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She started coughing. “Why not? That seems like a very River Santos thing to do.”
“How would you know?” I asked, my tone bordering on rude, but her assumptions were agitating, and I was tired of this game.
Her lips pressed, forming a straight line. “No. You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
“You do realize that you’ve hated me this whole time because of something one person said to you that might or might not even be true.”
I was finally calling her out and clearing the air. I wanted to get to the bottom of this so we could pack it up and put it behind us for good.
“I’m starting to realize that, but still…” She looked almost embarrassed, like she might not finish her thought.
“But still what?” I pressed, urging her to continue.
“You just seemed to fit the profile. The way you act. The way you look.” She waved her hand toward me. “Stacy said you leave a trail of broken hearts across the airline, and when I heard the other stories about you, I just believed them all.”
“You ladies are really gossipy,” was all I could muster up as a response without getting into specifics of my sexual history.
“We are. Plus, it’s not like you were ever nice to me, so hating you was easy.”
I let out a loud, warring sound. “Me? You were rude from the start. I only reacted in kind.”
She gave me a soft look. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“So, you admit that you started this.” I grinned, and her lips tilted up.
“Maybe.”
“I want to finish it,” I said, and her jovial expression instantly dropped into something far more serious.
“Finish what?” She sounded so nervous.
“All of this. Whatever this shit is between us. I want it dead and buried so we can move past it.”
“Move past it to what exactly?”
I was scaring her. Coming on way too strong and way too fast. She’d spent the last three years hating my guts and thinking that I was a typical guy who didn’t give a shit about women or their feelings. I couldn’t blame her for feeling a little jarred by my relationship whiplash. We’d gone from trading barbs in the bar earlier to me shoving my tongue down her throat and telling her I wanted more.
But I did want more. That much had become blatantly apparent. And now that I’d realized it, I couldn’t get the desire out of my head. I wasn’t the type of man who gave up easily once he set his mind to something.
“Do you have a picture of Stacy?”
“I do,” she said before lunging for her phone, which was charging on the nightstand next to her bed. I watched her scroll through what I assumed was her gallery in search of one. “Here. She’s all the way on the left. Dark hair.”
I grabbed the device and enlarged the photo so I could see it better. The memory came crashing back in that instant.
“You remember, don’t you?” Sky asked as I handed her cell back to her. She sounded sort of disappointed, like she had wanted this all to be a misunderstanding of some kind.
“Yeah. Stacy. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I forgot all about her. But it’s not what you think,” I said, and Sky straightened her legs in front of her.
“You didn’t hook up with her?”
“I mean, we kissed, but that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah,” I said, remembering everything about that night now that I’d seen Stacy’s face.
“So, you didn’t sleep with her?” Sky was trying to make it all make sense.
