Page 86 of Bulletproof

“Jory, for fuck’s sake,” he yelled at me. “Aaron Sutter has made me into you. I had no idea, but then last night, when I met you, it all fell into place.”

“What’re you⁠—”

“He got me all these different-colored contacts, you know?” He ignored me. “But I started to notice that if I wanted something, if I was wearing the brown ones, I got whatever I asked for. If I wanted to seduce him, I had to have the brown ones in, and I gotta be honest, other guys have always told me how gorgeous my eyes are, but Aaron … it’s the brown ones that do it for him—big-time.”

My stomach started to tighten.

“And I’ve had work done on my chin, my nose, to make them more delicate, and now I know why.”

“Jaden—”

He cut me off sharply, “No. Aaron bought me a tanning bed for my birthday last year.”

I got up and walked into the room to grab my duffel.

“What are you doing?” Jaden asked, as he’d followed me in.

“I’m leaving,” I told him, realizing how much I wanted to just pass out on the bed with the breeze blowing through the room.

“Are you kidding?” he almost shrieked at me, moving fast to bar my path. “If you leave, I’m dead.”

I turned to face him, and I realized that we were almost eye to eye. I had maybe half an inch on him. “After all that, you can’t expect me to stay.”

“Jory, don’t you realize that this is it for me? I have to show Aaron Sutter that the guy he has now is the one for him, and the guy he used to have—you—is not.”

“Okay.”

“So, if you could help out by being a total dick, I would appreciate it.”

I looked at him.

“What?”

“You want me to be an asshole to Aaron.”

“Yes, please.”

I shook my head. “You get that Aaron Sutter and I have been broken up for, like, forever, right?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been with him?”

“A little over a year.”

“Which is longer than he and I went.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you like being his boy, right?”

His scowl was dark. “What the hell do you⁠—”

“Oh, get off it. I was there today. He buys you clothes, jewelry, things. You live with him; he takes you everywhere with him. You’re kept. You don’t rock the boat. You do whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it, right?”

“I—”

“That wasn’t me. His relationship with me was hard work. I ran him through it all the time. We didn’t go places together unless I could afford my own ticket, unless I could afford to pay my own way. This?” I gestured around the room. “God knows what this cost a night, but I’m gonna go to the office here in a bit and have all of it put on my credit card, and then I’m gonna spend the next year, year and a half, paying it off because Aaron Sutter doesn’t pay for me to do anything. Get it?”