Page 28 of Dare (Fighting Fate)

But then Eli was taking a step back, a gentle smile slipping onto that luscious mouth of his as he lightly nodded. Internally, I heard the sound of a loud slap, the sting seeping through my body like a real physical blow.

“Wyatt’s a jerk,” Eli said, raising his chin a fraction and shrugging like nothing had just happened. “But you’re strong, Jess. Don’t let him change who you are.”

I blinked, embarrassment flooding my body in an instant. I wasn’t going to fool myself into thinking I hadn’t been obvious. I knew I had been. I’d more or less just tried to kiss him, and he’d recoiled like it was the most repulsive thing he could imagine. I felt humiliated beyond belief.

“I better get back to the party,” he said, taking another step back and gesturing to the door.

I smiled through the hurt and nodded. “Of course. I’ll probably see you a bit later on.”

With his lips pressed into a tight smile, he turned and practically ran from the shed, leaving me to curl up and lick my emotional wounds. I just wasn’t sure if those kinds of wounds would heal. It sure didn’t feel like it in that moment.

Chapter 18

Eli

Sitting forward on the weight bench, I leaned my elbows on my knees and tried to catch my breath. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, some part of me was standing back, arms crossed over my chest, staring at the part of me that was trying to act like nothing was different and it wasn’t fucking weird to pump iron on New Year’s Day.

I shook my head. So what if this hadn’t been in my original plans? Not having a hangover was actually pretty cool. I’d gotten up while everyone else had still been passed out all over the place, picked up half the shit lying throughout the yard, and cleaned up as best I could without getting an ass chewing from some poor soul who felt like they’d killed their liver the night before.

The downside of being the only one up was the fact that I needed a distraction, and most things that gave me that were as noisy as shit. I’d have given up my liver for an hour tinkering with my motorcycle right about now, but that’s just the way life was for me these days. It was seriously testing my strength of willpower—in more ways than one.

Lying back, I wiggled myself under the weight

bar and grabbed a hold of it, adjusting my grip until I was mentally ready for another set of reps. Lifting it up, I slowly brought it down to my chest before pushing it steadily up again. It was nowhere near the weight I usually pressed, but Mom had made us promise that we’d only lift what we were casually comfortable with unless we had a spotter with us.

Unfortunately for me, this did nothing to help me concentrate on what I was doing. As I continued through the set, my mind steadily drifted to the events of the night before, despite my best efforts to stay away from it. The image of Jess, standing right in this very space, her eyes wide and hopeful as she gazed up at me, open and pleading, was one I just couldn’t get out of my head. It had been taunting me in the worst way possible since the second I’d walked away from her.

My reps quickened as I thought about the struggle it had been to turn away from her. Every fiber of my being had been begging me to take what she was so obviously offering me, but I just couldn’t. Part of it was the fact that I’d made a promise to myself—a commitment to finish what I’d started, using one hundred percent of what I had. But it was another part of me that actually had the strength to walk away, and that was the aversion I had to being anything like Wyatt. I would never, in a million lifetimes, treat her so badly, but we were studying the same course, we had the same aspirations when it came to success with our careers, and we had the same amount of spare time in all that to give to someone—not enough. Jess deserved more than that. She deserved the world, and if I couldn’t give her something that came even remotely close to that, I wasn’t going to hurt her by offering anything less.

“Aww, look at the cute little weight set Eli’s playing with, Adam.”

Closing my eyes in a long blink, I breathed out, pushing the bar up to click into its rack. With my lips curled up into a smirk, I watched Isaac saunter over to the other bench and sit down. He looked like shit.

“At least I can lift this morning without hurling,” I said, sitting up to face him.

Adam pulled a can of soda out of the fridge and cracked the lid. “He’s got you there, Bro,” he said, taking a swig.

Isaac pressed his lips together into an accepting pout as he quickly nodded his head. “Yeah, you’re probably right. My stomach feels as though it’s reenacting a scene from The Perfect Storm or something. I’m not entirely sure which end it wants to come out, to be honest.”

“Seriously, Bro,” Adam said, coming to lean against the workbench. “Way too much information.”

Isaac shrugged, clearly nonplussed about it. “At least I scored last night.”

My gaze narrowed. This was news to me, but I didn’t need to ask whom he scored with. When I’d left the man cave last night, I’d seen him sitting by the fire with his arm around Amber’s waist. Holding back the jealousy that reared up inside me was a lot harder to do than I was comfortable with. The fact that he could just live in the moment without a care for consequences had always been a bone of contention for me. But then again, I wanted Jess for more than just sex.

Isaac wiggled his eyebrows, his shit-stirring meter turned to maximum strength. “What happened to you last night, anyway? You left to grab a brew and I never saw you again.”

I knew this question would eventually come up, but it didn’t mean I wanted to answer it. I took a leaf out of Isaac’s book and shrugged as though I didn’t care. “I just had enough.”

They both narrowed their eyes, suspicion creeping into their expressions. Adam was the first to break, his mouth curving up at the corners. “Jess.”

I tried to school my features into the most neutral expression I could manage. “Jess had nothing to do with it.”

That was when Adam flat-out laughed. “Bullshit. Something happened with Jess, and it made you choose to leave.” His expression fell as he realized what his words implied. “Shit. What happened?”

I sighed. I really didn’t want to get into it. Ever. But that was one luxury I’d never get with my family. There was a reason they all knew everything. The badgering would never end if I didn’t at least give them something. “Seriously,” I said. “Nothing happened. I ran into Jess. We talked. Then I decided I’d had enough, so I went to bed. That’s it.”

Adam deadpanned me. “You just talked? It can’t have been a very good talk if it made you want to leave.”

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