Page 79 of Bring You Back

I lick the scar on my lip, taste honey there. “They don’t last.”Tic toc, Julian.

“Okay.” He pushes my plate across the island, out of my reach, just as I spoon another triangle of grapefruit into my mouth. “Are you hurting yourself?”

I nearly choke. “What?” When I meet his eyes, his fall to my lips, to my scar. If I had my ripped jeans on instead of leggings, I’m sure he’d be eyeing the one on my leg, too. I wondered when he would ask about them. Some cosmic joke that it has to be tonight.

“Why would I cut my own lip?” I’m challenging now, using the word he didn’t have the balls to use himself.

“Do you hurt yourself?” He places slow emphasis on each word and I do the same with my next ones.

“In what way?”

“Inanyway.”

I scoff. “Not in the wayyou’rethinking.”

“You are,” he says after a breath, the words low with shocked realization. I roll my eyes.

“Iwas,” I clarify, then pull my plate back to me. “But again, not in the way you’re thinking.”

He pushes the plate away a second time, and through the peak of my annoyance, I blurt, “I didn’t care what happened to me.” I pull it back, he pushes it away. “Julian—”

“But you carenow.”

“Apparently,youdo,” I snap, meeting his stare head on. The turmoil I find there makes me retract the claws some. “I’m not hurting myself.”

“Don’t let anybody else hurt you, either.”

I’m not sure Julian understands the implications in his words. The way I’m going to take them. I cross my arms and give him a pointed, “I’m not.”

His features shift, wipe clean of all curiosity and concern for me when my meaning dawns.

In the midst of mylife’s shortmentality, setting things in order, balancing the scales, I seemed to have forgotten my worth.

I seemed to have forgotten I can’t be somebody I’m not.

I can’t allow myself to be forced into vulnerability, to be even more uncomfortable than I already am. Tonight, even with him actually here, with me, I still feel the way I always do when I see that he’s out, with her. I won’t sacrifice my pride. Or my feelings. I won’t shove my own needs aside. I won’t wait around trying to prove something to him while he gives his body to another girl when his heart belongs to me.

We’re both in survival mode. But I can’t fight on my own. He’ll need tostep upfor me, too.

Julian turns an apathetic stare back down to his plate. I push it away and his jaw sets.

“I was only gone a year,” I start, my voice surprisingly even against my twisted insides. “Out of touch less than that.”

He doesn’t attempt to pull his plate back, but he argues, “A lot of shit happened in a year.”

“A lot of shit happened in amonth,” I argue back, hackles raised, words coming fast. Julian’s truth tends to reveal itself in the quickness. Too slow and he’ll look for the next bush to beat around. “You haven’t known about your parents’ shit for ayear. You haven’t been using Reyna for ayear—”

He finally faces me. “I’m notusingher.”

“You don’twantto be using her.”

“We’refriends.” He’s riled, showing how much he does care. I want to add,With benefits, but that clarification contradicts my next thought. I go in for the kill.

“A taken guy isn’t attractive to me.”

“I’m not—”

“Taken?” I say for him when he cuts himself off, my brows raised. “I know. You’re justfriends. And so are we.” His nose flares at my words, the meaning clear. He doesn’t have me until he doesn’t have her.

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