Page 98 of Bought and Broken

I shake my head in disbelief. His cheek is already turning red from my hand.

“How could you?” I hiss.

“I’m sorry!” he says, the desperation in his voice clear. “I was so angry over what you did, and I—”

“What I did? When did I ever do anything to you, Tatum? I’ve been nothing but nice to you!”

“When we were younger, Devon,” he says firmly.

“I didn’t do anything to you!” I scream.

People slow down to listen to us, to get a glimpse of the drama unfolding. As if this doesn’t happen in Detroit all the damn time. I don’t care about them though. They can listen all they want. It’s about time Tate and I get this out of our systems. We should have done it sooner. Maybe things would be okay right now if we hadn’t danced around our issues for so long.

“I saw you that night at the party!” he grits out, his hands clenching to fists.

“Saw me do what? What party?”

Tate looks out at the street as if he can’t believe what I’m saying. I can’t believe what he’s saying! What does he think I did to him?

“Typical, Tate,” I say with a scoff. “You want to blame me for your problems, when—”

“I saw you walk out of Gunner’s room at that party!” he barks.

My face scrunches into confusion. What is he talking about?

“When I—” But then I remember. My hand comes up to cover my mouth, and I take a stumbling step back. “You think… you thought I—” The number of emotions I feel this very moment is overwhelming. Hurt. Angry. Offended. I can only imagine what Tate thinks I did with Gunner in that room… when all I did was go in there to change because Summer was sick and threw up on me.

I scowl at Tate, shoving him hard in the chest. “You asshole,” I seethe. “All this time you’ve been mad at me because you think you know what happened in that room?”

“I know what I saw,” he growls, stepping up to me, clearly ready to die on this hill he made because he’s out of his damn mind!

I shake my head, tears stinging my eyes as I take another step away from him. “I don’t know what hurts more, Tate. You thinking I could ever cheat on you or you not trusting me enough to talk about it.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Tatum

My house is empty when I get there. I hadn’t expected differently. Devon won’t come here tonight. She won’t come here ever again after what I did. My chest hasn’t stopped hurting since she walked away from me. Since she left me. Though it’s my fault this time, I still can’t handle how easy it was for her to go. How she simply left without looking back. The more I think about it, the more I can’t breathe.

This is all my fault.

I did this. It’s what I wanted, isn’t it? I wanted her to hurt. Wanted to get revenge. I did that. Because even though it was easy for her to walk away, I saw the pain in her eyes before she left. She’s hurting. But obviously not as badly as I am because I never could have walked away from her. Not like that.

I hate how badly this hurts, how much it sucks. But I knew if I didn’t keep my guard up this would happen. And here we are. I was stupid enough to fall into her trap. Stupid enough to give into her because she makes me fucking weak. I’m exactly where I started, only this time I feel way more foolish than I did the first time.

I should have known better. Playing with fire only gets you burned, and for some reason I thought I’d be a phoenix and be reborn from the ashes. But that’s not even close to being true. I’ll never be the same after this. How will I go back to anything normal? Everything is ruined now. Not only the chance I had with her, but my friendship with Dane. I destroyed it all, just for the opportunity to get even.

I blink a few times and realize I’m in my room. I don’t remember walking up here, but I must have. Dropping onto the bed, I bury my face in the pillow, which is a big mistake. It smells just like her.

“Fuck!” I shout, raising my fist and pounding it into the pillow. I move to the other side, but it doesn’t make a difference. It smells like her here too.

I fucked up. I fucked up so bad and I don’t think I can fix this.

Knowing I won’t be able to sleep, I go downstairs to the office and drown myself in work.

I’ll have a lot of fires to put out on Monday over the scene that was made at the event tonight. A goddamn charity event at that. Brent will have a lot of work to do over it too, but at least he has Dane to help him. I have nothing. No one. Not a single fucking person in my corner to be by my side when I fuck things up. No one to tell me it’s okay. That I’m allowed to make mistakes. No one to help me make it right. No one to show me the right way to do things.

No matter how many numbers I look over on these reports, I can’t get Devon out of my head.

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