Page 47 of On The Edge

I pulled a Cruz Navarro on Cruz Navarro.

I bury my face in my hands and try to process every way imaginable this could have gone and this wasn’t it.

In all the scenarios that ran through my head the first night I found out there was only one bed, it was me rejecting him. It was me frustrated with him being a guy, with him disrespecting my boundaries. With him being him and wanting casual sex for the sake of casual sex.

Who the hell is this woman I’ve become in a few short days?

And what am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to face him when this . . . shouldn’t have happened?

I sneak another glance his way, at all of him, and ignore the sweet ache that begins in my body.

Cruz Navarro is the player-est of players. He dates women a couple of times and then moves on.

He can’t move on from me.

We’re stuck in this . . . situation. And now I’ve slept with him and don’t know how to fix it.

* * *

When I get out of the shower, he’s no longer in bed.

In fact, he’s nowhere in the entire damn hotel room.

That’s good, right? That means I have more time to figure out how to handle this.

But wait. He’s nowhere in the damn hotel room. That means he’s silently freaking out about this too. Is he?

No. He most definitely is not.

This is a normal thing for him. Casual sex. Sex without strings. Fucking your pretend girlfriend until she comes so hard she sees stars, and then being gone when she wakes up because you regard what happened as being nothing more than just sex. As her being easily replaceable with the next person waiting eagerly in line.

But I’m not and that’s the problem.

I’m stuck here.

We’re stuck together.

And now . . . now we’ve screwed this all up.

By the time I hear the door click shut at my back, I’ve already worked myself up into a frenzy. I have ten speeches rehearsed—why this shouldn’t have happened, why it can’t happen again, why it was a huge mistake—and all of them are basically allowing me to save face.

And none of them come out when our eyes meet.

“Please tell me what I think happened didn’t happen.”

“Well, shit, Madds. Way to knock a man’s ego down a peg right off the bat.” He chuckles but stays near the door of the hotel room, arms crossed over his chest, and shoulder against the wall.

He’s keeping his distance. He’s letting me know there will be no warm fuzzies after last night. That there is nothing more to it than a physical act, a release. He couldn’t be more obvious about it if he tried.

I should be thrilled by that. That’s what I want. Then why does it hurt a little bit too?

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just . . . we were drunk.”

“Very.”

“And I don’t remember much.” I remember everything.

“That makes two of us.” He tilts his head to the side and studies me. I’m not sure why the intensity of it disarms me, but it does. It’s almost as if he’s trying to see something in my expression but what it is, I don’t know.