She flinches upon hearing my voice but doesn’t turn around. A taxi slows, and she reaches for the door handle.
“Collette, wait. Please.” I slam my hand on the top of the taxi.
“Go back inside, Fish.” Her voice is wrecked. Thick and raw and nothing like the sharp, sarcastic woman who roasts me on a daily basis. “Go back to your date.”
“Are you getting in?” The cab driver yells.
“Yes,” she answers.
“No,” I say at the same time.
The cab driver mumbles something about wasting my time and takes off.
“Motherfucker,” Collette curses.
“Here, you’re shivering,” I say, taking off my jacket and wrapping it around her shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” she screams, pushing my jacket away.
“Collette, please, it’s freezing out here.”
“No shit. I would have been fine if you had let me get into that cab.” She sneers at me.
“We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. I have nothing to say to you. I don’t know why you’re out here when your fifty-five-thousand-dollar date is inside.”
“She’s not my date. It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, it’s one hundred percent what I think. I saw you.” She glares at me. The look on her face nearly takes my knees out. Mascara smudged under her eyes, cheeks flushed from the cold and crying, those hazel eyes blazing with hurt and anger and something underneath both that she’s trying desperately to bury. “I saw you, Fish. Her mouth on yours. So don’t stand there and …”
“She grabbed me. She shoved me against the wall and kissed me. I didn’t kiss her back. I pushed her off the second my brain caught up.” The words are tumbling out too fast, but I can’t slow down. Whatever we are, whatever we’ve been building, it ends on this sidewalk.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.
“It fucking matters.” I take a step toward her and wrap my jacket around her stubborn shoulders, pulling her to me. “It matters because you’re standing here crying over something that didn’t happen the way you think it happened.”
“You can kiss whoever you want. It’s none of my business.”
“Bullshit.” I close the distance between us, pulling her closer to me. “If we were just friends, you wouldn’t be crying right now. If we were just friends, you wouldn’t have left the gala. If we were just friends, the sight of another woman kissing me wouldn’t have put that look on your face.”
“Stop,” she calls out to me as fresh tears fall down her cheeks.
“No. You need to fucking hear me.”
“I don’t need to hear shit and especially not here,” she snaps back at me. She’s right, we are out the front of this event. Paparazzi could be around, and the last thing I want is for our argument to end up on Page Six.
“Come with me,” I say, grabbing her hand. She resists for half a second then lets me lead her off the sidewalk, through the hedge line of the hotel entrance, into the dark alcove between themanicured bushes where the valets can’t see us and the street noise dulls to a murmur, then she yanks her hand free.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“You and I need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.” She pouts, pulling my jacket tightly around her.
“Well, then you’re going to fucking listen to me.” Her eyes widen in surprise at my words. “I’m fucking done pretending.”
“Fish …”