How Sinners Fight - Eva Ashwood Page 0,25

in me. How could he not? He was curled around a soft body a second ago, and now he’s hugging a block of ice.

“Sophie?” He lifts his head, worry creeping into his voice. “Are you okay?”

Rage rushes through me in a hot wave as I look at him. I think tears are prickling my eyes too, but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything but the anger.

“Did you tell someone you would make me leave?” I ask, pinning him with my gaze. He’s going to look me in the eye like a fucking man when he responds, and I’m not going to waste any time tearing the truth from him.

Gray goes still. For a second, time seems to stop as we stare at each other. Then, just like that, his eyes harden. Everything in him hardens.

That ice cold man I knew from the moment I walked onto the Hawthorne University campus is back, and gone is the Gray who just fucked me like he could never get enough of me. Who wrapped his arms around me like he’d never let go. His cum is drying on my fucking thighs, and the thought of that makes my stomach tighten into a hard knot.

“Did you tell someone you wanted me to leave Hawthorne?” I ask again.

His jaw tightens. “Yes.”

That’s it. Just one word. Cold. Factual.

“It’s true?” My heart thuds wildly in my chest, like it wants to escape my body, to escape this fucking room. “You fucking said that?”

I don’t want it it to be real. Even now, I’m hoping it’ll somehow turn out to be a mistake, some big misunderstanding. I look calm as fuck on the outside, but inside, a war between my head and my heart is being waged. I may be an expert at not showing my emotions, hardly even feeling them at times, but this?

This is a whole new level of fucked up.

“Who were you talking to?” I demand. I want to know. Goddammit, I need to know.

I didn’t hear another voice on the other side of the door—I didn’t stick around long enough for that—but I know Gray wasn’t just talking to the wall. There was something in his tone that night, so cold, so controlled, that it almost feels like it couldn’t have been the same man who’s lying here with me now. Like it was his fucking evil twin or something.

But he only had one twin, and she wasn’t evil.

It was him.

Just him.

Gray.

He doesn’t answer my question. Doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even try to make an excuse or apologize.

He doesn’t do shit, just backs away a little and props himself up against the kitchen cabinets, his jaw set and his eyes blank as if trying to block it all out. As if he doesn’t even fucking care.

I don’t understand it. I don’t even know how to begin to try to make sense of it. Gray, who just helped pay my likely astronomical hospital bills. Gray, who I’ve spent the last week of winter break with in his fucking house, because he wanted to make sure I was safe as I recovered from my fall. Gray, who’s just given me the best gift I’ve ever received, the only gift I can ever remember receiving.

He still doesn’t fucking say a word.

Was it for his own sake? Did he take care of me just so that he could send me packing, on my feet and stable, without having to worry about feeling guilty about it?

It’s the only thing I can think of. He wanted to make sure I was okay for his own damn sake, not for mine, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about me when he shoved me out. When he got me away, as he promised he would.

I’ve done this before—the hot and the cold with him, the push and pull. And as I bite my cheek against the hurt and rage simmering inside me, I decide I’m done.

I’m fucking done.

Maybe he never forgave me for taking Beth’s place after all. Maybe he never fucking will.

He’s obviously not going to say anything, and I’m done making excuses for him.

“I’m not dealing with this bullshit anymore. Fuck you,” I mutter, pushing myself up off the floor.

I wish it was an effort to pull myself away from him, to yank my clothes back on and storm out of the kitchen to my bedroom. I wish the numbness in my chest wasn’t already creeping through my body and taking over.

But it’s better this way.

It’s