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“You’re always safe with me.”
I scoff, ignoring the way my head feels buzzy beneath his gaze. My previous panic is gone, but the reminders of my new responsibility sink in the longer I stand here.
I never should’ve come out tonight. I have too much to do and not enough time. This opportunity with Haven is huge; I should be spending time figuring out how I’m going to make this all happen alongside all my other responsibilities, not partying with people who don’t even care for me.
“If you don’t care to be with your friends, why’d did you come here?” he asks, and I can hear the judgment in his tone.
“I wasn’t forced into coming here. I was invited.”
It’s not a lie. I did, however, force myself. I thought tonight would be different, especially after the bullet I took at rehearsals.
“And what, you accepted a pity invite?”
This question slaps even harder. I’ve never surrounded myself with people for just the hell of it. Never cared about who liked me or who didn’t, but it’s different with them.
The stakes are higher. My career is on the line.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” My teeth grind together, my words pinching through my lips.
“Oh yeah?”
He rises from the couch, stalking toward me like I’m his prey.
I don’t move, because how could I?
“If I don’t know what I’m talking about, then why is it that when you walked in, you were forcing a smile on your perfect face like all of this was a scene and you were just waiting for the director to yell cut? But when you stepped into this room with me, you got your color back.”
He reads me like a fucking book as the toes of his shoes meet mine.
My eyes grow wide as I digest his words, and a flutter moves through my stomach. I’ve mastered being unreadable, learned how to put on a show. No one digs for more; no one cares enough.
No one but him.
Jett Parker is the one who doesn’t see me through rose-colored lenses. The only one that makes me hate just how perfectly he can chip away at the surface.
“I just have a lot on my mind,” I blurt out, freeing some of the pent-up worry in my brain, even if it is to the last person I want to know.
Taking a few steps back, Jett lowers himself down on the couch, patting the leather beside him with a lusty smile that I try like hell not to have a reaction to.
“Sit. Tell me about it.”
CHAPTER 15
JETT
“I can’t. I’ve got to get back to the group; they’re going to be wondering where I am.”
Fia tries to keep up her façade, but it’s meaningless. She’s only unraveling herself from the trap I’ve put her in.
“Wouldn’t they have come looking if you were that important to them?”
The color vanishes from her face, but she isn’t as struck as she pretends to be. My words may be blunt, but she’s only reacting because of who they’re coming from. She knows I’m right.
What I want to know is why she keeps up such an act for them. The girl I met two years ago wouldn’t give a damn about whether they liked her.
It’s what drew me to her in the first place.
Never have I seen someone so secure with themselves. So carefree toward the people around them, unbothered by the opinions of others.
