“No!” she snaps. “No, you shouldn’t have.” She’s staring at me now, and a fire blazes in her eyes.
I start to speak, but she holds her hand up to stop me. “And regardless of what he has or hasn’t done, I shouldn’t have let that get as far as it did when he believes me to be committed to him. Butthatis not what I don’t understand. What I don’t understand,Ledger,is why you’re stalking someone because of me.”
Her eyes widen with a sudden realization. “It’s not just him either, is it?” When I don’t answer, she continues, “I knew it was you sending me all those packages, but I could never figure outhowyou were doing it. You hacked my phone, didn’t you?”
I remain silent.
“Didn’t you?” Tears well up in her eyes.
Now I’m the one who’s frozen. I can’t tell her that I fell madly and obsessively in love with her the first night we met.
“Sloane,” I breathe out. “I…like you, a lot…”
I look in her eyes to make sure she’s still with me mentally before continuing. “Do you remember asking me if I recognized you that night when we were stuck in traffic?” I don’t let her respond. “Remember how I told you I recognized you by your beautiful green eyes?”
She nods, tears starting to fall down her face.
“Well, there was more going through my head that night than admiration of your eyes. I had never seen a person’sexpression change from such sadness to such joy in a fraction of a second. I saw life come into your eyes when you noticed my bike. Then when you noticed it had a rider, you looked at me like I was a mermaid or something. I’ve never had a woman look at me with anything other than lust, and it meant a lot to me. I wanted to ask you what was going on in that head of yours when you drove off.”
“Well, you were way too large to be a man. I thought you might be a troll.” She giggles.
I squint my eyes at her and grin. “A troll? Isthatwhy you called me a beautiful troll the first night of practice?”
Her laughter stops abruptly as she gasps. “I really said that out loud?”
Deciding it’s safe to touch her, I squeeze above her knee. “Yes, you sure did, you little menace.”
Her laughter returns, and I watch her sad tears turn to happy ones. When she finishes drying her eyes, I take both of her hands in my own and rest them in her lap.
“I knew the moment I locked eyes with you at that first practice that I wasn’t going to let you drive away again. I took your information from Mom and started looking into your socials. The more I found out about you, the more I wanted to know. So yes, I hacked your phone. And yes, I keep an eye on the people around you. I keep an eye on everyone I care about.”
I watch as her body relaxes into the couch. We both sit there in silence for what seems like forever when she lets out a quiet, “Ledger?”
“Yes, Angel?” I feel like I’m waiting for a roulette wheel to stop on one of the fifty things she could be curious about from the past hour.
“Did youreallysend me a dildo?”
I choke on air. I had forgotten all about that. I look up to see her grinning.
“Have I told you what a menace you're being tonight?” I pause, watching her roll her eyes, then stand. Still holding her hands in my own, I give them a light squeeze. “Come on, let's get you home.”
She allows me to pull her up and opens her mouth. I presume she is about to say something about Allie, so I let her know that her friend has already been taken care of tonight and knows that Sloane is safe as well.
I lean in close to her and whisper, “The two of you are also not going to be charged with having fake IDs.”
I’m cuffing the back of her neck with my hand when she gasps and looks up at me with rounded eyes. I laugh and lean down to kiss the top of her head. She looks down and shakes her head before I move my hand to the small of her back and lead her through the back of the club to my car.
I’ve barely started driving when Sloane says, “So Dean, huh?”
I’ve been preparing myself to answer any of the questions she might have about the things she’s learned tonight. Still, I have to admit, I’m a little relieved that we can spend the car ride bonding over mutual hate rather than having to tell her about my past fuckups.She’ll eventually have to listen to that story, and I have no clue how I’ll get her to stay once she has. We haven’t even had sex yet, so I can’t knock her up. Or maybeI could sneak into her room at night with the famous turkey baster method.I’m insane.I could also act like a decent man and be there for her right now instead of plotting.
I grab her left hand and kiss it before resting both of our hands on her thigh. “Angel…I’m sorry—”
“No, no, it’s okay. I think I hate him anyway.”
I chuckle. “If you hate him,why on earthare you dating him?”
Sloane proceeds to tell me about how their relationship started. Apparently, their families had been close her whole life, and while she didn’t actively have a crush on him, when he asked her to his senior prom, she was thrilled to accept. He was a popular senior who was good-looking, athletic, and whom her parents loved, so there wasn’t really a question in her mind about beginning their relationship. Although he was sweet at first, things began to change when he went to college. She thought he was acting distant and weird, but he was also insistent that she join him when she graduated, so she didn’t look too much into it. She didn’t learn until she was already halfway through her freshman year what a trap she had gotten herself into.
