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“Relax.”
“Fuck you!”
That one loose bolt, holding the gate closed on his inferno officially snaps. The invisible door of his hostility set free as the monster comes back to life.
“Everyone knows she’s yours.”
“Do you?” Cole challenges, saliva flying from his mouth. Eyes wild and slightly out of focus. “Because to meandeveryone else here, it looks like you’re touching what doesn’t belong to you.”
“Iceman, calm down, we’re fr—”
“—I swear to fucking god, Rory, if you say friends, I’m going to lose it.”
Pretty sure you already have…
I push from my spot anyway. He doesn’t get to tell me what to do and I’m about to tell him that but then he cuts me off again.
“I know how he looks at you. He may be distracted with someone else for now, but we all knew about it before.”
In my peripherals, I notice how strongly Eli’s jaw starts to grate along his jawbone. Cole is unafraid to go straight for the jugular. His own hysteria is making him blind to what’s right in front of him.
I stab a finger at my chest. “You know we’re together, right?” I’m shouting because he’s overstepped. I’m not sure what upset him back at the bank, but his anger has more than overstayed its welcome.
My throat burns with acid and resentment. His accusations didn’t just hurt, they cut. Deep but effortless.
“Have I ever given you a reasonnotto trust me?”
A different type of energy crashes as it washes the room. Cole goes so still at my comment you’d have thought he’d turned into iron.
My eyes narrow, he may be stuck but I’m damn sure not. “You know, for someone who’s so sure of himself all the time, you’re coming off pretty insecure right about now.”
That dangerous glint in his eyes only grows the longer I speak.
He bares his teeth. “That so?”
“Yeah,” I say, matching his rude tone. “It is.”
Both of us stare each other down for what could be minutes or hours, I’m not really sure. Eventually and it’s only a second, but I swear—I swear, I see a hint of regret flash in those ice-colored eyes.
“Princess, it’s not—”
I suddenly didn’t care if he was pleading for me to understand. A hardness has settled, pressing itself to my center where he already hurt me. “You were being a dick and you know it.”
“Tell me you aren’t seriously going to stand here and defend him right now?”
“It didn’t mean anything!” I scream over his stupidity.
That flicker I saw disintegrates as the edges of his eyes widen before thinning back to mask his terror. His entire mood has shifted back to deadly bruteness, only now it’s directed at me.
I stay exactly where I am, taking it all in, unaffected. He has my full attention, and he should be as afraid, if not more. I’m not helpless, haven’t been for a long time and I will not tolerate being disrespected.
“I was trying to….”
I raise a hand and a slight sneer pulls at his mouth, but he stops talking. “Unless it involves you apologizing to meandEli then I don’t want to hear it.”
He’s pushed too far, and I no longer care about anything else but that.
Cole’s eyes blaze as hot as a roaring fire at the mention of him apologizing to Eli. I can tell he’d rather burn alive than do that.
