“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Get the fuck out, Heath.” I turned around and walked away, moving to the other side of the bed.
He didn’t come after me. He bent down and picked up his phone from the ground. Then he had the audacity to press his thumbs against the screen and text someone.
“May as well tell your whore you’ll be there in a few minutes—”
“Shut the fuck up.” He lifted his gaze and came toward me, naked with his phone in his hand. He grabbed my wrist and shoved the phone into my hand. “I deleted all the photos. And I texted her back. Look.”
Out of defiance, I didn’t.
He raised his voice. “Now.”
I raised the phone to my face and read the message he’d already sent. I’ve got a woman, Dynasty. Don’t text me photos anymore, because my woman just saw it and she’s losing her fucking mind because she’s so head over heels for me that she can’t think straight. And I’m just as head over heels for her.
I couldn’t lift my gaze to look at him.
“Scroll up.”
“What?”
He pressed his finger to the screen and scrolled up, showing all the times she’d texted him and he never replied.
I dropped the phone and finally looked at him, still pissed.
“Yes, I would be fucking pissed if you had some other guy’s junk on your phone. Yes, I’d be pissed if some guy was hitting you up in the middle of the night. But I know you would never mess around on me. Because I trust you.” He got closer into my face. “I fucking trust you.” His blue eyes pierced into mine. “I admit I should have deleted those photos now that I’m committed to you, but I just forgot about them. You need to trust me, Catalina. Because I’m your man, and as your man, you can trust me—implicitly.” He turned away and walked back to his clothes on the floor. He started to get dressed, no longer looking at me. “Let me know when you’re ready to apologize.”
“Apologize?” I asked incredulously. “You should have told her you were in a relationship. You should have deleted those photos. All of this happened because of you.”
He turned back to me, his gaze dark. “You shouldn’t have fucking snooped through my phone in the first place.”
“Wouldn’t have happened if you’d just told the woman you weren’t available—”
“And none of this would have happened if you fucking trusted me.” He grabbed his wallet and keys off the nightstand. “Yes, I could have handled that better, but so could you. And your response to all of this is far worse than what I did in the first place.” He didn’t look at me again before he walked out, slamming the door hard behind him just to remind me how pissed he was.
A week passed.
He didn’t text me. He didn’t stop by my apartment. He didn’t come to my performances.
He disappeared.
I was too stubborn to apologize for it, so I held on to my silence, spent my evenings at home alone, making dinner for myself with the groceries he’d dropped off last time he was there.
But after days came and went, I started to look at my phone more often, expecting him to text me.
He never did.
When the full week came and went, I began to get scared.
What if he’d moved on? What if he’d called Dynasty? What if he’d stopped waiting?
What if I’d lost him?
The fear was so overwhelming that I swallowed my pride and drove over there, not caring that it was almost midnight, terrified he would have another woman at his place when I walked inside.
I didn’t park in the garage because I felt like I’d lost that privilege and parked at the curb. I entered the code, relieved he hadn’t changed it, and stepped inside his home.
It was quiet.
I took the stairs to the main floor, listening for the sound of the TV, the sound of life. I reached the main room, seeing nothing. The kitchen was untouched, and the living room was vacant. “Heath?” I raised my voice, hoping he wasn’t in his bedroom…with a guest.
I heard nothing in response.
I moved into the hallway and stared at his bedroom door. It was wide open. “Heath?”
Nothing.
I turned to the stairway and moved to the third floor. My last hope was he was in his gym, and if not, he just wasn’t home. I approached the glass walls and spotted him in front of the mirror, lifting heavy dumbbells as he did his curls.
I closed my eyes in relief, so thankful he was home, thankful he didn’t have a visitor watching TV on his couch or lying in his bed. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
His headphones were on his ears, so he didn’t notice me, not until I stepped farther into the room and made a reflection in the mirror on the wall. His eyes flicked to me in the mirror, his arms by his sides as he continued to grip the weights.
He was still, staring at me for several seconds, not the least bit happy to see me.
Was I too late?
He carried the weights to the racks and set them down before he pulled the headphones off his head. “About fucking time.” He set his headphones on the bench then loosened his black gloves from his hands. He pulled them off and tossed them on the ground, turning to face me and stare at me in the flesh.
His heart hadn’t softened in our separation. He was just as angry as he’d been the day he walked out. He wasn’t even impressed by my appearance, by my short dress and heels. He was normally so infatuated with the way I looked that he couldn’t keep his hands off me. That attraction had disappeared.
He stared at me coldly, sweat on his forehead and his chest from his workout. “You have something to say to me?” he barked.
God, he was terrifying when he was mad. I came closer to
