For a second, I genuinely didn’t understand what he’d said.
I stood there, holding that stupid fucking salad, staring at him.
It registered.
Not all at once. First there was confusion—a blank, ringing nothing, like the silence after a slap—followed by pain that hit, sharp and dead-center.
So that was it.
Fifty pounds. I’d gained fifty pounds since we met, and apparently that was enough. Enough to erase everything. Enough to make him look at me like someone he had to tolerate.
One hundred and sixty pounds.
That’s what I weighed. One-sixty. Not some number that should make a man curl his lip. Not some number that should make him saylet themselvesgo like that.
But there it stood. The line, and I stood on the wrong side of it.
And the worst part—the part that made my throat tightenand my eyes burn—was that he’d been thinking it. For how long? Every time he touched me? Every time he didn’t?
I kept my mouth shut.
I moved silently into the kitchen.
Opened the trash.
And threw the salad away.
The plastic container hit the bottom with a soft thud.
Behind me, he exhaled loudly. “Jesus, Sloane. You just threw away twenty bucks.”
I turned slowly.
“Peter,” I said, my voice quieter than I expected. Sharper, too. “I’m sick of you fucking me and leaving me hanging.”
He blinked, clearly not expecting that.
“I’m sick of you being selfish.”
There, I said it. Out loud. Finally.
And he laughed.
His eyes moved down my body as the laughter trailed off, slow and deliberate, as if surveying something that confirmed every point he’d already made. His mouth settled into something ugly—not quite a sneer, not quite a smile—it made my skin crawl.
“Oh, come on,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not—”
“Not what?” I cut him off, my hands shaking. I felt it starting in my fingers and working up through my wrists, but my voice held steady, and that was the only thing that mattered. “Not true? Not fair? Pick one, Peter. Tell me which part I got wrong.”
He stopped laughing.
Good.
“You touch me when your dick gets hard. You pump until you’re done, you roll over like I’m nothing but a goddamnfleshlight. Every. Single. Time.”
His jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle beneath his skin.
“That’s not fair,” he hissed through gritted teeth.