Page 104 of Ghosted

“Make it sound like I don’t give a shit about you.”

I stare at him.

Then I say the thing I know will hurt because apparently I need him to bleed somewhere I can see it too.

“Then give a shit about what I’m asking.”

His face changes.

For one second, he looks young. Not in a soft or harmless way. Just twenty-two and furious and completely lost under the weight of wanting something badly enough to ruin it.

“I can’t,” he says again.

My throat closes.

I nod slowly, because if I speak too fast, I’m going to cry, and I would rather die in this apartment than cry in front of Jagger Cutter after begging him to pick me and watching him pick blood instead.

“Okay.”

“Alice—”

“No, that’s fine.” I wipe at my mouth with the back of my hand. It does nothing. His kiss is still there. Hot and humiliating and mine to carry out of the room. “That’s very clear.”

He reaches for me.

I step back.

The space between us isn’t much, but it feels huge.

“Don’t leave like this,” he says.

That almost does it.

That almost cracks me right open.

I look at him, standing there bruised and bare and stupidly beautiful, asking me not to leave while refusing to stay out of the one place I begged him not to go.

“You don’t get to ask me to stay,” I say. “Not after that.”

His hand curls at his side.

“Stay away from the warehouse Friday,” he says.

And there it is.

“Alice.”

I turn for the door.

“Alice, wait.”

I stop with my fingers on the knob because I’m pathetic enough to give him one more chance.

One.

He doesn’t take it.

He just stands there, breathing hard, looking like I’m hurting him by leaving.