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“I don’t know, baby.”
She stops pacing when I get to her, and she allows me to back her up against the wall. “But it played.” She loses the fight with her tears and one drops from her eye.
Reaching up, I swipe it away with my thumb. “I know, but it shouldn’t have.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” I’ve played the lead-up to that fateful event over and over in my mind. But with the alcohol I’d drunk, the coke I’d snorted, and the beating I’d taken, I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
“After we… slept together, I freaked out and left for the Heights. I went back to where I grew up and hung out with my old friends. I thought it would help me clear my head. Help me feel like I… belonged. I thought it would feel like home.”
“Did it?”
“Nope. I realized the only place that feels like home now is when I’m with you.”
“Ace.”
I press my body against hers, ensuring she can feel what her close proximity does to me, and rest my hand on her waist. It barely scratches the surface of what
I need from her, but I’ve got to get all of this out first. It’s the least she deserves.
“I drank a shit load of liquor and snorted fuck knows how much coke.” She gasps at my admission but doesn't stop me. “Then one of Donny’s guys showed up to hand deliver a message.”
“Your face,” she says softly, as if she’s only just now remembering how I looked that night.
“I don’t remember how the night ended. One minute, I’m getting my ass handed to me and the next thing I knew, I woke up in fucking agony in my bed in the pool house.”
“How?”
“Cole,” is all I say, because I’m convinced there’s more to his story about that night than he’s letting on. “But along with the pain, all I felt was regret. Regret for how I treated you, for what I’d taken from you, for what I had planned next.
“I took the card from the camera I had set up.” I lean into Remi’s ear. “I didn’t even watch it,” I breathe, making her shudder. “I don’t remember what I did with it after that, but the next thing I know it was playing on the fucking screen for everyone to see.”
“Just like you planned.” Disappointment swirls in her eyes.
“Yes but… I swear to you, Princess. I wasn’t going through with it. I’d changed my mind.”
“Really?” she says coolly. “It all sounds a little too coincidental.”
“I swear on my brothers’ lives I did not set that video up. I did not want anyone to see it.” Staring into her eyes, I silently beg her to believe me.
“Ace, I don’t—”
I don’t allow her any more words. I slam my lips down on hers and make the most of her open mouth. My tongue dives in, in search of her own, and, after a second, she concedes.
“I swear to you, Princess,” I whisper against her lips. “Let me prove it. Please.”
“Ace,” she moans, sagging back against the wall.
I kiss her so deeply, deeper than I have before. I want to give her everything. I need to.
My hand runs up the inside of her tank until I take the weight of her breast. Her head drops back and hits the wall behind her. As she does, a flashback of her falling into that pool slams into me.
“Fuck,” I bark. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I shouldn’t be letting you, more like,” she counters.
“No, you should be resting.”
