Staying in Vegas (Vegas Morellis 1)

He pulls me back so he can look down at me, but the sympathy on his face is horrible. “You’re so young.”

“Don’t do that. You’re seven years older than me. That’s nothing.”

“I don’t mean in years,” he says, simply. “Your heart is still tender and impressionable. You’re still capable of thinking you’ve fallen in love in just a few days.”

He’s said a lot of mean shit to me since we met, but nothing as mean as that. I want to stop him. I want to ask him not to do this, not to push me away, not to take a wrecking ball to all the feelings I’ve already grown around him, but I know it’s too late. I can already see the ball swinging; I know we’re only moments from demolition, and I’m already living inside a memory.

One more experience I don’t get to keep.

I want to blame the pregnancy for tears that well up in my eyes, but I think they would fall either way.

“I don’t want to make you cry,” he says, but in the way that conveys he knows he will. As sure as the sun will rise in the morning, Sin is going to hurt me right now.

“If I couldn’t be for you, why do any of this?” I demand. “Why would you toy with me if you had no interest in seeing it through? I’m not being crazy. You’ve said things to me…”

He pushes himself up in the bed so he’s sitting instead of lying here with me. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. I didn’t think… I mean, it was only a few days. None of this should have happened. It wasn’t my intention.”

For all the sounds coming out of his mouth, he’s not saying much of anything.

“What was your intention?” I demand.

For what seems like a million moments, he doesn’t answer me. He avoids my gaze and I want to tell him he’s a coward, but I’m too afraid he has a Hail Mary up his sleeve. I know it’s absolutely hopeless, but some small part of me wants the next words out of his mouth to be an awful confession, followed up by a change of heart. He didn’t intend for any of this to happen… but it has, and he does have feelings for me, and he’s not about to shut me out. I don’t need things to make sense right now; I just need it to stop feeling like the beautiful thing I want to build with him is already crashing down all around me.

His tone is subdued when he finally speaks, like he’s reading a grocery list. I tell myself he had to remove himself emotionally because what he’s about to say is so horrible, but maybe he’s just a fucking sociopath and I’ve been wearing blinders these few days.

“Rafe liked you, but you lost his interest when you told him you were pregnant. You weren’t going to get it back. It wasn’t your fault, it was nothing you’d done, it wasn’t even because you were wrong for him, it’s because you came bundled with the last thing in the world he wanted to deal with. He needed something to wake him up, to get him to look at you again and see what’s really there. Not to look at you and see a problem, a pregnancy he doesn’t want, but to see you and your value. The fastest and most effective way to do it was to make you something he couldn’t have. To take you off the table, make you something he missed out on. He had to lose you to see you were worth hanging onto, and… well, if you caught my interest, that would catch his attention even if you’d never been his. I don’t get romantically involved with women. If a vegetarian gave it all up to taste a single steak, wouldn’t you wonder what’s so damn great about that piece of meat?”

It takes me a minute to sift through all this information, to distill it until I have a concise summary. I want to believe I’m getting it wrong, or that he’s lying, but right now he’s telling me the realest thing I have ever felt has been complete and utter bullshit right from the start, and I don’t know how to digest that.

“You’ve been playing me. Like my life is a game. Like my feelings are…” I shake my head, unable to even grasp at a word to adequately express my horror. “This was all playacting for you?”

“I wasn’t playacting, Laurel. I just didn’t give you all the facts.”

“You’re a monster,” I state, staring him straight in the eye. “You’re a monster.”

Whatever part of him was still open to me, that still wanted to take the sting out of this, it shutters as soon as I say that. Even his tone is colder as he pulls back the blanket and pushes his legs over his side of the bed. “I fucking kidnapped you, Laurel; did you expect me to be a good guy?”

“There’s not being a good guy and then there’s this,” I tell him, throwing my legs over my side of the bed and climbing off. My legs don’t feel completely up to the job of holding me up, but I shakily make my way across the floor to grab my panties. I flush with mortification as I pick them up now, knowing what I know, still feeling the evidence of our intimacy between my legs.

Oh, my God.

“How could you—I did things with you that—” I shake my head, my stomach rolling. “We almost had sex. You would have fucked me when you didn’t give half a damn? When you were just, what, babysitting me until Rafe came around? What if he never did, huh? You were feeding me all this bullshit, trying to convince me to keep a pregnancy you knew I didn’t want, making me think… making me think stupid fucking thoughts, and you were just manipulating me! You didn’t mean any of it. You pushed me into making huge, important life decisions—” I stop, remembering him saying just yesterday that maybe he was already making my decisions for me.

When I turn to look at him, he has pulled on sweats. I’m glad. As much as I enjoyed the sight of him naked ten minutes ago, just looking at any part of him right now feels like someone is thrusting a flaming sword right through my lungs.

“I’m a fool,” I finally surmise.

“You’re not a fool,” he states, shortly. “You’re young. You’re open. You’re not used to being around people like us.”

I shake my head slowly, those words weighing on me like they never have before. “If this is what being one of you means, I never want to be.”

“That’s fine,” he mutters. “Be better. Be whatever you want. Say what you will about my methods, they worked. Four days ago Rafe never wanted to see you again, now he’s bending over backward to win back your affection. Hate me all you want right now; you’ll be grateful when you’re dancing at your wedding.”

“Fuck you,” I fling back.

Because he’s a miserable fucking bastard, he cocks an eyebrow and gives me a mean little smile. “No, that’s one thing you won’t get to do. Sorry.”

That’s so cruel, it knocks the wind right out of me. I look around for something to throw at him. I find a lamp, so I rip it out of the wall and lob it at him.