for the right name to appear on the screen.
Skylar.
That is the first thought.
I drop the dumbbell back onto the rack harder than I need to, then sit up, wiping my face with my hand before I reach for the phone. My pulse is already doing stupid shit before I even glance at the screen.
Then I see the name.
It’s Cassie. Not Skylar.
I stare at it for a second because apparently my chest is a hopeful idiot and the universe enjoys kicking it for sport.
I open the message.
Cassie:Working late tonight. Skylar will be at the apartment by herself. Completely unsupervised, emotionally unavailable, and probably pretending she doesn’t want to talk to you. Do with that what you will, Rivera. Try not to be a dick.
The address sits beneath it.
I read the message once.
Then I read it again, more slowly this time.
Skylar will be alone and Cassie, the sharp-mouthed little menace that she is, has just handed me the one thing I have been trying not to want all day. A fucking chance.
For a moment, I just breathe.
It’s close enough that I could be there before common sense can talk me out of it
I have picked up my phone about a thousand times since she drove away from the workshop. Maybe more. I would grab it, open her name, stare at the empty message box, then put the damn thing back down because I had told her I would give her space. And I meant it. That’s the annoying part.
