After she drags her teeth across her lower lip, she nods.
As I mend her foot the best I can with Cameron’s minimal supplies, Macy whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry about. It was a glass. I’ll pick her up a new set tomorrow.”
“I’m not talking about the glass.” Before she even speaks, her eyes reveal that she thinks Cameron and I were kissing in the kitchen. “I shouldn’t have snooped. I just…” She chews on her lower lip as she struggles to find an appropriate response. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”
When tears gloss her eyes, my hand instinctively moves to caress her freckled cheek. The tension shifts from distraught to electric with a single brush of my fingers against her skin, and it brightens the hue on her cheeks rather than fading it.
“You can tell me anything, freckles. You know that, right?”
The bob of her chin brings her lips within touching distance. I could use the firmness of her bite as she battles her desires as an excuse to drag my thumb over her mouth, but as I said earlier, I’m done lying.
After tugging her lip free from her teeth, I smudge her lip gloss with my thumb like my mouth is dying to do. The air is heavy with need before a loud huff rips me out of a dream too surreal to be reality.
“Just friends.Right!”
When a black shadow appears in the corner of my vision, I shelter Macy with barely a second to spare. The bottle of perfume Cameron tosses across the room hits me square in the back, but it doesn’t get close to Macy.Thank fuck.I don’t know how I’d react if she had gotten hurt on purpose.
“That’s not how afriendtreats afriend!”
It is at this moment I realize this isn’t a dinner party.
It’s an ambush.
This is why I finished senior year with hardly any friends. It was easier to distance myself from my friends and brothers than try to protect them from Cameron’s aggression when she got jealous.
While standing with my back to the door to protect Macy from further onslaught, I say, “You should go.”
Macy looks at me as if I have grown a second head. “No, she’s?—”
“Cameron. This is Cameron.” I thrust my hand at the hallway, which is echoing Cameron’s rant about how men can’tkeep their dicks in their pants even after they’ve caught the winning catch.
I can’t believe I forgot this side of her. Her jealousy featured more than anything when we dated. The fights were insane, but I thought the makeup sex made them bearable.
I was an idiot.
Macy moves to stand next to me, hobbling. “Grayson, I need to tell you?—”
Cameron’s nasally squawk interrupts us as she returns to the bathroom. “Get out of my house!Now!” Her words aren’t for me. They’re for Macy, whom she glares at as if she is dog shit stuck in the tread of her shoe. “I invite you into my home for a meal, and how do you repay me? You eye fuck my boyfriend in my presence.” When Macy doesn’t flinch at her vicious words, she shouts again. “Get out! Now!”
“She’s going.” My tone is a silent warning that I will retaliate if she forces me to place myself between her and Macy, and it won’t be to block Macy’s retort. I may even encourage it.
Macy is not in the wrong here, and I won’t allow her to carry the burden of my mistakes.
“I should stay,” Macy whispers as I guide her to the door.
Even though she can’t see me, I silently disagree. While I am grateful for her offer, I need to speak to Cameron alone.
This is also embarrassing. Cameron’s psychotic rage isn’t love. It’s manipulation and control. It is demoralizing. The fewer witnesses to the meltdown of a woman I once painted as a saint, the better. If word of this gets out, I’ll never be trusted by my colleagues again.
I profile people for a living, so how did I miss all the signs? I could blame being sidelined by love, but that isn’t it. If it were, I would have been out of the game years ago, right around the time I let Macy take the blame for a murder she didn’t commit.
Macy attempts to dig in her heels, but I’m too strong, so she returns to words. “Please don’t make me go. I’m the reason she’s angry, so shouldn’t I be the one who settles her rage?”
“This isn’t on you.”
“How can you say that?” My hand slips down her back when she blindsides me in the best way possible. “She didn’t lie. I was inappropriate. I admired a taken man more than I should have.”
