“Jaden?”
I yank my arm out of her grip.
“Where are you going? You can’t leave.”
Her voice brims with anger.
“Jaden!”
I turn around and grip her elbow, her eyes widening with surprise.
“I told you I do whatever the hell I want,” I growl in a gravelly voice.
Tears glisten in her eyes––only for a second––and then a bitter smile rolls to her lips.
“Yeah. I know,” she throws at me, hurt. “I just saw it.”
“You saw what?”
“Your ‘page’,” she says mockingly, quoting the air with her fingers.
Drunk people bump into her as they swing in and out of the house. I haul her into a quiet room in the back and lock the door behind us.
Her eyes follow my moves, barely registering a thing.
She leans against the door, looking at me through a veil of tears.
“Why does it matter to you what I do? It’s nothing that you haven’t seen before.”
She tilts her shoulders in a soft shrug, then tips her head down, slowly brushing away a few tears from her lashes.
“Why does it matter to you, Senna?”
The softness of my voice takes her by surprise.
She flicks her eyes up, trails of tears staining her cheeks. With trembling fingers, she wipes them away.
“Tell me. How can it possibly matter?”
She searches my eyes.
“Because it hurts,” she mutters.
Smiling, I bring my hand to her face, brush a strand of hair away, and tenderly run my thumb across her cheek.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“There was a woman...” she says and pauses, studying my eyes again. “Blonde. Who is she?”
“No one.”
“How can she be no one? She’s on your website.”
Anger streams through her voice.
I say nothing.
“Was that a recent recording?” she asks.