Page 66 of Wicked Temptations
Probably guilt.
If I hadn’t chased him...
If I hadn’t lost my temper during the fight, if I hadn’t tackled him like some territorial animal feral with the need to mark its claim, if I hadn’t pursued him through the zones when he ran, then Jude would still be on his feet.
He wouldn’t be headed to the hospital with a busted ankle and his career potentially in ruins.
All because I couldn’t keep my shit together long enough to stick to the choreography.
I heard Riley skating toward me, her expression unreadable beneath the smeared doll makeup. She rolled to a stop a few feet away and crossed her arms, studying me with the kind of intensity that made me feel like a specimen under glass.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
The word came out too quickly, too defensively. Riley’s eyebrow arched.
“Right.” She didn’t sound convinced. “What happened out there?”
“He fell.”
“I got that part. I mean before. You two were going at it like you actually wanted to kill each other.”
I looked away, unable to hold her gaze. “We were just playing up the characters.”
“Bullshit.”
The word hung between us, sharp and accusatory. I wanted to argue but couldn’t find the energy. What was I supposed to say? That Jude and I had been tearing each other apart for weeks, both onstage and off? That the line between performance andreality had blurred so completely I didn’t know which side I was on anymore?
That I’d been fucking him anywhere I could get my hands on him, and that I’d demanded too much of him while not having the guts to call it what it was myself?
Riley sighed, and the sound carried something almost like sympathy. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you two, and honestly, it’s none of my business. But Jude’s my friend, so if you did something—”
“I didn’t.”
Liar.
I had done something. I’d pushed and provoked and chased him until he’d snapped. Until we’d both snapped and destroyed whatever fragile thing we’d been building between us.
“Okay.” Riley didn’t look like she believed me, but she let it drop. “Parker’s going to want you back out there. Damage control.”
My stomach twisted. “I should go with him.”
“To the hospital?”
The way she said it made it sound absurd, and maybe it was. What excuse did I have? We weren’t dating. We weren’t even friends, not really. We were coworkers who occasionally fucked when the tension got too thick to breathe through.
That didn’t give me the right to follow him to the emergency room and hold his hand while they took X-rays. Even if every instinct I had was screaming at me to do exactly that.
“He wouldn’t want me there,” I said quietly.
Riley’s expression softened a fraction. “Probably not.”
That hurt more than it should have. I nodded, swallowing past the tightness in my throat, and tried to pull myself together. Jude didn’t need me hovering over him like some lovesick idiot. He needed medical attention and space to process what had just happened without me making everything worse.
Like I always did.
Parker appeared at the end of the tunnel, his radio crackling with static and his face set in the kind of grim determination that meant someone was about to get their ass chewed. I braced myself, but he just jerked his chin toward the main zone.
