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It feels like a punch to the goddamn gut.

“How can you say that?” she asks, hurt filling her expression as she searches my face. “After everything we’ve been through.”

My head jerks back and my brows furrow. “What the hell have we been through, Leigh-Ann? We hooked up a couple times a week for a couple months. That’s it.”

“No,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “It was more than that. It meant more than that and you know it.”

I look over at Joe.

He’s as confused as I am.

There isn’t a single person on this compound that thought what Leigh-Ann and I had for a few months was anything more than casual.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Her chest heaves. “It started as casual, yes, but it turned into more. You kept coming back. Kept finding reasons to see me and be with me.”

Did I?

Because as far as I remember, it was usually Leigh-Ann showing up to the clubhouse and us heading up to my bedroom for some meaningless sex before she left again.

“Look,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t know what you think it was but I was clear with you from the start that this would never turn into a relationship.”

“It meant more,” she grits out through clenched teeth. “I know it did whether you want to admit it or not.”

I step closer, meet her gaze and shake my head. “Let me be very clear, Leigh-Ann. This was never anything but casual sex.”

“No,” she whispers. “You don’t get to decide all by yourself that it meant nothing. There are two people in this relationship. I was there, too, and it meant something. It was real.”

What the actual fuck?

Why is she sitting here talking like I promised her the world and then backed out?

That’s not what fucking happened.

We met and hooked up once.

It was casual.

We decided to keep seeing each other, sure, but it was always casual.

And I couldn’t have been more clear about that.

“I’m not deciding anything,” I tell her, keeping my voice firm to try and make her see reason. “That’s just the way it was.”

She stares up at me, her grip on the bars somehow even tighter than before as she searches my face and then she gasps. “Is there someone else?”

“What?” I ask, taking a step back.

“There is, isn’t there?” She releases her hold on the bars and takes half a step back, pressing a hand to her stomach. “That’s why you changed so fast. There is someone else.”

I shake my head. “Nothing changed, Leigh-Ann.”

“Yes, it did,” she insists, taking another step back. “I was there. I know what happened. There is someone else.”

Something about her certainty unnerves me.

My chest feels tight and heat creeps up my neck as she stares at me for answers and all I can think about is Lennon. I don’t know what the hell we are yet but I don’t want Leigh-Ann to know a goddamn thing about her.