23 #2
It suddenly dawned on me that everyone at the table was looking at us, like it was the most romantic thing they’d ever seen. I glanced back at the ring, but I wasn’t as overjoyed as the others. I had a strange feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t right, but I had to pretend.
“Thanks,” was all I could say to Aegan. “You’ve got good taste in this kind of stuff.”
“I’ve got good taste in everything,” he boasted, as usual.
Then he lifted a hand to my face and pinched my cheek, which I despised.
“Is it just me or are you even prettier than before?” he asked me, flirting. Of course, Aegan couldn’t go even a minute without being unbearably sarcastic.
“It’s just you,” I spat back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pee.”
He laughed and then went back to talking to the others about fair-related stuff.
I left the pool area, headed down the stairs, but I never made it to the bathroom.
I made my way through the club’s corridors, so overwhelming that they felt like a vast, intricate maze.
At one point, I had to stop and lean against a wall.
I took a deep breath in and looked at the ring in terror.
This A didn’t stand for Aegan. To me, it stood for Are you going to fuck shit up, Jude?—which wasn’t part of my plan. If I was too preoccupied with Adrik, I’d never be ready for the fair. But I couldn’t help but feel like I needed to find Adrik and make sure everything was okay.
I didn’t have to try too hard to find him. Out of the blue, Adrik came out of one of the rooms. He’d changed clothes: he was now wearing the trousers and boots he usually wore to the stable. He looked really pissed off.
“Adrik,” I called him, but he just walked right past me.
I didn’t let him leave. I ran in front of him to stop him.
“Adrik, I’m talking to you.”
“Get out of my way,” he demanded.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said, and slapped him on the back as he walked past me.
The he turned around, furious.
“What the fuck?” he shot back. His voice was sharp, capable of hurting me. “What the hell are you playing at, Jude?”
“I’m not playing at anything,” I defended myself, using the same tone he had. “You’re the one who just got up and left the meeting.”
“Ah, sorry, should I have stayed to watch Aegan stick his tongue down your throat again?” he snarled, clenching his teeth.
This caught me off guard. Maybe he was . . . ? Was Adrik Cash in a fit of jealously? Like, really?
“But what the fuck is wrong with you?” I complained, throwing him a strange look. “I thought you knew how things worked.”
He stepped forward, his jaw tense. His face was etched with anger that was a far cry from his usual miserable look. He looked like a demonic version of Adrik, capable of tearing the world apart with just one hand.
“Could you tell me how things work, Jude?” he demanded. “Tell me how the fuck things work because maybe I’ve got it all wrong.”
I was more confused than ever, like we were speaking different languages and couldn’t understand each other.
“You already know that . . . I’m going out with Aegan,” I said, although I could barely get the words out of my mouth.
Adrik pressed his lips together. He didn’t say anything, watching me like he was waiting for me to say something else, until it seemed like something suddenly dawned on him. It was like he’d just noticed something he’d never seen before, and suddenly everything made sense.
“So, you didn’t do it,” he said, uttering every world carefully.
“Didn’t do what?” I shot back, not having a clue what he was on about.
He exhaled in frustration. Then he rubbed his face and ran his hand through his hair in frustration.
He shifted, restless and angry. He suddenly looked furious, frustrated, and sorry all at once. “You said it in the treehouse. You said: ‘I’ll do it, I’ll break up with him. I don’t want to keep putting up with this.’”
Oh fuck . . .
Big mistake, Jude Derry: saying one thing and doing another.
“Did you think Aegan and me were no longer together?” I asked, trying to confirm what was already really obvious.
“I haven’t seen you with him over the past few days, and he hasn’t mentioned you, so I thought you two had broken up,” he said, shifting with barely contained frustration, like he was trying to understand why I’d been kissing him while still going out with his brother.
I was lost for words. Fuck, he was right. I’d said that, and I’d been up for doing it, but then Artie showed up to tell me I had to take a look at the message in the bathroom and . . . then I completely forgot about that part. I never even gave it a second thought.
“I haven’t broken up with him,” I admitted, pissed off at my own mistake.
“So, why did you ask me to take you to my apartment?” he asked, sounding disgusted. “Were you planning on being with me and Aegan at the same time? Are you really that twisted?”
“Of course I’m not!” I exclaimed, shaking my head. A whirlwind of thoughts swirled in my mind, leaving me almost speechless. “That’s not why I asked you . . . I—”
“You what? You like both of us and you don’t want to lose either of us?” he spat back quickly, sounding aggressive. I closed my eyes and felt even more overwhelmed than ever.
My relationship was a sham, which is why I had let things go beyond the first incense-fueled kiss, but Adrik didn’t know that. Now he was looking for answers I couldn’t give him.
“Adrik, you’ve got it all wrong—” I said, trying to clear things up, but he cut me off.
“I thought you and Aegan were over after what went down at the charity event, which is why I was stupid enough to try being different with you, thinking that you and me could—” He cut himself off, exhaling in frustration. He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. This shit doesn’t make sense.”
He stepped forward like he was going to leave, but I got in his way again. I wanted to answer his questions, even though I couldn’t answer my own, and even though I was being made out to be the villain.
“I’m not playing at anything,” I assured him, doing my best to convince him. “I didn’t think you’d care about what I said. How the hell was I to know?”
His laugh was bitter. He was giving me a cruel look, but I couldn’t blame him.
“Yeah, what the hell do you know?” he shot back sarcastically. “You just assumed I’d hook up with my brother’s girlfriend just like that, didn’t you? You always believe whatever you damn well please.”
“If you’d asked me . . .” I tried to say, but he didn’t care what I had to say.
“What?” he blurted out in a tone so deliberately cruel that I thought I was talking to Aegan. “You would’ve said, ‘Yeah, Adrik, I’m still his girlfriend, but it doesn’t matter, let’s kiss in your apartment’?”
“I stopped you. I made us stop . . .” I insisted.
“Did you do it because your conscience was gnawing at you, or because you wanted to sleep with him first and then with me?” he lashed out with cold, furious malice, fully intent on hurting me.
“Then you could compare us, right? ‘Adrik does it like this, but Aegan does it like that. Which one do I like more? Maybe I like both because—’”
“Enough, Adrik!” I shouted in horror.
He shut his mouth and threw me a challenging look.
I lifted up my hand, ready to slap him. I mustered up all the strength I’d need to hit him for talking to me like I was a .
. . nobody. I didn’t like all this drama, but right there and then, I really wanted to punch him.
But I didn’t. I was about to, and he was ready for it, but I didn’t.
Not because he stopped me, but because he was right.
Nobody but me knew the whole truth, so anybody who heard Adrik’s side of things would think I was a slut who was hooking up with the two brothers at the same time.
How could I defend myself when I didn’t have a leg to stand on?
Defending myself would mean giving myself away, but something was holding me back.
I lowered my hand but fixed my gaze on him. I held it firmly, because I wasn’t actually lying when I told him that making out with him hadn’t been part of my plans.
“I’ll tell you just this once, Jude,” he said, faced with my silence. He sounded threatening, ice cold, like someone trying to hold back all the rage bubbling up inside them. “I’m not going to fall out with him over some girl. If that’s what you’re playing at, forget it.”
Some girl.
Those words kept going around my head. He’d uttered those words with such . . . disdain. My chest hurt and I couldn’t move. Why did they get to me so much? Because even though I wanted to tell him that he was just a guy that meant nothing to me as well, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
That was a revelation.
Fuck, I liked Adrik more than I’d thought.
Fuck.
Fuck.
He seemed fed up, so he went around me and walked away, but I pivoted on my feet like an automaton.
“If you’re saying you don’t want to betray your brother, I understand that, but . . . some girl?” I couldn’t help myself. “That’s how you see me?”
Adrik stopped. He hesitated for a minute, with his back turned to me, but finally turned around. His jaw was tight, his fist clenched, his chest still heaving. He looked like the Greek God of Destruction. He could destroy whatever he wanted with his little finger. And he wanted to destroy me.
“I don’t know, Jude. I don’t know how I’m supposed to see you now. I don’t even know who you really are.”
And . . . did you hear that? Yeah, it was the sound of glass shattering into a thousand pieces. I fell apart. But I would I dust myself off, pick up the pieces, and start again.
I swallowed, thinking it would make the lump in my throat go away, but it couldn’t. I wasn’t going to let him get the best of me.
“That’s right, you don’t know.” I nodded, trying to gather my courage.
“Neither you nor Aegan know who I am. You know nothing about me. Which is why you can’t believe me when I tell you I’d never do something as low as plan to cheat on your brother with you.
It’s just something that happened. I don’t know why I let it happen, but it was real. ”