I felt used, damaged and broken.Discarded.
And then there wasAsh.
With Ash, the sex was scorching hot, but it was empty. A quick fix, meaningless. I didn’t want to own his heart like I’d wantedJesse’s.
And in that, there was a different kind of suffering. I was realizing thatnow.
There were days, after I’d slept with Ash, that I felt like shit. Like I was only hurtingmyself.
And yet… I kept doingit.
And now here I was… and I had no idea what it would be like if I crossed that line with Seth. How far I might fall for him, or wouldn’t. How badly he might hurt me, or I might hurthim.
The only thing I knew for sure: if Seth and I had sex, we were both gettinghurt.
Him, because it would only complicate things between him and the rest of theband.
Me, because my heart hadn’t fully healed. I was over Jesse, but I still wasn’t whole. I’d gottenpastthe heartbreak, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to put myself back together in the wake of getting smashedapart.
The fact was, I had no experience with how to do this, and apparently there was a fucking steep learningcurve.
I still did not know when or how I would come out on the other side of this, feeling whole and stable and just fucking normalagain.
I’d finally let go of the past, yet when I thought about getting emotionally involved with anyone again, I still feltbroken.
I was unsure of my readiness to fall in loveagain.
And, simply put, I could not predict how my heart would react to having Seth Brothers, naked, in mybed.
If we had sex and—best case scenario—the sex was amazing… even if I felt wonderful right afterward… I did not know what would happennext.
I might turn into an ice queen. Freeze up. Become cold anddistant.
I’d done that to menbefore.
I could also fall head-over-heels.
I’d done that before,too.
I seriously had no idea. And it was scary how out of control this made mefeel.
Scarier still that it wasn’t immediately turning me off of the idea. That it wasn’t making me run for thehills.
That for some reason, it was just making me want to dive down that rabbit hole even more, and see where itwent.
Chapter Sixteen
Elle
“You sureyou don’t wanna see these?” Joanie asked me. She was on her laptop, on the other side of the island in Woo’s kitchen, the screen turned away from me. “Are you absolutely sure? I’m telling you… you lookgood.”
“I’ll take your word forit.”
I was hungover, nursing a glass of water and preparing to take my lunch outside. I’d only gotten up half an hour ago. I knew the photos of Seth and I from yesterday were all over the web by now. But I didn’t particularly want to seethem.
If I saw them, it would just beg the question of what everyone else was thinking when they saw them… and I didn’t want to care aboutthat.
“Seth looks good,” Joanie added, glancing atme.
