Page 21 of Pretty Poisoned

"Exactly."

"It's a good rule."

"Are you poly?" he asks.

"Um, I don't know. I've never really been in a situation where anyone has expected me to label myself. But I've never been monogamous," I tell him. The truth is that I haven't really ever been in a real relationship. "So…maybe? I'm not really sure."

"You've never had a boyfriend…or girlfriend? Ever? You've never been in love?" He looks me up and down, likely trying to find whatever flaw has prevented me from forming that kind of bond with another human being. Luckily, I don't think mine is the kind you can find just by looking.

"No. Never."

"Interesting," he says. He tilts my chin up with two fingers and appears to examine me some more. "I wonder what that would be like. It'd either be peaceful or terrible."

"It's…slightly jarring, honestly."

Hunter was the closest thing to a relationship I've had in my adult life, and that wasn't love. And maybe I'm no expert—maybe I don't know what love is supposed to feel like—but I'm no stranger to the human experience or the potential to feel. I feel things all the time, so I know I'm capable. I have to be. Right?

But I've heard the things they say about me, and I've lain awake at night trying to process the idea that maybe I'm not, and it terrifies me.

So no, that's not it. I'm not a sociopath or anything like that. I'm just…I don't know what I am.

"I bet," Brady says.

He laughs and leans forward, grabbing his drink from the table. Before he can bring it to his lips, his eyes lock onto something that wipes the smile from his face.

"What?" I ask. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says, attempting to shrug it off.

I try to follow where his eyes were before and land on Rhett kissing another guy downstairs. He breaks away, then takes the other man by the hand and pulls him behind him toward the back exit.

"Oh…" I say. "You don't like it…"

"I'm fine," he says, poking at the ice in his glass with a stir straw. "I know what he and I have is real. It doesn't bother me. I just…thought he'd at least come say hi first or something."

"Does he know that you don't like it?" I ask.

"I'm fine with it," he says.

I cock my head and wait for a better answer.

"I'm not bi like him…but doesn't bother me so much if it's one of the girls," he says. "They're family, and I love them. Or if we do it together, but…yeah. We don't talk about it, but he knows."

"I'm sorry," I tell him.

"Don't be," he says. "Why would you feel sorry for me? I know Rhett loves me. And it's not like with Declan and Layla. Hetellsme he loves me, and Iknowit's true."

His tone comes off harsh, reminding me that while he knows that feeling, I do not.

I pick up something else in there, too. Layla thought she and Declan were in love, but he never felt the same way.

"I don't pity you," I tell him. "That's not what I meant by that. I just…can't imagine what that would feel like."

"Well, someday you'll know," he replies. It sounds a lot more like a threat than a well-wish. "And someday, the tours will end, and the sun will set on this season of our lives, and you know what? I'll still be here, and it'll just be us. We'll grow oldtogether, maybe have a couple of kids. And none of this will matter. It'll just be a story we tell them—about how Daddy was a rockstar once, and now we have enough money to send them to private school."

Hazel moves over and sits next to him, hooking her arm in his and showing him something on her phone. He laughs, and it's like the conversation never happened.

But that…that's love. I heard it in his voice, even in this painfully loud club.

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