14. Carter
14
Carter
O h, fuck. Her words are still hanging in the air, wrapping around me, sinking into my skin, curling into my bones like a match dropped into gasoline. My body frozen in place like I can’t quite believe what just came out of her mouth.
She wasn’t teasing, wasn’t trying to get a reaction just to laugh at the way I’d stumble through it, she was dead serious.
Now I’m sitting here trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to handle that. I drag in a sharp breath, push up from the couch, and start pacing before I even realize I’m moving.
If I stay sitting right next to her, staring at her, trying to figure out if I actually heard what I think I did, trying to understand how the fuck I got this lucky? I might actually lose my goddamn mind.
The living room feels too small, too hot, too suffocating with all the things I want to say but don’t know how to. I scrub a hand down my face, dragging my fingers through my hair, exhaling sharp, fast, my nerves completely fucking fried.
“You can’t just—” I stop mid-sentence, shake my head, start again. “You’re really saying this now?”
Haven is still sitting there, still watching me, entirely too calm when I feel like my entire fucking world just flipped upside down. One of her brows lifts, and that little amused tilt to her mouth should not be making my brain short-circuit right now. “Is there a better time?” she asks, voice all teasing, but I can still hear the weight of it underneath.
I let out a rough laugh, more breath than sound, more disbelief than amusement. “No, just—” I pace a few more steps, then turn back toward her, my hands braced against my hips like that’s going to somehow ground me in this moment. “You’re telling me you don’t hate me? After everything? After Tate, after me not telling you, after this entire night?”
She tilts her head slightly, considering, and my chest squeezes so fucking hard it’s physically painful. “Do I think you should’ve told me?” she muses, tapping her fingers against the couch cushion. “Yeah, obviously.”
I brace for it, waiting for the inevitable ‘but.’
“But,” she continues, smirking now. “You’re clearly already punishing yourself for it, so…”
I exhale hard, dragging my hands through my hair again, my body still too wired, my heart still hammering like it hasn’t caught up to the fact that I’m not about to get ripped to shreds.
She doesn’t hate me, she fucking likes me. I force myself to breathe, try to settle the fact that I am barely holding it together. My body, it’s reacting accordingly. The second I drop back onto the couch, it hits me, this rush of heat, this tension in every muscle, this sharp, too-tight feeling that makes my brain stall out completely. She just admitted she feels the same. My body is way ahead of my brain in deciding what to do about it.
That’s the exact moment Tate decides to make his entrance again. The second I hear the lazy, unbothered sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs, I already know I’m about to start regretting every decision I’ve ever made.
“Man,” Tate says as he steps into the living room, completely at ease, like we didn’t just have an entire conversation about him upstairs, like I haven’t spent the last hour trying to keep his existence from ruining everything. “I was really hoping for some yelling by now.”
Haven snorts, but I am still trying to breathe like a normal fucking person, like I don’t have a major fucking problem pressing against my jeans right now. I glance at her, half-praying she hasn’t noticed, half-panicking that she has, but she’s too busy looking at Tate.
He crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe, watching us with too much interest. “You two look cozy. What’d I miss?”
I glare at him, fully prepared to commit a crime if he doesn’t leave.
Haven, meanwhile, leans back against the couch, “Oh, you know,” she says, throwing a glance at me, smirk widening when she catches how tense I still am. “Just processing the fact that I was tricked into spending nearly a year playing games with the world’s most insufferable asshole.”
Tate grins. “Ah, so you’re talking about me then.”
I groan, because this is my life now. My entire fucking life and it’s a goddamn nightmare.
Tate doesn’t just stand there and let the moment pass, of course he doesn’t. No, he leans in, settles against the doorframe like he has all the time in the world, like he’s waiting for an invitation to ruin my night.
I can already see it in the way his smirk deepens, in the way his eyes bounce between us like he’s clocking every single little thing he can use to get under my skin.
He crosses his arms over his chest, and lets his eyes slide deliberately over to Haven. “So,” he chuckles. “You finally pieced it all together, huh?”
Haven huffs out a dry laugh, her arms crossing over her chest as she tilts her head at him, like she’s still sizing him up. “Not like you made it hard. You literally left your dumb mask lying around like you were hoping I’d recognize it.”
Tate shrugs, entirely unbothered. “Maybe I was.”
I stiffen instantly, I know that tone. That’s not just him stirring the pot, that’s him playing with fire just to see what happens.
Haven’s not backing down. She leans forward, elbows on her knees, eyes locked on him. “Well, congrats. You got your big boy dramatic reveal. What now?”
Tate’s smirk deepens, and I swear to god, I feel my entire body go rigid. “Depends,” he drawls, pushing off the doorframe, taking a few slow, deliberate steps forward. “How much of our little history have you told my brother?”
My stomach drops. Haven frowns, genuinely confused, not realizing what the hell he’s doing yet. “What history?”
Tate lifts a brow. “Oh, come on. You mean to tell me you don’t remember all those little one-on-one matches? The trash talk? The wagers?”
Haven shifts slightly, brows furrowing like she’s trying to remember, trying to decide if there was something she missed.
I snap before I can stop myself. “Fuck off, Tate.”
Tate turns his smirk on me, slow and sharp. “Why? Don’t like the idea of your girl knowing how much time she’s spent with me?”
“Tate,” I grit out, low and warning, my hands curled into fists at my sides, my entire body locked down tight. Because if I don’t physically stop myself, I might actually put him through a fucking wall.
Haven blinks between us, processing, finally catching up to whatever game Tate is playing, whatever trap he’s laying out in front of her, whatever the fuck he’s trying to stir up just for the fun of watching me lose it. He just grins wider, like this is all going exactly how he wants it to.
I lean back against the couch, arms crossing over my chest, keeping my body relaxed, my expression neutral, like I’m completely unbothered by whatever game he thinks he’s playing. “I know what you’re doing,” I say, voice smooth, controlled, just enough weight behind it to let him know I’m not biting. “And maybe you’re reading a little too deep into it.”
The smirk twitches at the edges. Barely, but I catch it. He likes to push buttons, likes to set fires and watch people scramble to put them out, likes to know he’s the one steering the conversation. I just flipped the fucking script on him.
I see the moment he decides he doesn’t like that. The slow, measured inhale through his nose, the way his jaw tics before he smooths it out, the way his eyes flick to Haven like she’s suddenly the more interesting part of this equation. I don’t like that, not one fucking bit.
Haven adjusts beside me, exhaling just a little too fast, like she’s been holding her breath, like she doesn’t quite know how to sit in this moment now that Tate has turned his attention to her.
I glance at her, catch the way her fingers curl against her knee, the way she’s suddenly too aware of the way both of us are looking at her, the way heat creeps up her neck.
She’s flustered. Not just from Tate’s presence, not just from the weight of his gaze, but from the fact that I just dismissed whatever angle he was trying to play, shut down whatever idea he was planting before it could take root. I just made it clear that whatever Tate thinks happened between them? It was nothing.
Tate doesn’t like being nothing. His smirk returns, but it’s different now, colder. He finally pushes back. “Yeah?” he murmurs, stepping further into the room, not breaking eye contact with me, not even glancing at Haven now, like he’s only talking to me. “Then why does she look like she’s not sure you’re right?”
My stomach fucking drops, because I feel it the second Haven stiffens beside me. He fucking sees it too. And for a brief, fleeting moment, I think he’s finally going to leave it alone. That he’s had his fun, that he got what he wanted, that he’s going to disappear upstairs without throwing another goddamn grenade into the room. Of course, I should know better.
He pauses in the doorway, cocks his head slightly, like he’s considering something. Then, with that same deliberate confidence that makes my blood pressure skyrocket, he finally speaks. “Alright, Carter,” he say, voice low, making it somehow even worse. “You can stop being a pussy now and kiss her—”
I already know I’m about to regret existing.
“—like you wish you could while you touch yourself at night.”
The air fucking disappears from the room. My stomach drops straight to the goddamn floor. Haven inhales so sharply it’s like she just got slapped.
Tate fucking walks back upstairs like he didn’t just ruin my entire existence in one sentence. Like he didn’t just shatter the fragile fucking grip I had on this night.
I don’t move, I physically cannot move. My pulse is pounding, hammering, my entire body locked in place, my jaw tight enough to break, my muscles tense like I just got hit by a goddamn truck.
I realize Haven is still staring at me. I turn my head, hesitant, reluctant, already knowing I’m going to hate whatever expression she’s wearing. Yep, she looks like she just got her entire fucking world flipped upside down.
Mouth slightly open, eyes wide, shocked, like she doesn’t know whether to be offended or something else entirely. I try to think of something to say. Some way to recover. Some way to undo whatever the fuck just happened. But there’s nothing. There is absolutely nothing, because Tate, doesn’t miss. I am so, so fucking screwed.