“Bullshit?” I grip the handle tighter, glaring at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He releases his hold on the steering wheel and works his tongue over his lower lip. “Means it’s bullshit.”
“Fine.” I cock my chin, rain making everything feel like chaos. “I was thinking I wish we never would have happened. That what you want to hear?”
“Bullshit.”
I let out a sharp groan. “You’re bullshit.”
“Really?” He laughs the word out. “I’m bullshit? I’m not the one hiding engagement rings, pretending I don’t want what’s standing right in front of me, and selling half-truths to anyone with an ear.”
“Half-truths?” I demand. “Says the man who can’t answer a question straight to save his life.”
“Well, maybe if the woman asking the question wasn’t so scared to ask what she really wants to know, I’d be a little better at it.”
“Oh, don’t even,” I shoot back. His eyebrows lift in his silentwhere’s the lie?look that fills me with fight. “You want the full truth? How about this, Nash—I hate that I told you to leave and you didn’t fight me hard enough to stay. Hate that you got in this stupid truck and drove away eight years ago and I had totell everyone you were dead because it was better than admitting you were alive somewhere without me.”
The rain roars.
“I hate that I got engaged to someone else because you didn’t come back. Because you chased fun, and even after all that, all I want to do right now is crawl across this seat and wrap myself around you.”
He is so still and the rain is so deafening and my skin is so hot.
I need to get out of here, and yet, I keep going. “I hate how you couldn’t bother to do laundry and now you have a whole perfect house and own a fucking frother.” When I think I’m done, I’m not. “I hate the postcards you sent. The way you look at me.” I let out an empty laugh. “And mostly, I hate how much I don’t hate you. Happy now?”
My whole body is shaking, and I don’t trust myself to stay in this truck so close to him. I push the door open, rain drenching me instantly as I step into the street.
He follows suit.
“Rue.” My name is a beg on his lips, one that I’m not equipped to handle.
I stop—briefly—and at the sight of Nash in the rain, looking at me looking at him with the same amount of want I feel across every cell in my body, I know I can’t marry Jonathan.
Drenched after the two-block jog to my car, I don’t register a single thing for the ten minutes I drive. It’s the relentless rhythm of rain, the pounding of my heart, and my repeatedwhat the hell am I doing here?before I make the wet walk of shame to the shed.
I call Jonathan—driven by guilt and the need to confess everything then end it all—only to get his voicemail followed by a short text reminding me his service is bad.
I scream at the phone—this isn’t jitters, this is so much bigger than that—but texthave fun!
Then, on a futon I shouldn’t be on, I rip my wet clothes off and imagine the man I can’t have doing everything he’s not allowed to, but I so desperately wish he was.
Thirty
“Hey, Mac, how are ya, man?” Nash’s muffled voice rips my eyes open and I flinch from the light pouring through the blinds of the squatter’s shed. “You get my emails?”
I jolt upright.
Nash is outside.
I’m in his shed.
Where I spent so much time thinking about his hands and mouth that I forgot to set an alarm.
Shit.
I hit the ground with a thud and crawl to the window, coming up at eye level to peer out.
Nash is pacing by the pool in sweatpants and without a shirt—hereallyhasn’t aged—talking on the phone. He has a coffee mug in one hand and Frank is on his heels.
