“Am I a game to you? The prize earned after a challenge?” I asked, staring into his troubled face.
The muscles in his jaw flex, nostrils flaring. “Is that what he said to you outside?”
I scoff, of course, that’s what he’d go back to. That’s all he’d cared about to begin with. The whole reason he’d come up here.
I try again more firmly. “What are we, Cole? What happened between us just now?”
“My fingers fucked your pussy,” Iceman says. “We had fun,” he adds blandly.
My head reels back. “Is that all this was to you? Casual?” Spitting out the word like it was acid.
Yes, I willingly gave in to temptation but what was this? Because it felt like more to me, and I wasn’t sure if I could do casual. Not with Cole at least. He knew me too well, understood me like no one else ever had. Casual was off the table.
I watch in sated anticipation the moment his eyes harden over and my gut plummets to the floor. The boy I’d had earlier disappearing behind that familiar mask he shows to the world.
“Was it supposed to mean more?” Tone cold as a grave.
His expression void of any emotion as a sharp pain shot through my chest. My heart splintering from the ice in his words.
My wounded brain giving in. Awarding him what he so desperately was after the whole time. The reason he’d come up here.
I spit out the words hoping they twist inside his chest like his had to mine. “Xander asked me out.”
That’s what he’d said outside when I was too beaten by my past to respond. Running away only to find a hellhound waiting outside my door.
Like a true idiot, I fell into his trap. Giving him exactly what he wanted.
“Hope you got everything you were after coming up here.” I say sounding as bitter as I felt. Detached from feeling anything else.
Cole’s eyes ping-pong across my face, looking for the truth I willingly give to him. His mouth winds so tight, I’m not sure how he doesn’t chip a molar.
One second, I was in his arms. The next I was being dropped like I was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, aloof and impartial. My feet stiffen catching the fall.
Bending down, he picks up the hoodie and throws it on over his head. His movements robotic as he shoves his arms into the holes.
Not giving me a backward glance, he acted like he was on a one-manned mission. His posture as stiff as it was ruthless.
I falter only after he’s gone. Releasing the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My back sliding down the wall as I sink my knees into my chest.
What had I awoken?
thirty-eight
Cole
Eager.
That’s what I was. The only thing I could focus on right now is finding the nearest bottle of liquor or I was going to lose it.
L-O-S-E, IT.
I could shift over to annihilation as fast as my father’s hookups. The only difference now is he’d send them out the revolving door before they’d finish another rotation. Whereas mine was continuous on its loop.
No start or stop.
That’s what Rory was to me. A continued thought that plagued my attention constantly.
Upstairs, Rory had asked what happened between us and so I gave her the truth. She didn’t like it, throwing back words she thought could hurt me.