Striding into the backyard, I started pacing before tossing out my warm beer into the grass and filling up my cup.
“What was that all about?” Mac asked, suddenly appearing, sans redhead.
“Where’s your lady of the night?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders before pointing lazily toward the house. “In there. Out here. Who knows?”
Chance was clearing out the few people who were lingering around us, telling them all to give us some space and go inside. They all listened. He was lucky that he garnered that much respect as a sophomore. If he were anyone else, they would have told him to fuck off and stayed put until he physically forced them to leave.
“I saw the whole thing. The way she was looking at you when she took that shot,” Chance said once the three of us were alone. “Then, you flipped out.”
“She told me she didn’t drink hard alcohol. Only beer. It was one of her rules,” I said, trying to explain why I’d gone so crazy.
“Okay.” Mac shot Chance a look, and I knew they both must think I was losing my mind. “Then, don’t look inside right now,” Mac added, and of course, I did the exact opposite.
I watched as she downed a shot, quickly followed by another. “ ‘Alcohol makes you stupid,’ ” I said, repeating the words that she had once told me.
“What?”
“That’s what she always said. ‘Alcohol makes you stupid. And gives people something to talk about.’ Why is she doing this?” I asked to no one in particular.
But Chance answered, “That’s obvious.”
“Spell it out for me then.”
“She’s trying to get your attention. She’s mad at you. She’s hurt. This is her way of lashing out,” he said, sounding so sure of himself.
“Mac, do you agree with that?” I asked, looking for either a consensus or an opposing viewpoint.
“Sounds about right to me,” he said.
I continued to watch Christina. When she stumbled on her feet and Logan’s arms wrapped around her, I’d had enough.
“Oh shit,” Chance and Mac said from somewhere behind me as I threw my cup to the ground and started moving indoors.
I didn’t have to look behind me to know they were following. It was a good thing. I might need them.
“Oh, goodie, you’re back,” Logan sneered, still holding Christina, and I zoomed in on his fingers splayed across her lower waist.
“Stop giving her shots. I already asked you nicely,” I ground out, my tone dead. Fucking. Serious.
He let her go and took a menacing step toward me, his hands balled into fists at his sides, and I almost prayed that he’d hit me first, so I could finally end this shit between us. But his maneuver was too quick, and Christina swayed, clearly unbalanced on her own two feet. I rushed to her side before she could topple over and held her upright, all thoughts of Logan wiped away.
“Let’s get you home, huh?” I said protectively.
She looked up at me and batted those long, dark lashes. “I didn’t come here with you,” she said, her words slower than usual.
“That’s okay. You can still leave with me.” I tried to be cute, but she wasn’t having any of it.
She swatted me away, forcing me to let her go as she braced herself against the counter. “No. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m not your property or your problem, Cole. Stop acting like I’m either.”
“I want you to be both,” I admitted quietly, but I didn’t think she’d heard me.
“Logan?” she said out loud, and he was suddenly at her side, pushing me away.
His hand splayed across her ass, and my eyes burned as I stared at his fingers, wishing they’d fall off one by one.
“Right here, babe,” he said the words so sickly sweet that they soured my mouth.
“I’m ready to go now.”
“Christina.” My voice came out pleading, and I swallowed hard to clear my throat as I prepared to say the one thing I had just promised myself I wouldn’t say in front of an audience. “He doesn’t want you. He just really fucking hates me.” I leveled my gaze to Logan, who was smiling now, his expression taunting me as my anger toward him multiplied.
Christina’s face twisted, like she couldn’t believe I’d just said that out loud. “Oh, right. ’Cause no one could ever want me since you don’t,” she bit out before grabbing his hand and interlocking their fingers together.
“It’s the truth,” I said, feeling like an asshole, but I couldn’t let him do this to her. I knew it was hypocritical since I’d been the one to hurt her so many times before. It seemed like I was saying no one else was allowed too mess with her, except for me, but it wasn’t like that. It fucking killed me to know that he was tricking her intentionally, maliciously. “Just ask him.”
“I don’t have to ask him. I wish I’d never met you,” she said, and the proverbial knife in my stomach gutted me clean and hollowed me out. “Can we go?”
“Of course.” Logan leaned down to plant a kiss on her cheek but kept his eyes open and on me the entire time like a fucking creep.
That single action confirmed every one of my suspicions; Logan was only using her to get under my skin. To distract me. To make me angry, push all my buttons, and get me to fall apart at the seams like a battered baseball.
Chance and Mac both stood in front of me the second I took a step toward Logan.
“Don’t,” they each said before turning to face him in unison like they’d practiced it.
“Just get out of here,” Mac yelled at Logan. “Before we let him go.”
Logan laughed like he wasn’t the least bit intimidated as he walked out of the house with my fucking girl on his arm.
What the Hell?
Christina
The minute the front doors slammed behind us, I dropped Logan’s hand and turned on him, feeling a little more sobered up than I had five minutes earlier. “What the hell was that all about? I’ve never seen Cole so mad before. He looked like he was going to rip you to pieces.”
Logan kicked at the ground before walking to his car in the driveway. He opened the passenger door and practically shoved me inside, but I braced an arm against the cold paneling and refused to cooperate.
“Tell me. Is it true? What Cole said?”
“Which part?” Logan asked with a sickening laugh.
“The part where you’re only with me because you hate him.”
“No.” He repeated the word, “No, Christina. I’d never do that. What kind of guy do you think I am?”
He asked the question, and I couldn’t answer it because I didn’t know. I barely knew Logan at all, but he’d come on to me like a freight train out of nowhere and not stopped since the night at The Bar. Doing it out of vengeance didn’t seem like such an impossible notion.
I might be pissed off at Cole, but I could tell he believed what he said. The look on his face when he had seen me tonight almost brought me to my knees. I’d never seen that kind of pain in his eyes before or the way it grew tenfold when he saw exactly who I had come to the party with. It was more than just a knee-jerk, jealous reaction, more than him not wanting someone else to have me.