Page 2 of Accidentally Forever
I pulled out of her and ditched the condom in the trash nearby. She righted herself, not meeting my gaze, and I ignored it.
Because this was just a mistake.
Just like it had been before.
“So, are we going to talk about it?” I asked, my voice a growl. I didn’t mean for the biting tone. I didn’tmeanto say anything.But I was so damn tired.
Aria Montgomery shook her head and wiped a tear from her cheek.
I cursed under my breath and moved closer, wiping the second tear with my thumb. Nothing made sense anymore. It couldn’t. I had done that. Doing what both of us had wanted. Playing a game. And I had left that tear. I hated the names. But the names were doing what we were good at. Playing a game.
“I can’t,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
I tucked myself back into my pants and swallowed hard. “Because you love him. Even with all he’s done, you love him.”
She met my gaze again, those blue Montgomery eyes staring daggers into my soul. “No, I... I know I can’t love him. And I don’t really.”
“Aria. You can lie to yourself every day. But you don’t get to lie to me. Not when we play games here. We can play games when I’m deep inside you, but you don’t get to play gameshere.”
“I loved the idea of him…but with this…” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t look at me. I knew there was more going on in that brilliant mind of hers than this moment. And I wasn’t part of it. We’d both taken advantage. Just like always. “This can’t happen again.”
I nodded tightly, knowing that all good things, evenhow dirty and manipulative they could be, had to come to an end.
“Fine.”
“You were with Daisy. My best friend. My cousin.”
And here it came—the rationalization. It surprised me it had taken her this long to find the road she wanted to go down when it came to pushing me away. Too bad I’d be the one walking—even if she didn’t realize it. “Well, Daisy’s not my cousin because that would have been wrong, but she is my best friend. I’m allowed to fuck other people you know.”
Aria looked like I had hit her, and I could have rightly hit myself.
“Aria...”
She shook her head. “I have to go.”
I looked down at her disheveled dress and hair and didn’t bother to tell her that she should get cleaned up. Because if she stayed, we’d fuck again, and then she would do the worst thing ever and fall asleep in my arms.
And that’s not what we did.
“Fine. Go. But we’re done—you and me. I’m done being the one that you run to when things get hard because you know I don’t ask questions.”
Aria lifted her chin then, looking like the Montgomery I knew. So fierce, sopassionate. So not mine. “All you do is ask questions, Crew. I’m the one that never has the answers. And you’re the one that never lets me askmine.” And when another tear fell, and another, I didn’t bother to wipe them away. Instead, she turned and left, picking up her purse and closing the door quietly behind her.
Aria Montgomery didn’t want to cause a scene. She wouldn’t slam the door. Instead, she would leave, and once again I watched the woman that I pretended not to love run away.
Chapter One
Crew
“Don’t worry, Crew. One day your Prince or Princess will come.” Lexington paused, his eyes dancing with laughter. “Of course, the goal is to make them come more than once, I would think.”
I stared at my best friend and took a step back. “Really? After all our time together, all the issues that surround us day in and day out, you go withthatjoke?”
Lex widened his eyes comically. “It’s a good joke. A great joke even. You are just one ballad away from becoming a Disney prince this point.”
Dash frowned. “Do princes get ballads? Usually it’s the princess who gets to sing about how her life is in shambles, or whatever dreams she has, or the fact thatshe’s falling in love. Do the guys even get a song of their own that’s not about how big their muscles are?”
Lex shook his head. “InFrozen 2, the guy who talks to reindeer gets his own boy band song. It’s quite astounding because they didn’t let Jonathan Groff sing in the first movie beyond that weird reindeer song. And he is a Tony award winning singer. It was a disservice.”
