a brick against the table. His eyes squint as he levels his glare at me. Meanwhile, Zara is staring down at her lunch, pushing around her food while chewing on her inner lip.
No one will dare to argue Nash doesn’t have trust issues. They can’t argue because they were the ones who instilled them. He can feed me all the bullshit about it being consensual and how he was the one to let her go, but I see it for what it is. He gave her up because she fell in love with his father more than she fell in love with him.
It’s quiet for a moment, and I already know Alistair will have words for me, but I don’t give a shit. It’s like I’m the only one who sees things clearly here, and it’s infuriating.
“We need more drinks,” Hanna says, breaking the tension.
“I’ll get them,” I snap, standing quickly and grabbing their glasses. When I get inside, I slam them against the bar top a little too hard. They don’t break, but I almost wish they had.
What the fuck is happening to me? It’s like the feelings I’ve been ignoring for the past three years are bubbling up as if they never really went away. I pushed away everything that happened with Nash. I thought I could get past it, but when I see him at that table, struggling with his pain alone, the pain of accepting what we did in Amsterdam on top of it, I feel so fucking unsettled, I want to break something.
I rinse out the glasses and refill them with ice when I see Nash come inside, shutting the patio door behind him. He’s fuming, nostrils flaring and brow angsty and folded in.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, trying my best to look unbothered.
“This is none of your fucking business. So, stay out of it!”
I drop the ice bucket on the counter with a bang. “You’re right. It is none of my business. I’m just an outsider, Nash, and I wasn’t there when all of this happened, but I was there after it happened. I remember how terrified you were that I’d leave you too. Do you remember begging me to stay?”
“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters through clenched teeth.
“I picked up the pieces in Amsterdam. I tried to give you what they couldn’t, something I knew you wanted, and do you know what you did to me in return, Nash? You broke my fucking heart!”
He flinches, his eyes going wide, and it takes a moment before he reacts, stomping toward me and shoving me back until we’re in the hallway behind the kitchen. Out of view of the party, he holds me against the wall, his hand pressed firmly against my chest.
“I swear to God if you don’t drop that shit, I’m going to send your ass packing off this fucking island, do you hear me?”
I brush him away easily. “I’m already gone. I can’t stay here, not with you.” When I try to move out of his grasp, his hand lands against my chest again and this time when he shoves me against the wall, his eyes are trained on my face, wild and…terrified.
“I never should have come here. You’re even more fucked up than—” He stops my words with his mouth, crashing against mine. Grabbing onto his neck, I devour his touch, his mouth, the warm velvet sensation of his tongue as it sweeps past my lips. A low groan shudders through me as I latch onto him, feeling him fist my shirt in his hand.
“Quiet,” he whispers, his hand reaching for my pants, gripping my cock through these thin, linen trousers. “I fucking hate you,” he mutters as he quickly pulls down the zipper and reaches inside, wrapping his hand around me and sending my mind far away where it can’t think, only feel.
The harder I squeeze his neck, the tighter his fist strangles my dick. Pulling away from our kiss, he looks down at what he’s doing, and I watch as he spits on the head, using it as lube as he strokes me, fast.
“You don’t hate me,” I whisper, grabbing his dick through his shorts, but he swats my hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Keeping up his assault on my cock, my breathing starts to stutter. Just when I feel myself start to build up, I grab him by the throat and look him in the eye.