Page 58 of Playing Pretend

My mouth popped open. “Are you shitting me?”

Nothing.

“You arrogant son of a bitch,” I said. “What made you think it was about you? What if I just wanted to have a night out with friends?”

Caleb tilted his head. “Did you go out just to have a good time?”

I lifted my chin. “Yes, I did, so you wasted your time coming all the way here.”

With a heavy exhalation, Caleb pinched his bottom lip between his thumb and his forefinger, and then said, “It would have been a waste of time if you were telling the truth, but you’re not, so…”

“And pray tell, why would I go out just to get your attention?”

I folded my arms across my chest, and smirked with a hint of arrogance. He was bluffing. He had to be.

“Because you’re angry with me,” he replied. “You figured you’d go out with the girls, have some fun, dance with someone else knowing Alfie would see it, and report back to me. But,” he tucked a strand of my curled hair behind my ear, and I struggled not to find it patronizing, “Your plans were blown to shit when Landon and Brian showed up, taking Aaliyah and Annabelle’s attention.”

I gave him a look. How the hell did he...?

Thanks to my sobriety it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. My eyes widened when it clicked.

“You,” I breathed, taking a step back. My mind flashed back to the start of the evening, when Landon and Brian only showed up a mere forty-five minutes after we’d arrived. “You told them where to find us.”

“I may have mentioned something to them, yes, but -”

I shook my head, cutting Caleb off. “There is no ‘but’ here, Caleb. You screwed up, and all you’ve done is prove how manipulative you are when a situation isn’t playing out in your favor.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he insisted, reaching for me. I moved further away from him.

“It never is with you, is it? You probably thought I was just another one-night-stand who got clingy, and that’s why you ran.”

“We agreed it was one night, Kadence.” His rebuttal was lame, and so incredibly weak, but I understood that to him it was valid and perhaps if I were drunk I would have bought it.

“We did, and I wasn’t aware that I gave you the impression I wanted more. Is it because I stayed afterwards?”

I waited for Caleb’s response, but again, he stayed quiet.

Yeah.

I was done with that.

With this.

“Well,” I started walking backwards. “This has been fun, but I’m beat. Sayonara.” I saluted him, quite sarcastically I might add, and whirled around. Of course I wasn’t as unaffected by how he’d treated me as I was pretending to be, but I was putting on a brave face, at least until I was alone.

Just when I thought I was in the clear, Caleb snuck his arm around my waist, and lifted me off the floor. I shrieked, my legs flailing wildly making my dress slide up.

“Put me down!”

Caleb grunted when the heel of my foot made contact with his shin, but didn’t lower me. Instead, he turned around and headed towards his bedroom.

“You can’t just dismiss me,” he said, his voice gruff.

“Why?” I twisted in his arm and dug my nails into his forearm until a hiss fell from his lips. “You dismissed me.”

He let out an inarticulate sound from inside his throat before spinning around, and pinning me to the wall.

“I hurt your feelings,” he observed. His eyes traveled over my face, down my throat, and when he brought them back up to meet mine, that all-too-familiar tingle started deep inside my belly.