Page 35 of Stuck-Up Big Shot
Something flickers across his face—apology? Apathy? Disgust?
He crowds me in but leaves a few inches of breathing space between us. And then he lets loose a torrent of words and emotional baggage.
“Nice? How can you say you’ve been nice to me when all you’ve been doing is lying to my face this entire time?Button.”
My body jerks in response to his accusation and the heavy emphasis of my nickname. I suppose it should anger me and light me with ire, but it only heats me with something else, and my parted lips squeak out a “What?”
“Don’t play that innocent game with me. You know what I’m talking about. Button.”
He takes a step in, encroaching on what little space we have between us. The scent of his anger is spicy and masculine, with a hint of misery. All that entangles with my irritation and lust that explodes through me like starbursts burning through the sky.
“Stop calling me that,” I demand, trying to push him away with my palms on his chest. But he grabs my wrists and locks around me tight. “And I haven’t played games. Maybe initially, I didn’t say anything.”
He sniffs sarcastically. “See? You’ve known all along who I am. You’re the one playing games.”
“Miles—” I attempt to subdue him, but he cuts me off, his fingers gripping me tighter.
“No. You don’t get to explain. You’ve had your chance, Sutton. And I don’t know what you’re getting out of this, but it’s juvenile and calculating.”
I want to push back and defend myself. To stand my ground and not waiver under his erroneous assumptions. But it would only add fuel to the fire, and from what I’ve learned in my psychology courses, it’s that allowing silence will diffuse the situation faster.
Using that technique, I remain mute, sucking in a breath and exhaling it slowly while my eyelids close to block out my desire to call him out on his arrogance and the misunderstanding of his own doing.
When they reopen, I find Miles’s eyelids screwed tightly shut, his lips pinched purposefully as if willing himself to remain in control. He drops my hands and steps back.
When he speaks again, his volume is lower, softer, almost penitent. “Why didn’t you tell me you were Button, Mel’s best friend?”
I can’t help my actions. His question is so desperate and fraught with pain. My hands move on their own accord and cup his jaw with my palms.
His lids pop open to register surprise, looking at me through wet lashes.
“Miles, I told you. Last Saturday night. When I found you on the floor outside of your apartment. I told you who I was and why you thought I was so familiar. It’s because I grew up with your sister, right under your nose. But younevernoticed me. I honestly think you just saw me as an extension of your little sister, and I was invisible to you.”
He shakes his head adamantly, refusing to believe my words, but I tip my head in disagreement.
“I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I was five years younger, and you were this idol every girl worshipped. And then you left for college, and soon after, my friendship with Mel slowly evaporated, and I disappeared from your lives.”
As if it triggers something inside him, Miles snaps his head back, and my hands fall to my sides.
“What you told the group just now. You made it sound like you left Mel when she needed you most.”
The festering wound purges open, his pointed words slicing through it like a knife and reopening the wound to bleed out hot and sticky over my soul. It hurts because it’s true.
I acknowledge this with a nod. “It’s easy to beat yourself up for things youcoulda, woulda, shouldadone in the past. And believe me, I have. I’ve blamed myself for not doing enough at the time. But I was a fifteen-year-old girl when my friendship with Mel ended. I tried as best I could to reach her, but she wanted nothing to do with me. And by then, it was too late. I just thought she no longer wanted to be my friend. I had no idea she’d turned to drugs to disguise her pain.”
Miles stumbles back, blindly searching for something to hold him up. Finding the edge of a counter, he lays a hand down, his entire body bent and dejected.
“Fuuuck me,” he grunts, fisting his hand and banging it down hard into the granite like a gavel, hitting it several times before I rush over to stop him.
When he finally turns his head to look at me, his teary eyes have dried up and are masked with a very different emotion.
Blame and remorse.
“It’s not your fault, Sutton. It’s all mine. I’m the reason she’s dead.”
20
Miles
