Page 64 of Dirty Rock

“Oh, I’m gonna.”

I took another step closer, but there was still so much distance between us. It felt weird after a full day of being hand-in-hand. After a full twenty-four hours of discovering one another. Julia spun around slowly, sniffing up and swallowing down as she leaned back on the counter, both hands still clinging onto the edge of it. She was a defiant little thing; I could give her that much.

We stared at each other. Her with her chin raised. Me through hooded eyes.

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve quit on us?”

“Yes.”

“Were you planning on telling me?”

“No.”

I raised both brows. “No?”

“At least… not until you’d left.”

I took another step closer. “You’ve brought me here, to your home. You’ve held my hand all day. You’ve told me to stop lying to myself every chance you’ve had. All while sitting there, knowing you’d done what you’d done.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Rhett.”

“Oh, yes, you fucking do, Jules.”

“I don’t,” she whispered. “You don’t owe me anything, either. You got what you wanted. I had fun. That’s all there is to it.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what? Like you usually are?”

“Excuse me?” I frowned, taking another slow, controlled step towards her. Those chocolate brown eyes followed me, resting in the face of a queen, belonging to the unexpected villain of the moment.

“You heard me,” she scoffed, her huff of laughter catching in her throat. “You’re RhettFuckingRyan,” she mocked. “You do what you want, who you want, when you want. You don’t answer to anybody. You don’t listen to anybody. You’re angry with the world and you don’t even know why, but you know you don’t care who you take down in the process. Isn’t that what you tell us all? Isn’tthatwho you want to be?”

“Are you really standing there turning this around to be about me?”

“I told you to leave it alone. I told you not to come after me, but you kept pushing and pushing and pushing.Let me have you.”

“After you came looking for me first,” I reminded her.

“That was a mistake.”

“It seems like everything between us has been a mistake.”

“I always knew it would be.” She straightened her back and raised her chin.

“But you still wanted it, didn’t you?” I walked closer. There was only two feet between us now, and she was pressing her back into the counter to try and seem taller. Her breaths became heavier, and her eyes flickered all over my face. “You still needed it from me.”

“Stop it.”

“You still needed a taste before you chewed me up and spat me out. And you couldn’t get enough.You can stay if you want…”I repeated her own words back to her. “You wanted more. You wantedtime.Admit it. You loved every filthy second I gave you.”

She curled her lip in disgust. “This is who you really are. This is who Rhett Ryan is. This is what I see when I look at you.”

“And this is who Julia Speed seems to be. A stranger. Cold. Nothing. No one. Who the fuck knows? I sure don’t. Apparently, I’m not allowed to know the rules of this game you’re playing.”

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