Page 34 of Pretend for Me

“Will you please call Audrey?” he asked. “I don’t want to leave you here. Alone.”

“Yes,” I muttered, pulling my phone out of my bag, waving it in his direction.

“For what it’s worth, I’ll always love you, Cassie,” he murmured, sincerely. “I hope we can be friends at the very least.”

Matthew lingered a moment, waiting for me to change my mind I suppose. The only thing that was different was that I held onto the wall with my hand to stabilize myself.

“Friends.” I nodded, still not looking at him, pulling a sweater out of my purse.

“Goodbye, Cassie,” he whispered. When I failed to reply, I heard Matthew’s footsteps echo against the concrete and he proceeded to walk away.

“Goodbye, Matty,” I said to the empty alleyway.

17

MATTHEW

“Fuck. I just want her back!” I punched the wall just inside my apartment, bruising my knuckles in the process.

I was reeling from how we’d left things and my frustration had bubbled to the surface the second I set foot back in my apartment. I backed away from the wall, from anything that was destructible since I didn’t have it in me to clean up any more messes, and decided to take a shower to try and decompress instead.

You would think sex would have done the trick but that went to shit fast.

The water fell over my body in rivulets, and I threw my head back as I shampooed my hair. While I didn’t work out religiously, I tried to eat clean enough to maintain the toned body I had gotten in my late teens.

I grabbed some more soap from the pump dispenser and massaged it over my stomach, working my way lower and lower. Having sex with Cassie in an alleyway wasn’t planned, and it should have satisfied my desire for her, but instead it made me crave her more. As loath as I was to admit it, maybe Holden wasright and I definitely had some pent-up tension I could use help relieving.

I grabbed my cock, which had grown hard with thoughts of how it felt to have Cassie back in my arms, taking it roughly into my palm, stroking it a few times. Like so many times since I’d reached puberty, I fantasized about Cassie. Her legs, her breasts, her ass, even her smell. But unlike all those times before, I couldn’t get her look of despair out of my head.

After she’d run away all those years ago, it took some time before I could work up the courage to use Cassie as inspiration again. I thought about random women from movies and magazines, sometimes recounting my past sexual encounters, searching for something to bring me the same satisfaction, but none of them did the trick. There was no denying that she was sexier than any porn.

This time was different, though. She was no longer some obscure fantasy, a memory from the past. She was real and even more beautiful than before. I could recall the way she felt pressed against me. How she kissed me. The way she grabbed my arms, and the soft moans she made. But her anger and the look of disgust and disappointment in her eyes was different. It all felt different.Shewas different.

It felt wrong to use her image to get off when she seemed disgusted by the sex we’d had. I groaned, throwing my head back in annoyance. I released my grip on my cock and turned the water all the way to cold. I’d just have to find another way to relieve some of this tension. Maybe a trip to the gym would do the trick.

When my body started to tremble from the frigid water, I shut it off, stepping out into the bathroom. After I grabbed a towel from the rack and tied it around my waist, I went to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. I wasn’t muchof a drinker, especially not when I was alone, but now seemed as good a time as any to start.

Glass in hand, I made my way to the safe in my bedroom. After I disarmed it, I pulled out Cassie’s locket, the one I’d given her when we were sixteen, the one I had kept all these years. After she’d run away, I’d found it on the floorboard of my car. Opening it and seeing the words engraved there depressed me even more. I mourned the fact that she would never get to read those words, the ones I had spent hours perfecting, the ones I had been waiting for the right moment to share with her. When I gave her the locket, I told Cassie to never open it. It was a risk that she would peek, but she had promised that she would wait until he told her to open it at the right moment. I never got the opportunity to share what the locket said because we had ended far too soon. Not wanting to further spiral into a state of melancholy, I closed it and placed it back into the safe. Even with her words of finality, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.

Making my way to the armchair in the living room, I slumped down into it, careful not to spill my drink. Rocky settled down on the loveseat across from me and plopped his head down, settling in for a nap.

“What a fucking life!” I grumbled, taking another sip of the bourbon.

This pity party continued for the rest of the evening until the early morning hours…

It wasa little after seven the next morning when my phone started ringing incessantly. I raised my head from the back of the chair and grabbed the phone beside me. I squinted to seethe name, the morning light and hangover wearing on me. My stomach roiled with a mix of nausea and anxiousness.

Holden.

“Hello,” I croaked out, sounding like a chain smoker.

“Yo, Matt! You gotta get down to Adams Point now. And don’t talk to anyone until you get inside your office. I’ll be here waiting.”

What. The. Fuck.Holden never got to the office before I did, and he certainly never gave a shit about my tardiness.

“Holden, there better not be another stripper in my office. I’m not in the fucking mood.” I spat the words, realizing how late I was. I had become a workaholic who typically lived at the office. Fuck, Wyatt was gonna have my ass on a silver platter.

“Matthew! That was one time, and it was your birthday. Stop being such a fucking prude. He was very kind and generous with his time.” Holden chuckled on the other end of the phone.

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