She tried pulling her arm away, but it was no use. She wasn’t going anywhere unless I wanted her to.
“Jax, I mean it! Let go of my arm!”
I yanked her closer to my face. “Was. She. The. Reason?”
“She was only part of the reason!”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation. I’m already marrying you, aren’t I?”
“Sophie, I’m trying to keep my cool. Do you see how hard that is for me? Now tell me what the hell is going on?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You know about Ben. There’s no need to hash it out. Now let go of me!”
When I didn’t, she roughly tried to shove me away. She was pissed I wasn’t budging an inch.
“Stop it! Let go of me!”
“I want to know the truth! If there’s another reason you didn’t tell me about Ben, then I want to know what it is!”
“Why?”
I didn’t hold back, spewing, “’Cause I’m trying to forgive you!”
“Well, I don’t need your forgiveness!”
Her answer infuriated me to the brink of insanity, and I unwillingly let her go. She instantly lost her footing, almost falling backward if I hadn’t caught her around her waist.
The momentum of our movements suddenly had my mouth inches away from hers. Her breathing quickly became erratic while her chest was rising and falling against mine. We stood there for what seemed like forever, lost in our own thoughts. In our demons.
I wanted to hate her.
Punish her.
Control her in a way I never had before.
Make her see reason, the truth of how I felt in the depths of my being. As much as I wanted to make her pay, I also wanted to kiss her senseless.
As if reading my mind, she was the first to break the silence between us.
“You got what you wanted, Jax. You always get what you want—I’m marrying you, even after everything! All the running around you did on me! The cheating—”
“Sophie, I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what?” she bit. “You’re just going to stand there and lie to my face? I guess it’s easy for you since you spent years lying to me about all the women you were fucking behind my back!”
I growled deeply, hanging on by a very thin thread.
“How many were there, huh? How many women did you sleep with when you were with me?”
“You have it all wrong.”
“Bullshit! You really want to go back to that night?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Great.” She pushed me away, and I let her. “I don’t want to go back to the reason I didn’t tell you about Ben either. So now we’re even!”