18. Cole #3
My jaw flexes as I ease the car alongside her anyway, the tires hissing on the wet road. “You’re gonna get sick. Just get in the car.”
She lets out a scoff. “Please. Just because we had sex doesn’t mean you need to act like you give a shit about me.”
I groan under my breath, kill the engine, shove the door open, and step right out into the rain. I reach her in a few long strides and fall into step beside her, noticing her smudged mascara when she looks up at me, shocked I’m out here.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, shrugging my jacket off even though it’s already soaked, and swinging it around her shoulders before she can shove me away. “You drive me insane,” I grit out, still gripping the collar of the jacket around her.
Rain beads on her lashes, trickles down her face. Her lips part like she has a comeback locked and loaded… but nothing comes out. She just looks up at me, her expression a mixture of confusion and shock and something else I don’t know what to make of.
I swallow, my pulse pounding. “Get in the car, Aurora.”
She glares—because of course she does—but she’s cold and wet, and after a few seconds, she exhales, yanks the jacket tighter around herself, and walks toward the passenger seat.
I climb into the car, cranking the heat as I shove the gearshift into drive. Rain pounds on the roof, drowning out the silence, and I turn on my music, turning down the volume slightly as I drive down the road.
Her perfume fills my car and I grip the steering wheel tighter, knowing I won’t ever be able to get rid of her scent after this.
“Turn here,” she tells me.
I take the corner, pull up to the curb outside her building, and kill the engine. The sudden quiet makes the rain sound even louder, drumming hard on the roof.
She doesn’t move. Just sits there with my jacket swallowed around her. “You didn’t have to drive me,” she finally mutters.
I glance to the side and the look in her eyes makes my stomach knot. It looks a little too much like she wants my answer to mean something.
I shut that down fast.
I huff out a humorless breath. “Don’t start drawing hearts in your notebook, Prescott. I wasn’t doing it for you.”
She whips her head toward me. “Then why did you?”
“So I didn’t have to listen to Ryan bitch about his girlfriend catching a cold because of you,” I reply, itching for a smoke so goddamn badly.
“God, you are so confusing,” she says after a few seconds of silence. “You tell me you hate me all the time. So why do you keep doing shit like this?”
My jaw locks so hard I feel it in my temples. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We fucked. And now we’re done. It’s simple.”
“Oh really?” she fires back, eyes blazing. “Then why did you take over the tattoo today?”
I look at the dashboard instead of her, but she just continues.
“Why did you tell me not to go home with your teammate?” she demands.
My jaw tightens, thinking about every one of those moments, how my body burned from just the sight of her with them. How I cannot let it mean anything.
“Just trying to do you a favor,” I grind out, “since your taste in men is obviously fucked.”
Her mouth drops slightly and she lets out a disbelieving scoff. “God, you’re such a fucking asshole.”
I turn toward her, heat burning through my chest. “You were right when you called me a heartbreaker,” I bite out. “So don’t sit there now and act like you didn’t know exactly what the fuck you were getting into.”
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t get to do this,” she snaps. “You don’t get to act like you hate me one second and then act like you have any ownership over me when you see me with another guy.”
God, she needs to stop talking. I shouldn’t be alone with her. I can feel my bones vibrating with each second that passes.
“You push me away, you pull me in, you act like I’m beneath you and then you—” She breaks off, shaking her head. “I don’t know why I even got in this car with you.”
My hand curls tighter around the wheel. “The door’s right there,” I grind out.
But she doesn’t leave. She just sits there, her breathing filling the silence. I make the mistake of looking at her watching as her chest rises and falls under my jacket, which has slipped off one shoulder so I can see damp skin and the thin strap of her top.
My eyes drag up the slope of her throat, across the flush creeping up her cheeks, to the way her lashes clump from the rain.
She looks furious and wrecked and so fucking pretty, but I feel the anger rolling off her, matching mine, which just makes me want to get closer instead of backing away like I should be doing.
I know I should tell her to get out. I should shove every messy impulse back where it belongs, let her slam the door, let this be the end before I make another irreversible mistake.
But then she licks her bottom lip, keeping her eyes on me, and the last of my self-control snaps.
“Fuck it.”
My hand leaves the wheel before I’ve even decided what I’m doing. I hook my arm under her thighs and lift her into my lap. She lets out a sharp gasp, and every promise I made to myself about staying away from her breaks into a million pieces.