She searched through a few roommates wanted ads and wrote the numbers down on her notepad before she clicked on the second page.
Her hand froze on the trackpad.
What the hell? There. At the top of the second page was Cason’s house. The exact one. She even double checked the address on the off chance that there were two houses in town that looked exactly the same from the outside. She clicked through the pictures and at the bottom, where it was listed as rented, she checked the date the ad was updated and her whole body began to vibrate with confusion.
Yesterday.
The website listed the house as rented the day before.
It had to be a mistake. Cason said he’d been in town for a while. Isn’t that what he’d said? He’d made it seem like he’d been there for a year. Two years? Maybe she couldn’t remember what he’d said, but he sure as shit hadn’t made it seem like he’d just moved into the place.
Her brain felt less like scrambled eggs and more like eggs over hard, burning, scalding, smoking away. Burnt. That’s what she felt. She felt burned out. No, that wasn’t right either. Burning. She was burning up on the inside. Rage rose in her chest, cutting off the confusion and drowning out logical reason.
I never told him my name.
The thought hit her so hard it nearly toppled her right off the bed like a sucker punch from some douche bag invisible force. She actually righted herself on the bed and straightened her laptop, to keep it from ending up on its side.
She did a quick mental check, searching through her inventory from the day before. She’d seen him in the coffee shop. Cason. He’d rear ended her at the stop sign. She’d offered to exchange information, but he said it wasn’t necessary. At the diner, he’d told her his name. Cason. She hadn’t told him hers, but he knew it. He’d freaking called her Noemi and she’d never told him.
No. No, fucking way.
She rarely swore, even inside her own head. The thought just proved how dialed up her rage truly was. Her hands both shook so badly when she reached for her laptop that she could barely type. She forced herself to enter two names she’d heard only once. From her father. That night he’d told her about the marriage he’d arranged.
She typed them in. Her eyes fixated on the first letter of the first name. B. B for Byron. Not C for Cason. She closed her eyes before she hit ENTER, hoping like heck that she was wrong, and things just weren’t making sense. That she didn’t remember correctly, and she had told Cason her name. That maybe whoever actually owned the house he was renting, though she’d thought it was his, had forgotten to update the site or maybe Cason was moving, and he had a month to get out. There could be a thousand explanations that were all logical.
Except that when she opened eyes that felt grainy and acidic and strained to look at her search, there was a page full of results. And a couple pictures that weren’t the grainy, low resolution print out her dad shoved in her face before she checked the heck out on him mentally and went AWOL physically.
Cason.
Cason started back at her.
The same blue eyes. Eyes she’d recognize anywhere, when they were in color and in focus.
His hair was longer now, but the rest of him was still the same.
Holy fucking fudge nuts. She’d just spent an entire night doing all manner of illicit, wild, amazing things with the man she refused to marry. With a man she’d flown halfway across the country to avoid.
Turned out the bastard had a talent for giving multiple orgasms.
Turned out he was also a lying, cheating, scum sucking, horrible dirt bag who had tricked her, lied to her, tongued her va-jay, and fucked her thoroughly into next week all while she thought he was someone else.
Byron the Bastard. Her mind conjured up the name and it fit. It fit so effing well.
Byron the Bastard had made a fatal mistake doing what he’d done to her.
Byron the Bastard was going down.
Epic flames style.
CHAPTER 14
Byron
Bang bang. Bang bang. Bang baaaannnnngggg.
Byron shot straight upright in bed, the sheets falling away from his chest, pooling at his waist. He blinked into the room, bright now that daylight spilled through the blinds. His heart thrummed wildly until he realized that he hadn’t been dreaming. The banging really was out there, not some skeletal figure of his imagination. After the nightmare from the night before, in which the last night with his father replayed in vivid technicolor, all the details painfully accurate, he was primed.
The banging continued. Bang, bang, bang. Thwump. Thump. Something followed up what was obviously fists. A foot? Was someone actually out there trying to kick his door down?