Breaking Even (Sterling Shore 5)

“Why?”

He bends over and kisses my neck as his hand goes to my waist. “Because I wanted to see you. I saw you at the door, so you made this night much better by already being here.”

I push him back, and he tilts his head. “I don’t want to be the feel-good girl all the time. I’d like to be someone you want to see for more than sex.”

“Brin, I’m pretty sure we do a lot more than have sex, considering the vast knowledge you’ve accumulated about me over the past month. And don’t act like I treat you like shit or something.”

I groan in frustration while clutching my head in my hands. “You don’t treat me like shit. At all. I just feel like shit because you think this is something completely different than I do, even though I don’t understand how.”

When I look up, he’s already moving away from me, putting some distance between us.

“So you’re starting to want something. I told you this was for fun. You said you didn’t want anything serious.”

I laugh humorlessly while staring at the ceiling. “I lied. Just like I always do when it comes to trying to be with you, because I’m stupid like that.” When I bring my head back down, his jaw is tense, but that doesn’t stop me from continuing.

“I’ve wanted more since the day you towed my car to fix it. I wanted more the night you slept on my sofa with me. I’ve definitely wanted more since the day you carried me over to your house and made me have the best night I’ve ever had. So yeah. I want more. Every day I want more.”

“I told you it had to be simple,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

“Simple?” I ask incredulously. “This thing between us hasn’t been simple since we met. You’re the most complicated, contradictory, annoyingly frustrating person I’ve ever met in my life. You show up over here because you miss me, you can’t stay away unless you make yourself, and you talk to me like we’re best friends. That’s a relationship, Rye. You just don’t want me to fall in love, but I—”

“Don’t,” he cautions, a hard edge to his voice that I’ve never heard before.

I’ve never seen him look so angry.

“I knew better. You swore this wouldn’t happen. I told you I didn’t want it, and here you are trying to force me into something I don’t want. Something you knew I didn’t want. I don’t want a relationship, and you don’t know jack shit about being in a relationship any more than I do. So don’t try telling me that’s what we have. Because it’s not. Never was.”

I can’t believe him. Who the hell is this jerk?

He starts walking toward the door, but I jump off the sofa to grab his arm. “I don’t know anything about a relationship? I was married!”

The icy eyes that glare into mine aren’t the warm orbs of brown I love. “Yeah, and your marriage turned out real damn well, didn’t it?”

I drop my hand from his arm just as he shrugs me off, and then he walks out of my door, slamming it behind him and destroying me. I just stare at the door like any minute the man I know is going to come in and apologize for the asshole that just left.

But he doesn’t. And when the first tear falls, I’m not surprised. I finally fell in love, and now I know for a fact I’ve never been in love before Rye Clanton, because this hurts. This hurts so damn much.

Right now I hate him more than I hate John Abott because I wish I never fell in love at all.

Chapter 15

RYE

“Thanks for coming over,” Dad says as I step in.

“It’s too soon for you to be remarried, so I assume you have something of real importance to say.”

I can’t even look at him right now. I can’t look at myself either. Shit. I should have never gotten involved with her.

She’s right. I fucked with her head the entire time. It should have been strictly sex, because I complicated the hell out of things. We both did. It was messy from the beginning.

I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I can’t think about this.

“I have a few things to go over with you. Mostly financial stuff. I’ve just reworked my will, and everything is going to you when I die.”

If we’re not talking about his loose love life, then it’s something morbid like this. But this conversation is moot because people like him never die. Unless the wicked kill themselves, the good are the only ones to die, and they die too young.

I’ll live for-fucking-ever.