Page 86 of Rulebreaker

“Yeah?” Dash bends, his face several inches from mine. “Then why the fuck are you here and not in Nashville with Lily when she so clearly needs you.”

I sniff. “I’m sure she and herhusbandare doing just fine.”

Dash straightens, shoves his hand through his hair and sighs disgustedly.

But it’s Banks quiet question that slices deep, shattering all that ice around me. “Did she tell you shewasn’tmarried anymore?”

“No,” I growl. “But generally fucking someone and dating them and making them fucking fall in love with you means that you’renot fucking married!”

My friends still.

Then Dash lifts his brows. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know,” I grit out.

“Youdidn’t know?” Banks says, eyebrows in his hairline, shock in the lines of his face.

“I fucking just said that, didn’t I?”

The idiots just look at each other.

“You didn’tknow?”Royal asks.

“Right,” I mutter, shoving up to my feet. “I’m done with this conversation.”

Banks catches my shoulder, pushes me back down. “You didn’t background check her?”

I blow out a breath. “No.”

“Seriously?” Dash blinks.

Kill me now.

But I know they’re not going to leave–and as much as itgalls me, I can’t fucking take them all on at once. They’ll just hold me down and I’ll have to answer their questions anyway. “I trusted her,” I admit and without the ice, the pain is roaring back in, making it hard to breathe, to think. “So no, I didn’t run a check on her. I expected her to tell me shit like this.”

Royal shakes his head. “Fuck, man?—”

“I know—” I begin, expecting him to be on my side now.

“—you need to stop acting like a hurt little bitch boy and focus.”

My mouth drops open. Then I glare at him again. “On the fact that she lied to me?”

“On the fact that her feelings for you were likely so goddamned big that she was terrified of hurting you,” he says and those words bounce through my insides, doing damage, so much damage that my anger starts to ebb away…

And horror slowly begins to grow in its place.

Because all at once I remember her telling me we needed to talk at the airport.

And at the house Jean-Michel arranged for us, when I was so fucking worried about cooking us breakfast that I didn’t give her the time or space.

Had there been other times?

Maybe.

Christ, I can’t think.

Can’t breathe.