Princess
You totally missed the point. The facts should be about each other.
Jack had to be shaking his head at his phone while that little furrow between his dark brows grew deeper.
Yeah, okay, so do you like unicorns?
Princess
Fucking random, dude.
Princesses like unicorns and pink, right?
He left me on read, but the ear-to-ear grin and adrenaline spike was all the proof I needed.
Whatever this was had reached new levels of intense. The bad part was how quickly it became addicting and how quickly it faded, leaving me hungry.
“You’reawfulquiettonight,”Sasha said beside me.
I turned down the volume on the music in my truck, having made it a little higher so she wouldn’t talk. Obviously, that hadn’t worked as planned.
“Yeah.” I scratched through my hair. “Sorry. Uh, I like your skirt.”I like your skirt?What sort of bullshit was that?
“Thanks. I got it last weekend when Momma took me shoppin’.” And there she went. “I’d had to pitch a fit first ’cause she wanted to go to Montgomery, but I made her take me to the Summit …”
I relaxed with a sigh, tuning out Sasha’s rambling about her and her momma. It hadn’t been a lie, so why did it feel like one? Ididlike her skirt. Sasha always dressed cute.
Her long, wavy hair was pulled over her shoulder, and she toyed with the ends as she talked. Her pink lips smiled a bit as she went on about whatever. In the low lights of my truck, her eyes sparked every time she glanced at me, and even more when she caught me watching her before I refocused on the road.
“What?” she asked with a wide smile. Dropping her tone, she added, “You wanna skip the party?”
A future flashed before my eyes. Twenty years condensed into two seconds, featuring our wedding at her daddy’s church, our two kids, and a dog that dug holes in the yard. Our divorce, my gray hair, and her death grip on a youth she’d outgrown.
I shook my head. “Uh, nothing,” I said to the first question, ignored the second one, and got out of my truck. I’d parkedat the Beach at some point in my distracted nightmare. No. I certainly didnotwant to skip the party. At least, not for any of the horny reasons written all over her face. Reasons that would assuredly lead us to a future I undeniably wanted no part of.
Sasha followed, then tucked her slim arm around mine, and we headed for the sand. Many classmates from school were here, and being a public area, there were some I didn’t know too.
I upnodded Nick and Michael but stayed with Sasha while she paraded me around her friends. It was this thing we did at every party. I played the boyfriend—reaffirming to everyone that someone wanted her—long enough she was fully claimed or something, then she’d release my arm, and I’d mumble something about catching up with the guys. She’d kiss me before I left her side, then I’d get a break for an hour or so.
And that was exactly how it went tonight.
We went through the motions of dating, but in truth, it had become a lie. There was no doubt in my mind Sasha would probably stay content with what we had, but I couldn’t say that for myself any longer.
While my girlfriend smiled at me across the bonfire, where she stood and chatted with her friends, shooting me kissy faces every so often that I smiled in response to on autopilot, I thought about a guy.
A guy who hated me and had never said anything nice to me.
A guy who left me on read but I itched to text again anyway.
A guy who stood next to his brother, talking with his soccer teammates, and hadn’t once acknowledged me tonight.
And fuck me, if that didn’t make me think about him more.
This unexplainable hate for another person, which was so unlike me, might’ve taken a jump and landed on borderline obsession. I glanced at him dozens of times and had to finally admit to myself I was doing so in hopes he’d be looking back at me. Once. Once was all I needed. Once to know that he knewI was here, that he recognized me. Or maybe I was hoping for more. When our gazes crossed, would I find indifference or violence? Would he stare at me in silence again? A silence that said so much.
Why did I want to be in Jack’s head as he was in mine? What had me so entranced with him? Why was I starved for his attention?
Jesus, I was going fucking crazy right now, sliding deeper into this fixation. Dozens of people around us, and no one had a clue how badly I needed another shot of Jack.
