I grab him by the collar of his shirt, shaking him. “Why thefuckwould you say that?”
“Because he straight-up told me he’d use you and ruin you completely, and there’d be nothing anyone could do about it. I figured I’d level out the glaring power imbalance so you wouldn’t look like some love-drunk idiot.” He shoves me back. “And guess what? He saw through every one of your tactics. Showing up at the restaurant, the cheap provocations, dragging him out here—none of it worked, because he never left New York for you. Even when you thought you had him cornered, he was just playing you.”
I raise my fist, my hand pausing in the air as my muscles coil with tension.
“You’ll punch me because of him?” He tilts his head. “Really, now?”
“Fuck you.” I kick him, releasing him with a shove. “Stay out of my and Vaughn’s business.”
“No.”
“Cyrus,” I growl his name.
“Yulian,” he says coolly, standing up. “You’re not seeing or thinking straight when he’s around, which can get you in trouble.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
He shakes his head, but he says nothing.
“What?” I snap. “Just spit it out, Cy. I know you hate Vaughn, but I really dislike it when you’re antagonizing like this. I know you must’ve provoked him. You do that all the time when you hate someone.”
“I don’t hate Vaughn, and I wouldn’t be antagonizing if I thought he cared about you as much as you care about him.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t want you to pay for this again, Yuliy. You deserve to beput first.You deserve someone who doesn’t walk away when things get too difficult.”
Then he steps out the room, leaving me more tense than when he disclosed that he told Vaughn about the revenge.
Fuck Cy.
He can be noisy and annoying.
But his last words keep playing in my head on a loop.
Prick is always right, and I’m now having a mini existential crisis.
I flop back on the bed. The mattress bounces beneath me, and Vaughn’s woodsy scent fills my nostrils, expands my chest, and twitches my cock.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” I glare at my dick that’s half tenting my shorts. “You should listen to Cy and have some dignity, man.”
I shake my head because I’m literally talking to a dick.
My phone vibrates on the nightstand, and I retrieve it with another sigh. Probably Alina. She gets demanding when I don’t FaceTime her at least once a day. She’s been extra cheerful lately, her smile radiant. The incident in DCseems to have empowered her instead of the other way around. She’s always busy with “stuff” lately.
My heart does that small squeeze, and I sit straighter when I see Mishka’s name on the screen.
He’s calling me?
This is the first time he’s ever done that.
I swipe the screen, then put the phone to my ear, all sorts of emotions rushing through me. Uncertainty, chaos, but mostly pain.
I’m hurt that he chose to leave without talking to me, even if he had a good reason behind it.
“Morning,” he says as soon as I pick up, his deliciously deep voice, which whispered crude things to me, sounds raspy.
“Hey,” I reply, not sure what the fuck I’m supposed to say. I’ll never acknowledge the pain, like I was abandoned after a booty call or something.
“Sorry I left,” he says. “I was being impulsive by breaking into your place last night. I shouldn’t have done that, so I had to go.”
“You could’ve woken me up.”
