Page 98 of Hungry Hearts

“No, you didn’t!” she screams back. “You saw Flynn and his date in my shower. Ruby and I were still at the dance studio parking lot wondering why the hell someone would slash my tire.”

I blink back my confusion while my brain tries to make sense of what she just said. “I saw. I heard him say your name.”

“Her name is Emmaline. You saw what he wanted you to see. Heard what he wanted you to hear.”

Fucking. A. The fucker set me up? My nostrils flare and I huff out deep, angry breaths. “Where is he?”

“No. Stop.” She squeezes my triceps. “We’re not talking about him right now. We’re talking about us.”

“The fuck, Maia? He’s supposedly your friend and he did this?”

“We’ll get there. Right now, we need to fixus. If that’s possible.”

I run my fingers through my hair and spin away from her, needing the space to pace. She didn’t cheat on me. She didn’t fuck him. We’re good. We can be together again.

I turn to face her. “If you didn’t cheat, we can go back to—”

“No. We’re notgoing back.”

My heart stops. Literally stops beating in my chest. She’s dumping me because I fell for Flynn’s sabotage. “So he wins. You really do want him.”

“This!” She jabs her finger into the air. “This is what we need to talk about. I understand your jealousy, I really do. If your best friend was a woman, I’d have a hard time with it. What Flynn did was wrong and twisted, but you, Ryder, you didn’t even fight for me. You refused to talk to me, even yell at me for what you believed I had done. Did you not think what we had together was worth it?”

“It’s not—” My throat constricts with tears. Tears I haven’t felt since witnessing the demise of my parents’ relationship. “Trust isn’t something I give easily. And once it’s broken, it’s not something that can be repaired.”

“Does this have to do with your parents?”

I stumble back in shock. “How the...what do you know about that?”

She shakes her head and gives me the saddest whiskey eyes I’ve ever seen. “Nothing. Avery mentioned there was damage from them.”

“Avery? You know Avery? Is she the one who gave you a key?”

“I met her the other day when she sat in my chair at the salon.”

“Freaking nosy girls.”

“She and Nolan, all your friends, are worried about you.”

“Nolan talked to you too?”

“No. But he gave her permission to give me a key to the penthouse. She said something about it being symbolic?”

“Christ.” I pinch the back of my neck. “Fuck yeah, it is. We don’t let women up here.”

She scrunches her brows. “I got the impression Avery was familiar with the place.”

“Yeah, she, Nora, and Ella are the only ones who’ve ever been up here. We don’t...” I trail off. Fuck. Nolan gave her access because he knows how fucked up I am over her, how much she means to me.

I’m still vulnerable, still hurting too much to tell her how I feel.

“If there’s a possibility of us working things out, we need to have open communication. I’ve told you about Adam, about our relationship and marriage, about how hard it was for me to move on. I need you to open up to me as well. Give me a piece of Ryder that no one else has.”

Yeah, she told me about her sweet-as-vanilla husband, and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t hate him. They were each other’s first. Never fought. Young, innocent love. They were happy, naïve, pure.

She’d admitted to me one night while we spooned on her couch after making love that she’d never done half the things with her husband that we’d done. Instead of gloating like I thought I would have, I held her closer and thanked her for sharing with me.

But I didn’t share in return, other than to tell her I’d never cuddled with a woman before. I’ve been keeping my emotions to myself out of fear. She’s right. She deserves more.

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