Page 10 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

He hums before saying, “A-plus for effort. But again, as much as I like that word coming out of your pink lips, I kinda forgot the other sickness you have.”

“What?”

“Where you use those same pink lips to lie your pretty ass off.”

I flinch and my eyes skitter up. “I don’t?—”

“So before you start spouting off lies, let me tell you exactly what happened. You saw a girl writhing on my lap, hated the fuck out of it, wanted to take her place. So you did what you always do. Play your schoolgirl games with me instead of using your head and staying the fuck away from me and my business.”

“She wasn’t going to help you,” I blurt out, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“What?”

I don’t know if I should say it. Actually, I know I shouldn’t.

He’s made himself plenty clear where he stands when it comes to me, but I don’t give a fuck.

I care about him. I do. And as much as I know he’ll bounce back from it, I also know something awful happened to him six months ago.

Plus I was there. I saw him get beaten up.

I saw him unconscious. I have to say something.

And he can take it like the big man he is.

So I lift my chin, declare, “With your pain.”

A tight clench of his jaw is his only response.

“That’s why you came here, didn’t you? That’s what you were looking for. To forget. To move on. That’s why you’re always with all these girls. I saw it. I see it. I read the articles. You’re with a different girl every night ever since…”

When Lively said it was all over the news, what happened at that parking lot six months ago, she was right.

In fact, it’s still in the news. Not just the incident, but what he’s doing to get over it.

They say his focus isn’t on the game anymore.

That he’s partying a lot, almost every night.

They say if he was a playboy before, who went through girls like water, he’s even worse now.

These days his relationships, or rather his one-night stands, don’t even last through the night.

Some nights he changes girls by the hour.

And while it all seems like great fodder for gossip, what it really is is painful.

It's so fucking painful that this is what he’s doing to move on.

This is how he’s dealing with what happened.

Especially after everything he’s done.

“I know,” I go on, taking a deep breath. “I know what you did.”

His face is hard but blank, no sign of life, let alone a single expression in sight.

But I don’t get deterred. I’ve already started down this path and I’m going to keep at it.

I clutch the tray to my chest, not as a shield this time but as something to hold on to.

I press my spine into the pillar as well, not to get away from him but for support because my legs are about to give out.

So his engagement with his girlfriend Isadora?

It was a sham. He only proposed to her—in front of everyone no less, in front of his twin brother—so she could get the man she really loved, his twin brother.

Because while he was in love with her, she was in love with Stellan the whole time.

And when he found out about it, he decided to help Isadora get Stellan.

“For her ,” I say, my voice trembling. “I know it was all a sham. You getting down on one knee. You proposing in front of everyone. You did it for her. You did it so… she could get what she wanted all along. Your twin brother.”

Isn’t it the craziest thing in the whole world?

Proposing to a girl you love just so she could get the man she loves.

Faking the engagement with her just to make sure she gets her heart’s desire while totally disregarding yours.

But that’s exactly what he did, and he kept up the charade for months.

For months , he pretended. He kept the truth to himself, never shared it with anyone.

Never let it show there was something going on.

Not until that night six months ago, when everything came to a head and I found out the truth. When I had to watch him get all beaten up and bloody.

Before I can think about it, I reach up with my hand and cup his jaw.

It’s hard and rough with his perpetual stubble, and I don’t think my fingers have ever encountered anything more wonderful.

I rub my thumb over his scrape-y jawline, hoping to cut myself on his razor-sharp stubble.

“You didn’t deserve that. Not after everything you’d been through, everything you’d done for her. ”

“Yeah, you know a lot about what I deserve, don’t you,” he says, his voice low, almost threatening.

I wince slightly and take my hand off his cheek, wrapping it around my tray once again. “I just know that you’re in pain, and getting a lap dance from a stripper isn’t going to help with that.”

“And what do you think is going to help?”

“I don’t know, talking about it?” I say.

He watches me a beat. Then, “What helped you?”

“What?”

“With your pain,” he explains. “Over me.”

“I—”

“Ah, my bad,” he cuts me off, his eyes flashing hard and his lips twisting in a sneer.

“You’re still not over me, are you. You weren’t when you got so broken up over my fake engagement that you had to leave the room to go catch your breath outside.

And you’re still not over me now, when you saw a stripper dancing on my lap and spilled your drink on me in a pathetic attempt to catch my attention.

So I don’t think I should be taking advice from a desperate schoolgirl with a bad crush, like you. ”

I want to smack him again. And then I want to punch him in his smirking face. But I won’t. I don’t want him to know how much he affects me. He already knows more than he needs to about how attuned I am to him.

So I steel my spine and say, “If you think turning into a raging asshole is going to make me regret being kind to you, then you’re wrong.

I’m not going to apologize for being a decent human being.

In fact, I’ll go ahead and tell you that maybe you should try it sometime.

And just to remind you, I’m not a schoolgirl anymore.

I already graduated. With your sister, who happens to be my best friend, remember? ”

He studies me for a few seconds before moving his gaze up and down my body. “And now you’re a stripper.”

My skin heats up despite everything as I protest. “A muse, remember? Not a stripper. I just serve the drinks.”

“When you manage not to drop them, that is.”

“Hilarious.”

“Let’s change that up tonight, shall we?”

“What?”

Something flickers through his features, something mysterious but no less heart-pumping. “I came here to be serviced.”

“You—”

“But you ruined that for me.”

Embarrassment heats up my cheeks once again. “And I apologized for it.”

He hums as if in assent. “But apologies don’t make for a happy ending now, do they?”

“What happy ending?”

He takes his time replying as he stares at my flushed cheeks, my hair, my halo, the tray I’m still holding against my chest. My short skirt, my bare thighs, all the way down to my heels.

Once he’s satisfied with his perusal, he lifts his eyes, dark and glittering, and drawls, “The kind that a half-naked girl writhing on my lap leads to.”

I’m still frowning. “What does that…”

My words trail off when I finally grasp what he means, and his mouth pulls up in a tiny smirk. “Ah, so the Little Strawberry finally catches on.”

My heart skips a beat even as anger warms my chest. “Is it because of my red hair? The nickname.”

“No, it’s because you wear your little red heart on your sleeve.”

“You’re a pig,” I tell him.

“And you owe me a happy ending,” he declares.

“What?

“Actually”—he pauses to look me up and down once again—“I’ll let you off the hook if you manage to get me hard.”

“Wait, what ?”

“Give me a lap dance for the one you ruined,” he tells me, jerking his chin up at me, his words commanding. “And we’ll call it even.”

I let a few seconds pass as I absorb what he just said. “Are you… You’re kidding, right?”

He shakes his head slowly. “I never joke about these things.”

“What things?”

“Things involving my dick.”

“Your d…” I shake my head, blushing furiously.

“Okay, time out, all right? I know what I did was wrong. I get it. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in your business.

Message received. You can do whatever you want with whoever you want.

And I will stay far, far away from you. Now, can you stop being an asshole for a second and just let this go?

Let me get you some towels and let’s just forget it ever happened. ”

“Can’t. I’ve got a very good memory.”

“Why, are you an elephant?”

“Nah, just an unhappy customer, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not a stripper,” I remind him with clenched teeth.

“I’m not going to give you a lap dance. The most I can do is pay you back.

” At this, a muscle jumps on his cheek for some reason, but I keep going, “That’s what I was trying to say in the beginning before…

all this. If you just tell me how much money you gave Bridgette, I can pay you back and we can put this whole thing behind us. ”

It's not ideal. It’s going to set me back but I’m also not going to give him a freaking lap dance. So paying him back is the lesser of two evils.

“Three thousand dollars,” he replies after a few seconds.

“What?” I shriek.

“A little over that, but we’ll round it down to three.”

“You really gave her over three thousand dollars ?”

His jaw clenches. “It’s not a big deal.”

I open and close my mouth a couple of times before stuttering, “It is a big deal. You gave her enough money to buy a second-hand car. There’s no way her lingerie cost that much. No way .”

“Yeah, but she left, didn’t she? Instead of standing here and running her mouth, calling you a bitch,” he bites out.

Wait a second, what?