Chapter Ten
“Good to hear your voice, Bri. I’ve been thinking about you,” Jude responded.
She ground her teeth together and tried to think of a reason not to lay into him for making her wait five fucking weeks without so much as a text message.
But she couldn’t find one.
“Oh, you’ve been thinking about me? That’s sweet,” she purred. “After five weeks without a call, I kind of forgot about you.”
“I’m sure,” he said disbelievingly. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I’m not some booty call,” she said defensively. “I’m hanging up now.” Hanging up was the last thing she wanted to do, but she wanted him to beg for it. “Good-night, Jude.”
“Bri, wait.”
She shook her head. She should have just ended it. She didn’t need a guy who couldn’t be bothered to call her, who obviously didn’t feel the same way she did. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t hang up on you.”
“If you wanted to, then you would have already hung up on me.”
Point. But she didn’t want to concede it.
“A real reason,” she said. Her voice was like ice.
“I want to see you again.”
She scoffed, “That’s cute.”
“And you want to see me again, too.”
“Do not presume to know what I do or do not want,” Bryna spat. “It’s been five weeks. I’m not interested.”
“I have a job that takes me out of town for extended periods of time.”
Bryna gasped mockingly. “A job that demands no cell phone use? Shocking.”
She could almost feel his frustration through the phone.
“I had access to a phone. I just didn’t call you.”
“Obviously,” she snapped. At least he had finally admitted that he had just avoided calling her for all that time. “Now, excuse me, I can make better use of my time elsewhere.”
“Bri,” he pleaded, “I’m only in town tonight. Come see me.”
She shook her head in frustration. The nerve of this guy. She didn’t care what kind of connection she had thought they had. No one treated Bryna Turner like this.
“Please. Don’t insult me. I’m not interested in another one-night stand.”
“No one said anything about a one-night stand.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
Five weeks had been long enough to realize he wasn’t going to call. Now that he had, he was only interested in a booty call. She didn’t know why this upset her so much. When she’d left the club with him, she had known that they were going to have sex, but she had fooled herself into believing there was more between them when there was nothing. She had thought that when she left her number, he would call, like every other guy she had ever been interested in had done. She didn’t like making herself vulnerable to people who would later throw it back in her face with their silence.
And now this call…
“No, Jude, I can’t think of a single reason to come see you tonight. Find someone else.”
She ended the call before he could respond. She was finally getting back to her life and trying to forget the man who had made her feel different…the man who had seen the truth about her. She had lied on the phone when she said she hadn’t been thinking about him. It was even making her doubt Gates.
Fucking idiot.
Walking back to the room where she had left Gates, she found it empty. She scrunched her brows together. Where had he gone?
She asked the closest person if he had seen him and followed his directions up the stairs. Voices traveled down to her as she neared the landing.
“But I hate lying,” Chloe said.
“You’re not lying. You’re not saying anything. It’s just like we discussed.” Gates’s voice carried.
Bryna crossed her arms. Lying about what?
“Am I just supposed to be friends with her? When she’s being all friendly to me, I look at her and just burst at the seams, wanting to tell her,” Chloe admitted.
“Chloe, you know we can’t tell anyone what happened.”
Bryna couldn’t stand there and listen to this any longer. She’d heard enough. “Well, if you didn’t want anyone to hear, then you probably shouldn’t be having this conversation in a nightclub,” she said, walking up the last remaining stairs.
Chloe covered her mouth. She looked frightened and pitifully young. “Bri, I am so sorry.”
Gates frowned. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but—”
“But what, Gates?” she asked. She didn’t want to hear any of his excuses or lies. She just wanted to have everything out in the open. “I’m assuming that the girl you slept with is Chloe—the one you swore to me meant nothing and just reminded you of how much you missed me.”
“You said that?” Chloe whispered. She sounded horrified.
“I couldn’t tell you who it was,” Gates said. He looked like a mouse caught in a trap.
“Right. Because I’d rush to the media?” Bryna asked, rolling her eyes. “So, who should I call first? TMZ or People magazine?”
Gates cringed. “You wouldn’t.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Chloe reached out and grasped Bryna’s hand. “Bri, you have to know how sorry I am. I never would have come between you. Gates said that you broke up.”
Bryna shook her hand off. She stared down at Chloe with the detached cold anger that always bubbled just under the surface, and Chloe shrank away. The girl didn’t know what Bryna was capable of. She wasn’t queen bee for nothing. She hadn’t survived in Hollywood for nothing either.
She turned her focus back on Gates, and he levelly met her gaze.
“We were broken up even though he tried to convince me that we weren’t. He’s been trying to convince me ever since he got home. Who knew it was just a guilty conscience?” She tapped her lips twice in disgust.
He tilted his head down and looked at her in exasperation. “You slept with someone else, too,” Gates reminded her.
“Don’t get me started,” Bryna snapped at him. “I called you in the middle of the night and told you the truth. I was going home with him. It was over. You were the one who came home, told me the girl meant nothing, and were doing everything to make us work. What were you so afraid of that you couldn’t tell me it was Chloe?”
He glanced toward Chloe and then back to Bryna. “Please don’t do this.”
“I’ll let you figure it out for yourself, Gates. We’re through.”
Bryna rushed back down the stairs in a hurry. She had said everything she wanted to say to them. There was a difference between what she had done and what Gates had done. Why was it so difficult to be honest with her? Gates clearly had feelings for Chloe or he wouldn’t have hid the fact.
Once she reached the exit to the club, she realized to her surprise that Gates hadn’t followed after her. She ground her teeth together in anger.
She fished out her phone and dialed Jude’s number. “Where am I meeting you?”