“Cole? What are you doing? I...”
Was underneath him. My thoughts derailed. We’d lain like this before. Every other time, he’d been kissing me. Hands had wandered. My body had come alive. I didn’t have my body this time, and yet I felt even more alive, as if I were connected to a generator, my nerve endings buzzing with energy.
His gaze drilled into mine...only to lower to my mouth and linger, everything about his expression softening. His breathing changed, emerging shallow and fast. “Are you okay? I couldn’t see it in your body, but your spirit is gaunt. You’ve lost weight, and there are shadows under your eyes. I wasn’t sure if you were a hiker who’d been lost for several days or a zombie.”
I stiffened, trying not to panic. “I’m okay.”
“Good. That’s good.” His thumbs traced the rise of my cheeks. “Ali...”
I knew that look, that tone, that touch, and knew where this was headed if I didn’t put a stop to it. “Get off me,” I said, ashamed of my sudden breathlessness.
He stayed right where he was. “What are you doing to me? How are you making me forget what’s best for me... For you?”
“What’s best?” Maybe, if he said it, I would finally believe him.
“Me...Ronny. You...Gavin.”
No, I still wasn’t convinced. “Wrong.” I didn’t worry about his words coming true later on, either—not in terms of spiritual law. My free will was not on board. I turned my head away, peering up at the sky. “I’m not attracted to Gavin, and you’re not attracted to Veronica. Not anymore.”
“You’re right. I’m not.” The perfect answer—until he added, “I don’t think.”
The addition stung. Pushed me over the edge of calm.
I gripped his jacket, shook him. “Do you really think you’ll be happy with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Heck, maybe you will be, at least for a little while, but if you’re true to habit, it won’t last and you won’t stay with her.”
He glared at me. “I don’t have a habit.”
Blind! “You seriously don’t think you’re so afraid of losing the people you care about that you cut them loose before they ever have a chance to get inside your heart?”
He took my hands and pressed them into the ground, over my head, forcing my back to arch and my chest to rub against his. “There are people in my heart,” he gritted out.
What he didn’t say but I heard anyway: just not you.
Have to stop setting myself up for this kind of rejection. “Maybe we’re both wrong. Maybe you don’t even have a heart.”
“Oh, I have one.” Eyes narrowing, he reached down with his free hand and parted my legs, giving himself a deeper cradle—a perfect cradle—and foolish, foolish Ali let him. Hardness against softness, male against female. “I just don’t want it broken.”
“So you go around breaking other people’s?”
“I didn’t break yours, and you know it,” he snapped. “You got over me pretty fast, and I did my best to get over you.”
That was all he said, but I knew. In that moment, I knew. “You’ve already done something with Veronica,” I said flatly.
A dark curtain fell over his features. I waited for him to deny it.
He didn’t deny it.
He nodded.
Even though I’d guessed, shock hit me with the force of a baseball bat. Shock and betrayal. I had no reason to entertain the betrayal. We’d broken up. But...but...here he was, on top of me, and here I was, loving every sensation, and meanwhile, the memory of messing around with Veronica was new and fresh and burning in the back of his mind.
I pushed him off and jerked upright. “I think I hate you.”
“You aren’t the only one. I think I hate myself.”
I was done with this topic. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.
What did you do with her? I almost shouted.