Page 42 of Hard to Love

“Christ, woman.” It’s a swear below the hum of people shouting at him to leave me alone, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even flinch when I push his shoulder as he simultaneously grabs my bra and remaining chips off the poker table before trying to escort me out of there.

Fury courses through my veins. “Leave me alone. You don’t get to tell me—”

“Like hell I don’t,” Finn says before picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes who doesn’t have a say.

“Put. Me. Down,” I shout, my legs kicking and my hands slapping at his butt as he tightens his grip over my thighs while walking through the casino like nothing is amiss.

People are staring.

At least I assume they are because I’m face down being treated like a little kid, but not a single person steps in to help me out. Instead, I see flashes from phones taking pictures.

By now, not only is my head dizzy but I’m panting from trying to wriggle out of his grasp.

“I swear to God, Finn,” I say as the elevator dings and he strides into it and closes the doors, telling other people they can’t get on. “Put me down.”

But he doesn’t. He just adjusts me on his shoulder and tightens his grip. “How the ever-loving fuck does one even get into a strip poker game on the floor of a casino, huh? How does that even happen?”

“It’s pretty easy when you’re Stevie Lancaster,” I snipe back.

“You know what’s even easier? Having a million videos and pictures of you all over the Internet, half dressed and totally drunk.”

“Well, it sure as shit beats the picture of you and me from last night being everywhere.” My words smother the small space and Finn doesn’t respond.

Where the alcohol was numbing before, now it’s just pure, unfettered anger. Sobering and almost invigorating.

The elevator dings.

He strides with me down the hall and only after he enters my suite with the key card he must have kept, does he put me down. And by put me down, I mean he throws me on the bed before walking back out as if he didn’t just haul me up here like he owned me.

I’m up and scrambling to go after him within a second.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” I scream, picking up the throw pillow on the couch as I walk past it and throw at his back.

It hits him squarely between the shoulder blades and he turns back on me so quickly that it knocks me off my stride.

“Who the hell do I think I am? I’m the man who just saved your ass from causing a scene that you wouldn’t be able to undo.” He steps into me, the muscle in his jaw ticking and the tendons in his neck taut as he jabs his finger at himself as if to make the point.

“I don’t want your help.”

“I’m sure you don’t through your drunken goddamn haze but rest assured, you needed it.”

“I didn’t. Especially not from a quitter like you.”

And there it is—the reason I’m angrier than anything—laid out between us.

He quit on me when I thought he believed in me.

He quit on me when, compared to the loneliness of the last few horrific months, I finally had someone to anchor me.

He quit on me when he made me want him even though I didn’t want to.

“A quitter like me?” His eyes narrow as he steps even closer. His voice is calm and even where mine is wild and crazy. I don’t care because he hurt me when I’m so sick of being hurt. “I thought that was exactly what you wanted, Stevie. For me to quit so you could go crazy and sabotage the rest of your career to the best of your ability.” He hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “Case in point, downstairs.”

“Case in point? How about case in point that you’re not the man I thought you were?”

“Oh, I’m wounded. As if you had me figured out in the whole ten days I’ve known you.”

“I have you figured out a whole lot more than you think I do.” I push against his chest, begging for a reaction from him. Needing him to feel as out of control as I feel right now. “I just didn’t figure you for a pussy who ran away when shit got real.”