Page 69 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
I nodded.
“All right. I promise.”
I felt relief tinged with sadness, mixed up with elation and fear. Until Nico spoke again, and then I just felt frozen.
“If you admit you don’t hate me and tell me the truth about how you really feel.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out. I looked away, but he held my chin in his hand and forced me to look at him. “Tell me, baby,” he whispered.
I moistened my lips, closed my eyes, and told him the truth.
“I’m scared. I’m scared as shit. I’ve never felt anything like this before, and I’m pretty sure you could break me. And . . . and . . . ” I faltered, my voice shaking. “I’m falling in love with you. And it’s way too soon. Way too much. All I know is that you make me crazy and happy and miserable and insecure, and . . . fuck.” My chest got tight. “I need a few days to figure this out.”
He froze. His voice dropped to a dangerous level. “You did not just come all over my cock, give me everything I been wantin’ you to give, tell me you’re fallin’ in love with me, and then say you need space. Tell me I didn’t just hear that.”
I opened my eyes, only to be pinned by Nico’s burning stare. It was hard to swallow around the rock in my throat. “Can’t you understand how hard this is for me? You, those girls, Avery . . . everything? If the shoe was on the other foot, how would you feel?”
> He didn’t answer. But his nostrils flared and his lips thinned, and I knew he knew he wouldn’t like it one little bit.
Time to go for broke.
“Why did she come here?”
He knew who I meant, of course. A muscle worked in his jaw. “She’s got nowhere else to go.”
“And the next time? And the time after that? Are you always going to have to rescue her? Are you always going to drop whatever’s going on in your life to take care of Avery?”
Into his eyes came a look of pure torture. He inhaled deeply before he spoke, as if he knew the effect his words would have on me beforehand, and was steeling himself for the blowback.
Nico whispered, “Yes.”
That was it. There it was, in black and white. Funny, I never knew a heart could break more than once in the span of a single hour.
Then, with horror, I realized the man I’d just laid myself bare to, body and soul, had reciprocated by telling me that another woman would always be his first priority while he was still inside me.
Ice formed in crackling long fingers along the length of my spine. It became almost impossible to breathe. “You . . . you . . . ”
I couldn’t find the word. “Bastard” was too nice. “Son of a bitch” didn’t cover it. “No good, lying, untrustworthy, piece of philandering shit” didn’t even begin to make a dent.
I flew off of him before he could stop me and staggered to my feet, desperate to get the hell out of that room, out of that house. I found my discarded clothes on the floor, dressed in record-making time, went to my duffel on the dresser, and shrugged on my jacket. The entire time Nico watched me silently from the bed.
At least he had the decency to zip up his fucking jeans.
On my way through the door, Nico said, “You’re not even gonna ask me why?”
He sounded bitterly disappointed in me, which pushed me past the breaking point. I spun around and shouted, “Why doesn’t matter, Nico! It doesn’t change anything! It doesn’t change how you feel!” I put a hand to my head, almost dizzy with another sickening realization. “God,” I whispered. “I should have known. I did know. What an idiot.”
Nico sat up. He swung his legs off the mattress and sat staring at me with the light streaming in behind him. His face was in shadow, but I didn’t need his expression to identify the anger in his voice. “Should’ve known what?”
I turned away. I walked out the door. It didn’t matter. In the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t. But I’d only gone a few feet past the threshold when I turned back to look at Nico one final time.
“You remember that story I told you about the reason I hate my birthdays?” I was surprised my voice was so steady when everything inside me was dissolving into dust.
Needed you to know I’m a man who’s gonna take care of your heart.
Beautiful lies from a beautiful liar. I angrily wiped the moisture from my eyes.
“I left out one little detail. When I said “I should have known,” I meant I should have known better than to get involved with a musician. Musicians are unreliable. There’s always something more important to them than you.”
