Page 54 of Bitter When He Begs

I sigh and nod once. “Fine.”

Damon watches me a second longer, like he’s making sure I mean it, then he returns my nod, seemingly satisfied. “Good. Now go enjoy the party.”

I don’t feel good about walking away, not even fucking close. But I turn away anyway, shoving my hands in my hoodie pocket, forcing myself to walk back toward the party.

Back toward pretending that I don’t fucking care.

Luca

Thepartyisstillgoing strong downstairs.

Bass rattling the fucking windows, voices overlapping, and drunken laughter mixing with the occasional crash of a bottle or a chair or someone’s dignity.

But I don’t feel the need to be down there. I don’t feel the pull to lose myself in it, to pretend I’m the same guy I used to be back then. To lose myself in a bottle or a body or whatever the fuck I used to make nights like these bearable.

For the first time, I don’t feel the need to pretend, and fuck me, it’s freeing.

I sit on the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, rolling a coin between my fingers. It’s something to keep my mind busy because I refuse to let my thoughts drift in the direction they always do when I’m alone.

I tell myself I don’t care what’s happening downstairs.

I don’t care that Sage is still here, or that he might be leaving with someone else tonight.

But just as I almost convince myself, there’s a knock at my door. I look up, but don’t move right away, whoever it is can fuck right off… But then they knock again, this time more insistently.

With a frustrated sigh, I push up from the bed and cross the room in a few strides. When I unlock the door and yank it open, I bristle when I see Damon standing there. “You seriously checking up on me right now?”

He doesn’t react right away; he just leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest. “No.”

I scoff and shake my head. “Right. Because obviously my word isn’t good enough for you. Jesus Christ, Damon. I told you I was fine. I told you I wasn’t gonna slip, and yet here you are—”

“That’s not why I’m here, Luca.”

“Then why are you here?” I grit out through clenched teeth.

I expect him to say it, to admit that he’s checking up on me because he doesn’t trust me to handle myself. That he thinks I’m so fucking weak that I can’t even sit in my own room without him hovering over me like some overbearing guardian angel.

I expect it.

I’m ready for it.

But instead, Damon just sighs and shakes his head as if this was the last thing he wanted to deal with tonight. “I just stopped Sage from coming up here.”

That makes me go completely still, and I blink way too fast, the words not registering at first. Almost as if my brain refuses to process them. I open my mouth, then close it. Then… fuck no.

No.

No fucking way.

“What?”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “He was on his way up here and admitted that he was coming to find you.”

I force my expression to stay blank, like this is nothing. Like it doesn’t mean a fucking thing that Sage was on his way up here to see me. That, for some reason, despite everything, he still—

“I told him to leave you alone.”

I don’t know why that makes my stomach twist, because I should feel relieved. I should be glad Damon stepped in and stopped whatever bullshit was going to happen, that he shut it down before it could start.