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And I hated that it disappointed me because he’d always been drawn back to me for one last goodbye. I hated that I wanted him to come back as much as I never wanted to see him again. I hated that my body craved him and that my heart stupidly ached for the way he held and regarded me.
But I’d never been so disgusted with someone in my entire life.
With an unsteady exhale, I brushed my hair away from my face and glanced around, a pit of ice and guilt opening inside me when I caught Rorie’s stare from where she stood about a dozen feet away.
Her head moved in faint shakes as if she were equally disappointed and worried before she focused on the few kids around her.
I wanted to know why she hadn’t told me he was married. I wanted to know why she’d made it seem like he was something else instead of what he was.
I wanted to know so many things.
But I was just as disgusted with myself because I’d helped Diggs cheat on his wife—even unknowingly—and nearly every part of me still wanted him. So, I studiously avoided her and kept my conversations with Cora short and about work until I could slip away from the school an hour later.
And when I got home, I went through every room and made sure the windows were locked, then spent an embarrassing amount of time moving furniture to barricade my front and back doors.
* * *
My eyelids opened to my dark bedroom some time that night. But as I lay there, listening for any sign as to what might’ve woken me, I realized I already knew.
Because adrenaline wasn’t coursing through me and stealing my breaths, as it often did when I woke from memories posed as devastating nightmares. I didn’t feel as if I’d been abruptly torn from sleep by the evil presence I couldn’t seem to escape. Instead, I felt comforted. Protected. My body was responding to and reciprocating the heady sense of desire creeping through the room.
It’d been that way every night he’d somehow found a way into my apartment, when there only should’ve been suspicion and red flags.
“Found you,” he muttered, and my eyelids momentarily slipped shut as those words and that voice rolled over me like branding touches and punishing kisses.
“I told you I’d scream,” I whispered just before he entered my line of sight. Something about watching him lean against the wall, arms folded over his chest and eyes narrowed in frustration, had my chest aching.
Every other night I’d woken to him, he’d been climbing onto my bed. Grabbing me up in his arms and pulling me close. Barely giving me the chance to fully wake before his mouth was pressing against mine.
The change from those nights to tonight was oddly heartbreaking, but he shouldn’t have been here at all.
He never should’ve been here.
“Heard you,” he continued in the same hushed voice. “Think I deserve to know why.” He jerked his chin toward the front of my room. “Think I deserve to know why you’re trying so hard to keep me out.”
“You still got in.” My tone hinted at my desperate desire to know how.
His mouth slanted impishly. “Hard to keep me out of places, Tree.”
“If everything is locked, and I’ve barricaded the doors, take a hint,” I snapped as I sat up to kneel on the bed. “You disgust me, don’t you get that?”
Genuine shock flared across his features and pulsed with hurt before his face went void of all emotion.
“I’m disgusted with myself because I let you touch me.”
Long seconds passed before he nodded and pushed from the wall. Rubbing at his jaw as he turned to leave.
My heart faltered.
I swallowed back a sound of protest.
I hated that a little over a month with this man had somehow turned into something so significant that it still felt wrong to watch him leave, even with what I now knew.
He stopped at the foot of my bed, his voice low and edged with warning when he asked, “How did you find out?”
A disbelieving breath fled from me. “I saw you.”
“When?”
