The situation was far more complicated than that, but I could never be with Addie, not when I felt the way I did about Sutton.
“So you’ve just been leading me on all these years?”
“What? No, of course not.”
We’d met on a case nearly a decade ago, and while I could admit there’d been someflirting, most of it had come from her. I racked my brain, our interactions over the years flashing through, but I couldn’t pick out anything that would’ve given her the idea I’d been leading her on.
At least, not until asking her to Crew’s wedding.
Which, admittedly, was not a great look but only an isolated incident. It didn’t warrant all of…this.
My temples pulsed, and I lifted my hand to rub them.
Fuck, I was not in the right headspace for this.
“No, I get it, Lane. You get shot and she starts acting like she’s cared about you all along. Acting like you haven’t hated each other all this time.”
What the fuck was she talking about?
“I have never once said I hated Sutton.”
How I felt about Sutton was complicated as hell, though less so after my weird coma dream, buthatewasnottangled up in the mess.
Addie snorted derisively. “You may as well have for how poorly you two get along.”
“It’s not like that. There’s…history there.”
History I wouldn’t be getting into with anyone but Sutton. Hell, my own family didn’t even know how deeply Sutton was rooted into my goddamn bones.
Addie’s eyes flashed, mouth twisting into a sneer. “So you’ve been fucking her behind my back.”
“Behind your back? Addie, we”—I gestured wildly between us, a bad idea given the sharp, stabbing pain it garnered in my chest—“aren’t together! We never have been!”
Damn, shouting made my throat burn again. I was too fucking fragile for this, but Addie didn’t seem to care. If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man.
“What was the wedding then? Pity?”
“No. I thought there might be something here worth exploring.” Maybe I’d been deluding myself the entire time, but Ihadthought that to some extent. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone there. “But now I see it for the mistake it was.”
Addie’s face went blank, eyes shuttering, body going deathly still.
She’d run the gamut of concerning emotions in the last five minutes, but I had to admit: this was the scariest of all.
“Fuck you, Lane,” she spat before turning on her heel and stalking out the door.
She disappeared from sight, but shortly after, I heard anooffrom the hallway, followed by, “Oh, hey, Addie.”
Trey.
Addie didn’t offer a response that I could hear, and a moment later, my older brother appeared in the doorway to my room, eyes darting confusedly between me and the hallway.
I blinked in shock, still trying to process the last ten minutes.
Rubbing my forehead, I squeezed my eyes shut against the ache that had spread from my temples.
When I opened them again, Trey’s expression had morphed from happy teasing to concern.
“You good?” he asked, pulling a chair up to my bedside.
