Tempting - Lucian Alex (книги бесплатно .TXT) 📗

“You’re right,” I said, and her eyes finally found mine. “You are absolutely right, Miss Morello. We are done talking about this.”

“What does that mean?” Her voice sounded shrill, taking on a panicky edge.

“I bet you’ll figure it out when you grow up.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Like it wasn’t controlled by my brain, my left arm reached out and my hand swiftly slapped him across the face. The resulting stinging in my palm paled in comparison to the pain splitting my chest down the middle.

“Fuck. You.” The words were laced with venom, the power behind them causing my voice to sound cold, furious. But my limbs shook from the boiling in my veins. “Grow up? Are you fucking kidding me?” He stared at me, unmoved, and I badly, desperately, wanted to throw something across the room, if only for the satisfaction of seeing it break into a million pieces.

I wanted to scream, to punch a hole in his chest, anything to make him feel what I was feeling.

I grabbed my jacket off the floor and shoved my arms through the holes, my mind a storm of anguish and humiliation.

My palm still stung, but I wouldn’t let him see me in pain. A sob climbed up my throat, but I refused its release as I pushed past him, flying down the stairs and out the door. The slam of the door behind me was completely unsatisfying.

It wasn’t until I’d reached the nearest subway station that I allowed myself to crumble onto a bench. I’d held it in, the vinegar that burned my throat—a product of unshed tears. But now that I was far from the cause of my heartache, I was safe to grieve. Sobs shook my chest and I held a fist to my mouth, pressing hard against my lips to keep me from crying aloud. I let my hair form a curtain around me as my composure dissolved on the cold cement bench.

When my train arrived, I sent up a silent thanks for the empty seat and leaned my head against the glass, desperate to disappear. Fortunately, no good Samaritans were after making me feel better, so the tears rolled freely and endlessly down my face as the crack in my chest split more and more each time I replayed his words in my head.

“Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? You come in here and think that getting me off, that screwing me before you tell me is somehow going to make it better that you made a huge fucking decision about a future that we have never talked about.”

It was a mother fucking echo in my head. “…a future that we have never talked about” echoing the loudest, painting his own thoughts for us perfectly clear. While I’d been imagining spending more time with Nathan, his thoughts had run a different way. He hadn’t been making plans, I had; Alone.

When I was back in the safety of my apartment, I turned my phone on silent and curled into my bed, the down comforter like a cocoon around me, over my head.

The quiet of my apartment was unwelcome, but it was all I had. And that realization pressed upon my chest, causing me to cry once again.

The worst thing about what Nathan had said hadn’t been the delivery—which was fucking horrible in and of itself—but what he’d said. He’d essentially called me a manipulator, a child, and an idiot. He’d assumed I’d buttered him up with sex, had made this big decision about my future without thinking things through. And he’d insinuated that I wasn’t mature enough to understand the gravity of the situation. All of it hurt, but the fact that he’d questioned my intelligence hurt the most.

Given the way I’d been feeling toward him over the last several weeks, I’d finally accepted that Nathan was more than a fuck, a conquest. He was the real deal, a man worth holding onto. And after running from dozens of men, it was a big fucking deal for me to find the one I wanted to stick around.

“Fucking asshole,” I blubbered into my pillow. I’d surrendered to him, given him things I’d never given another man. And he’d reduced me to what essentially amounted to nothing.

In my head, I’d seen the whole situation going differently. I’d imagined Nathan taking my news in, realizing it was ultimately my decision and while I would have respected his opinion—had it been delivered more kindly—I would have ultimately stuck to my guns. Because that was who I was. I’d never bent for a man, chased a man, wanted a man the way I wanted Nathan.

Not that it mattered anymore. I rubbed a tissue over my nose and winced when I felt the sharp cut against my nostril. To my sheer horror, when I pulled my hand back I realized I was still wearing the engagement ring. The very catalyst to our fight.

Wrapping the fingers of my other hand around the band, I yanked to pull it off, but it wouldn’t budge. Fuck. I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, rubbing lotion around my finger before twisting. The lotion loosened it enough to help it spin, but it still wouldn’t slip past the first knuckle.

“No, no, no,” I said, tears of frustration now falling. I couldn’t wear this. I couldn’t have this on my finger still.

After trying to remove it, unsuccessfully, for twenty minutes I gave up.

I was a shitty friend, but luckily for me, Leo wasn’t. So I dialed his number.

“Hey, stranger.”

I closed my eyes, breathed a sigh of relief into the phone. “Leo. I’m sorry. For the last month, for ignoring you. I need you.”

“I’ll be there in a few.”

True to his word, he arrived at my apartment just when I was on the verge of hysterics. I threw myself into his arms, clinging to him like the savior he was.

“Hey, hey.” Leo pulled me back and looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”

I held up my hand with the ring on it, my lips turned down. “This.”

His brown eyes grew as wide as saucers. “Holy shit, Add. You got engaged?”

If I thought this situation couldn’t possibly get more humiliating, I was sorely wrong. “No. This isn’t mine and I need to return it. But it’s stuck!” To illustrate my point, I tried to pull it from my finger but it wouldn’t do anything but twist, almost mockingly so.

“Okay, it’s fine. We’ll get it off.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I blurted. It wasn’t just because of the ring situation, but until he was in front of me I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed him. “I’m sorry I’m such a dumbass.”

He smiled his trademark Hollywood smile, the one that could get him anything he wanted. I wished I had such a weapon in my arsenal, to make him forgive me. “It’s okay. You’re still my friend.” He said it in a little kid voice, and I laughed. Just like that, my kissing him and ignoring him was forgotten and we were back to the friends we were supposed to be. Just friends.

He held my hand in his and turned it over. “It’s a little swollen. Did you hit a wall or something?”

I thought of the slap I’d delivered to Nathan’s face. “Or something,” I admitted. “Is that why it won’t come off?”

Nodding, he rubbed at the skin around the band. “Probably. But I saw a video on YouTube, I know just what to do.” He strode into my bathroom, returning with floss. “Do you have olive oil?”

“Hell no. I have vegetable oil. What do you think this is, The Ritz?”

Leo laughed and grabbed the oil from where I’d pointed. When we were both settled on my couch, he started wrapping the floss around my finger, just above the band, all the way to my knuckle. I watched the compression on my skin, the way it turned almost purple.

“Hold this so it stays taut,” he said, pressing the end of the floss in my hand. He poured a little of the oil into a cup and dipped his finger in, rubbing over the top of the floss and around my finger. The floss was wrapped so tightly that when he tried to tug the ring over the floss, it slid a lot more easily up my finger. Encouraged, he wrapped more floss right around my knuckle, squeezing my finger. Within seconds, the ring slid completely off and he quickly unwrapped the floss from my finger.