Page 73 of The Thing About My Rival

My father was being unreasonably critical, and she stepped in to set him straight and effectively tell him to stop it.

And with her, I was grateful.

But when Hugo set Ramon straight and told him to stop it, I was enraged.

After that realization hit me like a trash can lid to the head, all attempts to stay in a semi-sleepy state were lost as I tried to figure out that conundrum.

And that was…well, I have no idea how long ago it was. But I’m very awake and my heart has been beating well above sleep-potential rate for quite some time.

Maybe the difference is that Suzanna did it from a place of love. And Hugo did it from a place of assholery.

Taking a deep breath, I force all the muscles of my face to relax, then discover my eyes are screwed tight shut likeI’m running into a sandstorm. As I release a long, slow exhale to try to calm my heart, a car splashes by on the street under my window. It must be raining.

Damn.

That means the field will be wet for training.

And that means Hugo might wear long track pants instead of shorts so the mud doesn’t splatter up his bare legs. Bare legs that are perfectly sculpted from years of training and with just the right amount of?—

“Fuck.” I slam onto my back, reprimanding myself out loud, and stare up at the crack in the ceiling.

Why can’t I get this man’s hotness out of my head?

Well, the fact that I’m still a little sore from the bar-top banging doesn’t exactly help with the forgetting.

But forget him, I must.

Lying here trying to figure out the difference between what he did and what Suzanna did is getting me nowhere.

Just as I’m curling into the fetal position and giving up, it dawns on me. As sure as the sun is rising in the sky, it all becomes crystal clear.

Dear God, that’s it.

That’s why I yelled at him for defending me against Ramon, yet welcomed it when Suzanna did the same thing with my dad—it’s because there is absolutelynodifference whatsoever between the two things.

The truth is they both did it with exactly the same motive—caring.

And I’m terrified of Hugo caring for me.

I groan into my pillow. There are few things more annoying than figuring out an answer and discovering it’s something you didn’t want to find.

Under that bravado-soaked exterior, Hugo is a caring,vulnerable soul. I saw that in the bar when he was asking me what we did in Paris.

Yes, it was smoking hot, burning with sexual tension, and if we’d gotten within two feet of a flammable substance we would likely have combusted, but he was asking me for the right reasons. He really did want to know what happened. Yes, he wanted to turn me on, but he wanted to know how he’d behaved, how he’d treated me.

And then he wanted to treat me better.

He was trying to treat me better.

He tried to find out what my morning drink was, and when he couldn’t, he brought me coffee with cream and sugar on the side in an effort to cover as many bases as possible.

Goddammit, the man was trying to treat me better.

Fuck.

And I repaid him by seeing the worst in him. And pushing him away.

I don’t doubt for a second that Ashanti would say that’s because I either don’t feel worthy of being treated well or because seeing the worst in him helps me convince myself he’s awful so I don’t fall madly in love with him and risk him breaking my heart.

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