Page 56 of Lies Like Love

“What do you mean,other plans?”

It’s already nine-thirty at night, and I don’t like that Fel’s out when her one and only friend is standing in front of me.

“Some gala.” Maren rolls her eyes. “Her grandparents had a dress delivered and everything. Cinderella. The ball. I don’t get it, but you know Fel.”

I do know Fel, and even worse than the thought that she’s out on a date is hearing she’s with her grandparents. Especially after how things went down last night.

I might have said what I did to push her away—or because she pissed me off—but I didn’t honestly think it would be that easy for her to disappear back into her previous life. She should have done what she always did when we were younger—bother me until I’m forced to face my shit.

Instead, she ran back to them?

It doesn’t make sense, except that it sends the carousel of taunts from my father circling in my head. They’ve been on the sidelines waiting for her to run out of her mother’s money, or get bored, or get scared.

A smart move on their part because it led her to me. The one person with the power to destroy her deep.

Last night she got too close. She made me want to cross a line I promised myself years ago that I wouldn’t. She made me face things I stopped myself from acting on one too many times when we were younger.

While I might have told her I wasn’t going to touch her because I wanted her to prove she wanted it more, that wasn’t the real reason.

I stopped myself because I’m not allowed to keep her, and the second I act on what’s been brewing, I’m not sure there’s any going back. No matter how brutal the torture watching my fantasy play out in front of me—listening to her moan while her pussy convulsed around her fingers—I couldn’t act on my desire.

Her movements, her breaths, her sounds—they made me want to shove my dick so far inside her she’d forget we were ever supposed to be a fake family. They made me want to fuck her until she understood I’ll never think of her as anything but the girl I saw first.

And I was close—so fucking close.

So destructive as ever, I pushed her away before she saw the truth. And in the process, I sent her straight back to them.

“Why does it look like I just told you worse news than if I said she was in the changing room?” Maren’s cold demeanor falters the slightest, and she’s looking at me with too much curiosity.

“Because it is.”

She opens her mouth to say something else, but I’m not sticking around to hear it. I need to get in the ring. I need out of my head. I’m not sure breaking my knuckles on someone’s face will be enough right now, but I need to try.

Because I’d rather have Fel taunting me as she circles the ring than have her return to the vultures who have other plans for her. Plans I still haven’t figured out but always suspected. Plans I’m positive are no good because my dad seemed amused by them.

I climb the steps to the ring and the crowd’s already going wild. Usually, I feed off their screams because it quiets everything I don’t want to think about. But right now, it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

“Hi, Jude.” Brea smiles at me from the edge of the ring as she walks past in a striped, blue bikini top. “Hope you win.”

I will, but not for her.

I’ve never given a fuck about the girls who parade themselves around this place. I get that they draw a crowd, but anything beyond that has never mattered. There’s only one person who did, and I had to accept that I could never have her.

But then she showed up at my tattoo parlor. She walked back into my life with her wild red hair and sent my good intentions up in flames.

She reminded me why I hated her for pushing me to my limits eleven years ago, and why I hate her even more for doing it now.

There’s no going back.

She might have thought it was the heat of the moment, but the second she came under me everything was clear. Fel is mine, always has been.

I flex my hands and stand in the corner of the ring, waiting for the buzzer to go off like it’s the only thing that’s keeping me going. I close my eyes and tip my head back, inhaling the smell of sweat and blood.

My happy place, my home.

I might have pretended to be a clean-cut football player as a teenager, but I was never myself until after I did what I had to.

If I hadn’t protected her, no one would have.

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