Page 13 of Make Me, Break Me

“It doesn’t. Not anymore.” He leaned in to kiss me again, pushing my door open with his boot.

“Are you home, finally? I was going to call the cavalry. And you—” Margot, my roommate, popped her head out of the doorway just as Dex maneuvered us inward. We got stuck in a strange three-way, one body headed in the opposite direction to the rest of us.

“Margot?” I twisted in Dex’s arms, and he let out a snort.

“Isn’t it the wrong day for the big guy to visit? I’m not vacating.” Margot planted her feet firmly on the threadbare carpet that formed our threshold.

The same one that Dex crossed the last Friday night after we didn’t fuck. After all those orgasms. The night he broke my rules.

On Friday.

I turned accusing eyes to him. “It’s not Friday.”

Margot crowed triumphantly. “Not getting kicked out of my own room tonight, sucker!” She wandered off across to her bedroom, her job done, leaving me alone with Dex.

I slid my hand beneath the strap to my laptop satchel and tugged it over his head, ignoring my pounding heart, the way mybreath refused to stay in my chest and the fact that I had to get up onto my toes to achieve my mission at all.

“Give. It. Back,” I muttered, though he offered up no resistance whatsoever.

“It’s yours.” Dex spread his hands, leaning just inside the door jamb, and crooked a finger. “Come here.”

“Nu uh.” I retreated inside my room a few steps. “That’s a really bad idea. Why don’t you take your fighting, cracked ribs, your vendetta with the Allstars Captain—” Itoldhim not to go after Beau, even if I hadn’t mentioned the head of the Kingsman frat by name, “—and head on back to your mafia roommate. Isn’t he home by now?”

“Yeah. Brought a pretty little thing with him.”

“Good, why don’t you share? I’m sure you like that.” I turned away and stopped, the force on my arm holding me in place.

I looked down at his giant hand wrapped around my entire shoulder, his palm warm but not half as welcoming as his embrace had been a second before when he had kissed the hell out of me. Scars and ink decorated his knuckles. I studied each then looked over my shoulder and found his gaze.

His teeth bared. “Would you like that? Me sharing a girl with someone else? Fucking away with Falcon when you weren’t there?”

I shrugged, refusing the image of the Italian sex bomb that was his housemate when it tried to pop into my mind, deflecting from the point he tried to make. “I never liked the mafia type. They spend too much time looking in the mirror for my tastes.”

“You know what I meant. What if I went back to the library and found the librarian for the night? What was her name…Elizabeth?”

I hissed through my teeth and yanked my shoulder free of his hold. He let me go, opening his hand. I stumbled, forwardclutching my bag. A feral sound that echoed his own ripped from my lips. I wasn’t sure what hurt more—my heart, or my pride.

“Do whatever you like, Dex. I’m not your girlfriend or your keeper. We just fuck, remember? We just happen to be good at it together.” Maybe if I said it enough times, I’d believe it.

His gaze hardened impossibly. “We are good together, Zin. We could be better.”

“Could we?” I raised an eyebrow. “Not if you’re considering hooking up with someone else.”

White teeth flashed again. “That was your fucking—” He snapped the end of his sentence off, breathing hard. “I swear, Zin. There’s no one else I want but you. Fuck, there hasn’t been anywaybutyou since we met. Not fucking once.”

My stomach dropped. Any other girl on campus might want to hear that declaration, but to me it felt like prison bars of a pretty variety. All promises simply ended up with a pedestal I had to climb with a fucking steep drop to tumble from on the other side.

Usually onto a blade of my own making. Literally.

“Maybe you should browse more. See what’s out there before you make a one sided decision like that. Good night, Dex. Shut the door behind you.”

I turned away so he didn’t see the first tear fall.

Silence was the only thing that filled the space at my back. For a long moment, I thought he’d left. Then those same, heavy footfalls I liked in the library following me padded closer. His fingertips grazed the line of my shoulders, beneath my hair. I thought he might say something more, then his touch disappeared, the door shut and he was gone.

No, Dex wasn’t the one to see my tears fall, but Margot did.

CHAPTER SIX

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