Page 129 of The Auction
I should’ve gone with her.
I lean back against the couch, my phone in my hand like it’s an extension of my own damn body. Cassidy’s bitmoji still hovers over her parents’ house on Snap Map. That’s the only thing keeping me from grabbing my keys and showing up uninvited. At least she’s still there.
I’m kicking myself for not pushing harder this morning. For not making her tell me whatever the hell she’s been holding back. I saw it in her eyes—the secret she wasn’t ready to share. I thought giving her space would help. That she’d come to me on her own, trust me enough to tell me the truth.
That she’d believe me when I say I would doanythingfor her.
The city skyline spreads out past my floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass gleaming with the fading orange light of early evening. I can’t seem to take it in tonight—the view’s wasted on me. My chest feels tight, my pulse a steady drumbeat in my ears.
I type out a quick message.
JAXON: You okay?
My thumb hovers over the screen, wondering if that sounds too clipped, too impersonal. I hit send anyway.
One minute passes. Then two.
Nothing.
I stand, pacing toward the glass, the reflection of my own restless shadow moving with me. My hand tightens around my phone until my knuckles ache. I tell myself she’s just busy. Talking with her mom. Sorting out whatever she went there for.
A few minutes later, my phone buzzes in my hand.
Fuck. Finally.
Relief lasts exactly half a second—until I read the message.
CASSIDY: I made a mistake getting involved with you. I shouldn’t have strung you along, but I was using you. It’s better if we go our separate ways.
What the fuck?
My lungs forget how to work. The room seems too quiet, the kind of silence that presses in on you until you can hear your own pulse.
I was using you.
The words echo in my head, ugly and sharp, carving through every moment we’ve shared until they don’t even look realanymore. No laughter. No heat. No soft mornings with her curled into me. Just a con, start to finish.
No. No, she wouldn’t?—
I dial her number and it rings twice—then voicemail.
She fucking sent me to her voicemail. I call again. Same thing. My call is rejected.
The third time it goes straight to voicemail. Again when I call back.
Did she fucking block me?
JAXON: Cass, what’s going on?
Nothing. No delivered notice. She’s cut me off.
My grip tightens around the phone until my knuckles ache, until I’m seconds from crushing it in my palm. The urge to throw it into the wall claws at me, to hear it shatter and see it die so I can go back. Back three minutes ago, when she was still mine?—
Except she was never mine.
Apparently, I was just a pawn in whatever game she was playing.
The burn in my chest ignites into something else—something sharper. Anger. At her. At myself for letting her in, for thinking I could keep her.
