I notice her packed suitcase and my heart fucking constricts in my chest. She’s leaving me? The part of me that hoped this was all just a show dies a fast fucking death. And I thought her always saying she’d stay meant she would. That she understood I’d push and hurt to prove otherwise. I guess she doesn’t understand me as much as I thought she did.

I say the only thing I can to hide the hurt lancing through me, to lash out. To hide the unexpected let down that drops through my soul knowing she doesn’t want to be here and watch me chase the green flag tomorrow.

I confessed that I use pleasure to bury the pain … but fuck, right now, I’m about to use anger to hide the foreshadowed devastation.

“Thank Christ! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, sweetheart!”

She steps toward me and I can see the fire in her eyes, the fury in her lips, and that goddamn defiance in her posture. That defiance that makes me ache to take her like no other fucking woman I’ve ever met before, ever had before.

“This is over here and now!” Beckett’s voice booms at us in a tone I’ve heard very few times during our friendship. Instinct has me turning to look at him because last time I heard him like this he threw a punch at me. I don’t need this shit right now. Not Becks pissed and sure as hell not him interfering. “I don’t care if I have to lock you in this fucking room together, but you two are going to figure your shit out or you’re not leaving. Is that understood?”

I start to argue with him the same time that Rylee’s voice rises, but he cuts us both off. “Is that understood?”

The anger in his voice stuns me momentarily, and fuck me, Rylee gets the first word in. “No way, Becks! I’m not staying in this room another second with this asshole!”

“Asshole?” It rolls of my tongue as if it’s a question, but she’s right. Fucking right in every sense of the word but I’m so beyond angry right now. First her and now Becks turning against me? The hairpin trigger had been pulled tight in the bar, and I’m primed and ready to fight.

I whip around to face Rylee, only to find her body fucking inches from mine. How can I hate and hurt right now but my body vibrates from her nearness? Fuck me, she’s my kryptonite.

Where are the fucking superheroes now?

And I’m so grateful when she speaks because it pulls me from my thoughts—thoughts that are so fucking scattered I can’t figure out which one to focus on. The woman makes me have more personalities than the splintered images of my reflection in that shattered mirror. For some reason though, I don’t think all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will be able to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.

She snorts in disgust. The sound forces me to focus on the here and now rather than the memories of what she feels like against me. Beneath me. Part of me.

“Yeah! Asshole!” She sneers at me with such derision that I can feel it pulse in waves off her.

Good. The wall’s back up. Right where I need it to be. Fucking Christ! If she thinks that’s going to hurt me, she’s gonna have to try a whole fucking lot harder. It’s hard to hurt a man that died inside years ago.

But I swear to God she brought me back to life.

Get your head straight, Donavan. Hurt her before she hurts you. You told her the truth. You chased. You tried. She wouldn’t listen. Still isn’t going to listen.

Which means she’s not going to hear me. She’s going to believe whatever the fuck she wants to. And in turn she’s going to leave me.

Broken.

Shattered.

Irreparable.

Break her before she’ll break me.

“You want to talk about assholes? Try that stunt you pulled with bar-boy back there. I believe you claimed the title right then, sweetheart.”

“Bar-boy? Wow, because having a harmless drink is so much worse than you with your gaggle of whores earlier, right?”

She shoves at my chest like she did downstairs and I accept her anger. I welcome the physicality that comes with the force of the push. I welcome the sting in my heart from that goddamn look in her eyes that says she hates me, loves me, is hurt by me.

I need a fucking minute, a pit stop second. I need to stop that burn in my gut and get my fucking head back in the game. I pace back and forth, blowing out a breath to shove the emotion aside and bury it down deep with the rest of my secrets.

I notice the smirk on Becks’s face out of the corner of my eye—the one telling me I’m in so fucking deep and the cement’s starting to harden around my feet … and around my heart—and I can’t help the words that fly out of my mouth. “She’s driving me fucking crazy!”

I’m talking to Beckett, friend to friend, searching for some kind of help here to quiet the confliction within and of course Rylee latches on to the one word I leave hanging out there for her like a checkered flag in the wind.

“You’d know all about the fucking part seeing as you fucking Tawny is what started this whole thing in the first place,” she screams at me.

I don’t even have time to register the jolt of Beckett’s body beside me before he stutters out, “What?”

Oh fuck.

“What? He didn’t tell you?” She sneers at him.

Shut the fuck up, Rylee. Becks is in big brother mode and this is my fucking business.

Motherfucker.

“I told the asshole that I loved him. He bailed as fast as he could. When I showed up at the Palisades house a couple days later, Tawny opened the door. In his T-shirt. Only his T-shirt.” She takes a deep breath, focused completely on Beckett and ignoring me. “Colton didn’t have much more on either. Told me nothing happened. But that’s a little hard to believe with his notorious reputation. Oh and the condom wrapper in his pocket.”

I cringe, her words hitting every part of me that wants to hide. Becks turns to look at me and I can see it hitting him, lie by fucking lie. That I let this argument fester to become this because I’m so fucking stubborn that I didn’t tell her the truth. I see the disbelief in his eyes and how infuriated he is in the clench of his jaw. “Are you fucking kidding me here?”

“What?” I can hear the confusion in her voice, but I can’t look at her because I’m too focused on the look on his face.

“Leave it, Becks.”

“What the fuck, man?” Here comes the bulldog. Fuckin’ A. He’s not going to leave this alone, is he?

“I’m warning you, Beckett. Stay out of this!” I’m so pissed at myself—at everything that’s happened tonight—the anger inside ignites and I turn the inferno toward him. My fists clench. My blood boils.

He takes the bait, focusing on me rather than Rylee, and adds kerosene to my fire. “When you start jeopardizing my team and the race tomorrow, then it becomes my business …” He shakes his head. “Tell her!”

“Tell me what?” Rylee shouts out in the silence of the room. The only other sound is the testosterone reverberating between Becks and me.

He gives me the look—that look that tells me he is so disappointed in me, mixed with what the fuck are you trying to pull. I give him the only answer I can because right now I don’t even know what I’m fucking doing. “Beckett, she’s like talking to a goddamn brick wall. What good will it do?”

“She’s right. You’re an ass!” he says, and I can see the challenge in his eyes even before he spits out his next words. “You won’t tell her? Fine! Then I will!”

I’m done, trigger pulled, buttons pushed successfully.

My hands grip his shirt and I’m pressing him against the wall without a second thought, jaw clenched, fists itching. “I said leave it, Becks!”

What the fuck am I doing? About to go to blows with my best friend over a fucking chick? She must be the real deal. Fucking voodoo pussy, my ass. More like schizophrenic pussy. She has me all over the goddamn place.

I can see the amusement in his eyes. The look that says, she’s got you by the balls, Wood, and I think you like it, want it, but are scared shitless.

No fucking way.

My emotions are ruled by anger and I’m so confused my game’s off and no one knows that better than him. He could have our positions reversed in a millisecond. So why hasn’t he pushed back? Taken the bait? Hurt me so I’m given the due I deserve?

Instead he just lifts an eyebrow telling me to show him differently, then—show him that Rylee isn’t my final rodeo—before pushing me away.

“Then fucking fix this, Colton! Fix! It!” He shouts the dare at me before yanking the hotel room door open and slamming it shut.

Unsure what to say. Not sure how to escape these confines—from feeling and not wanting to feel and everything in between—I cuss out a storm as I pace the room again, trying to ignore the fact that Ry is watching my every movement—dissecting it and trying to draw conclusions I don’t want her to form. If she’s not going to believe me when I told her nothing happened, then she’ll never trust me anyway.

How could she really believe I’d want something more when I have her? Perfection. Necessity. The Holy motherfucking Grail.

Does she know how much it kills me that she thinks I’d do that to her? Rips my fucking gut to shreds. I’ve given more of myself to her than anybody else I’ve ever met and she doesn’t trust me? My poison has tainted her now and I can’t let it continue to any further. I want to punch something—need to desperately—to get rid of this overload of shit coursing through my body.

“What was that all about?” Her voice cuts through the haze, but I’m so angry I push it away, keep walking trying to calm the fuck down before I say something I’ll regret. “Damn it, Colton! What don’t you want me to know?”