Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
He dropped the towel as a muscle ticked in his jaw. Brodan rounded the bed to sit at my feet. He held my gaze for a second before he reached for his phone and unlocked the screen. His eyes moved over it and then back to me. “She wants to know why I didn’t take her up on her invitation to join her in London on New Year’s.”
Hurt I wasn’t sure I was allowed to feel made me draw my knees in. “So a woman asked you to spend New Year’s with her, and you didn’t tell me?”
Brodan studied me warily. “I didn’t think it mattered, since I had no intention of taking her up on it.”
“Is it Lotte Fischer?” I nodded at his phone.
“It is.”
“She was your …?”
“Fuck buddy,” he said bluntly. “Whenever she’s single and we’re in the same place, she calls me up.”
“You had a few of those, then?”
“Aye. I never hid that from you.”
“But you’re still texting with her. With the others? Have they been in contact recently?” Blood whooshed in my ears as I waited impatiently for him to respond.
Brodan sighed heavily. “A few have reached out, and I told them I wasn’t available anymore.”
“But you still text with them? They’re still on your phone?”
He glanced at his phone and uttered a slight huff. “Well … they’re still my friends.”
“Either they’re your fuck buddies or your friends, Brodan, but they can’t be both.”
“Of course they can.”
“Maybe before you were in a serious relationship.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You want to dictate who I can be friends with?”
That he couldn’t see how hurtful this was made me want to scream in his face. Instead, I shoved my laptop aside and pushed off the bed with a scoff of bitter laughter. Shoving my feet into my boots, I skewered him with a dark look. “I’d like to see your reaction if my fuck buddies were still texting me.”
“Roe …” He stood up.
I took hold of the door handle. “I’m going for a walk because if I stay, I might throw something at you. But think on this, Brodan, while I’m gone … what do you think it says to me you need to keep in contact with your fuck buddies? If you can’t guess, let me tell you.” Tears burned my eyes, and I hated him for it. “It tells me that deep down, you think you’ll need them again, and you don’t want to burn those bridges.”
“Monroe—”
I slammed out of the room before he could respond because I wasn’t kidding when I said I might throw something at him.
As I hurried down the corridor, Angeline Potter, of all people, appeared around the corner, heading toward her suite.
“Monroe!” Brodan shouted behind me, and I glanced back to catch him practically falling out of the room as he pulled up his jeans and zipped them.
Ugh. I couldn’t even get space to run away from an argument.
“Trouble in paradise?” Angeline asked snidely as I passed.
“Oh, fuck off, Potter,” I snarled.
“Uh!” She squeaked in outrage behind me.
“Monroe!”
I turned the corner, almost running now as I tried to make my escape without Brodan seeing which way I’d gone. I fled toward the turret, the only place in the whole damn castle that ever seemed to be free of other humans.
But I’d barely made it into the circular room when I heard the door below me open and shut and footsteps thunder upward. Brodan appeared at the top, not even out of breath, bare of foot and chest.
“You chased after me in front of Angeline Potter half-naked, so now our spat will be all over the estate,” I snapped without preamble.
Brodan’s eyes gleamed as he prowled toward me. “I’m not the one who told her to fuck off.”
“You heard that?”
“No, she screeched it at me as I ran past her. Well done, by the way.”
I placed a hand in front of me to halt him.
He walked right into my palm. I felt his heartbeat thudding underneath the smooth, hot skin and dropped my hand as if he’d burned me. “Don’t run away from me in the middle of an argument. I can’t stand it,” he growled.
“Don’t be an arsehole, then.”
Brodan pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, tapped the screen, and held it up. Lotte’s name glared at me. Then he tapped the screen next to her name and deleted the contact.
I sucked in a breath as he scrolled through and deleted five other women’s names from it.
“That’s all of them. I need you to believe that.”
Adrenaline still rushed through me from my jealousy and hurt, but now relief loosened my shoulders.
“Do you believe me?”
Studying his panicked expression, I felt remorse. “I believe you.”
Brodan nodded, panic turning quickly to irritation, as he threw the phone on the side table with a hard clatter. “You’re right. If you were in contact with men you’d had a sexual relationship with, it would bother me. I never want you thinking I’ve got one foot out the door in this. I’m in this with you, Monroe. You know how hard it was for me to get to this point, but I’m here … and you can run here or run all the way to fucking Timbuktu … and I will follow you. I will never give up on you without a fight.”