Pretend You're Mine (Inked Hearts 3)

“Me too. I mean. I want that for you too.” And for me too. I want both of us to forget she exists.

“You’re good to me, Leigh. Better than I deserve.” His eyes fill with vulnerability.

I want to wipe all his pain away. I need to reassure him. I need more than words. But words are all I’ve got. “You really believe that?”

“I don’t know.” His gaze shifts to the sky. “I just know I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“I might.”

“Anything is possible, yeah. But I’m not going anywhere.”

“When this guy realizes how great you are—”

“I’m still going to be by your side.” I’m going to be there. With him. Forever. “What was she right about?”

“Two years ago, three now, she gave up on starting her own website.”

“The punk one?”

“It was supposed to be an edgy women’s interest site, yeah.”

“XO Punk Jane.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy.

“It’s a big women’s site. But, carry on.”

“Your hair looks silver in the moonlight.”

“The chlorine washed out all the dye.”

“I always wonder what it’s gonna look like.”

“I’m pretty settled on purple.”

“That?

?s what you said about pink.”

“I gave it six months.”

He brushes my wet hair behind my ear. “You’re afraid of commitment?”

“No. I just like seeing a different person in the mirror sometimes.”

He nods I get that. Shifts back to telling his story. “Three years ago, she took a job at her dad’s company.”

“Your dad works for hers?”

“Yeah. The media conglomerate that buys out good websites and turns them into generic pop-culture shit with a theme.”

“Oh. Yeah. They’re the worst.”

He laughs. “Her dad offered her a job at the women’s interest one. She took it. When she told me, I couldn’t believe it. That was a betrayal of everything we believed in.”

“Why?”