Page 9 of Hate the Way You Lie (Hate 2)

Just thinking about it, I can see the lovey fucking words and kissy-face emojis in my head. “Yeah, she’s been texting him this whole time. The whole time she was playing me– playing us. I saw them. Talking all about how they’re meant to be together.”

Out the corner of my eye I see Reilly’s head fall back against the wall, his arms crossed, and his breathing stutter heavily like this is all too much. This is messing with my head, so I know it has to be fucking him up big time.

Rush shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? Love how quick you are to blame her for this. To naturally believe she wasn’t telling the truth about him. Did you catch her texting him? Did you actually see the messages from her phone? Did you check her phone records?”

A weight drops on my chest as I take in the reality of his words. “Well, not exactly. I didn’t have fucking time for—” Before I get the chance to explain, he cuts in again.

“So, how did you see them?”

“I saw them on his fucking phone, Rush. He showed me the messages between them. It was even her number! Filled with things he shouldn’t have known.”

Rush’s face turns a deep crimson color and I know he’s about to lose it. His hands come up in front of him and he flexes his hands like he wants to strangle me, like he’s barely containing himself.

He’s already gotten a couple of good shots in on me. With the force of his hits, it would only take one more to knock me on my ass. My jaw is already sore from the punch, feeling like he put a dent in my face from the pain. “His phone? His phone! Did you even check to see if they were real? You do know there are apps that can fake phone numbers and messages, right? You know there’s tech to do all of that, right? You’re not that big of a moron, right?” The more he talks, the more I feel like a fucking idiot, but I can’t back down. I can’t admit that I fucked up. I can’t admit that I ruined everything because I can’t let myself trust anyone. I can’t admit that I might have ruined her life more than I want to ruin my own right now. Once I admit that, it will become too real. Too raw.

My father taught me to never let my guard down and to never, ever trust anyone, even if you care about them.“The only one truly looking out for you, is you,” he’d always say.

I take a step forward and narrow my gaze on his dark glare. “They were from her number. I could scroll through them. They looked real, asshole. I didn’t have anything on me to fucking check, so I did what I had to in the moment.” Rush fills the space between us, and before I can stop it, his fist slams into my nose like a wrecking ball. My hand instantly comes up to cradle my aching face as I try to breathe through the sharp pain. Tears prick at my eyes from the damage he’s done, but deep down, part of me knows I deserve every single hit he takes out on me tonight.

My gut is screaming even harder that I fucked up. That I let my trust issues and idiocy rule my actions.

“You’re so fucking dumb. I didn’t take you for someone who’d believe a stranger over his wife.” Blood drips from my nose, filling my palm with its warmth.

“My wife? I barely fucking know her. She was a contract, nothing more. We both needed something from each other, and that’s all it was.” The lie tastes like acid on my tongue. We were starting to have something, before it all got fucked up. I don’t know why I’m saying this when I know I don’t mean it deep down. Maybe self-sabotage and pure destruction are what I deserve.

Rush roars, pushing me back into the wall. “Was. That’s right, shewas. But she ended up being so much more, and you know it. I’m not fucking blind, I know she was more than a contract to you. The only one who can’t seem to see that or admit it is you, asshole.”

Does she mean more to me or Rush? Because he’s acting like more than just her bodyguard right now. I’ve had this feeling that something was going on between them, but the way he’s acting now confirms my suspicions. This is what she does. She can draw anyone in because she’s fucking incredible. So incredible that she could act like she wants to be with all of us only to find out later it was all to pull one over on us.

“And you should have believed her. But you decided to take the easy way out and believe that manipulative, abusive bastard so you could get away. So you could run from your problems like you always do, like the scared little bitch you are,” Rush spits in my face.

“You’re wrong,” I say those words again. This time I mean them. They don’t know about the moment Tara and I had in the car. They sure as hell don’t know I confessed my soul to the woman who ended up betraying me.But did she really betray me?“Is there something between you and Tara that I should know about, Rush?” I try to deflect the attention off me. The battle in my mind is one I don’t think I will win. An overwhelming sensation tries to rip through my skull and make me see the bigger picture that I’m not ready for.

The one that reminds me I’m the villain in this story.

Rush falters a little at my question, but he doesn’t break.

“He’s right,” Reilly cuts in. My eyes land on his conflicted gray irises. “You couldn’t handle how you felt, so the first sign of trouble, you pushed her away. But you fucked up. You pushed her right into the arms of a monster. If she gets hurt, or worse, that’s all on you. I hope you can live with that for the rest of your life, because I couldn’t. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror knowing I had let go of the best thing ever to happen to me because I was too much of a baby to recognize what I had in front of me the entire time.” His gaze adverts from mine and he gulps like he’s trying to keep it together.

He’s fucking gutted by the news. Reilly may look like a badass with his piercings and tattoos, but he wears his heart on his sleeve. I know he loves her. It might be more of an obsession even. He’s completely wrapped around her finger. I tried to keep him from getting hurt in the first place, but I couldn’t stop it. It was inevitable.

They were inevitable.

I couldn’t protect him from her then. Except tonight, when I left her with Zayan, I thought I was protecting him. That I was protecting us from a snake in our presence.

Rush’s words ring through my head.

Drugs. Abuse. Rape.

The more I think about it, the more I think I might have been wrong to let her go. I should’ve believed her over a man I just met. A man who had a good reason to fuck me over—to fuck her over.

The devastating looks I’m getting from Rush and Reilly tell me all I need to know—I fucked upbigtime. Even if she was doing exactly what Zayan said, I should have taken her back home and figured it out on my own or with their help. I shouldn’t have stormed out of there because I was scared that the woman I was falling for could hurt me like that. I push people away before they can get close because it’s easier to handle being alone than the disappointment of getting hurt.

The longer I stand here, the longer it all washes over me.

The more I realize I made a huge error.

My mind has finally caught up, and even it knows just how wrong we were.

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