Page 78 of Hating On Riot

That brunette who had asked when Riot would pay her a house visit next is on the bed, half-naked. Her shorts ride up her thick thighs, showing camel toe. Ew. The strap of her thin tank top is halfway down an arm, showing the swells of her big breasts.

The door to Riot’s bathroom opens. He comes out zipping his pants with a grin that I could only describe as smarmy. Did she give him head in the bathroom, and he was cleaning himself up?

He must know something’s up when he sees her smug expression. His attention swings to the door. I clench my hands at my sides. Tears prickle my eyes. My chest hurts as if someone punched it.

Not waiting for him to make up some lame excuse about having a girl in his room—his room, for goodness' sake, in the house I shared with him for a week—I hurry down the stairs and to my car. The guys give me pitying looks or look away.

Riot catches up to me at my car. He grabs my arm and swings me around. I collide with his abnormally muscular body. I shove my hands into his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

“How could you? How could you bring that bitch to the place where we played our games, where we came together?” I whisper-yell. “Where we snuggled and talked about our dreams?”

Except it wasn’t our dreams, but my dreams. He’s never told me what his major is. He’s avoided telling me his plans for the future. Come to think of it, he hasn’t opened up to me like he did when we were in our teens. Back then, he told me about his insecurities and became so vulnerable that he let me see him cry.

He holds me tighter. I twist out of his grip. I get inside my car, having left the door unlocked in case we wanted to go somewhere private. He gets in the passenger side before I can reach over to lock the manual lock. Well, it’s a good thing he’s here because I have more to say. I turn in my seat and face him.

He’s slipped on a guarded expression. The man in front of me isn’t the Riot I’ve been spending my time practicing evasive maneuvers with. He’s not the funny, crass guy who encourages me to talk bro talk and who is my number one fan as a water girl. The Riot I thought I knew showed me what it was like to live rather than hide behind my wall of safety and prim and proper. I can take what that Riot taught me and do it without this stranger in front of me.

“I did fine for the last four years and will do fine for the next four and the next four of my life.” My heart breaks at the thought of life without him.

“Are you breaking up with me?” That same guarded expression.

“How can I break up with you when you were never mine to begin with?” I say, frustrated. “Were anyone to ask, we agreed I’m Cooper’s girl first and foremost, remember?”

“Don’t remind me.” He runs his hand over his face.

A change comes over him, like a spark turning into a flame, then an inferno. He clenches his jaw. He balls his hands into fists on his lap. Then his fingers are in my hair, and I’m yanked to him as he leans in. His mouth crashes over mine. His tongue coaxes my mouth open. I’m speechless. I can’t move for the life of me. I’m frozen, but my mind is reeling.

A stolen kiss? A fucking stolen kiss after I found him in the room with that girl?

No, no, “No!” I push him away. “Get out. You have no right.”

“But Coop could? What about Brock?”

“That’s different.”

“How, Arie? You can break my heart, but I can’t break yours, is that it? You can hurt and grieve Laney’s death, but I can’t talk to you about her? We all grew up together. Life doesn’t exist in a vacuum or in boxes for you to bring out and do show-and-tell whenever you feel like it, but lock it away when you don’t. My family ate dinner with yours. I joked and laughed with your twin. She helped me with booby-traps.”

A ghost of a smile lights up his face.

“Fine. I am open to talking about her. About anything in my life. I’ll be such an open book, you’ll say it’s too much.”

“Never, baby. You’ll never be too much for me. I’d say I know too little about you. Four years changed us. I want to get to know you again.”

“Then riddle me this. Why were you there the day Laney died? Why were you two staring at one another? Did you mean to meet her there? Have you always loved her first, and I was the alternative, the substitute that you can play for a fool because you’re an O’Sullivan and you all are players of the worst kind?” I tip my chin. “I refuse to be second best.”

Though I know the truth about what happened that day, all my insecurities return.

His face softens. “You aren’t. You’ve always been my number one girl. I was there because I followed you. I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see you. You drove past, and I tailed you to ask if you’d like to be my girl, officially. I didn’t give a crap that your brothers would threaten to cut off my dick. I’d never been to that part of the city, and I lost you. Then I saw Laney.”

He cups my face in his large, calloused palm.

“You’ve always been the only girl on my mind. You wrecked me so completely for others that there will never be another in my life, should you decide not to give me another chance.”

Another chance, as though he’d already messed up? All the good words he’d said, and the reason he gave for following me on the day of my twin’s death, which had warmed me from the inside out, fall away, replaced by this intense jealousy that grips my insides and twists, sending pangs of hurt to my heart.

“Actions speak louder than words, and that’s what I saw,” I ground out. “She was half-naked on your bed with the door shut, and you came out of the bathroom, zipping up your pants!”

I can’t get the image of them out of my mind.