Page 72 of Roan

No matter what I do or say, she will be his until she decides otherwise. The next move is up to her.

You might be thinking that I ran to Roan the first chance I got, but you’d be wrong. I didn’t go to him right away. I couldn’t. I had to think about what all this meant and understand that what I did had consequences. I should have told Agustin sooner. Instead, I waited, and his entire family flew out here from Key West. Even his ninety-year-old grandparents.

I feel, well, devastated by my actions. I want to go as far as to be mad at Roan for destroying it, but I can’t. Not when I know me marrying Agustin would have been wrong.

But you don’t care about any of that, do you? You want to know if I went to see him, don’t you? I didn’t. Not right away. I take my time leaving the ranch. I stay in my dress, walk on the beach, try to talk myself out of going to Roan and realize there is nowhere else on earth I’d rather be.

I spend the next three hours at the Gaslite in Santa Monica. It’s a dive bar where the locals hang out and bonus, they serve free popcorn and specialize in karaoke. Dressed in all white, I sing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” three times. And tell the crowd who doesn’t give a fuck that I’m not a virgin bride. I get so drunk I can barely walk, max my credit card out buying everyone shots and screaming at the bartender every single time, “It’s my wedding day!”

At some point, the bartender, seemingly entertained by me or maybe just my drunk perception of him, asks, “Where’s your husband?”

“I’s didn’t go through wid it,” I slur, after ten too many shots and fall off the bar stool onto my ass. I’m asked to leave not long after that because of a miscommunication as to where the ladies’ room was.

A guy tries to help me out, probably because he thinks he’ll get lucky, but I have my mama’s Latino blood running through my veins, and you will never convince me to do anything I don’t want to.

With my wedding dress still on, smelling like I doused myself in vodka, I get an Uber to Roan’s house ready to tell him off. I should mention it’s three in the morning by the time I convince myself to do this and I am in absolutely no condition to be talking to Roan.

“There’s a gate,” the Uber driver points out, as if I didn’t know.

“Ram your car into it,” I giggle, tossing what money I have left in my bra at him. And yes, I’m still drunk.

“I know whose house this is and I’m not about to start shit with the Sawyer brothers.”

“Pussy,” I mumble, slamming the door in his face.

He takes off and I’m left alone in the desert, standing in front of the gate with my arms crossed over my chest. If I had a dick, I’d piss on their sign for the shit these guys have put me through over the years.

I hit the Call button with my bare foot—I lost my heels earlier today. My dad answers the call. “You lasted longer than I thought,” he says, laughing. I know he can see me on the camera. They did away with the two-way video when Tiller showed a county official his junk.

“Open the gate,Dad.” This might be a good time to mention, if you haven’t noticed already, I’m a feisty drunk.

Dad laughs but opens the gate. He greets me at the door, holding it open and watching me strut inside. “Are you drunk?”

“Nope.” I push past him and head upstairs. I’m on a mission.

Up three flights of stairs, I find myself swaying in front of Roan’s closed bedroom door. I twist the handle, but it’s locked. Naturally. He knows better in this house. I’m forced to knock and it totally throws a wrench in my plan to barge into his room like he did my wedding and wake him up by yelling at him.

After five minutes of knocking, Roan finally opens his door, half-asleep, naked, and growls, “What?” with his eyes closed.

I think I’m more caught off guard that he’s buck-ass naked. My eyes immediately go to his dick. I smile and drop to my knees and pet his dick. Yep. I just did that. Wanna know what makes it even worse? I whisper to it. “Hello, old friend.”

Roan’s eyes snap wide open. As if maybe he’d been sleeping up until this point. He scans the scene before him. Girl in a wedding dress at his feet petting his dick. I bet he thinks he’s still sleeping.

His dick? Not sleeping. It’s fully awake and likes me. I think I purr at it, but I can’t be completely sure.

Stepping back, he yanks me to my feet and inside his room. The door slams behind me and he locks it. Reaching for his shorts on the bed, he slides them on and turns on a light.

I cover my eyes. “That’s too bright!”

The light dims and I think he laughs, but I don’t know for sure. The moment I see his eyes—I lose it on him. Those piercing, evil, captivating, soul-stealing eyes flip a switch inside me.

“I hate you, Roan! So much. I hate that you led me on for years. I hate that you treated me like a child. That you took everything from me, until you wouldn’t take the one thing I wanted to give you until it was too late. And I hate that I love you despite all of that! Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?”

He smirks but doesn’t reply.

I don’t relent. I say a whole bunch of other stuff too, but I don’t know what it is. My mouth moves, words come out and all the while, Roan just stares at me like my head is about to explode. It might. It totally feels like it might. But I don’t stop. I can’t. It’s as if I’m telling him, you started this fire, you finish it. My eyes rage and accuse and he accepts, because it’s on him. He started this when he first kissed me in Paris.

His posture straight, his stare volatile, he let me believe the lie and it started a chain reaction from there. I press on, hysterically crying, going off on him for all the ways he’s pissed me off. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Roan’s heated eyes bore on mine. “Let me see your hand.”

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