His eyes darken. “You’re trying to set me up?”
The power behind his words steals the air from my lungs, and I stare at him open-mouthed.
“I-I’m trying to help you.” I spring to my feet and glare at him.
“By setting me up with another woman whenyou’resupposed to be mygirlfriend?” He jabs his finger against his chest as he says ‘my’, rising to his feet and facing me head-on. His eyes are trained on mine and the pulse in his thick neck is going crazy, pumping out like the bass in an illegal rave.
I can’t believe he’s being such a jerk about this. Surely, he should be pleased that I care enough about him to actually consider his happiness and want to do something to help. But the way he’s glaring at me, his smoky quartz eyes almost black, he looks anything but pleased. He looks angry.
Really fucking angry.
I step toward him so we are toe to toe. I don’t care that he’s miles taller than me. I glower up at him with as much energy as I can muster, matching what he’s sending back down to me as he sucks in deep breaths through his nose. This is the last time I do something for him if he’s going to hit the roof like this. I can feel the heat spilling from his body in waves, flooding the air around us as he leans toward me, filling my space with his scent.
“I hate knowing Bea hurt you. I hate it. You need to move on and meet someone else. Stop fucking around with one-night flings and find something meaningful. Then maybe you’ll be happy.”
“You think I’m messed up over Bea?” he grits out. “A woman I dated for a few monthsyearsago?”
I take a deep breath, my nipples grazing the front of his shirt through my blouse as my chest puffs out. “You told me that night after Paige’s party you’d been hurt. That you still think about it sometimes.”
He screws his face up. “Not about Bea. Fuck, Harley. I never think about Bea. She was the same self-obsessed social climber then that she is now. I just couldn’t see it until later. Agreeing to marry her was a mistake.”
“Wait…youdidn’t propose?” My voice falters.
“Fuck no,” Reed fires out, glancing to the ceiling before he runs a hand over the five o’clock shadow on his jaw as he shakes his head.
“Then how—?”
“It was her idea. We just sort of fell into it. We hadn’t even announced it properly or gotten a ring. I wasn’t in a great place when my relationship with her started. At first, it was a distraction. A way of not thinking about what was going on in my life. Then she asked to move in with me, saying it would save money. It wasn’t a healthy relationship. I couldn’t speak to her about what was going on in my head.”
“Oh.”
The tension between us is thick and stifling as silence stretches out. A million possibilities run through my mind.If not Bea, then what? What was that flash of hurt I saw in Reed’s eyes? Because I sure as hell didn’t imagine it.I’ve known him long enough to recognize an emotion I’ve never seen in him before. I’ve known him long enough to feel my heart tear when he sits with me on our sofa and tells me there’s a specific date he sometimes thinks about that hurts him, just like there is one for me, too.
I’ve known Reed Walker long enough tocare.
I look up into his eyes. They’re full of fire and anger, and I swear I could wither. Curl up and hide in the dark from the way he’s looking at me. I got it wrong.Painfullywrong.
Someone like Bea couldn’t cause the hurt hidden in that beautiful face.
It was something, or someone else.
Something much bigger.
Reed moves suddenly and wraps both hands around the sides of my face. His fingers cradle the back of my skull, and I freeze, completely at his mercy as I gaze up at him, my body on fire from the intensity with which he’s looking at me. My heart pounds so hard against my ribs that he must be able to feel it against his chest. He has complete power over me. His hands are practically as large as my head, and he’s almost twice my width. But I know he’s not trying to scare me. It’s something else. His eyes may be full of anger, but his hands are gentle.Tender.
He dips his head so his mouth hovers a fraction away from my own. I swallow hard and dart my tongue out to wet my lips. His eyes follow my every move.
“Don’t try to control me.” His voice is low and has a razor-sharp edge to it. “I won’t have it. Not even from you.”
I part my lips and search his eyes. “I wasn’t, I—”
He brushes his thumb down my cheek and over my mouth, pulling my bottom lip down and letting it pop back up; his pupils dilating as he watches.
“You’re fucking infuriating. I told you. I’m done ‘fucking around’, as you so tastefully put it. The next woman who gets my lips gets my heart.”
His hands leave my face so fast I gasp as though I’ve had a blanket whipped away in the middle of a snowstorm and been left standing naked, exposed to the biting cold.
“Reed?” I spin just in time to catch a glimpse of his back as he storms off to the front door, slamming it as he leaves.