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He is so kind.
It doesn’t even make sense why he’d be in love with someone like me. I’m insane. Completely insane.
We don’t work well together at all. We’re simultaneously too different and too alike.
Forcing breath into my lungs, I head back inside, up the stairs, toward Rowan’s bedroom. I need a shower, and all my stuff is in there. Which I should start remedying, since I’m not staying here anymore and everything will end after the ball tomorrow anyway.
The invasion is over.
I won.
I just wish it didn’t feel so much like losing.
I also wish I knew what happened to Corbin. I didn’t see him last week before or after the date, nor today during the Maxim-focused meetings that lured me back out of The Giungla. Rowan needs a friend right now. If I weren’t so distracted, I’d know what was going on.
Stopping with my hand hovering over the doorknob, I contemplate entering Rowan’s bedroom. Again. After three weeks. What if he couldn’t bear having my things strewn all over his dresser, and they’re gone?
Why…would I care about that at all?
At the very least, I need to see Bugsy the Oreo cookie and remind him of all his secret training.
That’s very important.
Because, obviously, I need to leave Rowan with a constant, cruel reminder that I happened.
My fingers close, but I’m frozen.
I am not in love with Rowan.
He was a means to an end.
A tool.
A pawn in life’s long game of chess.
Why am I like this? What is wrong with me?
I wish…
I wish my parents were here.
Right before I decide that I can’t handle being back in Rowan’s room, and I’ll just ride home sweaty, the solid door in front of me whips open.
I startle, stumbling back a step.
Expression rigid, Rowan halts before crashing into me. Dark eyes wide, he stares, drops his attention to my tube top, and closes his eyes. A coarse swear leaves him. Then, in the next instant, his fingers latch around my throat. He pushes my back into the wall across from his bedroom door, pinning me there as he threatens the feeble amount of air I’m managing to feed my lungs.
I’m gross, slick with sweat. I smell like the outdoors, disappointment, uncertainty, fear.
He doesn’t care.
My pulse thumps against his grip as he claims my mouth, makes it his, and ignores all the apparent reasons I’m less-than-kissable at the moment.
His thigh slips between my legs, holding me up when I start to melt, when I gasp his name against his tongue.
The whirlwind of my emotions turns into a tempest, but there’s nothing I can do as he engraves himself into me. Losing my sense of self, I tangle my hands in his shirt and pull.
I don’t love him.
