Page 7 of Unofficial

"Let's go over there," Kade says and takes both of the bottles by their necks. "It's a little more private."

Following him to the table, she doesn't say a word and sits with her hands in her lap. She doesn't touch her beer, which is another bad sign.

"I don't know what to say," he says, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and tugs at the corner of the label on his beer bottle.

"You asked me here to have a conversation without a plan of what to say? Do I really mean that little to you?"

His eyes look up to her face, but she won't make eye contact with him. She stares around him, never quite looking directly at him, and it makes it even worse. "I feel like such a jerk."

"I hope you aren't expecting any type of objection from me."

Her tone isn't angry. It holds no disdain. Nothing but sadness. "Jess, look, I'm sorry. I didn't expect you to walk in on that."

"That's what you're apologizing for? Me walking in on it, not the fact you were sleeping with someone behind my back? You're sorry you got caught."

"Wait," he says and holds a hand up. "I never cheated or went behind your back."

Her eyes finally snap to his, and he sees a flicker of something. Anger, maybe. "If that's what you need to believe to make yourself feel better, fine."

"We never talked about what we were or what we expected from each other. Had I known what you thought, things would have been very different."

"Excuse me?"

"I like you, Jess. I really do. But I thought we were keeping things casual and having fun."

Her eyebrows crease. "Casual?"

"Yeah."

"You have two sets of clothes at my place, along with shampoo and body wash in my shower for the nights you stay over. I have an extra set of clothes, a toothbrush, and essential makeup items for when I stay over at yours. I have things in your shower, too. Are you telling me you have one drawer for me and others for other women, too? Do you just take all my stuff out and hide it to put Lena's stuff out when she shows up? Or how about Amanda or Molly or Brittany? Whatever the other girls' names are."

His stomach falls even further. Anger he can handle, but logic wasn't on his bingo card for the evening. "No."

"I guess I can't see the casual part of it, then," Jess says and shrugs. "How nothing meant anything to you. How I clearly didn't mean anything to you."

"I never said you don't mean anything to me. And what we have does mean something to me."

This isn't how the conversation should be going. Normally, by this point, there's shouting, screaming, maybe a slap or two, and basically anything other than the confused defeat she wears.

"If I told you I was seeing someone else, and that I couldn’t get together because I was on a date and planned to take him home with me, you wouldn't care? It wouldn't bother you in the slightest?"

A strange feeling swirls in Kade's chest. The thought of Jess with anyone else stirs something inside him that he hadn't expected, but he forces it down. He's not a relationship guy. "No, it wouldn't."

"I think that's where we're clearly on different pages because the idea of you spending time with anyone else like you do with me makes my heart hurt."

"Jess-"

"If you thought we were just casual, why did you lie to me about being sick? Why wouldn't you just tell me you were seeing someone else? Or even just saying you were hanging out with someone else if you didn't want to tell me you planned to have sex with her on the counter I set breakfast on in the mornings I stayed over?"

Damn her and her logic. "I guess I had a feeling you wouldn't be okay with it."

"Why Kade?" she asks, catching him off-guard. "Were you unfulfilled with me? Did the other girls do things I wouldn't? You always seemed happy when we were together, and you never seemed less than satisfied after we had sex. I'm trying to understand this."

Wait, hold on a damn minute. "It has nothing to do with anyone doing something better than the other."

"Then, why?" Jess's green eyes search his, and he hates the pain he sees there. "We seemed to get along so well together. Like we were happy. I was happy, but you obviously weren't. Help me understand what it was you needed from others that I wasn't giving you."

"Because I'm just not a commitment type of guy," Kade says. He hates how she seems to put this on her when it's not her fault in the slightest. It's all him. "I'm the casual type. I like to play the field."

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