“Oh please,” I scoffed back at him, mocking. “We both know Itookwhat I wanted. You were just along for the ride.”
Rafe’s mouth opened to shoot back what I’m sure was going to be another poisonous barb, but Jordan had finally picked his jaw up off the floor.
“Enough!” he roared. “Both of you, just fuckingenough.” He shot Rafe a scathing glare, then flickered a sheepish look at me. “Violet, do you need something to wear? I can’t concentrate when you’re all…” He waved a hand at my stark naked, post-fuck-session state, and I couldn’t hide a grin. His sharp gaze seemed to run over not just my nudity but also every cut, scrape, and bruise like he was mentally cataloguing them all and storing the information for later. He didn’t baby me or ask if I was okay, and I loved that.
When I was really exhausted, I lost control over my emotions and they all just played out on my face. All of them. And right now I feared he could see exactly how confused and turned on I’d been by his kiss.
“Seriously, the way you’re looking at me makes it really,reallyhard—”
Rafe snorted.
“—toconcentrate.” Jordan finished, shooting his friend another glare.
As funny as I found the current dynamic, Jordan had never done anything to deserve my malicious anger, so I dragged a sheet over my body and gave him a small smile. “Better?”
“Marginally,” he muttered, his heated gaze staring at the thin material like he wanted to make it disappear. With a sigh, he sat on the side of the bed and ran his hands through his hair several times while Rafe and I just waited to see what he needed to say.
“What the hell did I walk in on here?” Jordan finally demanded, encompassing us both in this line of questioning.
I just shrugged and deferred to Rafe. Let him sort this out; I’d just wanted hot, meaningless sex to wash Alex out of my brain. Ugh. FuckingAlex.
An arrogant sneer curled Rafe’s lip, and he scoffed back at Jordan. “Shouldn’t I be asking the same thing? Since when did you and Cinderella start swapping saliva?”
I spluttered. “Uh, since never. That was a first, and I’d also really like to know where that came from.”
The small, apologetic frown that touched Jordan’s brow when he looked over at me struck a nerve. Had that been something more than just adrenaline at play?
He let out a small sigh, turning away from me again and giving Rafe a small headshake. “You knew I liked her. If you felt the same, you should have fucking said something sooner.”
“That’s not even remotely what this was about,” Rafe replied, his jaw clenched with frustration.
I was officially lost. There was more going on in the subtext than I was picking up on, and it was making me twitchy.
Clearing my throat, I folded my arms—holding the sheet in place to retain what little shreds of dignity I had left. “This was about my need to erase myex-boyfriendfrom my mind for five fucking minutes.” Rafe quirked a brow at me, and my cheeks heated. “Or longer. But it doesn’t change anything. Prince Prickly and I still hate each other just as much as yesterday.” I paused, frowning as I remembered everything I’d learned before the fight. “Maybe more than ever. Did you know that the Princess Ballot was rigged?” I speared Rafe with my stare. For some reason, some stupid, hopeless reason, I wanted him not to be the epic, unredeemable asshole I suspected he was. I wanted him—and all my friends for that matter—to be ignorant of the secrets Alex had so carelessly spilled.
His long hesitation filled me with dread.
“What? No, we don’t know anything about that,” Jordan responded, his confusion clear in his voice. But my gaze never moved from Rafe’s. He fucking knew something. “Rafe? Bro? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
I genuinely believed I didn’t care what Rafe thought of me. We weren’t friends, and despite all the sex we’d just had, we certainly weren’t lovers. But somehow as I stared into his angry, unsurprised eyes, my heart broke a little bit more.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I whispered. “You knew that I was chosen because of my DNA. That Alex was planning on making me fall in love and sign some archaic marriage contract. Is that what happened to all the ballot winners? Did they all get tricked into getting pregnant, too? ’Cause that’s what Alex had planned for me.”
At this, I finally got a reaction out of him. “What?” he spat, his face twisted in disgust. “No! I didn’t know anything about that. That’s…” He trailed off, shaking his head with disbelief. “No.” His gaze returned to mine, and this time there was no pretense. His eyes were full of what appeared to be a sincere apology. “I swear, Vi, I had no cluethat’swhat they were up to. But… yeah, I have suspected since the last ballot that something weird was going on.”
I nodded slowly, releasing the heavy breath I’d been holding. Suspecting wasn’t knowing, and that made all the difference to me. He’d also tried multiple times to warn me away from Alex, in his own fucked-up way, and I’d chosen to ignore him. I had no one to blame but myself for this mess.
“Well,” I muttered, feeling my shoulders sag under the weight of all my issues. “Maybe you can understand why I needed to forget all ofthatfor a while.”
A fake cough near the door alerted us to another participant in the conversation, and Nolan grinned a sly, sexy grin. He held my missing blade, which he must have rescued from the tournament. Relief flooded through me that it hadn’t been lost or stolen. I’d worked too damn hard to earn that blade.
“Well, New Girl. If that’s how you forget your problems, I, for one, would like to be involved.”
He was joking. Wasn’t he?
“Me too,” Jordan added, and he definitelywasn’tjoking.
What. The. Fuck?
