Page 16 of My Ex-Best Friends

“Oh, everyone knew that.”

“Wait.” I sat up straighter, pulling away from him. “Who’s Sinclaire?”

He shook his head. “His daughter. Your mom really didn’t keep you very well informed, at all.”

My body erupted in goosebumps even as my stomach dropped. A nasty feeling that felt a little too much like jealousy ripped through me. “Oh.”

14

***Brooke***

Ididn’t say much else as Logan drove me to Colt’s damaged house and then around the rest of the town, pointing out the few things that were new to me. My mind was reeling from all that I’d learned. Noah had a kid. The treehouse we’d cherished was gone. The men who I’d once been so close to had lived an entire lifetime in the decade I’d been gone. They weren’t the kids I’d known and that gutted me. Knowing that they’d been living without me and seeing it was violently different. I wanted to cry.

Logan insisted on grabbing dinner from Mack’s, a seafood place that had once been my favorite. Instead of driving us back to his house, he drove to the small park at the end of town and parked overlooking the ocean. The public beach was probably swarming with swimmers on the other side of the park but he’d parked on the side preserved from the public because of some native animals that lived there. He rolled the windows down again and turned the truck off.

I took the food he handed me and silently ate while staring at the crashing waves. The sound eased some of my anxiety but I was still wound tight.

“What gives, little bunny?”

Giving up on the crab leg I’d been trying to open, I pushed my Styrofoam plate onto the dash and sighed. “It’s nothing.”

He licked his fingers clean in a move that sent heat curling through my lower stomach. “Bullshit. You look like someone kicked your dog.”

Groaning, I let my head rest against the seat and stared up at the ceiling. “Fine. It’s weird. It’s weird to hear about your lives and I hate that I missed them. Turns out that my worst decision had nothing to do with picking a man.”

His jaw tightened. “Yeah, I could’ve told you that ten years ago.”

“I know. I don’t mean to whine to you about something I didtoyou. I just made myself pretend like none of this existed here after I left. I thought about you guys, of course, but I never let myself spend more than a few seconds on it because it just… It sucked. Now I’m seeing that me sticking my head in the sand didn’t stop y’all from living your lives and I want to scream. Even if I don’t have a right to, I do.” I shoved the door open and stepped out. “I just need a second. Ignore me, Logan. I’m not your problem and I shouldn’t put this on you.”

I shut the door and leaned against it. I didn’t know what I was doing. The feelings rushing through me were scary and infuriating. Jealousy and bitterness tangled with my anger at Finn and pain over the choices I’d made through my life and I just felt small and stupid. I’d had everything I’d ever wanted in life once upon a time but I’d gotten scared and run. Ten years later and I had nothing to show for my time away except for a few new lines around my eyes and a grossness inside me that sometimes felt like it was consuming me. I was a loser.

“Would it be easier if we’d just waited around on you for a decade?” Logan came around the front of the truck and stood in front of me, a scowl on his face. “What are you doing here, Brooke? Are you staying? Are you going to fuck with our heads and pretend you still care about us just to run away again? Because if that’s the case, I’ll drive you to your mom’s house and we can act like you never came back.”

“I’m not trying to fuck with your head!”

“Time passed for us but I would hardly say we’ve lived much in the last ten years. Noah tried to move on but if you think he stopped looking for you for even a single day, you’re wrong. Colt? Fuck knows he never even tried to look at anyone else. And me? Brooke, I haven’t fucked another woman since that night without thinking about you. When I can make myself pretend to be excited about taking a woman home, it’s never stopped feeling like a betrayal. So if you’re here to do some tour of your feelings before scurrying back to the city to chase another man who will never feel for you even a percentage of what we felt for you, I’m not interested.”

My chest heaved as I stared up at him, trying to process his words while the look on his face trashed my insides. “Logan, I-”

He slammed his hands down on the truck on either side of my head, boxing me in. “What do you think it feels like to know you refused to think of us for all these years? Clearly, you don’t like seeing that we managed to scrape together bits of life without you. So how am I supposed to feel knowing you stuck your head in the sand and pretended I didn’t exist? Fuck! I could shake you, Brooke. You fucking wrecked us. You fucking ruined us and then just skipped your way through life.”

I grabbed his face in my shaking hands and shook my head. “I was never happy. It’s gutting to admit that, to admit how wrong I was, but it’s true. I realized last night that I haven’t been happysince the last time I was with y’all. I hate myself, Logan. I hate what I did. I just-”

He shoved his hands in my hair and crushed his mouth to mine. It was a bruising kiss, one with more teeth than tongue. He bit my lip hard enough to make me whimper and pinned me to the door. I clawed at his neck as I tried to get closer. I sucked his tongue when he forced it into my mouth and then bit it, making him growl.

He moved us without me noticing and then he had me lifted into his backseat and he was crawling over me. I just wanted more of him. I needed to touch him, to feel him. I yanked his shirt over his head and cried out when he let me rip it off and then dropped his mouth to bite my hard nipple through my top. Shoving my shirt and bra down far enough to pull my breast out, he sucked at me until I writhed under him.

I raked my nails down his back and dug my feet into his seat to rock my hips into his. I chased the feeling of his erection as he shifted and then I was lost as he shoved his hand down my jeans, not even bothering to undo them. It caused the denim to bite into my sides but I didn’t care when he forced his fingers under my panties and slid his rough fingers over my slippery clit.

I cried out and Logan left stinging bites up my chest and throat. Instead of kissing me when he got to my mouth, he hovered over me, holding my helpless gaze as he circled my clit faster and faster.

“How the fuck could you ever think leaving was an option when you get this wet for us? You’re soaking your jeans, little bunny, soaking my fingers. Did you ever get this wet for anyone else?” He bared his teeth at me. “Answer me.”

When I didn’t answer fast enough he pulled his fingers away. Chasing them, I pleaded with him to keep touching me. “No! No, never! Touch me, Logan. I need you.”

Sliding his fingers down my slit, he roughly pushed three fingers into me and we both swore when my body clenched down on him. He groaned my name loud enough to fill the truck and then curled his fingers. “That’s what I thought. All this sweet pussy juice is for us, isn’t it? Tell me, Brooke. Tell me the truth. Is this all for us?”

I locked my arms around his neck and panted. “Yes!”

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