Page 50 of Unwanted

“What?” I ask incredulously, wondering if I really heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “You said you found it hard to believe that nothing else has mattered to me in the last four years.”

Stunned, I find myself pulling away and out of his hold, and Frankie’s face falls.

“Arlo.”

He steps forward and I move back.

“Arlo,” he repeats.

“How can you say that?” My voice is low and pained. “How can you look me in the eyes and say that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“You left,” I spit out. The words are harsh and brittle leaving my mouth, laced with four years of buried hurt that I had no intention of admitting to just yet. “So don’t tell meIwas all you cared about, when you were the one who left.”

I don’t know what I expect, but the way he stands there watching me, calm and collected and not in the least bit affronted by my confession, hurts me even more.

“So does this mean you’re ready to talk about it now?” he asks.

“No,” I say, regaining my balance enough to walk away from him and back inside the gym. “I don’t want to hear you lie about how I am the most important thing to you but was never important enough for you to stay.”

A hand grabs my shoulder, and I feel the use of all Frankie’s strength in his grip as he turns me around.

“You really want to do this in the middle of the sidewalk outside the place you work?” he asks, his expression contorted, now finally showingsomeemotion. “You want to talk about how I left and know why I left, in the middle of a fucking sidewalk?”

His voice is loud now, angry even, and it infuriates me even more.

How fucking dare he?

I can feel my pulse speeding up as I try to string a sentence together. Some words. Any words.

“Fuck you, Frankie.”

It’s all I can manage. Three words that deflate me from my anger immediately. Three words that somehow say everything and nothing all at once.

Shaking my head, I leave Frankie, not caring what he does and where he goes, and drag my heavy feet back into the gym and straight to my office.

When I don’t hear the door click closed, I turn to find Frankie standing in the doorway. Hands clenched, nostrils flaring.

“Please,” I breathe out. “Just go. I don’t want to do this with you right now.”

“Do what?” He rushes to me, forcing me to walk backward till my ass hits the edge of the desk.

It’s his turn to crowd me in now, arms on either side of me, head lowered, his warm breath hitting my ear. “You don’t want to hear about how leaving you turned my world upside down? How it nearly killed me?”

Closing my eyes, I tip my head up to the ceiling and shake it, my tongue too thick to talk, every limb of my body too heavy to move.

“You don’t want to hear about how I fucked my way through Seattle trying to forget you?” Fingertips ghost down the length of my neck, starting at my chin, passing my Adam’s apple, and stopping at the hollow of my throat. “Or would you rather hear about all the guys I let inside me, imagining they were you.”

I swallow hard at the thought, the unwelcome images of Frankie being with anybody else fueling a possessive rage that’s bubbling beneath my skin.

His fingers repeat the movement. “That got you a little, didn’t it?” he taunts.

“Stop,” I manage to choke out. “Please.”

“Stop what?” he asks. “Telling you things you don’t want to hear? Or making you feel things you don’t want to feel?”

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