Page 79 of Leah

My life was meant to be private. I was meant to be achieving my pathetic little milestones unobtrusively.

What have you done?

I’d taken it too far.

God, I threw caution to the wind by being here with Carter.

What the hell had I been thinking?

I should have told him to leave the second I found him standing in the store. Then none of this would have happened. A fucking fool once again, driven by my emotions.

“Don’t start with me,” he vented on the phone. “It’s not a good time to tell me what I should have fucking done, Rome.Just get us out of here.” He rattled off the directions to Rome before he got off the phone. “Alright, he’s on his way.”

“He’s pissed, isn’t he?” I questioned, numbly.

“Who cares what he is?” He kneeled in front of me, and I looked at his worried face, glimpsing at his torso and at all the marks I’d given him during our time together last night. They were little scratches, most likely from my riding him with my fingers dug into his chest.Awesome, Leah.Did the people out there get a good look at those too?

“Hey,” he said softly, grabbing my hand. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this. It’s not that big of a deal. We’ll cut straight through them and get in the car and that will be the end of it.”

“That will be the end of it?” I shot him a disbelieving look. “No, it won’t, Carter. How long before we’re in some stupid fucking blog?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters tome!” I stressed, feeling my eyes mist over in panic. “I have a life here! I can’t have it turn upside down because of you. How am I meant to land a goddamn job fresh out of Uni if everyone in town is going to recognize me as your fling?”

His eyes immediately darkened. “What did you just say?”

My heart slowed.

I didn’t respond.

He moved closer to me, his anger exploding out of him as he gritted out, “Did you call yourself a fling, Leah?”

“That’s whatthey’llbe calling it, Carter.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what they call it!” he fumed. “That’s what they do, remember? They lie. They fucking lie about everything! If they want to call you a fling, then let them. We know the truth, and the longer you’re around, the more they’ll realize what we have is real.”

I just blinked at him for a moment, incredulously.

What did he just say?

I pulled my hand away from his. “The longer I’m around, Carter? I’m not going to be around because I’m here and you’re over there—”

“We have something,” he cut in sharply. “There’s so much potential here to make this work.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. You have my word, Leah.”

“And you think your word means anything to me after all we’ve been through?” I seethed, completely losing my shit. “You broke my heart, Carter. You made me believe so many times during our time together that there was something more between us, and then you destroyed me! You can’t sit here and tell me that we can make this work when I have a list of reasons to doubt you.”

There.

I said it.

My true thoughts on the matter. I wasn’t going to shirk around this. He needed to know where I was at.

“Look at me,” he suddenly said, softly. Grabbing at my face with both hands, he turned me to him. “Leah, I want you. Just you.Onlyyou. Don’t cheapen yourself right now. Don’t think of yourself as a fling. You’re not. You’re the only real thing in my life, and I can’t stand the thought of you walking away from this. I’m not that guy anymore. Are you hearing me? I’m not that guy anymore, Leah.”

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