Page 140 of Just for the Cameras
“That does not give you the right to treat me the way you did. Just because you’re angry or feeling something awful inside doesn’t give you the right to humiliate me in public.”
“No one cared,” I say.
“I did!” she shouts, pointing at her chest. “I cared. I cared about the way you spoke to me. I cared about the way you made me feel at that moment. You treated me like I was just someone you could toss to the side, reprimand like I didn’t matter. And maybe that’s how you really feel, but excuse me for thinking that maybe there was a little more between us. Clearly, I was wrong, though.” She starts to move away but then says, “I have quite a few pictures stocked up on my phone to post, so don’t worry about coming in right now.”
“I have to,” I say.
“Then you can work with someone else.” Her eyes meet mine. “Because I can’t do this temperamental side of you anymore. I can’t work with the growly asshole who will snap at me at any given point. I don’twant to deal with that, and I don’t deserve to deal with that. I’ll go through with the rest of the planned events because I will keep my word, but everything else, I’m done, Graydon.”
Done?
She can’t be done. Right?
She wets her lips and then quietly says, “Please don’t text me. Don’t pick me up foranything. Don’t send me pictures, and…stop messing with my head.”
Then she takes off, leaving me struck with…with a sense of loss. Like with every step she takes, putting distance between us, she’s walking off with something I truly care about.
Hank slips his arm around her shoulders while staring at me the entire time, almost tauntingly, as he leads her to his worn-down tan Jeep.
My teeth grind together as I watch him help her into the passenger side. That’s my fucking job. She’s supposed to go home with me. I’m supposed to tuck her safely into my vehicle.
Not him.
Steam billows out of my ears as he rounds the back of his Jeep, his eyes on me, as if to say he just won.
Guess what, you fuck, you didn’t. Because this is far from over.
Even if I couldn’t tell Maple about my mom.
Even if I’m a coward, and this morning…a bully…
Maple’s mine.Or maybe…was.
Until I screwed up.
But I’m not going to give up that easily.
CHAPTER 26
GRAYDON
Sitting on my couch, Istare down at my phone, a rage warring inside me.
A part of me wants to find out where Hank the Wank lives, tear his door off the hinges, and teach him a goddamn lesson about moving in on someone when they have no right to.
A part of me wants to go to Maple’s apartment and sit outside it until she lets me in to talk to her. Because her words…her words sliced right through my brittle heart.
“I cared about the way you made me feel at that moment. You treated me like I was just someone you could toss to the side, reprimand like I didn’t matter. And maybe that’s how you really feel, but excuse me for thinking that maybe there was a little more between us. Clearly, I was wrong, though.”
She isn’t wrong. She…she means a lot to me. I might not say much, but I listen. I listen when she speaks.
But the other part of me, the part that actually wants to kick my coffee table over, stares at this inane text thread.
A text thread I don’t want to be a part of.
But a text thread that I think I need.
Grumbling to myself, I type out a text.
