19. Renee

I can’t believe I let that happen. If I’m honest—and I will never say it out loud—I knew as soon as I walked into the arena that it could happen. That, if I saw him, it would be explosive.

And it has been. On about a million different levels.

All of which were so, so wrong.

“This was a mistake.” I say the words aloud again, but they’re as much for myself as for him. Truth is, we both need to hear them. We both need to understand that what happened here tonight was stupid. Unreasonable.

Even if it was incredible.

Weston hurt me and the feminist inside of me wants to kick my ass right now for a whole laundry list of betrayals. For allowing him within two hundred feet of me, for sneaking out against Sutton’s advice to be here, for wanting more of him despite all the evidence that I should stay far the hell away.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, Weston, it was.”

“If it was a mistake, it wouldn’t have felt so damned good.” His smile is everything I remember and I hate myself for wanting to fall into it. This is the man who drove me back to Deacon, to my mother.

I finally get what they mean when they say that, when the devil comes for you, he’ll look like everything you’ve ever loved.

“Maybe it felt so damned good precisely because it was a mistake.”

“It was right, Renee. It is right. Don’t try to talk yourself out of it.”

“No.” I shake my head. It doesn’t matter how fucking good it feels. It was wrong. “It was a mistake and it’s never going to happen again.”

He grins with one half of his mouth. “Wanna bet?”

I grimace back. “Stay out of my life, Weston.” Sometimes, his confidence is hot. But when I’m fighting for every breath, trying to keep my head in the game, it’s nothing short of annoying.

He stalks closer. I would flinch if he was that kind of guy because there’s so much intensity in his gaze. In Deacon’s hands, that kind of intensity becomes violence.

In Weston’s, it’s… something else.

“I’m not letting you marry that asshole.” He cups my face in his palm and uses his thumb to stroke my cheekbone. “I refuse.”

“That isn’t your choice, Weston.” I pull out of his reach and take two steps back. “You hurt me.”

“I know.” He nods sadly, then holds out a hand like a peace offering. “Let me make it right.”

I shake my head, knock that hand aside, and walk past him to the door. The sooner I leave here, the better.

But before I can open it and escape into the tunnel, he calls out, “Renee, why did you come here tonight?”

I freeze. I can’t tell him I thought I’d die if I didn’t see him. I can’t tell him that I was hoping something like this would happen, that I would have my one last time, that we could talk things through.

I can’t tell him that I… care about him and wanted to make sure I had a fresh memory of him to carry me through the rest of my nightmare of a life.

I have that now.

I can’t ask for anything else.

So, instead of saying all that, I turn to him with a harsh swallow. “The truth is, until tonight, I didn’t know you’d been sending tickets. When I found out, I came—but only because I thought you deserved to hear it face to face.”

“Hear what?”

“That there’s nothing between us. You blew up anything we might have had. So please, I’m begging you: leave me alone now. Stay away from me. Don’t send me any more tickets. I won’t be using them.”

It would’ve been incredible to be able to punctuate that speech by opening the damned door and disappearing from Weston Scott’s life forever. But that would have required coordination and the recognition that the door was even locked in the first place. So instead of a smooth and graceful retreat, I’m left jiggling the handle and twisting the lever again and again in a fruitless attempt to get this stupid thing unlocked.

“Goddammit,” I finally cry out in frustration, “let me out of here!”

Weston glides to the door, does something with the lock mechanism, and the door flings open.

Even him being this close is hard. I can smell me on him and, beneath that, his musk. But that way lies temptation, so I book it through the now-opened door instead.

The tunnel is better. It smells like sweat and disinfectant.

I can feel his eyes on my back as I retreat, but I don’t turn around. If I do, there”s no telling what I might do. I can’t afford to see those eyes, that snarl, that intensity again.

It’s better to just put one foot in front of the other until Weston Scott is nothing but a memory.