Page 111 of Vicious Little Games

With a scoff, I stroke my palms up and down her back when I tell her, “You think I want to? I don’t have a choice. The contract is signed and the only way I can get out of it is to pay them the advance back. I would have to use my tuition money…”

“Then pay them back. Use Daddy’s credit card.”

“I can’t. Dante will want to know what ten grand was for and then my mom would find out.”

Lifting her head, Cass’s eyes glisten in the moonlight as she looks into mine. “You say you would tell our parents about us, but you won’t tell them about the pornos?”

“That’s different. My mother never needs to know about the pornos. We can’t hide this, us, from them much longer.”

Cass starts shaking her head before I can finish my sentence. “We can’t tell them. There’s nothing to tell them. We’re just fucking.”

“This isn’t ‘just fucking.’ Trust me, Cassie, I know the difference. You don’t wake up with someone you’re ‘just fucking’ every single morning, have all your meals with them, and spend the entire day and night together.”

“We won’t be doing any of those things once you go back to New York,” she points out.

“Not unless you come with me. We wouldn’t have to tell Dante why right away.”

“No. I want an arranged marriage with someone Daddy approves of, and I want it to be soon. Within weeks.”

When she says shit like that, I want to dunk her head under the water until she comes to her senses.

“That big fat lie of yours stopped being funny weeks ago,” I tell her. “So, stop saying that shit. I’m not jealous of some hypothetical man, Cassie. God, you are the most stubborn, confusing woman I have ever met.”

“This was the last time,” she says as she lowers her legs from my waist and lets my neck go.

“What?”

“I just thought we should end it where it started.”

“You seriously don’t want me to sleep with you tonight?” I ask her in confusion.

“No.”

“And we’re never, ever, going to fuck each other again?”

“That’s right. Because it was just sex.” After that proclamation, she swims toward the pool ladder.

And just like the first time, I want to grab her leg and pull her back down into the water with me.

But I let her go.

I watch her grab a towel, dry off, and then head back inside without me.

I don’t know what the hell is going on with her. It has felt like she’s been pulling away from me all week. Then, every night, we would fall asleep together and I would tell myself I was just imagining things.

I was right, though.

Cass just threw in the towel on us, and I have no fucking idea why.

35

Cass

I’ve been keeping myself busy with the arrangements all day Friday, trying to keep my mind off Cole. But since this is all for him, it’s not been an easy task.

Ending things with him last night, yet again, was the right thing for both of us.

If I keep repeating that sentence to myself over and over again, maybe I’ll eventually believe it.

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