My teeth sank into my bottom lip. “I’m not a big party girl, but since it’s your birthday, I’ll show for you. And also because I feel bad that I don’t have a gift for you.”
He smirked. “Having you there is the only gift I need.”
“Then I’ll be there.”
“Good.” Releasing me, he stepped away and gripped the doorknob, twisting it and opening the door.
“Tell your friends they’re welcome to party too. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.” He winked and walked out the room. When he was no longer in sight, I sat on the bed again, huffing.
I wasn’t trying to lead Brody on. It wasn’t my intentions. He would ask to hang out or study and I’d say yes. He was fun to hang with, and his presence took my mind off reality, but he felt things for me that I didn’t feel for him. He liked me a lot, I could tell, but I didn’t like him enough. Not enough to move on.
I don’t know. I guess after being with Cane, I didn’t want to share my lips with anyone else. Deep in my heart, I still belonged to him. I didn’t want to move on, no matter how much I kept telling myself to try. I had this part of me that was hopeful and burned bright with yearning. It was a part of me that knew one day I’d see Cane again. That maybe one day, we would be together, happy and blissfully content.
It was wishful thinking. We’d met in the wrong lifetime. Our paths had crossed, but we weren’t destined to be.
At the end of the day, I was better off with someone like Brody. Someone who wasn’t so…complicated.
Chapter Nineteen
CANE
If the world didn’t know who I was, and I could still get away with the things I used to do, Kelly would have been taken care of a long time ago. Unfortunately, she talked me up too much—made it seem like we were this happy couple when really I hated everything about her.
I’d had enough. My sister had had enough.
At first, I had her shut out. I told security not to let her through or anywhere near my home. It lasted for about a month, then she started making threats—said she’d go to my sponsors and other important partners of mine to tell them that I’d built my company on lies and dirty money. It would only be a matter of time before an investigation happened, and even though I’d covered most of my tracks, there was still an open line that had yet to be taken care of, and if authorities discovered it, my life and career would be over.
She was hanging what she knew about me over my head, trying to treat me like some dog that would be lost without her, but that was where she was wrong. I wasn’t a dog and I had no fucking owner. I was a fucking wolf, an alpha in fact, and you could only cry wolf so many times before the wolf finally took action and demolished you and everything you cared about.
There was a knock on the door as I ate lunch with Lora. Lora got up from her chair to get it, but came right back with a fierce scowl.
When she and Lora first met, it didn’t go well. Kelly was annoyed by the fact that there was another woman in the house. When I told her Lora was my sister, she got annoyed that I hadn’t informed her my sister was in town. Like it was any of her fucking business.
Lora had one conversation with Kelly and had settled it. In Lora’s words, she “didn’t like her uppity bullshit.” What made things worse was that I told her how Kelly was trying to use what she knew about my mother, Buck, and my past as bait. That made her truly despise everything about her.
Kelly stepped into the kitchen, her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her lips stained with a pink gloss. “Hi, Cane,” she said, coming to my side to rub my shoulder. My jaw clenched as I placed my fork down.
“What have I told you about showing up at my house without telling me first?”
She smiled down at me, but it was tight. She picked her head up to look at Lora who was finishing off her salad and completely disregarding her presence. “Your sister has no manners. I hope you know that,” she muttered.
Lora scoffed, but kept chewing, staring down at her meal. I knew if she’d looked up and saw the look of disgust on Kelly’s face, she would have flipped and punched her right in the face. She was holding off for my sake. She didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.
I picked up my plate, purposely bumping her out of the way to put it in the sink. “What do you want?” I turned to face her.