“You humiliated me.” The words come out through his teeth, each one bitten off and spit out. “Do you know what people are saying? Do you know what it looks like when a man claims a woman in front of the whole town, and she throws it back in his face?”
“That’s not my problem. You shouldn’t have done it. I’m not yours to claim.”
But, I wouldn’t mind Hunter claiming me by putting his hat on my head.
“It is your problem!” he shouts it, and the force of it makes me flinch. His hand slashes through the air between us. “You made it my problem when you let me take you out. When you moved into my building. When you smiled at me like you wanted this. You want me, you’re just too fucking pussy to admit it.”
My eyes go wide. He is insane.
“I never wanted this.” My voice is quieter now. Not out of weakness. Out of the slow, dawning realization that I am in this apartment alone with a man who is not in control of himself. “I was being polite. There’s a difference.”
He stares at me. Something behind his eyes shifts, a wall coming down, something dark sliding into place. “Polite.” He nods slowly. “Is that what you call it?”
“Reese, I think you should leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not until you agree to be mine.”
I shake my head, trying to hide the tremble in my hands. I spot my phone on the couch and quickly look away.
He says it so calmly that it’s worse than the shouting; the volume drop is never a good sign. I’ve learned that the hard way. The dangerous ones don’t get louder. They get quieter.
“You know what really kills me?” He starts pacing. Short, agitated loops in front of the couch.
All I can do is stand frozen on the spot and watch him.
“I could have given you everything. This apartment. A life here. Things women in this town would kill for. I could get any woman I want. You know that? Women want me.”
“But I don’t, Reese,” I say, with certainty.
He stops pacing. His eyes drift across the room like he’s looking for something to focus his rage on.
And they land on the dining table.
I watch it happen in slow motion. His head tilts. His brow creases. He crosses the room in three strides and picks up Hunter’s hat.
My stomach plummets through the floor.
He turns it over in his hands. Runs his thumb along the brim. Studies the inside band and then he laughs. But this time it’s different. This time it’s hollow. It’s evil.
“This is Hunter’s hat.”
It’s not a question.
He looks at me. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. “Why the fuck is Hunter Sterling’s hat in your apartment, Lola?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My brain is scrambling for an explanation that isn’t the truth, but every lie I reach for dissolves before it hits my tongue.
He holds the hat up between us. “You are a fucking whore, Lola. I should have known by the way you flaunt yourself on social media. An attention-seeking whore. And the only good thing about you is your body.”
I suck in a breath as the words slice through me. Hitting way too close to what I believe about myself.
“Oh my God.” He presses his tongue into his cheek, nodding to himself. “I see it now. I see exactly what you are.”
He launches Hunter’s hat against the wall with such force that it knocks the picture right off, smashing to the ground.
“Reese—”
“You came to this town with nothing.” He waves his hand in the air. “Nothing. No money. No family. No connections. And the second you get here, you sink your claws into the richest man in the county.”