Page 25 of Edged
“Are you finished?”
“Oh, I’m just getting started.”
He chuckled like an arrogant piece of shit. I watched the way his throat worked as he swallowed, the way his hands flexed around the bottle, already condensated because the fridge in the hotel room was garbage. He sat in the chair like he owned it, and I bristled, which only earned a deeper laugh out of him.
“Calm down, Owen.”
“Fuck you.” I shoved the chair back, grunting when it clattered against the glass slider. “I don’t even know why I called you.”
I stormed back into the hotel room, hands fisted at my sides. Honestly, what had I been thinking? There was a reason for the decade of silence between him and me, and one good hand job wasn’t enough to erase the history between us. But much like a man who’d never been told no, Archer followed me inside, closing the slider behind him like we’d agreed to breathe the same air.
“You didn’t call,” he corrected. “You texted.”
“I hate you as much as I did the last time I saw you.”
“You didn’t hate me at all last night.” The corner of his mouth twitched toward a smirk and I wanted to swing at him, put him through the glass, maybe even send him over the balcony entirely. Any of the three would have been satisfying.
“Before that,” I reminded him.
“Oh.” Archer licked his lips, that sly smirk settling onto his mouth like an expression he’d tailored just for me. “Back when I gave you my virginity?”
“When youtookmine,” I retorted, even though either statement held true.
“You gave it,” he said. “If anything, you tookmine, and we both know that I’m telling the truth here.”
“The first and last time you’ve been honest about anything,” I snapped, taking a step toward him out of anger, hands still tight at my sides.
“No.”
I turned my back on him, but there was nowhere to go. The room was nice, but it wasn’t huge. Besides the balcony, the only places to escape him were the bathroom and the bedroom, neither of which felt like a place where I wanted him to follow.
He closed the space between us, stopping inches away from my back. His body radiated all of the things I simultaneously enjoyed and hated about him. The confidence, the charisma, the attitude. It was all the things that made me fall in love with him when we were in high school, and all the things that made me hate him as an adult.
“I told you then I was sorry,” he whispered.
“What exactly were you sorry for?” I was less than a foot away from a framed painting of the Hollywood sign, and I could see myself, and him, in the reflection of the glass. But where my eyes watched him, his were focused on me, the juxtaposition notable and severe.
“Were you sorry for what we did?” I asked, sucking in a breath and watching his reflection, the way his eyes studied the lines of my neck, the way his mouth parted before he spoke.
“I was sorry for hurting your sister, for hurting you.” He licked his lips. “I was sorry that I didn’t see it all sooner.”
“See what?”
When I looked back into the glass, his gaze caught mine and held it.
“That I was in love with you.”
I turned quickly, and Archer moved just as fast. He stepped forward and I stepped back, my shoulders hitting the painting and his chest hitting mine. He wedged one leg between my thighs to pin me against the wall but kept his hands at his sides, his eyes on me.
“Don’t lie to me,” I rasped. “You don’t have to lie.”
He shook his head, lips wet from his spit and parted just enough so I could see the edges of his teeth.
“I still am,” he said it like he was telling me the weather or what time a movie started. Archer said those three words with such confidence and ease, it had me second-guessing why anything in life was hard when being in love could sound so simple.
“Well.” My voice was scratchy, the words thick in my throat. “I don’t love you. I still fucking hate you.”
“That’s fine.” Archer reached for the button on my jeans, fingers hesitating around the metal. “You don’t need to love me to let me fuck you.”
