AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And as Josh Greene, snowboarder and ladies man extraordinaire, starts singing the lyrics to me, I barely even notice. I’m too busy wondering about what I saw in Luc’s eyes.
About what it meant.
And about why I feel so empty now that I’ve lost whatever it was.
Chapter 10
Luc
Cam starts talking as soon as we leave the bar, chattering incessantly about I don’t even know what. It gets to me because it’s so not like her—except that it is. It is exactly like her when she’s nervous or feels out of her depth or simply doesn’t know how to act. That’s when she starts to talk like a crazy person, her words tripping over each other as they tumble out of her mouth so fast and furious that her voice wavers because she doesn’t stop for a moment, not even to take a breath.
Usually, I’m the one who stops her. I’m the one who gets in her face and calms her down and makes her take a fucking breath every once in a while.
Just like when she came to my house last night.
Just like when she was at the photo shoot this morning.
But I don’t have it in me right now to ground her. I’m too busy trying to ground myself, trying to keep myself from flying into a million fucking pieces as rage grinds through me.
She let him buy her drinks.
She let him touch her.
She fucking let him hold her, let him kiss her cheek and the corner of her mouth.
While I was sitting right fucking there.
Only a few hours after she let me do the very same thing.
How the fuck am I supposed to feel about that? What the fuck am I supposed to say to her?
He’s her type, way more than I am. A slightly older version of Z, all wrapped up and waiting for her to save him. Gloss and daredevil on the outside, tortured soul and death wish on the inside. And unlike Z, he’s totally interested in her.
Fuck, it’s a miracle she’s out here with me at all—she probably wishes she were going down on him in the bathroom right now. It would totally explain the babbling.
I click my remote as we get to the car, start to climb in without opening Cam’s door for her. But old habits die hard. Plus, my mother taught me better than that. But that doesn’t keep me from slamming the door a little too hard once Cam is inside. Doesn’t keep me from picturing her and Josh doing all the things we’ve already done, all the things I still want to do to—and with—her.
Sexual things, sure, but other things as well. Things like standing on top of a podium with her, first-place ribbons clutched in our hands. Josh can give her that, can give her everything in the snowboarding world that I can’t. Two of the most talented athletes on the planet hooking up? Dating? Getting serious? They’d be the fucking golden couple of winter sports, their faces plastered on every sports show and magazine cover around.
Just the thought makes my stomach churn and my blood freeze as rage turns to fear.
I tell myself I’m being stupid, that I’m blowing the whole fucking thing out of proportion. But I saw how that bastard looked at her tonight. It’s the same way I look at her.
The same way she looks at Z.
Fucked up and pissed off, I slide behind the wheel of my Range Rover, start it up. I pull out of the parking lot in a squeal of tires that has Cam grabbing onto the door handle even as she looks over at me in concern. “Luc, you sure you’re okay to drive?”
The fact that she doesn’t know that I’m stone cold sober—that I stopped drinking hours ago after my second beer—pisses me off even more. I bet she could tell me exactly how many drinks the great Josh Greene had tonight.
And fuck, I need to stop this shit. I sound like a total fucking chump and I’m done with that. I’m so done with it.
Jealousy’s ugly, I get that. It’s fucking ugly. It makes you think crazy things, makes you do crazy shit. God knows, I’ve felt more than my fair share of it through the years when I was watching her moon over my best fucking friend.
But this, this doesn’t feel like jealousy. It feels like my fucking heart breaking wide the fuck open.
Feels like me breaking wide the fuck open all over again.
When we were in South America, I swore that I wasn’t going to do this anymore. Wasn’t going to let Cam get inside me and twist me up into a thousand fucking knots. Wasn’t going to spend my life on the sidelines waiting for her to see me.
