Slide (Black Addiction #1) Read Online Free Page B

I’d take him back and crushing him like he’d crushed me. I’d smile as I drifted off into sleepland knowing he’d realized too late that I was the woman of his dreams and I’d leave him crying just as he’d left me.
    “Rob.” I tried to keep my voice level while my pulse hammered away under my skin. “How lovely to see you.”
    It wasn’t a lie, I was genuinely glad to see him. It might have taken me a couple of weeks but my emotions had moved from sad to mad. And while a few days after my spectacular dumping and firing I might have taken him back, now it was seeing him grovel that would give me the most pleasure.
    “You too, Ali-cat.” He leaned down and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Seems like you were holding out on me.” His brow rose as he eyed my dress again.
    “Oh, this?” I giggled shamelessly. “Just a little something I threw on.”
    Okay, so when it came to sexy and flirty I sucked. The seduction game was as elusive to me as the Loch Ness monster, and me trying to be sexy was probably just as scary as Nessie.
    “Well, it obviously agrees with you.” He smiled, his hands gently rubbing up my arm. I tried to stop myself from cringing at his touch, or punching him right in the balls, more to see if he still had any.
    “Listen, I’m glad I found you. I’ve been thinking a lot about you the last few days.” Rob moved closer, the noise from the bar making it hard to hear him.
    “Oh?” I mentally smiled as I prepared to tell him to go take a hike.
    There are times in life when you wish there was a pause button. Where the moment just needed to be savored just a little longer than time allowed. Not to gloat, but to validate that good things eventually happen to good people. Karma, payback and all the stuff, would eventually do its duty and the righteous would stand victorious. Sure it was a little conceited, but I figured I’d earned my moment and I wanted it to last just a little longer.
    “I’m getting married.”
    The words had come out of his mouth but just like the night when he told me we were through, it was as if I hadn’t heard them correctly.
    “What?” My eyes flew open in a shock I had no hope of disguising.
    “I know it’s sudden but I’ve known Susan most of my life. We dated through college and well, we found our way back to each other. Our families are ecstatic. Naturally, our mothers are already naming our children.”
    I was going to be sick. The room was spinning; the heat that had been mildly uncomfortable before was now suffocating, and my lungs wouldn’t expand enough so I could breathe.
    “Ali-cat, are you all right?” I felt his hands grip my arms as my body swayed on the barstool I was precariously close to falling off of.
    Words failed me as my throat dried up and my mouth refused to function. In my fantasy he begged me to take him back, not tell me he was over me and ready to make some other girl his wife.
    How could he have replaced me so quickly?
    Had I honestly meant nothing?
    Was I so easy to toss aside that he couldn’t even give it a few months before I’d have to see his smug-ass face smiling from the engagement announcements of the newspaper?
    And just when I felt I was either going to throw up or pass out, a miracle happened and I was able to not only remain upright but conscious too. It would have been asking too much for me to think of something to say, so in the end I didn’t try but climbed off that barstool and walked away instead. Just like that—I was gone.
    My miracle unfortunately didn’t extend much past getting me out of the bar where I stood like a deer in headlights, looking at the street traffic. Think, Ali, think. I willed my brain to kick into gear and figure out something that would get me off the sidewalk and away from the nightmare I’d left behind.
    Then in a moment of clarity, or further delusion—jury was still out as to which—I thought of Rusty. Why my mind would go to the sexy, hot and charismatic mystery man when