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“You have this way of making me forget that I need to be my own person. So you’ll go to Rebel’s,” she says. “Or I’ll leave.”
And go where? I’d rather she be here at the penthouse. As long as she’s here there’s hope, right? “For how long?”
“I don’t know.” She frowns. “I need time to decide where we go to from here.”
Chapter Thirty
Ivy
It’sbeenafewdays since Nicole threatened to destroy my world, and I found out there wasn’t as much of a world for her to destroy as I’d been led to believe. The man I love lied about being my husband. And my best friend went along with it.
Of course they both text me every day. My mornings start with a message from Rogue that reminds me how much he loves me. The last thing I see before I fall asleep is his message about how he hopes I sleep well.
All I can tell him is that I’m not ready to have the conversation I know we need to have. I’ve barely had a chance to wrap my head around the fact that Rogue proposed to me the minute I found out we weren’t really married. I came down with a stomach bug the next day. Most of our time apart I’ve spent in bed, punctuated with short trips to the bathroom where my stomach tries to exorcise itself from my body. I can’t keep anything down.
At least today I was able to manage to shower, though it’s still not easy with the cast. A few more weeks of it, unfortunately. And now I’m bundled up on the couch watching a horror movie starring Jenna Ortega.
“You want?” Dizzy holds the popcorn tub out in front of me.
“No thanks.” I shake my head. I’m still a little green. Still a little woozy. And quite frankly I don’t think the stabbing on the screen is helping, but Dizzy was excited about her movie choice and I don’t want to make her feel bad by asking her to turn it off.
“What about you, Jackson?” She says his name like she wants to take him to bed, then waggles her eyebrows at me.
The bodyguard passes behind the couch and snags a couple of kernels before immediately going back to the chair he’s camped out in the entire time she’s been visiting. It’s at the far end of the room; ensuring he isn’t intruding and in our faces.
He doesn’t let me out of his sight now, but am I surprised after my antics? Not one bit. He’s doing his job and reporting everything I do back to Rogue. I pretend that I’m okay with it because otherwise Rogue would be here and any opportunity to think without him clouding my judgement would evaporate.
When he’s near I want the fantasy too. I want everything he offered. Marriage. Family. Love. Nights where he makes love to me until I forget everything outside of the way we move as one. But that’s the problem.
It would be easy to forget there is a price on everything in this world. And loving Rogue is going to cost me dearly. In the choices he’ll try to make for me. Like our fake marriage. Oh, but it was fun while it lasted.
But also because of Nicole.
“You’re thinking about him,” Dizzy says knowingly.
I only told her we were taking some time and not that the marriage was a fraud. I’m not ready to announce that yet. “I can’t help it.”
“Maddox men get under your skin. They burrow in so deep that you can never scratch them out.” She playfully scratches the inside of my arm with the tips of her pink nails. “No matter how hard you try, Rogue Maddox is always going to be the one that you can’t get over. The one that you crave.”
“How do you know that?” This isn’t the first time she’s claimed to have an inside scoop on the guys. When I questioned her she said it was something she’d read on the internet, but this feels too personal. “Did you have a thing with Rogue? Before…”
“Oh my God, no.” She laughs awkwardly. “I’m so sorry if I gave off that impression. No, Rogue and I never did the deed. There was no filling of this hot dog bun. No sex of any kind. No flirtation. I hadn’t even met him until Ben introduced us at the wedding.”
“The wedding?” I glance at my bare finger. If Dizzy has noticed I’m not wearing my rings she hasn’t said anything. There was no wedding, so I don’t understand why she would be talking like there was.
“Uh, the alternative wedding expo,” she says. “You put on a performance with your friends. It was fantastic.”
“I don’t remember.”
“No.” She purses her lips. “I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s such a pity. You were so great.”
“I wish I could.” I study my nails. It would help me be certain about Rogue. About my feelings for him. About what I should do. “Did you have a fling with one of his brothers?”
“N-no.” She tugs at her skirt as she uncrosses and recrosses her legs. “I haven’t even met Rebel or Riot. Although I did once wave at Riot through a car window.”
I’m reading too much between the lines. Wanting a friend who understands what I’m going through is making me see things that aren’t there. “Was that with me too?”
“You were visiting Rochelle Kitt.” She plucks a puffed up kernel out of the bowl and sticks it in her mouth.
