Page 145 of Tangled Kisses
Because I’m more than just a former escort, and Reese knows that. Doesn’t she?
“Reese,” I whisper, my tone wrecked. “What are you doing?”
She still won’t look at me, her fingers fidgeting with the ring on her hand.
I take another step, softer now. “Talk to me. Baby, please. I love you. I love you so fucking much. Just look at me.”
Vander snorts. “Reese, don’t you know better than to let them fall in love with you?”
I turn toward him, fury boiling under my skin. “I’m not talking to you.”
My gaze flits back to her as my insides threaten to unravel. “Say something, Reese. Anything. You owe me an explanation.”
She finally lifts her eyes.
But when she speaks, it’s not her voice. Not the warm honey that rushed over me last night as I held her in my arms. Not the husky chuckle when I promised to put a baby in her tonight.
“It was fun,” she replies. Flat. Cold. Robotic. “But it’s over now. My life is in New York. It’s time for me to get back to it.”
I blink, reeling. My throat locks.
She can’t be doing this to me. To us.
She loves me. I know she loves me.
Until a horrible thought hits me. She’s never said those words.
Still, I won’t go down without a fight. She’s worth that. She’s my everything, and if she’d just talk to me…
“No.” I shake my head, pain clawing through every vein as I fight to understand. “This isn’t you, Reese. Don’t do this. Don’t?—”
She cuts me off, waving her hand much like I’ve seen the wealthy do to their hired help when they’ve had enough of their backtalk. “Learn to take no for an answer. I said that it’s over.”
Something detonates inside me—blood boiling, my heart seizing in my fucking chest.
“You’re just like all the rest of them, aren’t you?” The words scrape out of me, grief and rage tangled together. “I can’t believeI thought you were different. I would’ve given you anything.Everything. You told me this is what you wanted.”
Vander leans in, smirking, words pitched loud enough for those around us to hear. “Don’t you understand, boy? Reese has taken what she wants from you. That was the plan all along. And now?” His smile sharpens into a lethal point. “We’re done here. She was always mine. She was never yours.”
I don’t think.
I just move.
My fist connects with his jaw in one clean, brutal arc—bone on bone, sharp and savage. Vander stumbles back into a side table, whiskey shattering across marble as gasps ripple through the ballroom.
For a second, everything stills.
I expect Reese to look at me.
To run to me.
To remember us.
But she doesn’t.
She drops to her knees besidehim, her hands fluttering to his jacket as she assesses the damage. “Are you okay?”
“I should press charges,” Vander grits out, holding his jaw.
