Page 104 of Entangled

I’m sure Lucky likes me, I doubt he could fake that much, but I never had a chance to talk to him after I broke the deal. As far as he was concerned, I was there for sex. What a brilliant opportunity that must have been to make Jasper jealous.

The worst part is, I can’t even blame him. He wasn’t cruel to me. He didn’t do anything wrong. It was all fair, under our arrangement.

I just had to go and get my stupid heart involved.

So I push down my own broken heart and glare at Jasper. “Lucky loves you and you love him and you’rerejectinghim? How many years, Jasper? How many years have you been doing this to one another?”

His shoulders hunch in Lucky’s uniform.

“You’re very, very good at pushing people away, and I’m sure you have every reason. You’re very clever, so I’m sure you’ve built a brilliant case against yourself. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re hurting him. God, it all makes sense now. I never understood why he was so deeply lonely. It’s this.”

Jasper turns back around, stricken. “He’s not. Lucien is strong. He’s so fond of you, you’ll be happy.”

Fond. It’s a slice to my hamstrings. A crippling blow.

“He will never love me while he’s craving you. Stop hurting him, Jasper. You’re being selfish.”

“Selfish?” Jasper stiffens, and this time fury suffuses his forbidding features. “Careful, dear girl, you go too far. Everything I’ve done is to keep Lucien from harm.”

I know he’s right. This is not my place. But everything is bursting inside of me, organs imploding, one by one. I’m already too tired, too on edge. They’re foolish, all of them. Can none of them appreciate what it is to be loved like that? Tolovelike that?

My mother, my grandmother, my father—whoever he was—or even my husband, Henry, none of them ever loved me so well. I want it. Badly. I wanted it to be mine.

This is a repulsive waste. Discarding uneaten banquets in the trash, instead of giving them to the starving.

“Well, you’re failing miserably,” I tell him, unable to keep the harshness from my voice. How is it that Lucky lied to me more intimately, and yet I still understand him more than I do Jasper? I know what it is to want. Tocrave. “Lucky deserves better. This is your hang-up,yourissue. If you truly loved him, you’d get over yourself. You’d give himeverything, instead of teasing him over and again with this awful push and pull. You slipped? How many times? How many times have you broken his heart through the years, Jasper? God, I don’t understand?—”

“Enough, Eden.” Dom touches my arm, and I snap my head to look at him. My control is gone, shattered, the way it was when I drew the gun on Heather, and when I unleashed on Jaykob. My control used to be the one thing I had, and now I can find it exactly nowhere.

“You’ve said enough,” he repeats.

Something in his voice makes me glance at Jasper, who is white to his lips, staring at me. After a moment, he spins on his heel and walks off.

“I need to talk to him. Are you okay here?” Dom asks, distracted, and at my shaky nod, he picks up his pack and leaves after Jasper.

As he does, the guilt from the last two days returns with inhuman force. It pumps through this aching, shredded thing in my chest like poison. Lucky and Jasper. Dom and Heather. Myself and my terrible secrets.

A low whistle pulls me from my thoughts. “Now that was a show.”

I press a hand to my mouth. “Not now, Heather.”

“Hey,” she says, and she waits until I look down at her. When I do, her expression is surprisingly compassionate. “Do you know what you’re doing there?”

She tilts her head after Dom and Jasper.

I laugh humorlessly. “Does it seem like I know what I’m doing there?”

Heather leans forward and hooks her arms around her knees, looking up at me. “Look. A bit of unsolicited advice?” Her gray eyes are grim now. “Choose.”

“Choose?” The word has a vile taste.

Her shoulders lift. “As someone who has been caught between multiple guys before, it seems like a fun place to be... right up until it isn’t. Don’t be that person. She’s not a fun person to be.”

Hesitantly, I sit down beside her. Choose. Lucky is in love with Jasper. Jasper with him. Dom with her. The loss of each of them hollows me, like three gaping wounds, all still fresh and bloody. That wastheirchoice.

I can’t carve out another one by choosing between Jayk and Beau. Ican’t.

“I’ve made such a mess of things, Madison.” Tears fill my eyes, and the panic catches me with harsh, hitching breaths. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. The things I’ve done. Who Iam...”

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