Never His Girl (Kings of Cypress Prep #2) - Rachel Jonas Page 0,41

pinching the bridge of his nose when he leans forward, resting both elbows on his knees.

“I can’t fucking do this,” he goes on, grumbling to himself while I just sit, listening. “That was me being a dick,” he eventually admits. “I… felt something. And it scared the shit out of me.”

“You felt something,” I repeat flatly. “You’d have to have a heart to feel something. So, forgive me if I call bullshit on that one.”

He lets out another of those labored breaths, and he’s starting to turn red. Only, I’m certain it isn’t from embarrassment, but rather anger.

“Fuck!” he growls, loudly enough that I’m certain whoever’s at either side of this suite just heard him.

My posture goes rigid, thinking he’s about to either freak out or start yelling. I’m now about two seconds from putting him out of here.

“With other girls, it’s always the same. With all of them,” he clarifies. “It’s… it’s fun while it lasts, then it’s over as soon as we leave the bed, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t like that with you,” he stammers, having a hard time getting his thoughts together.

Those heartbreaker greens of his flash toward me, and I feel so much in his stare.

“You lingered,” he says. “We fucked, it ended, and I expected the shit that came with it to just… fade, but…”

My gaze rises when he stands to pace, seeming to search for the right words.

“I expected to have this big epiphany when it was over, this sudden realization that everything I thought I felt wasn’t real, but it wasn’t like that.”

He pauses, and it feels like my heart’s trying to leap out of my chest as I listen.

“Being with you made it even clearer that, somewhere between me trying to hate you and you trying to hate me, something changed,” he admits. “And I hated myself for—”

“Hated yourself for what?” I ask, hearing the air of desperation I meant to keep to myself.

His feet aren’t moving now, and I have his eyes again. They’re boring a hole through me and I swear I feel him struggling to hold all this inside. Struggling against whatever has him spilling his soul right in front of me tonight.

“I hated myself because… I fucking fell for you, Southside.”

My throat tightens, hearing what he’s just admitted. But I’m not melting at his feet like some might. Instead, I’m madder than when he first began to speak because nothing makes sense. Realizing there’s more between us than bitter rivalry shouldn’t have triggered such an ugly response from him. It just shouldn’t have.

“So, instead of telling me how you felt, you decided to destroy me instead? Kicking me out, posting that video of us?”

He’s shaking his head before I can even finish, and he’s pacing again. He looks tortured, like a man warring with two voices inside his head. One telling him to continue being who he’s always been. Another telling him he’s reached a fork in the road and must decide right here, right now, who he’ll be moving forward.

“What I said afterward—telling you to leave—that was me being an ass,” he growls, like he expects me to already know this. Like it’s an excuse.

“No argument there,” I snap back, feeling my face grow hotter. “And the video? Was that just you being an ass, too?”

“The video was… It was…”

“It was what, West?”

I’m raging now, on my feet and then standing in his face, blocking his path. He’s not allowed to avoid this. He’s not allowed to avoid me.

I see that, more than anything, he wants me to let this go, wants me to stop pushing, but there’s no chance of that happening.

“It was what, West?” I ask again, clearly sick of his bullshit.

He stares down on me with the candles’ glow looking like actual hellfire in his eyes. His jaw is tight and he’s madder than the devil, but I’m not letting him slip past me again. He’s all out of passes and I’m all out of patience.

“If you don’t want to talk, then we’re done here,” I assert, already heading toward the closet to get his shit and put him out, sooner rather than later. But as soon as I reach the double doors—

“It was Parker.”

Hearing that, it feels like every ounce of air has suddenly left the room, and when I turn, West takes a few steps back and drops down into the chair again. He can’t seem to look at me, but meanwhile, I can’t take my eyes off him. Not even