Owen
When I got home, I stormed into my bedroom and slammed the door. Then I kicked the leg of my bed as hard as I fucking could, furious with myself and with Tanith and with everything.
“What the fuck, man?” a sleepy voice asked, and I blinked through the darkness to see Phin sitting up in my bed.
“Why are you in my room?” I asked, flicking on a light. Phin’s dark hair was sticking up everywhere, and he was still wearing his suit trousers and his tie . . . without a shirt on.
“I thought this was the guest room.” Phin yawned, looking around. “You’ve got nothing up on your walls, my friend. I’ve seen corporate reception rooms more decorated than this.”
“I have books,” I said tightly, walking toward the bed. “Anything else is clutter.”
I liked a clean room, a nearly empty room. It helped me keep everything in its proper place, which was essential when my inbox was constantly overflowing with Preston Media work. Work my mother expected me to do since I’d one day be at the helm of the company.
Doing that work was the only time my mother remembered I was alive, so it wasn’t exactly optional.
But I didn’t like to think about that too hard, or I’d feel that cracking in my chest again. The same cracking feeling Tanith had achieved so fucking effortlessly tonight.
“Get out of my bed,” I grumbled, grabbing Phin’s wrist and pulling.
“I like it here. We can snuggle,” he said. “I’m very good at it.”
I didn’t have a problem sharing my bed—normally. But I was in no mood for company tonight, and I was probably going to require at least two angry masturbation sessions in order to sleep anyway.
“Get out,” I said again, trying to yank him to his feet. “I don’t want to be around you or anyone else right now.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Phin asked, stubbornly staying in bed. “Are you still mad about the mayor’s daughter? I didn’t know, dude. I thought she was just some hot blonde.”
Who looked exactly like Aurora did before she dyed her hair, I thought.
“It’s not about the mayor’s daughter, and I don’t have a problem. Get. Up.”
“You do have a problem,” Phin declared. “I can sense it on you.”
“You absolutely cannot because there’s not one to sense.”
“You have a hickey on your neck, and you’re pissed as hell,” Phin observed smugly. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”
I scowled. “It’s not.”
“It is. Who is it? Not Sera, because you’d already be dead.”
We shared a look, both silently agreeing on that point. Rhys might not have claimed Sera for his own, but I was reasonably certain he’d eviscerate anyone who did. And I meant that literally. He would remove someone’s guts with a fishhook, horror-movie-style, and lose not a single wink of sleep over it.
Phin kept guessing. “Aurora? It’s not Aurora, is it?”
He was still drunk enough that he couldn’t keep the obvious pain out of his voice. Purely to put him out of his misery, I told him the truth.
“Tanith,” I admitted quietly. “Tanith Bradford.”
“Tanith!” he said. “God, of course. Of course it’s her.”
“Why of course?” I asked irritably. “She’s the worst possible girl for me. She’s poor, for one thing, and not even a ‘from a good name and at least used to have money’ kind of poor. Her family is nothing; her connections are nothing. I don’t know what I was thinking on that yacht in Ibiza; there were so many of our girls there—fit as hell, and so much easier to handle. Then I somehow found myself wanting a nobody in a T-shirt and cutoffs.” I shook my head. “She fucking hexed me or something. It makes no sense.”
Phin stared at me, his forehead furrowed. “You didn’t say any of that, did you? To her, I mean?”
I frowned. “Well, yes. Obviously, I had to give her some context for my insane obsession.”
His brows popped. “And she took that . . . well?”
“She told me to fuck myself and that she was going to find someone new to kiss. Lots of new someones, actually.”
Phin let out a bark of laughter and then clapped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry, dude, really. Sorry. But, oh my God, you are a dumbass.”
I stiffened. “Fuck off, you twat.”
“No, really, look. You know I’m a screwup, and you know I screwed things up with Aurora—”
“And keep screwing them up,” I muttered.
He kept on talking like I hadn’t spoken. “But even I can see that you messed up, bro. Like, messed up bad.”
“How is being honest a bad thing?” I demanded.
“Because it means you honestly feel like she’s beneath you, dickhead. Why would she want anything to do with you after that?”
Panic, slow and cold, curled in my chest. “That’s not—look, when you say it like that, it sounds bad. That’s not what I meant!”
“It might not be what you meant,” Phin yawned, tugging his hand free from my grip and stretching back out on my pillow. “But it’s what you said.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
I got to my feet and started to pace. “But what was I supposed to say? That I’m glad she’s nobody and poor and that I’ll have to fight my parents every step of the way to date her if she doesn’t want to hide?”
Phin turned to his side, burrowing into the blankets like a woodland animal burrowing into a den. Well, a woodland animal that wasn’t six foot three of muscle and testosterone and bad, horny decisions.
“I don’t know what you were supposed to say,” he said, already sounding halfway back asleep. “But if I were you, I’d figure it out and tell her. Soon.”
“She won’t want to hear it,” I said, the panic clawing into my throat now. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t lose this. She was my sickness and my cure. I had to have her.
“Then write her a letter, man, I dunno,” Phin mumbled. “Bitches love getting letters.”
Bitches love getting letters.
I brooded over this as Phin started snoring, like a lanky, behemoth of a puppy. I paced and paced until my feet ached and I had to sit down at my desk. I stared at my laptop for a long time, my mind filled with the scent of her, the sounds of her, the memory of her eyes the color of a tropical sea, the feel of her wet cunt.
Her giggle when she ice-skated.
Fuuuuuck.
I buried my head in my hands for a minute, dragging in an agonized breath. If I didn’t have her, I would die of this. I would fucking die.
I opened up a fresh email draft and started writing.