Page 66 of Cherry Beats

The question hung in the air, waiting to drop.

“Did you?” he pressed.

“Yes,” I answered softly, unable to lie to him.

The sound of disgust he made caught in his throat. “You? My Cherry made a deal behind my back?”

“I’m not... I’m notyourCherry, Presley. You need to stop saying things like that to me.”

“Okay, first of all, you don’t get to tell me what the fuck you are to me—or what youwereto me. That’s not up to you, so quit with the second-guessing, the bullshit excuses as to why I can’t feel what I feel. Second of all…” He blew out a breath. “I would have bet my life on it that you would be the last person in the world to do this to me.”

“Presley, it wasn’t like that. Whatever Dicky told you, I haven’t—”

“Oh, you have,” he spat back, and I could almost see the look he’d be wearing in my mind: nose curled. A hand raking through that hair of his I loved so much. His mouth downturned. The light and warmth from his eyes gone.

“Not how you think. Not the way you’re imagining it. I haven’t asked for any money or anything.”

“Yeah, because that’s the only thing you could take from me that would hurt, right?”

“This isn’t just about you. This is about me, my life, and the fact that I can’t fight like you can.”

“Fight? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I don’t have a management team or a publicist behind me if my shit gets spread across all the newspapers. It means I don’t have any protection like you. I don’t have a nice life or bottomless bank balance that can sort out all my problems. I have a mother, father, and brother made from mistakes and bad reputations. You think I want the whole bloody world to know about them, or me, or my friends? Do you think I want them to be associated with you—to embarrass you with their stories?”

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

I sat up straighter, a hand worrying my forehead as I stared down at the floor—the one we’d screwed each other on only a day before. The one that held the ghosts of our reunion. “Janey Dominic knows. She came after me… and my best friend Molly.”

“Came after you, how?”

“Dicky hasn’t told you this part?” I scowled.

“Told me what?”

Great. Just great.

“It’s a long story, but Molly was in danger. Janey roped someone else in to get information from her about us—you… and me. Not long after, I got a call making threats, demanding I talk about you. Demanding I tell her why you could possibly want to run to… me. She said she wasn’t going to quit until she got her damn story. She wasn’t going to leave me alone.”

“Shit, Cherry,” he hissed.

“You really didn’t know?”

“If I knew, do you think I’d be at this lame arse fucking party right now? I’d be chasing that bitch around London, tracking her down so I could serve up a few threats of my own.”

I frowned harder. “Presley, what exactly did Dicky tell you about my phone call to him?”

“That you’d called him in a panic and told him you wanted me to stay the hell away from you. You’d had enough. You couldn’t handle me being around, so you went ahead and made a deal.”

“But notwhy? Or what I’d actually said?”

“No.”

It was my turn to sigh before I ran through everything that had happened with JD, Trey, and my phone call with Dicky. I explained, word for word, what conversation we’d had, including the parts where I asked for him to get Presley to talk to me, followed by the crap I’d reluctantly agreed to about never answering the door to Presley again. The only thing I left out to save both our souls was the part where Dicky had suggested I was in love with Presley West.

No one needed to hear that tonight.

When I’d finished, Presley was quiet again. Eerily so. His silence was more powerful and frightening than his aggression.

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