Page 83 of Villainous Summer

“No. This isn’t about being in love with him. Which I wasn’t. I believed him when he said I was the only one, and he made me look silly. I can’t trust anything now, and it’s his fault. Men complain all the time about crazy women. ‘Look at that crazy bitch, so obsessed.’ Who made them that way? Who drove them to the edge and took off the brakes?”

“Then, let him go, Sunshine. You think I can’t tell that something about that guy is holding you back? Leave him behind. You’ll be happier if you do.”

“Don’t tell me what I need to be happier. Who is supposed to make me happier? You? Mr. No Commitment? Who needs labels, low stakes, different gal every weekend?”

“It’s not—” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I haven’t been with anyone since you and I—”

I raised a brow. “Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Believe what you want. You always do, right? You’ll jump to conclusions and won’t ask questions like, ‘Van do you want me to spend the night?’ ‘Van, were you able to eat while we were apart?’ ‘Van, would you absolutely beat my ex-boyfriend to a bloody pulp if he looked at me the wrong way?’”

His tangent took the air from my frustration.

“When I went to London, he sent me this bouquet of bright blue tulips. He said they looked like my eyes.” I let out a low laugh. “At the time, I thought it was so romantic. But then I looked it up, to see what type they were, and you know what I found? Blue tulips aren’t even real. They’re genetically modified to look like that. Dyed. It’s fake, just like everything I thought about him.”

I glanced over at Van, who was listening intently. “I was the other woman. He was seeing us both, and I had no idea until I came home to his engagement announcement. The day I broke into your house, I was confronting him. We argued, and I started walking home.” His brow furrowed. “After throwing an expensive bottle of champagne at his head.”

One brow raised, his mouth took on a downturned smile of approval.

“Did it hit him?”

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t be talking to you if it did. I’d probably be in jail.”

“Shame. His face is begging to be rearranged.”

A lesser woman might have disapproved, but I reveled in it. That gave me the courage to relax.

“No arguments there.”

We passed Ridgewood’s downtown exit, moving farther north.

“You’re not taking me home?”

He scoffed at me, taking my hand. “Of course not. You’re staying over. And no leaving in the middle of the night like some cartoon villain.”

Van

True to her word, she stayed. We showered together, where I had to scrub sap out of her hair, and I made it worth her while afterward by bending her over the rim of the tub and taking her.

As we collapsed into bed, she tucked her head between my arm and my chest and ran her fingers over its sparse hair, coiling them around her nails.

“I wish it could be like this forever.”

Forever. Such a terrifying concept. Never in all the years of women, sex, and short-term girlfriends did that word come into play.

I waited for the familiar dismay to grip me, the icy warning that it was time to unlace my arm from her shoulder and send her on her way. Rolling the word around in my head, forever, forever, playing for keeps.

Did I want that with Summer?

Instead of fear, a warm sensation seeped over my skin, a small glow that started in my chest and radiated out into my fingers.

I pulled Summer closer.

Is this what it felt like to fall for someone? A new anxiety crept in. Would she feel the same way?

With that on my mind, I drifted off.

I woke with her still in my arms. After pressing a kiss to her forehead, I slipped out of bed.

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