Page 51 of The Cabin

“Mhhm. So how do you explain hauling me out of the bar right when she was about to kiss me?”

He whips around, murderous. “She was not going to fucking kiss you.”

“Uh, she definitely was. I was there.”

“She probably sucks at kissing.” I raise an eyebrow. He sounds like a petulant child.

“What do you care if I mess around with a bad kisser?”

“I don’t.”

I huff in frustration, crossing to where he’s standing, getting in his face. Well, as best I can with the height difference. “You very obviously do and I wanna know why!” He glares at me, but I don’t back down. “Tell me,” I push. He stays silent. “I feel like I have the right to know why you go completely psycho when I mention that night.”

I’m right in his face. He clenches his jaw and crosses his arms across his chest. Now I’m just flat out yelling. “So, let me get this straight. You’re going to force me to live with you, but act like I’m the most pathetic thing on the planet who can’t get her own food, or shower, or possibly be the girl someone goes up to at a bar?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to! You scream it with every goddamn thing you do!”

More silence. “Right. And you’re gonna pull that little stunt in the bedroom. What was that exactly? ‘Aw, I’m gonna fuck with the poor divorced girl whose own husband didn’t want her. He’d rather have sex with his secretary, and I’m gonna make sure she never gets to erase those memories for as long as she lives.’ Real nice, Grayson. That’s not shitty at all! The first time someone is interested in me in two fucking years and you made sure to put me right back in my place. Right where I belong in single, lonely, Loserville –”

“I was fucking jealous!” he roars. The ferocity in which he says it stuns me in place. He’s seething and looking at me like he just admitted something he wasn’t supposed to.

“What?” There’s panic in his eyes. He’s backpedaling. “Of what, Grayson?” I am so confused by him. He’s quiet for a few seconds.

“Of you,” he says, shutting down completely.

“Of me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He moves around me and walks to the front door. “Because she wasn’t into me. She was into you.” He’s pretty much mumbling, and it’s made even worse because he’s also leaving out the door at the same time.

“You were jealous because she didn’t want you? Every freaking person in that bar wanted you!” I can’t even have his measly scraps? (Jade was not measly, it’s metaphorical).

“Yup.” And that’s all I get before he closes the door behind him. I hear the truck start up a few seconds later. What the hell was that?

Also, I guess wearegoing to talk about the dancing yesterday. ‘It should’ve been me dancing with you at that bar.’ What? So that I couldn’t dance with Jade? To stick it to her? That if she didn’t want him, she couldn’t want anybody? That doesn’t make any sense.

I’m going to request an effing manual that tells me exactly how to navigate these freaking mood swings Grayson has. Because I spend like ninety percent of my time trying to figure him the hell out.

I think I need a drink. Or ten.

—

Later that night, I’m lying on the couch trying to fall asleep, replaying the evening’s events over and over in my head. (I told you, once a spiraler, always a spiraler.)

Grayson will be pissed I’m not in the bed, but oh well. He’s pissed about everything anyway.

I am so overwhelmed and frustrated and confused. I don’t understand him. As soon as I think I do, he does a one-eighty and completely throws me off balance. It’s dizzying.

And to top it all off, I let somebody’s husband put their hand in my pants.

Chapter 16

By the time I wake up the next morning I feel about zero percent rested and Grayson has already left for what I’m assuming is the day. I heard him come back in last night, but he was gone before I got up.

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