Page 47 of Infatuated as They Come (Sinful Trilogy #2)

My jaw ticked. “The same shit he always says. I should be used to it by now, but it feels worse ‘cause of everything that’s happening—with how me and Holly have barely seen each other. It just feels like whatever I do, it’s never enough.”

“Look, don’t worry about her dad. You’re with the girl you love, right?” she asked softly. “And you want to be with her forever, don’t you?”

“Longer than that if it’s possible,” I said.

“You need to tell her everything you’re telling me. You need to look her in the eyes and make sure she knows. Don’t you want her to know?”

“I do. Really bad. I miss her and I love her. I love her so bad it hurts and I’m just trying to be…

everything . I’m trying to fix every problem but I keep making it worse.

I’m good at fucking things up and Holly’s good at fixing them, but it can’t be like that forever.

I just want to make her happy. I want to see her face every single day and kiss her and hold her and Christ, I should be with her right now.

” I jolted, pushing my hands through my hair.

“I gotta go. I’m so fucking stupid. Why am I so fucking stupid? She makes me stupid.”

“Go, go, go.” Lindsey shoved me backwards. “Go see her!”

“I… Yeah, I gotta go,” I muttered, looking over her shoulder. “Tell the—”

“I’ll tell them you said bye. Go see your girlfriend!” Lindsey insisted, giving me another shove. “Get out of here.”

Lindsey forced me out of the door and I shoved my hands into my pockets, feeling the little pom pom keychain and giving it a squeeze.

The air was cold and the sky was on the verge of turning dark and I should have been sitting across the table from Holly, looking into her eyes, watching her smile, hearing her laugh.

I really missed that sound. When was the last time I heard it in New York?

When did we last eat dinner together? See each other in the morning?

Spend our whole night just being together? She deserved so much better than that.

I was just about to jump into the truck when I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. It was a hand I knew too well, and I was dumb as fuck for coming back, because a second later, my dad was shoving me up against the truck door with a lazy grin on his face.

“You’re back already?” he asked. “That girl already got sick of you, huh?”

“We’re not doing this.” I pushed his hands off me. “Not tonight. Not now.”

“What happened? She get tired of you like I said she would?”

My eyes rolled as I turned around, but that was a huge mistake I usually knew not to make, because I was being shoved into the door again.

Every day with the man standing behind me had been a battle.

Defending myself had become an impulse, a necessity, the only way to survive another night.

It was taking everything in me to not put my hands on him.

Fighting back meant making things worse, and making things worse would make me late, and I had a goddamn date to get to.

“You used to at least be able to put up a good fight,” he said. “What happened?”

I shook my head and reached for the truck door, but his hands were back on my shoulders. I couldn’t hold in my frustrated grunt as I spun around and shoved him away from me. “We are not fucking fighting .”

“What happened to your little girlfriend?” He gave me a push back. “I told you she’d get sick of your shit and dump you here. You need a place to stay, don’t you? You’re not coming back here. No way.”

“Yeah, I missed you too,” I muttered. My phone went off in my hand suddenly and I looked down to see that Holly was calling.

My thumb hovered over the answer button, but the last thing she needed was to hear me and my dad going at it.

“Real nice seeing you again,” I said, hitting decline on my phone.

He laughed. “You expected me to miss you or something? When you left me here by myself , running off after some girl who was never gonna love you and want you?”

“Alright, we’re done. That’s it. Goodbye,” I muttered, and that was when I was met with that familiar feeling of his fist colliding with my jaw.

I pushed at him with one hand, my other reaching up to cup my chin.

I could already taste the sharp metallic feeling of blood hitting my tongue. “Are you fucking serious?” I snapped.

He yanked at my shirt and before I knew it, my head was hitting the dirt below us, and all I could think about was how I was fucking up my suit that I needed to look nice for my date.

The one I was dragging my girlfriend to when all she wanted to do was sit on the couch and drink hot chocolate with me.

I didn’t even know what he wanted. What were we fighting about this time? Who the fuck knew? But we were tussling and rolling in the dirt like old times, his fist missing my jaw just barely before I managed to get on top of him, pinning him to the ground.

“I told you: we aren’t fucking doing this tonight,” I said with gritted teeth, but there we were, already in the fucking middle of it.

“I have a date. I have to go to dinner with my girlfriend who I fucking love and miss and just want to see, but everyone else keeps fucking reminding me every two seconds of who I am and where I come from. I get it. I know. I am fucking aware . But I still love her and you might not give a fuck and he might not give a fuck and maybe you two should fucking meet up and be friends and talk about how much you both hate me and think I’m not good enough for her, but I’m just trying to give her everything I can and she says it’s enough for her so it’d be nice if other people fucking listened! ”

Including me. I hadn’t been listening either.

I stood up, hands pushing through my hair that was definitely more than a mess. A hiss left my mouth when I looked down at my suit, the black material covered in dirt and my shirt all wrinkled and my tie with a rip in it. Fucking great.

“You’re gonna end up just like me,” he muttered from the ground. “And she’s gonna end up just like your mother. Gone.”

I hauled the door of the truck open before he could get his hands on me again. “I’m not like you,” I said. “And good for Mom for fuckin’ getting away from you. I hope she’s happy.”

Slamming the door shut, I drove right out of there, leaving my old home behind with my ruined suit and messed up hair and racing heart.

If I drove right to the country club, I’d make it on time for our date, but I knew they’d never let me through the front door with my suit covered in streaks of dirt.

So, I drove to the closest clothing store only for them to not have any shirts in stock, and then the next store over didn’t have my size, and then the next store ended up being fucking closed, and then I was officially late.

I was wasting more and more time when I should have been with Holly.

Why wasn’t I with her? Why did I keep making stupid mistakes?

When I hit a red light, I got my phone out and winced at the thousands of cracks that covered the screen. I must have landed on it during the fight. My thumb tapped against the rough glass, nothing but blackness looking back at me.

I imagined calling Holly and hearing her voice and me telling her I’d be there soon. I knew full well that she was sitting there waiting for me like she had been doing the last few months. God, since we moved to New York.

My dad’s words echoed in my mind, and then Holly’s dad’s words were in there too, swimming around in my head, their voices loud and booming.

But the further I drove, that little pom pom keychain shaking as I went, I could hear Holly’s words clearer than theirs.

Her soft, calming voice. All the “I love you’s” and “I missed you’s”.

I needed to get back to her, see her, hold her close, tell her what an idiot I was for not being there with her and for her. I needed to do more than that. When I finally got to have her back in my arms, things would be different. I would be different. It was a promise I wouldn’t let myself break.