Page 30 of Fake Wife
I open the door to the restroom and barrel into a wall of a man.
“Oh!” I gasp as two hands curl around my biceps.
They don’t belong to Corbin and I’m immediately alarmed. They’re not as warm or as nice and it takes me a moment to recognize the man who’s pushing me out of the doorway of the bathroom and against the wall.
“Drake? What are you doing here?”
My blood chills, and the desire I was just trying to hide is no longer a concern.
“Me?” He leans in and drops his hands from my arms down to my hands. “What are you doing here? And with Corbin Lane of all people? Are you okay?”
My blood is pumping much too fast, my mind reeling. In front of me is the man I recently caught cheating on me, and while the pain at seeing him is real and very vivid, fresh like a wasp sting and burning, I can’t answer.
Speechless, I let him pull me back into a corner past the bathrooms.
“Talk to me, honey.”
It’s the honey that does it, dousing me with cool water. I yank my hand out of his. A week ago, I craved his rich brown eyes, his close-cropped dark hair that was fuzzy and spiky when I ran my hand over his head. Now it’s all wrong.
He no longer has the right to use that term of endearment.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” I say, responding to nothing he’s asked.
He doesn’t deserve my answers, and I blink away the image I have of him, some blonde bent over our bed—my side of the bed, her arms holding on tomypillow—while he thrusts into her from behind.
Damn. Was it really only a week ago? I see it all in the blink of an eye like it’s happening all over again.
“It’s for the hospital. Most doctors not working tonight are here. You haven’t been answering my calls.”
I turned my phone off when I spent the weekend with Corbin, and since we’ve been back in town, I’ve barely had it on at all. There’s no one to call and no one who would be calling me except Drake. I haven’t wanted to hear a single word he has to say, but now I can’t avoid him.
Damn it.
This is what I get for making a fool out of myself at the table.
Lady luck hates me.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I say, my voice breathless.
Until last Friday, Drake was the most attractive and sexiest person I thought I’d ever meet. I fell in love with him under a cherry tree six months after we started dating our junior year. He brought me a picnic lunch in between spring finals, helped me study for my statistics final because I completely suck at math, and then we made out, fumbling like teenagers, keeping it PG since we were in public, but it didn’t matter to me if anyone saw us or laughed as they walked by.
He’s been myworldfor seven years, and even in the last year when we were more strangers than lovers, I still never considered seeing someone else.
It’s always been him—until he made sure he wasn’t anymore.
“You have to let me explain, Teagan. Please. I hate that you saw what you did.”
His words burn through me, fire shoots from my eyes in a way I wish would burn him to pulp. “I’m sure you do hate I caught you cheating on me.”
I give him nothing but coldness. He’s lost the right to have anything else.
He smiles at me, though, and my knees wobble. I know every line of his body, every curve of his lips. I’ve memorized the gold flecks in his eyes and the exact arch of his brows. I’ve spent countless hours running fingers along his cheekbones and jaw. The small bump on his nose, a break from falling off a dirt bike when he was twelve that never healed correctly.
I’ve spent so many years with him it’s impossible not to be affected by the way he smiles at me, eyelids closing in his perfectly seductive and sexy way, and leans into me. He cages me against the wall, his fingers running along mine at my side, his other arm braces against the wall by my head, and I’m thrown into the epicenter of a hurricane.
This is Drake. My love. The man I’d planned to marry and live out my dreams with. He stomped all over them and I hate him for it, but it doesn’t mean I’ve been able to turn off all the love I have for him, either.
“Drake,” I whisper. “Please don’t.”
