Page 41 of Faking It
“You’re out of line, Harlow.”
My laugh echoes off the concrete walls around us. “Out of line? First off, you don’t get to tell me how to feel and second? I’m not some trophy, and I sure as hell won’t be yours.”
“For now you are, in the eyes of the world anyway.” His lips purse, and his eyes pin me motionless.
“That’s your fault.”
“We both wanted something from the other. We’re getting it. Like I said, don’t mistake reality with pretend . . . and sure as hell don’t mistake the guy you want with the man I am.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Be careful what you wish for, Harlow.”
He retreats another step, our gazes still held, before he nods and then walks away without another word.
A thing I’m starting to get used to him doing.
His way of getting in the last word.
Confusion reigns. What in the hell did I get myself into?
And much later when I’m lying in bed alone, staring at the ceiling, my mind turning endlessly, I hear the clank of feet on the steps. I feel the dip of the tour bus as he climbs the stairs. A few words are exchanged with Mick who’s been waiting for Zane’s return so we can move on to the next city. The next episode of How Confused Can We Make Harlow.
With my eyes closed, I trace Zane’s movements by the sounds he makes, my body never more aware of him than now. The snap of his phone being plugged into the charger. The click of the bedroom door. His sigh as he stands at the foot of the bed. I don’t look but I know he’s staring at me.
I can feel it. In the heaviness of the energy around me. In the chills that suddenly race over my skin. In the slow, sweet ache that burns between my thighs.
My body is betraying me. It’s wanting something I can’t have. Something that would only serve to complicate matters when they already seem complicated enough.
And yet I can feel his stare. I can taste his kiss. I can hear the words he said repeated in my own mind.
The problem is, he’s right.
Women fall in love with words.
In stupid words like mulligan. How can that word have a trace of romanticism in it? It doesn’t, but he said it and I partially swooned at the meaning behind it—at what I inferred by it and how I . . . shit, I’m proving his point for him and he’s not even having to defend it.
He shifts. The bathroom door shuts. The shower turns on.
All the while I’m left here reminded of his kiss. The one that stole my breath and is the current source of my confusion.
I asked him to be real . . . and then he went and kissed me. And it felt awfully real.
Is he purposely trying to screw with my brain—and body—because if that’s the case, he’s succeeded.
Was the kiss a warning? A dark promise? His way to be in control of a situation I forced him into? A way to stake his claim on me with some macho bullshit successful-man’s pissing match that I don’t want any part in?
Or was this just another game of his, the way it seems this whole SoulM8 venture is in a sense?
The bathroom door opens again, the sliver of light from it momentary before it’s shut off and the room is once again bathed in darkness.
The bed dips. The sheets pull tight against my body as he pulls them around him.
Shut him out, Harlow.
My blood hums from the heat of his body beside me.
Shut.
