He gave her another gentle shake as she watched his face grow hard. “Don’t say that.”
She changed themes and accused, “You said you’d take care of everything.”
“It wasn’t me who wanted you to go to your room,” he shot back.
He was right.
So right.
She was such an idiot.
Then again, if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have known who he was. He would have kept using her and lying to her to rub his brother’s nose in it.
Until he lost interest.
And she would have loved every second of it.
Until he broke her heart.
“You’re right,” she told him. “It’s my fault.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She was losing the will to fight so again she switched themes.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
That earned her another gentle shake. “I’m not letting you go.”
“Let me go!” she shouted.
“You have to give me the chance to explain.”
“I don’t have to do anything, James,” she retorted.
At the sound of his name, his arms tightened and she knew he was getting angry with her.
“Stop calling me that,” he warned.
“Okay, I will. Gladly. I’ll stop calling you anything,” she returned.
“Cut the crap, poppet, you know, between us, it’s bullshit.”
She was right, he was angry with her, she could tell.
And for some reason, she didn’t care.
And furthermore, she didn’t know anything.
Except there was no “us”. There was a one night stand, something else she’d never done in her life and something else that caused her extreme humiliation.
“I don’t know anything of the sort except you and Miles take sibling rivalry to unprecedented extremes and I got caught in the middle.”
“That isn’t f**king true,” he snapped.
“No? So you’re saying me and my winning personality knocked you clean off your feet?” she asked sarcastically.
His eyes narrowed even as he admitted, “Something like that.”