Page 77 of Cole

She shook her head. “I already decided that I couldn’t do it. I gave it up, ok?”

“Was that before or after we fucked?” I demanded. I could hardly wrap my head around the betrayal. I’d never seen it coming. I was blindsided.

“Before!” she cried, having the audacity to sound offended. “As soon as anything happened between us, I dropped it.”

Why? Because you feel the same way about me as I feel about you?

The question roared in my head, and I wanted to know more than anything, but all of this was too fucking dangerous. Tonight had gone south in the worst possible way. The vision of Isabelle standing there, a gun pressed to her temple, chilled my blood. She didn’t belong in any of this. That question had ceased to matter.

So, I didn’t ask. I couldn’t. Because there was a very real chance that if she gave me the slightest fucking inch, I’d take all of her.

Instead, I turned away, trying to put distance between us.

She followed. “I said I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to anymore— I wanted to help Rosie with Finn.”

“You know Rosie? You already knew Finn?” I demanded, I couldn’t get my head around it.

She nodded, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight with unshed tears. The extent of the secrets she’d been keeping was dawning on me. I knew what I needed to do.

“I’m not really interested in your reasons for lying to me, or sneaking into my club with bad intentions. Hounds don’t tolerate snakes.” I made my voice cold and harsh, a desperate bid to keep her back.

So, that was that. The attraction, the first I’d had in years, was going nowhere. She couldn’t be trusted. Who she was, and what she was doing, put an end to any idea of continuing this little thing we’d started. Had she gone that far just to get a story? Ambitious girl. I could almost respect it if it didn’t piss me off so much.

Isabelle swallowed hard. “Snakes?”

“Yeah, rich girl little snakes who think they can go around and break club rules, if they’re pretty enough. If they swallow well enough.”

Isabelle flinched like I’d slapped her. The words were like poison, burning my mouth on the way out, but I needed to say them, every single thing. She needed to stay away.

“I don’t want to see you around anymore. I won’t warn you again. All that shit you said at the diner? You were right. Don’t fight those instincts. This time, fucking listen. This life is too dangerous for someone like you.”

Someone worth something.

I turned on my heel and strode away.

“What about you? It’s too dangerous for you too, then. What if your life didn’t have to be like this?” she called out to me, stopping me in my tracks.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re too good for this, Cole. Can’t you see that?”

I turned and studied her by the moonlight. Slowly, I walked back to her.

“Too good for this?” I repeated. “It’s my family legacy.”

She shrugged, fearless again already, after almost getting killed. “So? Mine’s being a country club Stepford wife, but I don’t want that life. I’m realizing now that I have to fight it.”

I tilted my head to the side, considering her. She really was one of a kind, and she never should have gotten mixed up with me.

“I was born for this. It’s in my blood. It’s all I am. This is my level, Isabelle, and maybe that bothers you because you don’t like the thought that you get all hot and bothered for a loser who runs guns and drugs, a man whose life will end young, in some abandoned lot somewhere.”

“Yeah, maybe that does bother me! It should bother you, too!” she shouted at me. She was worked up, her chest rising and falling, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

This girl, beautiful and smart and fucking fearless, was about to cry for me again, and I couldn’t stand it.

This needed to end right now, before she became any more invested in my survival. She couldn’t continue to have that bright and shiny hope that was more alien to me than anything else. It tore apart something hard and dark inside me that I couldn’t stand to look at too closely, just in case I realized how fragile it was.

“Take your happy endings, and the turn-your-life-around shit the fuck out of here. I don’t need your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed fucking spoiled little rich girl optimism. We don’t live in the same world, Goldilocks, and I can’t pretend that we do.”