Her confession slices through me like a cold blade.
“Why?”
“I thought we were over,” she replies. “I thought you didn’t love me.”
Her words hit me like a load of bricks. “You thought that because I didn’t say it before leaving?”
She nods, her face crumpling. “You left me alone, River. I was… Bloody hell. I was about to say I was vulnerable. But I wasn’t. I was angry. Needy. Fuck it all. I don’t like myself like this.”
I swallow hard, fighting the wave of hurt and betrayal surging through me. The room feels like it’s closing in, my heart pounding so hard I feel like it might burst out of my chest.
“You like yourself better when you’re sleeping around?” I say dryly.
She whips her hands to her hips. Clearly sorrowful Emily is no more.
“No! For the love of God, River, you can’t arrange a matchmaking event and expect the womennotto test the waters.”
She’s not wrong. I’ve tested the waters myself. With Heather. And kind of with Misty, though I was trying to get information out of her at the time.
Hell, Seb has probably fucked all of them by now. That’s his way.
Still, I’m hurting. I feel betrayed.
I love Emily, but she’s not who I expected to fall for. Rachel was the one who drew me in the first night…but now she’s gone. Not that I blame her. She almost died on that catamaran.
Emily? She seemed uptight and haughty. Hardly my type.
But damn…
She turned out to be a lioness in the sack, and soon I found myself thinking about her all the time, wanting to know everything about her. She became my oxygen, my gravity, holding me together when everything else was falling apart.
And it all started because I was angry at Misty, I needed a release, and Emily was available.
Still…
“So you jumped into bed with the first man who showed interest?” My words come out harsher than I intended.
Emily flinches as if I’ve physically struck her. “Damn you! I told you I don’t like myself like this. I don’t like feeling unwanted, vulnerable. Yes, I went to bed with Sebastian?—”
“After I took care of your blackmail situation.”
“Stop bloody interrupting me!” She’s on fire now.
Fine. So am I.
“Fuck you, Emily,” I grit out. “Fuck you all the way back to London!”
“Fuck you too,” she hurls back at me. “I told you I loved you, River. And you left. You bloody left!”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t love you.”
“How the hell wasIsupposed to know that?
The silence that follows is deafening.
I run a hand through my hair. Anger roils inside me, but something else overpowers it.
Arousal.
