Page 80
Laughing, I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Good to know.”
“Why don’t you stay and hang out for a while so she can get some sleep before you take her back to your place? She literally just passed out.”
I glance past her toward the stairs, warring with myself for a moment before sighing and nodding my head.
“Yeah, all right. I could use a fucking drink anyway.”
She snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Hey,” I say as we turn toward the room where Marley and Moose are setting up the sound system. “Tell me what you know about this Conner fucker…”
“Oh, gladly,” she answers, her smile full of malice as she pulls out her phone and unlocks it before opening a whole folder of screenshots and photos dating back years.
“Shit.” I laugh, looking up at her. “You might be better than Streak.”
She laughs, holding her phone out to me. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“Noted,” I answer, reaching for it but before I can grab it, my own phone rings. I sigh, pulling it out of my pocket. Smith’s name flashes on the screen and I take a step away from Ali, indicating that I need a minute as I accept the call and put the phone to my ear.
“Please tell me you got something for me, brother.”
“I do but you’re not going to like it.”
“Just say it,” I shoot back, throwing myself into one of the chairs in the dining room. My knee bounces erratically and my stomach churns.
It’s going to be bad.
I know it is so I just need him to say it.
Finally, he sighs. “It’s Dominic King, Smoke. Gio and Luca are working for Dominic King.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Isabelle
“I hate you.”
The words are acid on my tongue because in spite of everything I’ve discovered, everything he’s done to me, I can’t actually bring myself to hold anything but love in my heart for the boy standing in front of me. I won’t let him know that though. Let him live the rest of his life thinking that I despise him, that I think he’s the worst kind of monster for betraying me like this. And he is but I still love him.
How fucked is that though?
He grins back at me.
The anger I felt a moment ago was nothing, absolutely insignificant compared to the rage burning through me now, so hot that it feels like it’s going to incinerate me from the inside out. The photos she sent me flick through my mind, bringing on another wave of pain as my vision blurs with the tears that I refuse to let fall. He doesn’t get to own my pain, not after everything he’s done.
“You think I fucking care, Izzy?” he shoots back, a cocky grin on his face that hurts more than the cheating and the lying. He stands from his chair and takes slow, calculated steps toward me. “Do you know how long I’ve been getting away with this shit? Since the beginning. It’s actually fucking astonishing how clueless and trusting you are. My friends would dare me to flirt with other girls when you were in the next room or make out with some random chick and you never even knew. It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.”
“I hate you, asshole.”
He laughs and pins me back against the wall, reaching up and dragging the backs of his fingers down my cheeks. “I bet you wish you hated me but if I wanted to, I could still pull you and we both know it. You’re weak, Iz, but you were a fun little toy to play with for the past few years.”
I shove him, trying to put space between us as my heart thrashes in my ears. “You fucking son of a bitch.”
“Don’t put your hands on me, you little cunt,” he snarls, shoving me back into the wall and pinning my body to it with his as he wraps a hand around my neck. My heart jumps into my throat and my eyes widen as I look up at him. “And remember one more thing, you’re nothing more than a convenient, easy fuck and that’s all you’re ever going to be.”
Fighting back tears, I force myself to meet his gaze. “Why marry me if that’s how you really felt?”
“It was the only way to win the game,” he answers with a shrug. “The guys all put a lot of money on this bet, saying I couldn’t convince you to run off to Vegas and marry me before we started college. Then, when they realized that I was close to talking you into it, they added the caveat that we actually had to go through with it and there was no way I was going to lose.”
