Tainted Heartbreak (Tainted Knights 3)

“Hey!” the girl called out, and I could have sworn I knew that voice. “Do you have any conditioner?”

It couldn’t be her, I told myself. What the fuck would she be doing here? Yet, I knew in my bones it was.

“Lin?” I cried and pushed past Cash, who looked about as sick as I felt. I stormed through the bedroom and threw the partially closed bathroom door open so hard it slammed into the wall.

The room was full of steam from the shower, and I could smell Cash’s shampoo and body wash in the air. Those scents had haunted me the last few days we had been apart as they clung to my pillows. I’d hugged them tight every night, breathing in the lingering smell of him and falling asleep, only to dream of him.

I grabbed the shower door and pulled it open. “Lindsey?” I repeated, my heart exploding in my chest as I looked at my naked friend and roommate standing there with my boyfriend’s shampoo in her hair.

Her eyes peeked open. “Amara?” she cried. “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

“I was about to ask you that question,” I snapped as jealousy hit me like a ton of bricks. Lindsey was the picture of perfection with her flawless body, standing there unashamedly naked. “Why are you in Cash’s apartment?”

“Cash?” She repeated his name like it was alien to her. “This is Harden’s apartment.”

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“Baby, I can explain,” Cash grabbed my arms, twisting me around to face him. His eyes pleaded for me to understand, but I couldn’t even look at him. I was breaking on the inside, shattering in a way I’d never allowed myself to break before. Losing my dad had broken my heart, left me feeling like I had a jagged tear in my heart. This? This was breaking my soul. I was fighting for every breath I sucked into my lungs, but I wasn’t even sure I wanted to breathe again. “This isn’t what it looks like. I swear to you, nothing happened.”

I jerked away from him, tuning him out as I turned my attention back to my friend. “Did you say Harden? As in your boyfriend, that Harden?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she told me as her face bloomed with color, and she glanced at Cash.

No, I corrected myself. Harden.

“Amara, baby, just stop and let me talk to you,” he commanded. On shaky legs, I turned to face him. I didn’t know how long I had before my knees gave out and I fell on my face, but it was going to happen soon. I could feel it in the tremble of my entire body as I struggled to remain standing. “Lindsey and I got caught in the rain earlier. Since we were closer to my apartment than hers, we came here to get dry. Nothing else has happened.”

“You were out with her,” I surmised in a voice that cracked. “On a date.”

Guilt flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t drop my gaze. “Her dad is in town.”

That didn’t explain shit to me. So what, her dad was in town? I didn’t give a fuck about Gerald Connors. He was nothing but a pompous asshole, just like Malcolm. Fuck, they were even friends because Malcolm had the kind of pull Gerald craved. My friendship with Lindsey had basically made the old fart cream his pants when he realized what kind of connections his daughter’s friend came with. But as soon as Malcolm was done with me, Gerald was too.

“Amara, I told you I was going to introduce Harden to my dad. Why are you acting so crazy, and what the hell are you doing here?” Lindsey grabbed a towel, and even though there was still soap in her hair, she stepped out of the shower. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Oklahoma until tomorrow?”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose, her voice grating down my spine more and more with every word out of her mouth. “Lindsey, get your head out of your ass for once and pay attention. Harden is Cash!”

She laughed. “What? That’s crazy. Harden’s dad is a congressman like my dad. He’s not some tatted-up freak rocker like your boyfriend.”

My eyes went to the ink on the inside of Cash’s bicep. The red clock was the only tattoo he had and was easily covered up by a shirt. To look at him, he wasn’t my idea of either a congressman’s son or a rocker. He was just a normal, hot as hell guy.

Lindsey wasn’t usually an airhead, but right then, she wasn’t catching on enough for me to get any answers out of her. I forced myself to look at Cash. “Who are you really?”

He reached for me, but I stepped back. If he touched me, I was going to lose the battle I had on my gag reflex and puke all over our feet. Or even worse, fall on my face sobbing. Clenching his jaw, he dropped his hands at his sides, balling them into fists. “I changed my name to Cash Graves when my dad gave me the ultimatum of going to law school or leaving. I left.”

“So what was your name before?”

“I’ve always been called Cash,” he informed me, his eyes bleak. “My name was Harden Cassian Mathias III. Everyone called me Cash because Harden is my dad’s name too. I changed my name because I didn’t want my career to touch my dad’s career, or his mine.”

“How long has this thing been going on between the two of you?” I demanded, trying to digest his name change.

“Two months,” he told me with a heavy exhale. “Gigi asked me to get close to Congressman Connors’s daughter and see if I could sway an upcoming vote on a bill in favor of my dad.”

“What?” Lindsey and I both exploded at the same time. “Why would she ask you to do something like that?”

“It’s what I’m good at.” He shrugged like it was nothing. “It’s always been my job to work on the people closest to my father’s rivals to get the results my dad wanted or influence a vote in his favor. When Gigi got sick, she used her cancer to guilt me into doing one last favor for her.”

“And this favor was to take me out? To string me along like some little doll so I could convince my father to do what yours wanted?” Tears were thick in Lindsey’s voice, and she didn’t even bother to brush them away as she glared up at him. “You were using me?”