It was a risk I hadn’t been prepared to take.
Because I’d needed her. More than she ever knew.
“Of Cherri?” Harleigh spat her name. “Never.”
She sounded tired, so weary and exhausted and sad.
But it didn’t stop me from saying, “Did you forget I know when you’re lying, Birdie?” I reached out, toying with the ends of her hair. “You flush.” My finger brushed her jaw, dipping along the side of her throat. “Right here.”
She swallowed. An audible, choked swallow as if she was forcing air past something in her throat.
“Stop touching me.” Her hand swatted mine.
“Why were you freaking out?”
“It’s none of your business. But I can assure you it had nothing to do with the fact you were watching me while you were kissing Cherri.”
Actually Cherri had been kissing me, not the other way around. But I didn’t bother to correct her. Because maybe a little part of me wanted her to hurt. To feel the sting of jealousy.
“Can you get out of my way?” Harleigh leveled me with a hard look, her eyes conveying nothing but hatred.
I stood and backed up, my thoughts running a mile a minute. I shouldn’t have followed her back here, and I definitely shouldn’t have gotten all up in her face about why she was hiding out here in the first place.
But I couldn’t stop myself.
I just couldn’t fucking do it.
Clambering to her feet, Harleigh brushed off her jeans, swaying on her feet. Her hand shot out and she steadied herself against the RV.
What the fuck was wrong with her?
She inhaled a shaky breath, glaring at me. “You can go now,” she said with fake arrogance. Because her eyes… fuck her eyes were like two glittering pools of uncertainty. No, it was more than that… her eyes didn’t look right.
“And if I don’t want to?” I inched forward. Pushing myself into her space. Harleigh stumbled back, pressing herself against the trailer.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Proving a point.”
“And what exactly would that be?”
I leaned in, ghosting my lips over the corner of her mouth. A mouth I’d only ever allowed myself to kiss twice before. Because she’d always been off-limits to me.
Too good.
Too fucking pure for the dirt on my soul.
The corner of my mouth kicked up as I said, “That you were so jealous of watching me with Cherri that you couldn’t think straight.”
Her body trembled, but she didn’t cower, glaring at me with the heat of a thousand suns.
Silence enveloped us as we stood locked in a brutal stare. I refused to look away. Refused to give her even one more ounce of control over me. I’d been a fucking mess ever since Chloe had said those five little words.
She’s back, Nix. Harleigh’s back.
But it was the words that rolled off Harleigh’s lips that shattered my thoughts.
“I hate you.”