Sophie's expression turns a little shy as she bites her lip. Callum grins, grabs her right hand, and lifts it to his lips, placing a lingering kiss on the back of it.
It all overwhelms me in an instant. Fear. Regret. Shame. Anger. Longing. Self-loathing.
The brutal cocktail of emotions tears through me like poison. Nausea increases tenfold, and I move to the alley next to the store. I violently retch as I empty the contents of my stomach right there.
"Ugh, fucking gnarly!"
A smoky voice exclaims so suddenly that I startle. Still bent over and disoriented, I turn the wrong way and smack my head into the brick wall. Pain blasts my temple and momentarily blinds me. "Fuck!"
"Damn, I didn't even have to move," the voice cackles, and once my vision clears, I see that it's a leather-clad blonde, smirking at me. She stubs out her cigarette and puts a new one into her mouth, lighting it.
Rubbing the lump on my head, I take deep breaths, trying to get my heart rate to calm down.
"You fucking scared me," I snap, once I can speak again.
"Boo, bitch," she snarks, blowing a stream of smoke in my direction. Once my eyes adjust to the dark alley, I finally see the owner of the voice.
"Wait—I know you," I say. A flash of memory—her walking out of Rhea's apartment, those sharp blue eyes like steel, and that lip curled into a sneer. Then again, at Haunts, a smirking at me from the bar. "Are you stalking me?"
Her face doesn't move for a second, then there’s just the faintest tightening of her jaw, and her mouth twists into disgust. Shaking her head, she takes a long, slow drag off her cigarette before speaking, "You fuckin' wish, asshole."
I frown at her animosity toward me. "Then who the fuck are you?"
"A concerned citizen," she shrugs casually, looking at the cigarette between her fingers with a slight smirk on her face. My brain seems to be working at full capacity now, and everything pieces itself together.
A concerned citizen who saw me at Rhea's with Elise, my coworker...
"What the hell? You—" I sputter, running my hand through my hair as the world seems to tilt. My nausea returns as I stare at this woman who decided to take it upon herself to try to ruin my life. "You're the one writing to my boss? You realize you almost got me fired? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Pretty sure yours and your—ahem—mistress's actions almost got you fired,” she snorts, shrugging her shoulders. “I, as a concerned constituent, just reported the fuckery happening.My civic duty."
Staring at this woman, I try to put a name to her face. She's tall, almost as tall as me, heavily tattooed, and dressed in black leather and dark jeans and boots that look like they're itching to stomp right on my balls. If she’s from Starling Cove, she was definitely out of high school by the time I entered, and from the look of her, it doesn't appear that we even ran in the same circles.
"What the hell did I ever do to you?" I ask, my voice hoarse.
"Youexist. Men like you," she spits venom at me. "But it's not what you did to me. Sophie's a good friend of mine, and what you did to her..."
My heart drops at the name.
"Sophie? She—I..." I trail off pathetically. There’s no point in defending myself against what I’ve done, because I did it. I cheated. I betrayed her. My mouth snaps closed, and I slump against the wall, but my defeat seems only to piss her off more.
"You hadgoldin your hands," she barks, her voice rising. "You had what people spend their whole lives searching for—what they pray for—and you fucking threw it away like it was nothing. What I wouldn't give..."
Her voice breaks off, and she inhales—then again, chest rising and falling in choppy waves. Her eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, with a heartbreak that looks like it runs too deep. She closes her eyes and takes another drag from her cigarette, the cherry lighting up the dark alley.
Frowning at her words, I ask her, confused. "You...wantSophie?"
"No, you dumb fuck," she exhales a stream of smoke and rolls her eyes, tossing the cigarette on the ground and stubbing it out. "Love. You had your love right in front of you—alive, breathing, yours—and you spat in her fucking face. You ripped her open and left her bleeding, and for what? Because she got sick? Because she needed you to show up, and you're so weak you couldn't hack it?"
"I... I had never gone through anything like that before. I was scared," the words scrape out of me, a punishment for my cowardice.
"You were scared?" she says, but nods at my words. "No, that's valid, Paul. That’s a real fuckin' valid thing to feel in your situation, but you didn't even try to fight with her. You justburied your dick in the nearest and willing pussy, hoping to feel anything at all."
The words are delivered evenly, but they land like a kick to my throat, and I actually flinch at being read so easily.
Her blue eyes narrow as she steps closer, and I shrink back against the brick wall behind me.
"Congrats, you broke free, but do you feel any lesstrapped?"
