Work In Progress (Red Lipstick Coalition #3) - Staci Hart Page 0,129

him changed. Hardened. Darkened when I thought he couldn’t be any darker, an eclipse of the moon on a starless night.

“If you think I fucked Vivienne Thorne last night, you don’t know me at all.”

The fiery rage in my heart went out with a hiss.

“You—” I whispered, but he cut me off.

“That picture was from the conference last year.”

My mind tripped and stumbled down a hillside, unable to catch itself. “But…”

“Have I ever indicated I feel anything for Vivienne but the desire to make her disappear?”

I couldn’t breathe. “N-no.”

“Have I ever so much as even looked at another woman since I’ve been with you?”

Tears stung, no longer angry. They were sharp with shame. “No,” I whispered.

“Then why, Amelia…why for the love of God would you think I would sleep with someone else? Especially someone who has been actively trying to ruin both of us?”

“I…” Too fast, the thoughts were too fast, the realization clicking like pins in a lock. “Y-you slept with her before. You…you were so angry, and I thought…I thought you…if you wanted to hurt me, you knew this would.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Nothing else moved. “You thought,” he started, his voice controlled, the timbre ominous, “after all I’ve done to protect you, that I would fuck Vivienne to hurt you?”

“I…” I couldn’t finish. My tears fell, guilt washing over me. “I…I did.”

He drew a breath that sucked all the air from the room. “You don’t trust me. But I trusted you completely. I always thought you were the naive one, Amelia. Turns out it was me.”

Pain, sharp and cutting. “I…I’m sorry,” I whispered, but the words weren’t enough.

“You believed their lie—the lie, the press, everything I hate—instead of trusting me. You have betrayed me more deeply than I thought you capable of. And it’s my own fault. For putting you here. For turning you into this.” His fisted hands trembled violently enough to see the movement from feet away. Locks of hair shook infinitesimally. His voice shuddered when he spoke. “I think you should stay here until we figure out what to do.”

“What to do?”

“About this. About everything. About us.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t see him anymore—he was a shining blur, a mirage. A dream. Tears spilled down my cheeks, soaking them.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’m sorry I put all of this on you. And I’m sorry you couldn’t trust me. Without trust, we have nothing.”

It was too much, too much pain, too much to process, to understand, to grasp what he was saying. I needed time. I needed air. I needed him.

“Tommy, please,” I choked, reaching for him as he stepped for the door.

But he backed away from me with his lips hard and eyes shining, his drawn brows betraying the emotion of his broken heart. “Don’t,” he warned. “Please.” The word broke.

I retracted my hand, clutching it to my chest.

“Goodbye, Amelia,” he said like it was the last time.

And then he was gone.

The Story They Want

Amelia

The next twenty-four hours were a blur.

Katherine found me on the couch some time after Tommy left. I didn’t know how long it had been. I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten there.

Everything hurt. My thudding skull. My swollen eyes, the well of tears infinite. My lungs burning. My ribs hitching. The hollow space inside where my heart used to be nothing but a gaping hole with seared edges.

I was wrong, so wrong. And he was right. About everything.

I’d had everything I could have wanted and lost it all.

Somehow, I ended up in bed. I took something, put into my palm by Katherine, her face tight with worry as I told her everything.

And I cried. I cried with her holding me, her arms wrapped around me and whispers on her lips until I eventually fell asleep.

It was a dreamless, heavy sleep, the kind that left you hungover and worthless, a blank loss of time that would have worried me, if it hadn’t been welcomed.

When I woke, the sun was high, my room bright, my heart missing. Gone.

I was empty.

My mind was slow, thick and hazy from whatever Katherine had given me. Judging by the time, I guessed a sleeping pill. I’d never been so grateful to lose a day. I wondered how many more of those pills she had. Maybe I could take another. Skip another day. Fast-forward in the hopes that, when I finally woke for good, I would be beyond everything.

Or better yet, that I’d wake to find it had all been a dream. A