Collaring Chaz (Dante's Infernal #2) - Joel Abernathy Page 0,73

door opened. I jolted and stashed the bottle in the drawer under the dressing table, spinning around to see who had caught me.

It should’ve been a relief that it wasn’t Sterling, and it would have been, if it was literally anyone else.

Anyone but Rafael.

There he was standing on the other side of my dressing room, looking like the day I’d left him. He was a moment frozen in time, and in comparison, the version that kept me company in my head was completely lackluster.

For a few seconds, I couldn’t say anything, or even process the fact that he was here. Maybe he wasn’t. My eyes always played tricks on me, or maybe it was my brain and I’d just been high for so long that even when I was sober, I couldn’t trust what I was seeing. Either way, it had been worse for the last few weeks, and tonight was just a clusterfuck. It seemed entirely plausible that I’d hallucinate him right before a big show, since the prospect of him being around was torturing me enough.

“Raf?” I choked out, leaning against the wall behind me for support, because I didn’t trust myself to be able to stay upright on my own.

Saying his name seemed to bring him to life, and he was across the room in a split second. He pushed me up against the wall, and I’d no sooner opened my mouth to ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing than he kissed me and filled it with his tongue.

I should have bit it the fuck off, or at least shoved him and told him to go to hell, but I didn’t. Of course not. That would have been the sane, rational thing to do. That was what anyone with an ounce of pride would have done. Instead, I just sank back and returned the kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck like I’d been waiting for him the whole damn time.

And the most pathetic part was, I had.

Even in that boardroom, with him sitting across the table backing up Drake and his lawyer while they fucked me raw, I’d wanted him to follow me out. To pin me against the wall and kiss me breathless in front of Drake and everyone. I’d wanted him to say I still belonged to him, not because of some stupid record label contract, but because of the one we’d signed that night in his room right before he’d screwed my brains out. I wanted him to stop me that day at the hospital before I got into that car. I wanted him to choose me, or at least fight for us, but he had made his choice, and I wasn’t it. I had finally given him the ultimatum I’d always known would work out exactly the way it did, and I was still enough of a dumbass to be surprised. To be hurt.

God, I hated him. Not nearly as much as I hated myself, but enough.

Just not enough to push him away.

He was the one who finally broke the kiss. Because of course he was, and I hated him for that, too.

“God, I’ve wanted to do that for so long.” He looked down at me and took my face in his hands, like I was some treasured thing he’d lost and found, and not the gum he’d been more than happy to scrape off his shoe and forget the last few months.

That finally jarred me into remembering I still had a spine, bendy as it was. I shoved him back enough to get away from him, my eyes already burning with rage he was probably going to read as me being all teary and pathetic again. And if he gave it a second, he’d probably be right, but anger was the only shield sturdy enough to keep me from falling back into his arms, and I was going to use it.

“Right. Because you just couldn’t keep your hands off me last week,” I said with a bitter laugh that grated my throat on its way out. “What, did Drake send you here to take one for the team or something?”

He frowned at me like he didn’t have a damn clue what I was talking about. Then it seemed to set in, and his eyes softened in understanding. “I know you’re pissed at me. You have every right to be, but please just hear me out.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I don’t have to do that. You’ve