Page 65 of On The Edge

“I promise. Yes.” She looks over her shoulder and sees me and hesitates. “Look. I have to go. We’re heading to the airport. Yes. Monaco.” Another murmured sound. “Please don’t worry. I said, I promise. Love you too.”

She moves into the room, her face a mask of indifference when she speaks. “You’re here.” The words are as stiff as her posture.

Apparently, I’m the asshole. This is beginning to become a regular thing, and I’m not a fucking fan of it.

“I am.” I hold the coffee up—my apology of sorts—and move toward her as she eyes me. “For you.”

“Did you even come to bed?”

Does it fucking matter? That’s my instinctual response. My distaste for being controlled.

And then through the steel in her eyes, I see a break. I see a hint of worry before her guard goes back up.

Fuck. She really was worried. Last night wasn’t just for show. Look who’s the asshole . . . again.

“Couldn’t sleep.” I glance over to the chair I sat in, fighting every urge until I had to gain more space before I did something we’d both regret. Again. “So I walked for hours. Got us coffee.”

She looks down at hers, but still doesn’t take a sip. “Just like that. You can drink like you did and”—she snaps her fingers—“you’re perfectly fine?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“This isn’t fucking funny, Cruz.”

“What? The race was over. My job was done. I get a mulligan. A day to cut loose. You going to bust my balls or what because I have enough people doing that?”

“You don’t get it.” Her voice softens momentarily, and I immediately straighten my shoulders. None of that shit.

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“I was worried about you. All night on a roof while you were drunk.”

A strange feeling hits my chest. One that is as foreign as me sleeping in the same bed with one woman for six nights in a row.

“So that’s why you’re mad? Because I worried you?”

“No.” She sighs heavily, goes to pick up her coffee, and then sets it back down without drinking it, almost out of principle. Kind of like a refusal to accept my olive branch of an apology.

“Then why? Because I put too much sugar in your coffee? Clue me in here, Madds, because there’s only room for one of us to be moody in this fouple situation, and I hate to break it to you but that’s going to be me.”

“Fouple?”

Well, at least I got confusion to replace her anger for a second.

“Fake couple.” I offer a grin. It usually wins her over, but when I meet her eyes again, I don’t think it moved the needle whatsoever.

Jesus. Whatever I said to her last night must have been bad if she’s still holding on to her anger.

What was it though, because from where I’m sitting, I remember almost every damn thing.

“Not even a crack of a smile on that, Hart? Damn. Tough crowd.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what? Why you woke up so bitter? No, I don’t. We’ve survived living together this far without any monumental issues.” I tap my cup against hers still sitting on the desk. “Yay. Go team.” I pump a fist in the air. “Well, unless you call this an issue. I mean is this our first fight as a fouple? Should we take a selfie to document it for all to see since apparently, we have to document everything?”

“No. You don’t get to do this.”

And this, folks, is why I don’t have a girlfriend. We fuck. I leave. And none of this inane back-and-forth conversation that makes no fucking sense.