Wrong Side Girl (The Girl Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

because a guy had made me laugh?
    My elbow shot out and connected with Cole’s side while at the same time I got up from the stool I was sitting on so that it was now between us, dislodging the arm he had around me. My hands landed on my hips as I leaned over the stool into his space to hiss into his face.
    “What the fuck is your problem, Cole? You’re not my boyfriend! You have no right to tell me whom I can and can’t talk to! Drop the overprotective big brother attitude! I’m twenty-five years old and perfectly capable of choosing the people I want to spend time with! Which, right now, is not you! So maybe you should move along!” By the end of my tirade I was breathing hard. I didn’t think I had ever been this mad at him before.
    Cole was watching me, anger flashing in his eyes. “Believe me, Lizzy, I am well aware of the fact that I am not your boyfriend! What pisses me off is that as soon as I turn my back for five minutes, you’re making goo-goo eyes at the first asshole that catches your fancy! Really? You’re gonna hook up with the bartender? I hadn’t pegged you as trashy!”
    My head jerked back as if he had slapped me across the face.
    Pain sliced through me, obliterating everything in its path.
    Tears were pooling in my eyes—too many—and they overflowed and silently ran down my cheeks.
    Cole had never talked to me like that. He knew what it did to me, knew how it made me feel when people I cared about treated me like shit, knew how deeply words could cut me.
    Since I was ten, he had been the one person in my life that I knew with absolute certainty wouldn’t talk down to me.
    But he had just literally called me trash.
    He was right, of course, I had been born into that life, had grown up surrounded by trash, had lived on the wrong side of town my whole life before I could finally escape, but Cole had never let me feel it.
    Until now.
    “Shit, Liz, I didn’t mean that. I—” I cut him off, moving my hand in front of his face, palm out, my eyes cold on him. I didn’t want to hear any of his apologies. I dug some money out of my pocket and threw it onto the bar, ready to leave. I needed to get the hell out of here before I lost my hold on my emotions. But Cole stepped in front me and kept talking, his voice slightly panicked, “I don’t know what’s going on with me. You’re right. I don’t have any right to tell you who to hook up with, but you have no idea how frustrating that is for me. You know how possessive I am of my time with you. Maybe that’s why I lost it on you just now. I missed you. Please, baby—”
    “No,” I interrupted him again, my voice filled with rage and pain at the same time, “Don’t you dare call me that! You just lost every right to ever call me that again!” My bottom lip was quivering and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it together for much longer. I tried to walk around Cole to get to the exit, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him.
    “Shit, Liz. I never meant to hurt you. I—” he was pleading with me, but I couldn’t deal with that right now. I was too hurt to even look at him. With a hard twist, I wrenched my arm out of his hold, turned around, and bolted. I made it to my car before Cole could catch up to me. When I heard him come to a stop right behind me, I whirled on him and let fly. All the pain and hurt and disappointment he had inflicted in the last ten minutes curled up in my stomach and turned in to an anger so hot I could feel my eyes alight with it.
    “Leave me alone, Cole! I don’t want to hear it! You can take your remorse and shove it up your ass for all I care! You think you can treat me like you just did, talk to me like you just did, then give me a bullshit apology and expect me to forgive you? Not gonna happen! You were the one person in my life that knew everything about me, everything that happened, and has never judged me for it! I won’t let anyone ever treat me like trash again! And that includes you! You