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“It would mean coming clean on everything first.” I wince. For someone who doesn’t know how to eat humble pie, I’m making a meal of it right now. “Including the hurtful words I told her before I left.”
“You mean, there’s more?” He stares.
I glance away, then head toward the bar and snatch up my whiskey glass. I squeeze my fingers about it but can’t bring myself to drink from it. If I’m going to have this conversation with her, the least I can do is stay sober. I owe her that much.
“Cade?” Declan walks over to stand next to me. “What have you done?”
“I told her the proposal was fake.”
“You motherfucker!”
“Yeah. I also told her I was leaving to go drinking on the town with the boys.”
I see his fist coming at me, but I don’t duck. My head snaps back, and pain explodes behind my eyes. I absorb the blow, then straighten and shake my head.
“You deserve that and more,” he growls.
“I do.”
“You going back to her, or what?”
I pull out my phone and pull up the app I use to track her, then freeze. The green dot, which is her phone, is on the move. “Bloody hell, she left the house.”
“What did you expect?”
“I told her it was safest for her under my roof.”
“You mean, the same roof where you didn’t tell her about your lies and lied about your truths?”
Heat flushes my neck. I track the dot as it heads up the road that leads toward her apartment. “Fuck. It’s not safe for her to return to her place.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
44
Abby
I unlock the door to my apartment, then walk inside. Penny dropped me off in front of my block. She was very persistent about wanting to come in with me, but I refused. I told her I needed time alone. She wasn’t very happy and made me promise I’d call Solene and talk to her. I also told her Cade arranged for extra security on the apartment, which is when she finally backed down. I suppose Cade has his uses sometimes.
I still can’t believe that proposal was fake. To think, I believed him! But he was so convincing. I place my handbag and my backpack on the settee. I didn’t bother with packing up all of my clothes. I’m sure Cade will send them along soon enough. I only picked up my essentials and was waiting outside Cade’s apartment building when Penny drew up in her car.
I couldn’t wait to get out of there. After how horrible he’d been to me—again—no way, was I going to stay under his roof. And this, after that moving proposal. I should have realized he hadn’t changed—not after he’d refused to say those bigthree wordsto me. He was using me—which he’d said he would—but after the way he made love to me and made me come over and over again, I thought things had changed between us.
And then, there’s how he’s looked into my eyes and calmed me down and told me to trust him before we’d walked onto that stage. I swear, I thought I saw something in his gaze then. I was sure he had feelings for me. How wrong I’d been. All he cares about is his precious career and his revenge for what I did to him, which he’s taken many times over.
So, he’s right, we are even. Through. Over. That’s it. I’m probably never going to see him again, but if I do, it will be as strangers. Pressure drums at the backs of my eyes. I’m not going to cry.I’m not.
My phone vibrates, and I pull it out of my bag.
“Hey, babe, you okay?” Solene’s face fills my screen.
“Guess Penny called you, eh?”
“Is it that obvious I’m checking in on you?” She purses her lips. “I hope you told that bastard to go to hell before you left?”
“Not exactly.”
She rolls her eyes. “Asshole should be kicked off the team. He should lose his sponsorships. He needs to pay for what he did to you.”
