“Oh really, Katie?” Vick cranked her neck so slowly she could have got the lead role in The Exorcist. Even Katie backed up a step. “Do you really think you want to justify Rome’s actions here?”
Katie’s mouth snapped shut, and I suddenly felt like I was trying to understand what large elephant was in the room. I cleared my throat. All of their heads snapped to me like three children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “Does someone want to explain what is going on?”
After a beat of silence, Rome grumbled, “I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
“And Jax will hurt you,” Katie quickly added.
“Or maybe he won’t because he’s realized what he lost,” Vick finished.
Rome balked at that. “He shouldn’t need to realize. He should’ve known.”
With all three of them standing over me looking down with complete concern while I sat cross-legged on the couch, I really did try to contain my laughter. I mean, they all meant well. But it was silly. I even looked toward the ceiling, willing myself to hold it in. As I took in the scene one last time though, the loud cackle couldn’t be held back.
Katie threw up her hands, mumbling something along the lines of me losing it, and Rome just stared while Vick smiled.
I sucked in a breath and started to explain but it just came out in another laugh. I slid onto my side to hold my belly from laughing. I wheezed and blurted out through giggles, “It's just a study session, guys. I didn’t say I was sleeping with him.”
Vick’s smile was full blown at that point and then she started to giggle when she added, “Can you imagine their faces if you’d told them that?”
I cracked up again. Vick joined in, falling to my side on the couch.
Katie looked on like she was totally disgusted. “How I continue hanging out with you two is completely a mystery to me.”
With that, she turned and stomped out of the apartment with me yelling after her from the couch that I love her. Who wouldn’t, right?
Rome wasn’t as easy. I just didn’t know it then. He swept in and brushed the back of his hand across my cheek. “Be careful, babe.” Then he turned to Vick and shoved her hair around on the top of her head, messing up her ponytail. “You’d better be right, Vick.”
His eyes held mine a moment longer, and in them I saw real anxiety. It hit me harder than I wanted it to.
Rome and I, we’d been a team, blocking out the world for a long time together. I was going against that, and I knew letting the world in—letting my heartbreaker back in—didn’t sit well with him.
I wanted Vick to be right as much as Rome did.
Except a part of me knew she wasn’t the one who was right that day.
Love was an addiction and overdosing on it left bad toxicology reports, destruction, and fatalities.