“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I reply, tilting my head away from his lips.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “We do. So you can come inside of your own accord, or kicking and screaming. At this point, I don’t care which one you choose.”
He wraps his fingers around my nape and squeezes firmly. “What do you have to lose? I never told Anna what happened that night. In fact, I never told a single soul. Trusting you is my burden to bear, and not a mistake I’ll ever make again.”
His comment sends me straight back to that night, just the place where I didn’t want to go.
“Fuck you,” I grit out, turning around to face him. “You don’t know shit, Adam. Just let me go. I won’t see your sister, or anyone connected to you again.”
He studies me and rubs his palm along his jaw. Then, in a simple move, he bends down and throws me over his shoulder.
“Adam!” I yell, squirming around. “Put me down, you asshole! Anna, I’m going to kill you!”
I ignore the men’s catcalls as he walks with me through their clubhouse. From upside down, all I can see is scary-looking leather-clad men, and all I can hear is music and laughter. All I can feel is anger and embarrassment. I’m wearing a fucking dress, and who knows what everyone can see. I punch the back of Adam’s thighs, but all he does is slap my ass once and I freeze.
“No one better have seen that,” I growl, trying to push my hair out of my face. A door is opened, a light is turned on, and then I’m tossed onto a bed.
His bed.
His very large, black, could-be-a-porn-set bed.
Images rush through my mind, me on that bed, underneath him, but I shake my head and push them away, knowing that they have no place being there. I look away from the bed and study the man in question instead, causing more memories to flash through my mind. I miss the old Adam. Before everything went to hell. The Adam who I would lie with in bed, staring at the ceiling, just talking for hours. The Adam who was my best friend in the world. He paces the room, stops, gives me a cutting look, then takes off his jacket and throws it on the ground, bringing me back to reality
“I never wanted to see you again,” he says, running a hand through his short blond hair. “Yet here you are. In my fuckin’ clubhouse. Christ.”
“You brought me here,” I remind him.
“I know,” he grits out between clenched teeth.
I cross my arms over my chest, hugging myself. “Anna and Lana wanted to see me. I didn’t seek them out. And I didn’t want to say no, even though I knew I should have. I couldn’t hurt their feelings. I still care about both of them.”
“I know you do, but this isn’t fuckin’ working, Bailey,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s too fuckin’ much. You’re in my territory, everywhere I go, when all I want to do is forget that you even exist.”
Ouch.
Why do I do this to myself?
I can’t have everything I want, and it looks like a friendship with my old friends is going to be something to add to that list. I totally see where he’s coming from. Anna and Adam are a package deal. I can’t be in her life without being in his. It is too much. Too much everything. Pain, emotions, memories. Just everything.
“I’ll stay away,” I say in a small voice. “I don’t want to be here either.”
Being reminded of everything I lost, everything that happened, isn’t a good time for me. I understand when he says he wants to forget. When you’re stuck in a place where you can’t go back, when you can’t fix the past, you need to let it go or it will eat you alive.
He looks at me then, I mean really looks at me. Looks inside me. “Why?”
“Why what?” I ask softly, swallowing hard at the emotion I see flashing in his green eyes.
“I mean,” he says between clenched teeth, “why don’t you want to be around me? You’re the one who fucked everything up, and now you’re acting like I’m the one who did something wrong, when the only thing I did was trust a woman who obviously couldn’t keep her legs closed.”
Before I know it, I’m on my feet, and I slap him right across his face. No one talks to me like