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And with that, my heart actually stopped. Not only did I realize he’d said “another woman,” meaning someone had obviously hurt him in the past, but from the sound of his voice and look on his face, it was bad. But he wasn’t totally wrong. I was acting like an idiot. Problem was, I didn’t know what or who to cling to. How to stop. How to . . . be honest with him. Because in the end, the unspun truth was rarely my friend anyway.
“I know I screwed up,” I said. “I sent the flowers because I didn’t like you with that woman.” I shook my head at the ceiling, feeling weak for admitting that. “And I didn’t mean that I don’t like you . . . I just don’t like the way you . . .” I motioned my hand in his direction.
“You don’t like the way I what?”
“The way you see me, okay? I don’t like how you just—”
“Call your bullshit?” he said with a grin.
Yeah, that’s what I meant, but no way would I say that out loud. Not when I had admitted too much already.
“Forget it,” I sighed.
“No,” Leo said with a sharp rasp. “What the hell is going on with you, Paige? Do you enjoy fucking with people?”
“No,” I said with a croak in my throat.
Every emotion I had been battling the last week, hell the last several years, settled in my chest like rocks and it hurt to breathe. I was sick of feeling alone all the time, and no matter how hard I tried to claw out from under the badness weighing me down, I just couldn’t gain any ground.
I was constantly digging. Trying to prove something, anything, to anyone. And nothing mattered. I was alone in a crowd, alone even with my friends—the ones who still saw me, that is.
I was plagued. Seen as a risk.
I offered nothing of value, because my word didn’t even mean anything. If it did, my own mother would have taken it. Roman would have taken it.
But they didn’t.
I was losing the fight, one I’d been waging since I was fifteen and begging to make the pain stop. The disbelief. Because the problem wasn’t that I didn’t have anyone to stand by me in anything—it was that I was slowly starting to wonder if I even had myself anymore.
I glanced up and saw Leo’s face. It was pulled together in concern.
“Paige . . . are you okay?”
Taking a deep breath, I placed my hands on his chest and gently pushed him back so his shoulders met the wall.
“I don’t enjoy fucking with people,” I clarified, “but I do enjoy fucking you.”
Grabbing his shirt in my fists, I didn’t say anything else and leaned up and kissed him. Hard.
I needed control. Something. Anything that made me feel like I had an ounce of strength left.
When Leo didn’t pull away, I thrust my tongue between his teeth and he groaned. His hands landed heavy on my ass and hoisted me up. I wrapped my legs around his hips and continued eating at his mouth like I was starved. Because I was.
Every time I tasted him, I grew more addicted.
I bit his lip.
Sucked his tongue.
Then went back for more.
He walked us into the bedroom while returning every heated kiss I gave. Balancing my weight on o
ne arm, he reached up with the other and freed my hair, instantly tunneling his fingers through it, pulling the tendrils hard enough to sting my scalp in the most erotic way that made me moan for more.
I was so on fire for him that I clawed like an animal to get to his skin. Anything I could touch. Anything I could feel, I wanted.
So long as I wasn’t feeling the ice. The empty, cold ache anymore.
