She's fully dickmatized, and I can't even blame her.
I can see it in the angle of her body. The way her tits are pressed together, giving him the perfect view of her cleavage. The careful tilt of her head that exposes her throat and a smile that tells Phoenix she’s his for the night if he wants her.
I look back at him, and he’s smiling.My smile.And now it’s stretched across his face like it belongs to her.
I rip my eyes away fast, too fast, my hands slamming onto the bar hard enough to send pain shooting up my wrists. I’m trying to rationalize the rage bubbling up inside me, reminding myself that I asked for this. But it’s killing me and doesn’t quiet this violent need to cross the room and make it very clear that he isn’t available.
Slowly, I turn back around, and when my eyes find their table again, she’s leaning in so close that her lips are practically touching his ear as she whispers something.
When his gaze finally lifts and finds mine across the distance, it cuts through everything—the crowd, the blur of light and noise, it all just disappears until there’s only him.
He holds my stare, never once looking away, letting me see the devastation on his face, but it’s not because he’s in pain. It’s because he’s the one causing mine. He wanted me to trust him when he told me how this felt, and still I pushed.
But buried behind that devastation is rage, and his eyes say everything his mouth can’t right now.
I fucking told you. I tried to spare you this.
My breath stutters, my body goes electric, and the alcohol running through my veins strips away any semblance of reason.
I want him away from her.
I don’t want her breath on his skin.
Realization suddenly hits me, and a wave of nausea curls in my stomach because Phoenix lived this for real, for years.
He did this.
He watched me.
Oh my god—hewatchedme.
He saw my body move with someone else. He saw hands on me that weren’t his and mouths where his should have always been.
He must’ve been hurt in a way I can’t even begin to fathom because this doesn’t even come close to what he felt.
How could he do it?
How the hell did he do it?
How did he watch me give away the kind of intimacy he would’ve killed for?
How did he stand in the background and swallow this kind of pain without breaking?
He loved me that hard.
That’s why.
He endured it because he always believed I’d come back. Because somewhere in that huge relentless heart of his, he knew we were inevitable and that no matter how much it tore him apart or how deep he had to bury it, I’d be his in the end.
And fuck—knowing that only makes this hurt worse.
The jealousy is eating me alive, but it’s the guilt that guts me. I put him through this every time I went on a date, every time I kissed someone else, and every time he watched someone elsehold me while he was silent and suffering in his own personal hell.
Jesus Christ, I did that to him.
His eyes narrow, the smile gone so fast it’s like it was never there. Whatever’s written across my face must be loud as hell because he starts to rise.
I shake my head, just once, and he freezes.
