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I wince as I toss back the blanket. I need a half dozen painkillers and a shower and a do over. Not because I regret sleeping with Kodiak. I do and I don’t. I like the man. I wanted him. And he wanted me too. But how could I do that and still feel like this about Riot? How could I do that to Kodiak when I know what he wants from me?

I cradle my throbbing head in one hand. My spinning thoughts are all too much. Putting my feet on the floor, I reach for my pajama bottoms and the panties tangled up in them. Painkillers then a shower.

One foot after the other, I get dressed. Standing, I pull my pants up. Kodiak is still sleeping. Riot’s chair is still empty. And I... I don’t know what I’m still doing here with the band. Other than I can’t outrun Marco in this state.

Rook is at the table when I walk out. He glances up from the book he’s reading. He starts to rise. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I can do it.” I find the painkillers that Doc left for me and take them with a bottle of water from the fridge.

“You’re not planning on leaving still, are you?” Rook watches me keenly.

“Not right now.” I hobble over to the couch and drop onto it. The shower can wait until the painkillers kick in. Come on, bitches, kill this pain I’m in. And if you can work on my overly sensitive heart too that would be fucking great.

The door to the suite opens.

Electricity creeps over my skin. My pulse forgets to pulse. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Riot. My blood turns to lava.

“Can you give us a minute?” His voice is drained, soft, regretful.

“Sure,” Rook says before he retreats.

“Kelsey.” Riot comes around the couch. He sits on the coffee table. Right in front of me. The lines around his eyes are etched with exhaustion. They deepen further as he takes in my appearance. “God, look at you.”

He lifts one hand toward my bruised face. Regret wafts off him like cologne.

“Don’t touch me,” I warn him. I don’t know what I’ll do if he lays one finger on me. Crumble? Or beat the living snot out of him with my bare fists?

I stare at his hands when he drops them between his thighs. The way he washes one over the other repeatedly while both knees jiggle to a rapid beat.

“I should have been there.” His voice is pained. “I should have kept you safe. I want to kill Marco—”

“You weren’t.” Because of course he wasn’t. He was making sure his precious band was okay. It’s always the same with him. I’ve only ever come a poor second to his success. Whatever it takes to make it big... no matter how many times he hurts me in the process. “You were with her.”

“It’s not like that,” he says.

“I don’t care.” I stand delicately. I’m sore all over from fighting for my life last night. While he wasn’t here. What can he possibly say?

Grabbing my hand as I go to move around him, he drops to his knees on the carpet. Voice quiet—almost believably earnest—he pleads, “Please look at me.”

I shake my head. We’re not together. I don’t love him anymore. We’re not even friends. It makes no sense for a tear to slip painfully from the corner of my eye and splat on my cotton pajama top. “Don’t... You can’t make it better. Just get up.”

I thought we’d made progress. Before last night—hadn’t we? And it was starting to feel like he was fighting for me. For us? In whatever form we could be us. Even if that was only friends in the end. God, how deluded am I?

“Please,” he croaks.

Every time I open up to him, he does something that breaks me. Because I let him. Because as much as I don’t want there to be a connection between us, there is.

I hate him. I have to. It’s the only way I survive him.

With every ounce of anger I have in me, I lock my gaze with his stormy one. The emotion in it takes my breath away before I remember why we’re in this position. “You’re engaged. To her.”

“I’m not.”

“It sure looks like it in the pictures online.”

“It’s fake.” He lets out a breath. “Please let me explain. It’s the only way—"

“I already said I don’t care,” I say. “I don’t need to hear your excuses for why you can’t stay away from that bitch. Or why you would propose to the woman you cheated on me with.”