“You tremble. I haven’t even begun,” he murmured, eyes longingly dropping to my lips, lingering, contemplating.
I could feel the heat permeating from him. It was pulling me, pulling us like a magnet.
“These lips kissed another man tonight. Something broke inside me when I saw that.” There was undeniable sadness in his tone. “Did you know that the broken shards of a heart could still shatter even more into a tiny million pieces? Mine did after watching you with him. It drove me insane. I didn’t know jealousy until I saw you with another man.”
There was such conviction in his tone that I almost believed him.Almost.
How long was he there spying on me before he finally made himself known?
“You pretend like you’ve been living a life of a saint. It took you a week after seeing me that last time to resume seeing Hailey Mavis again, and yet you speak of heartbreak? Don’t think me a fool, River. Give me some credit. I was in love, not stupid.”Was there a difference?My stupid mind retorted. I doubted it.
“It was all contracted, just a pretend, as I have elaborated and explained to you before. Nothing happened with her. Well, not back then, anyway,” he reasoned with the same lies he had fed me until I couldn’t take it and vomited all of his deceit.
Contracted, probably. But there was something more. I knew it. My gut sensed it, and it had never failed me before. Something had been developing between them, and even if it weren’t physical, I knew enough that he had some sort of attachment to her. My instincts hadn’t been very far off, and in the end, he had proved me right.
“I’m sure it didn’t take you long to remedy that problem.” A lump of bile rose in the back of my throat. The thought of them together, to this day, still made me sick to my stomach. “My heart was never in question. It remained with you. Itremainswith you,” he vehemently swore. “Nothing’s changed for me, Cara.”
No.I indignantly shook my head in repulsion. He was just saying the right things so he could trap me back into his mangled ugly web of lies.
All my life, people had let me down time and time again. It was a mistake to trust him and believe he was any different from the people who had abandoned and left me because I wasn’t good enough to be loved. My mother took her own life because she couldn’t stand the sight of me. My father had up and left the country when he found out my mother was pregnant with me. My relatives thought I was an inconvenience, so they had handed me over to social services without a second thought.
It took me forever to give my heart to him, and in the end, what did he do? He proved that he was just like them—rotten to the core.
Hiding my damaged heart and the painful echoes from a lifetime of neglect that I had harbored ever since childhood, I blankly stared at the man whom I once thought the world of. “Do you honestly think that’ll change things, River?” I hatefully spat at him. Fully ensconced in loathing and wrath, I longed to hurt him further, but violence would simply worsen things. “I’ve moved on. I’m over your brooding, self-centered playboy persona. Above all, you taught me that there are far better options out there.”
A guttural sound vibrated off him. “Oh, so Parker Haynes is better than me, is that it?” He began to move, slowly circling me, commanding, menacing. “How long have you even known this guy? A few weeks? Months? We both know, Cara, that no man can love you the way I do.”
Arrogant, overbearing fucker. I wasn’t going to buy into his intimidating tactics.
Halting his tracks, we stood side by side, a breadth away from touching. I could feel his hot breath teasing the skin on my neck, but I determinedly gazed ahead, eyes penetrating, seeing nothing but him.
“Does he even know you’re with me?” His low voice was measured, almost seductive.
Did he really think he had some importance in my life? Just because he had reached stardom, I was far from star struck. On the contrary, his name hadn’t crossed my lips again until tonight.
“Why should he know about you, River? As far as everyone I know is concerned, you’re nothing but a stranger to me.” And that was how he should remain. A phantom from my past.
My response made him ground his teeth, trying his damnedest to contain his fury. “Is that what I am to you now, Cara?” He leaned closer, taking a whiff of my scent and making me hyperaware of his proximity. “A stranger?”
You were my world … but I died the moment you betrayed me.“It doesn’t matter.” I had mourned him as though he truly had died. For a year, I struggled to get it together. And the moment I did, I made a vow never to look back. Tonight was an exception, yet it wasn’t an excuse to let him lull me into stupidity.
Firmly cupping my chin, he made me look at him. The second our eyes clashed, I immediately felt bereft, beyond troubled when I saw the evident pain that was unguardedly expressed in his dark, mesmerizing eyes.
“It matters to me. It matters a whole lot.”
Swallowing the heavy lump in my throat, I licked my lips as tremors ran over me. “What do you want from me, River?”
Searching my depths, his lips parted while his eyes flickered back and forth, probing for some certainty, inching closer to me, to my heart. “You. Just you, again and again until my last breath.”
I was immediately transported to a time when those words of promise whispered out of my own lips before I gave myself to him for the first time at the age of seventeen.
Numb from the immense wave of sadness, I felt the back of my eyes begin to sting, threatening to form tears. “We’re done. We’ve been done. Let’s end this amicably. Stop bringing up the old times; it’s all in the past.”
His hold of my chin tightened, face inching closer until his nose almost grazed mine. “Is it,” he softly spoke against my lips slightly, brushing it with his, “ever really over?”
If River dared kiss me, my knees would harshly meet his golden twin nuggets. I would injure it until he was black and blue.
“Yes, it’s really fucking over, in case the part where I shut you out of my life for the past two years wasn’t clear enough for you, River. Spare me the nostalgia. I find it nauseating. Stop being hell-bent on trying something with me because it’s OVER. Nothing you say or do will ever change it. I need you to quit it because I came here for closure and to have the good-bye that we never had. You just have to stop—”