Page 186 of Rules of Association

Yet had I ever been so fucking mad at him in my entire life? At that point, I didn’t think so. Not when one look at his healthy seemingly perfect form pissed me right off. Because I was not healthy and I was not alright. Not since the beach. Not since the moment he’d said those words to me.

I’m leaving.

I’m fucking leaving! Are you kidding me?

I looked back at him ten times on the way up the beach that night. Ten! I counted. And every single one of those times he had been in the same exact place. Standing there in front of the waves, staring. It would have only taken his big ass like four steps to catch up to me. To stop me and justtalkabout it. Talk about things instead of leaving and kicking me out and telling me not to contact him while I was at it.

But instead he’d left and the sight of him suddenly made me so mad. Madder than I was at Melissa.

Con’s eyes tracked me. Sliding up and down over my form, all over my face, and only after he’d taken stock of every other part of me, did he meet my eyes. And what do you know, he was pissed off too.

I felt my nostrils flare.

“What, Cee?” he asked, picking up on my mood as soon as our gazes connected. “What is this?”

I shook my head, heat rising up my neck, chest heaving as I tried to cool my angry breaths. What was this? Shouldn’t he know? Did he not understand that this was me falling the fuck apart without him?

Apparently not. He took an angry step forward and pointed at the ground. “Explain this to me, Ceci.”

Explain it to him?Oh hell no. He was not telling me to explain something whenhehad yet to explain a goddamn thing! I just continued to stare into his eyes—his angry, disappointed eyes—trying to calm my racking breaths and the rising anxiety in my chest.

“What?” he hissed this time, clearly angry and frustrated if he was raising his voice. It made the knife in my gut twist further.It wasn’t supposed to be like this. “What?”

My eyebrows pinched together as I tried to determine if he truly hated me. If what I remembered about the beach was right and he was really through with me. His tone suggested that he was and I couldn’t lie, that hurt. Connor just tossed his head back and groaned.

“God dammit, Celestia,” he sighed, running a hand over his face. He looked around the room, taking in everything from the family around us to the fruit on the floor. Hands falling to his hips, he breathed down at the ground for a countable number of seconds before looking back up at me.

I breathed in a sharp breath that felt more like pointy knives than air. In that short reprieve, his hard eyes had changed into something different. Not back to the Connor I had been friends with for all this time, but to the Connor on the beach.

Connor was looking at me like he loved me. Me, who was causing all of this mess. Me who had broken his heart over and over again and who was now botching the job at apologizing too. He was looking at me like he loved me still through all of it and I don’t know why, but that look washed all the anger clean from my body. It was like a drain plug had popped loose and all the unnecessary feelings filtered away, leaving just the one that mattered.

I missed him.

I missed him so much it hurt. I missed him more than just in my mind or in my heart. I felt like there was something stolen from my body that day on the beach. Like he’d taken something of mine with him when he left and I hadn’t been the same ever since.

As my chest continued to heave and I stared at Con like a raging grizzly, I felt my eyes start to burn. This horrible welling feeling starting from the pit of my stomach and moving into my chest.

Connor watched it all on my face and when he saw the miserable emotion building there, he took a step forward. Against my normal instinct, I took a step away. He tracked that movement, confused and hurt by it.

Holding my trembling eyes he asked, “Mad at me?”

Staring at him, my nose and throat burning like hell, I nodded my head. But slowly the nod morphed into a shake, betraying me. I wasn’t mad. I was something else for sure, but I missed him way too much to be mad anymore.

Con took another step forward, his voice lowering. “Then tell me what’s wrong. What is all this?”

My chin trembled, and I sucked in another harsh breath. Somewhere, I found the strength to ask the thing I needed to know most. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Mad at me?”

I wasn’t asking because of this. Melissa was on my shit list, and if anyone had a problem with that they could take it up with someone who cared. I was talking about everything else. Everything I realized in the time he was gone. Every misstep and heartbreak I had put him through. I was talking about our backlist, and every wrong move I’d made in creating it.

In his eyes, I saw that he knew what I meant. That he still knewme. And in those eyes I saw that he meant it when he shook his head slightly and said, “Not anymore. Never for long.”

I couldn’t help it. I sobbed.

Chapter Forty-six

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