Page 45 of Playing With Love

“Tell me you’re fuckin’ joking.”

I felt the words rumble through my chest and make their way out of my scratchy throat, what I didn’t hear was her response.

“Lizzy, baby, tell me you’re fucking joking.”

“You…” She wisely stopped speaking.

With an ungodly amount of effort I remained parked on the other side of the room, too afraid to move. Too afraid a single step in her direction would shatter the tenuous hold I had on my control. Too afraid any movement at all and my fury would unleash.

“Let me make sure I have this right. I walked you to your door, didn’t accept your invitation in, and you took that as me rejecting you?”

Liza’s shoulders straightened, her chin jutted out, and she held my stare with as much defiance as she could muster.

Confirmation.

“I’d ask if you’re goddamn serious with this shit but I see you are. I’d ask if at any point that night, or maybe one of the seven-hundred plus days since that night, if you’d pulled your head out of your ass long enough to think about why I didn’t go inside with you and went back to my room alone. But I know the answer to that, too.

“So let me clue you the fuck in, Liza. I knew where your mind had turned, I saw it before I walked you up. What I didn’t know after that call, I thought was from your ex-husband, was if there were some feelings for him you hadn’t completely dealt with. I also knew before we went there again, we needed to talk. Which was something I told you we needed to do, and we would’ve if you hadn’t snuck the fuck out. I’d intended to share with you, I was ready to quit the DEA. I was done dancing around our attraction. I was done pretending I wasn’t in love with you.

“As much as it killed me not to follow you into that room, I knew what would happen. I knew where I was at and I knew the moment the door closed behind us I’d have your clothes off and my face buried between your legs. Kinda hard to talk with a mouthful of your pussy, Liza. And before I took you again, I needed to make sure you were where I was. I’d waited ten fucking years to get back inside you. I couldn’t be the man who helped you fuck away your feelings for another man. That was not where I was at. That shit would’ve killed. So I waited, not one more day like I thought, two motherfucking years. And when I finally get my shot, you reject me. But I don’t give up. I keep at you. That was, until you landed a blow I couldn’t swallow. I don’t know what the fuck that shit was about Boyer and how the hell it’s my fault he cheated, but that was some next level bullshit.”

I was so caught up in my anger I missed the already heavy air in the room turning thick. I didn’t see Liza’s face pale, or her stumbling back until it was too late and she hit the corner of the dresser. It was her muted grunt of pain that drew my attention to her. And when she had it, I saw her pale face, saw her chest rapidly rising and falling trying to suck in air, saw the stark devastation. And then I heard that devastation come out of her mouth in a voice I never wanted to hear again.

“You can’t love me,” she croaked.

Her denial landed. A blow she didn’t know struck burned through me.

That’s who I learned to be.

My anger easily shifted to Boyer.

“Lizzy, whatever that cheating prick force fed you was total shit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your ex. Whatever excuses he gave you for stepping out on you were nothing more than him trying to assuage his guilt for hurting a good woman.”

“Why are we talking about Arnie?”

I resisted the urge to shout my frustration.

“The man cheated on you. He made you not…you.”

“Not me?” She crinkled her nose.

“Baby, before that asshole, you were open, honest, you put yourself out there. Not even five minutes ago you told me you learned to hide from rejection. So, yes, he made you not you with whatever crap excuses he gave you. Bottom line, him cheating wasn’t rejection, it was a character flaw and that’s on him. Not you.”

“Even if I cheated first?”

Her question knocked the wind out of me.

“What?”

“I cheated first,” she admitted, her eyes dropping to the floor. “So how can I blame him for cheating when I’d been doing it before he gave me his ring. And I continued to do it until the day I signed my divorce papers.”

“What the fuck?”

My Liza was a cheater. The one thing she knew I found unforgivable. A deal breaker. The one and only thing that could trigger me cutting someone out of my life. With my history, my father being who he was, knowing how years of his continued cruelty had broken my mother, I had no tolerance for cheaters.