Page 91 of Kingmakers, Year One

Leo didn’t give a fuck about that. The moment he had a chance to go off in the woods with Gemma, he took it. He didn’t think about me at all.

“I saw you,” I tell him, my eyes burning into his. “I saw you letting that little whore suck your cock.”

I don’t actually feel great about calling Gemma a whore. After all, it’s not like she knew the fantasy I had in my head about how my night was supposed to go. It’s not like she had some responsibility toward me—we’re not even friends.

It’s Leo who hurt me, not her. But in my fury, I use the most vicious words that come into my head and I apply them mentally to Leo as well as to her.

Leo is a whore. He loves attention wherever he can get it. He doesn’t understand the first thing about fidelity or love.

He’s stammering and stumbling, nowhere near his usual smooth self.

“I was really drunk,” he says. “I swear, I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t even know how it happened.”

I stare at him like I don’t even know him. “That’s a pathetic excuse.”

“I know!” he cries. “I know it is! I’ve never lost control like that, I don’t understand it.”

Leo’s attempt to explain himself is just making me angrier.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I seethe at him. “You can fuck whoever you want. Just leave me out of it.”

“Anna . . . I know . . . I wanted . . .”

He’s stammering at me helplessly, unable to say what he wants to say. I already know what he’s trying to tell me. He regrets being so careless—he didn’t realize how much it would hurt me.

But that’s Leo’s problem—he’s fucking thoughtless.

I try to push past him again, and in desperation he cries, “Where did you go last night?”

“I left.”

“You came back here all alone?”

I’m impatient with this line of questioning. I don’t appreciate Leo acting protective after he ripped my heart out.

Also, a small ugly part of me wants to hurt him back.

So I say, “No. I wasn’t alone.”

Leo can hear the menace in my voice. His eyebrows draw together.

“Who was with you?”

He doesn’t really want to know the answer.

I look at his handsome face. The face that I’ve loved all my life. The face that I’ve never tried to drag down from happiness to sorrow, not once.

I know that I should take a day or two to cool off. That’s why I didn’t go down to breakfast—I wanted to avoid this exact conversation until I was in a more rational state of mind.

But the other part of me—the part of me that called Gemma a whore—the part of me that’s angry and vengeful and self-destructive—that part answers Leo, the words leaving my lips before they’ve even formed in my brain.

“I was with Dean Yenin.”

Leo stares at me.

I regret it already. I regret saying it, I regret doing it. I regret everything that’s happening.

Too late.

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