Page 83 of Crash

I let my head fall back against the door and closed my eyes, breathing in the lingering traces of his body wash in the air. Some masochistic part of me wondered if he was still standing out there, separated from me by nothing but three inches of wood and an ocean of unspoken words. Like the night I’d been assaulted, I pressed my palm to the door while Scarlett’s voice echoed in my head.“Every action says that he’s in love with you.”

God help me, but I was starting to think she might be right.

So, why did it feel like the closer he got to love, the harder he pushed it away?

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“How’d it go, Romeo?”

Scarlett leaned against my kitchen counter like she owned the place, sipping water with an expression that said she’d been waiting for me. Perfect. Just what I needed.

“That well, huh?” She actually patted me on the chest as she passed by. The casual familiarity was jarring. Most people knew better than to touch me, but apparently, Scarlett hadn’t gotten that memo.

“I screwed everything up.” Clearly, I was more rattled than I’d thought, spewing this out to a woman I didn’t know.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she said, examining her nails with exaggerated casualness, “she said it was the best orgasm of her life.”

I leveled my best glare at her. The one that made my interns squirm. She just grinned wider.

“We are not having this conversation.” I pushed past her to the fridge, grabbing a beer. “I don’t know you well enough to have this conversation.”

“I don’t think so.” She plucked the beer from my hand and set it on the counter with all the authority of a kindergarten teacherconfiscating contraband. “No drowning your sorrows until after we talk.”

“We’re not talking.”

“Agree to disagree. You need to talk to someone.”

“I have friends for that,” I said, grabbing my beer, holding her gaze, and taking a long pull.

“Ryker.” She cocked her head. “You and I both know you can’t talk to him about this.”

I ran a hand over my face. I didn’t want to tell Jace, Axel, or Knox either. They could tell Ryker. And, hell, Knox was in prison. Let me show up with my little problems in life when the guy was fighting for his.

“I’ve never seen Tessa this angry,” I admitted.

“Exactly.” Scarlett’s eyes sparkled with something that looked dangerously like insight. “She’s angry because she has feelings, and when Tessa doesn’t want to have feelings, she lashes out. Like a tiny, angry Chihuahua.”

The mental image of Tessa as an angry Chihuahua nearly made me smile.

“I don’t want it to be like this between us,” I admitted. “I want things to go back to normal.”

“Which normal?” She cocked her head. “The one where you both pretend you don’t have feelings for each other? Because I gotta tell you, that ship has sailed, capsized, and is currently hanging out with theTitanic.”

“I don’t know you well enough?—”

“To have this conversation. Yes, you mentioned that.” She waved away my protest like an annoying fly. “And yet here you are, looking like someone kicked your puppy, which means you’re terrified of losing Tessa.”

Damn it. She was right. I hated that she was right.

“Can I give you some advice?”

“No, I’m good.” I went to take another sip, but this woman, this fucking woman, snatched it out of my hand.

“Lucky for you, I’m feeling generous.” She hopped up onto my counter—actually hopped up onto my counter like it was a chair—and settled in like she was preparing to dispense wisdom. “You have exactly one get-out-of-jail-free card that’ll make this all better. It’ll be like magic pixie dust that erases everything that happened.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And what, pray tell, is that?”