stripping, right?” He lifts his brow in a ‘you think?’ move. Mr. Passive Aggressive is still in the building.
I stay where I am, part of me wondering whether I should go sit on the arm of his chair just to have our closeness back, the other part knows that I should keep the distance between us.
“I quit on Friday. I’d been thinking about it for a while. I have you, I have my job at the hotel, and I have . . . you.”
He sits there like that for a while, saying nothing, my uncertainty over what to do next increasing with every minute that passes.
“They bribed you, didn’t they?”
My eyes bug out of my head as I whisper, “What?”
“They offered you money. Probably said something along the lines of how they couldn’t stop us being together but they’d make it worth your while if you tried to ‘fit’ the mold.”
It’s scary how well he knows his parents. Unfortunately for him, I do not like what he’s insinuating right now. “I—”
“Fuck!”
Oh no. Hell no. My anxiety takes a back seat as a wave of unease and then anger pushes to the surface.
I never told anybody about what Cade’s mom offered me. I’d told Cade about her threatening me but none of the detail. There’s no way he could know about the offer unless she’d told him. But what would she hope to achieve by doing that?
“How much did they give you? At least tell me they gave you a whack.”
I freeze in place, kicking myself for not telling him exactly what his mom told me at the homeless shelter. “Nothing,” I spit out, but I don’t miss the conflict swirling in his eyes. “I don’t want a dime of their money, or yours, for that matter.”
I stalk my way over to the kitchen counter, reaching up into the drinks cabinet and pulling down a bottle of scotch and a tumbler.
Pouring half a glass, I screw the top back on the bottle, wrap my fingers around the glass and knock it back, wincing at the fireball travelling down my throat into my stomach.
“Jesus!” I wheeze, staring at the floor and breathing my way through it. “That shit doesn’t fuck around.”
“Abi,” Cade says, his voice firm and commanding. It’s a tone that demands attention if not anything else.
I meet his eyes, my chest seizing at the conflicted expression on his face. I want to fix it; I want to erase that wary look in his eyes. I should just lay it all out and fight for my corner.
“For this to work—for any relationship to work—we have to have honesty, and I’ve gotta know that you won’t keep things from me. Doesn’t matter how hard it is, or how pissed off it’ll make me, I need to know you’ll tell me everything.”
I take a deep breath, my gaze locked to his, knowing he’s right. “I’d never take their money. It wouldn’t matter if I was living on the bones on my ass and didn’t know where my next meal was coming from.” I take a deep breath and look at him, making sure I have his full attention for what I’m going to say next. “I’d never take anything from them because doing that would mean giving up you.” And never has a truer thing ever come out of my mouth.
His shoulders slump as he breathes out a sigh. The need to touch him, to reassure him physically overwhelms me and I abandon the scotch, walking to his side.
“I’m wild—I’m crazy. I live life as it comes. And you . . . you’re perfect and your head is on straight and you’re . . . you’re”—I struggle to find a word to completely describe him other than—”perfect.”
“You said that already . . .” he says, not moving, watching me pace and stutter with verbal diarrhea before I stop with a jerk when clarity makes a long awaited appearance.
I turn my head to face him and voice my biggest fear. “And I’m scared that I’ll screw you up,” I whisper.
His eyes morph from careful to soft as he straightens and braces his hands behind his back. “Being without you screws me up.” He takes a step towards where I’m frozen in place. With the look in his eyes, the meaning of his words, there’s no chance in hell I could move even if I wanted to. “Being with you screws me up.” He gets closer, my heart stopping dead in my chest when his