With any luck she wouldn’t remember everything that happened tonight.
And he was left with some pretty uncomfortable truths. About himself. About her.
He didn’t want to think of it like he was standing at a fork in the road. He wanted to stay on the same road. He didn’t want to feel like he was on the verge of change. Like they were. It just wasn’t what he wanted. But it was the only image he saw. The only thing that seemed real. That there were decisions to make. Decisions he didn’t want to make. No. There were no decisions to make. Tonight she had been drunk. Tonight she had been...
She would want to go out again. Eventually, there would be some other guy. And he would have to decide what he thought about that guy. He would have to surrender her to someone all over again...
That was a hell of a thought. Like she was his. Except it felt like she was. It damned well did.
Asher had been safe in a way. Because the guy hadlet Rue and him have their relationship. He had been there, and more or less he hadn’t disrupted them. He’d been in the military. He’d been distant a lot of the time, and Justice had been able to keep his claim on Rue because of that.
Well. What about a new guy? Would he be jealous of Rue and Justice?
And Asher was crap in bed. So what about if she met a new guy who made her feel more? Who made her feel everything?
No. He didn’t need to think about that. Not now. He wouldn’t. Tonight had been an aberration. And there was no point digging into his feelings about the whole thing. Tomorrow she would be sober, and everything would be clearer.
Tomorrow, he would just act like nothing had happened.
Because he refused to go down this damned fork in the road.
They had been through too much to let something like this change them.
He would be damned.
Chapter Fifteen
This wasn’t the first time Rue had woken up disoriented in the bedroom at Justice’s house. But she felt remarkably worse this time than she had the first time. She was... she was hungover. She’d never been hungover in her life. Actually, until last night she’d never been drunk before.
Last night...
Pieces of it started to come back to her. Just little bits. She had gone out with Justice. And... that man had asked her to dance. And then... there had been a fistfight? She sat up. But that was a mistake, because she was dizzy.
But yes. She was remembering it right. There had been a full-on fistfight over her.
She stood slowly, trying to find her balance, and feeling the ground sway beneath her.
But then Justice had taken her out of the bar. She had been so furious at him and then...
She clapped her hand over her mouth. No. Absolutely not. There was no way that she had...
She had asked Justice to have sex with her.
And he hadturned her down.
Oh no.
She stumbled into the bathroom and turned thelight on. No. She had not seriously propositioned her best friend and said... said that he didn’t care about sex, so he should have it with her. Because it didn’t mean anything to him. That was... It was a horrible thing to say. It was horrible and mean, and she was humiliated. Because not only had she thrown herself at him, but then she had been mean. And she had...
She threw up on his boots. She had thrown up on his boots.
Right after he had...
She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t quite remember what had happened right before she threw up on his boots. She stripped her clothes off and turned the shower on, and did not wait for it to warm up before she got in. Then she howled in indignity as the icy water sluiced over her skin. A polar plunge of shame. One that at least jolted her a little bit out of her groggy state.
FirstI’d touch you...
No.
