Page 48 of Her Greatest Mistake

My steps falter on the way to where she stands. Her question is like a blow to my pride—knowing that she didn’t keep up with my career but did my cousins. Jealousy pricks at me as I clench my jaw and continue on my warpath.

“Keeping tabs on me, sweetheart?”

I let my shoulder crash into his, relishing in the groan he releases as he drops his hand from her arm.Good, I hope it hurt.Sweetheart my fucking ass.

Braxton looks up at me, meeting my harsh stare with one of her own. “That was rude,” she states.

I slowly lift my eyebrow. “Rude?”

“You got some linebacker in you, Madman,” Jamie jokes.

“Is there a reason you came storming over here like an angry bull?” Braxton asks me, ignoring Jamie. My inner caveman likes that a lot.

“You’re here with me,” I remind her before glaring at my cousin. “Don’t touch her again.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of who I’m here with. I’m also aware that he’s being a jackass right now,” Braxton says tightly, and when I look back at her, I find her scowling at me, one hand on her hip.

Pretending I don’t wish it was my hand on her hip, I scowl right back. “When I’m with a girl, she’s mine to touch. If anyone else had touched you the way he did, I would have beat him into the fucking ground.”

“Lucky me, then, I guess,” Jamie grumbles before he walks away. Or at least I think he does. I don’t spare him a glance to check.

I nearly beat at my chest when Braxton doesn’t either. Even when the muscles in her face tighten and she takes an angry step toward me, I have to fight back a grin of victory.

“You’re a lot more possessive than you were before,” she informs me, as if I don’t already know that.

She has her chin lifted to look at me, and I pinch it gently between my thumb and pointer finger, holding it in place. The soft gasp that falls from her lips has me throbbing in my jeans.

“Possessive? Oh, baby. You haven’t seen possessive yet.”

“So, what was that just now? Jealousy, then?”

I take a step closer, sliding my hand across her jaw and then cupping her cheek in my palm. The way she’s looking at me right now, like I’m the only person she sees, not Jamie or anyone else around, it does something to me. Something that should scare me enough to have me backing up and calling it a day. Instead, I take that one final step left between us and close the gap, hoping that she can’t feel the erratic beating of my heart pressed against her.

I’m aware that we’re supposed to be pretending, and maybe that’s what gives me the confidence to keep doing these things. To keep touching her and flirting with her. If it’s all under the pretense of a fake relationship . . . it can’t mean anything. Right?

I drop my head until our breaths intertwine and lower my voice. “And if it was jealousy? What then?”

“I would say you’re just as blind now as you were when we were teenagers,” she whispers before stepping back, forcing my hand to fall from her face.

My mouth fills with bitter disappointment as she rushes past me, back into the house. I watch her pull open the patio door and walk inside, feeling confused. So fucking confused.

“Are you even going to make it two months?” Cooper asks, his words judgment-free as he moves in beside me. Eavesdropping asshole.

Emotionally exhausted, I just shrug. “I don’t know if I’ll make it twoweeks, let alone months.”

“Looks like you don’t have much of a choice.”

“Thanks for that.”

He looks toward the house and exhales tightly. “What will it take for you to forgive her? You know just as well as I do that you’re more upset with her for leaving than anything that happened with her father. You’ve admitted that to me more than once. Hell, for the longest time, I was convinced that even if you had never played hockey again, you would have been happy as long as you had her beside you.”

“What does it matter now?”

He shoots me a look that says,are you serious?“Don’t you ever think about how great things would be if the past was left where it belongs and we could move on and make new memories? We could be the three musketeers again. Don’t you want that?”

I twist my mouth in frustration. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Come on,” he pushes.

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