Page 168 of Dirty Like Dylan

“Like fuck you can’t.” I stared him down. “It’s not hard. I know you know how to suck face, Cope.” I wanted to challenge him. I wasn’t making this shit easy for him. If all he was was scared to love me, I was not fucking letting him off the hook.

“Not with you,” he said quietly.

And it tore my fucking guts out.

“Yeah? What about what happened with Kitty?” I accused.

“What happened?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. Looking all fucking kinds of guilty.

But I wasn’t gonna mince words anymore. I wasn’t beating around the motherfucking bush anymore.

My life and my feelings for him were not some fucking joke.

“You came in my fucking face,” I said, throwing it at him the way I’d always wanted to.

“By accident,” he said.

“Fuck you it was an accident.” I was all up in his face, and I’d never wanted to hit the guy so fucking badly. I wanted to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

But he was totally calm when he said, “I got carried away.”

“Carried away?” I spat right back in his face. “Carried away? An impulse buy at the fucking checkout aisle is getting carried away. Drinking ’til you throw up is getting carried away. You came in my face.”

“You were both there,” he said, still calm. “She was sucking my cock and the two of you were making out and she had her hands on me and I lost control. So fucking sue me.”

I took a deep breath and ground my fucking teeth.

I did not wanna unleash on him all the hateful fucking angry shit I wanted to say right now.

“Let me guess,” I said instead. “Next you’re gonna drop the world’s worst fucking cliche in my face and tell me you were curious. Like some sorority girl on spring break feeling up another chick’s tits.”

He said nothing, but his jaw worked a bit.

Good.

I wanted to piss him off. I wanted him to say something mean and give me an excuse to punch his motherfucking lights out. Drag him to the floor and fucking pound him with everything I had.

“I thought we were just messing around,” he said, still calm. “We were drinking a lot. We were fucking women together. I didn’t know you felt…”

“Fuck you, you didn’t know,” I snarled.

“Ash…” he said, his voice and his eyes going soft, and totally fucking sad. “I love you, but…”

And I drew back. My head snapped back, like he’d motherfucking sucker-punched me.

Those words, coming out of his mouth, were pretty much my worst fucking fear come to life. Me, Dylan, and the I love you, but… conversation.

I didn’t want him to go on. I didn’t need him to.

I could fill in the blank myself. I could imagine a whole shitload of ways that sentence could finish, and none of them were anything I wanted to hear.

I love you, but I don’t love men that way.

I love you, but I don’t love you that way.

And the worst, the most important of all, the most fucking true of all…

I love you, but I’ll always love Amber more.

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