Rooming With My Ex-Mate's Hockey Star Brother

SADIE

Trey slams the door behind him, the sound echoing through the apartment.

I refuse to give him the satisfaction of looking back. If he wants to stomp around acting like he’s the offended party here, he can do it without an audience.

By the time I reach the sofa, my feet feel cut open all over again. I lower myself carefully, pull one leg up and rub around the bandages, focusing on the repetitive motion because otherwise I might turn around and say something I can’t take back.

When I finally look up, he is already leaving the kitchen with a bottle of water, heading for his room like the entire drive back wasn’t thick with tension.

”I expected better from you,” I say before I can stop myself.

His stride breaks.

Part of me wants him to keep walking so I don’t have to do this. The rest of me is too angry to watch him disappear into his room like nothing happened.

”Paige? Really?” I stare at the back of his head. ”I know you cool, popular hockey guys probably don’t sit around counting who you’ve slept with, but out of everybody you could hook up with, you chose her?”

He finally turns around, anger already carved into the lines of his expression. ”What the hell are you talking about?”

”You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

”No, Sadie, I don’t.” His grip shifts around the bottle. ”You’re pissed at Ezra, insecure about Paige, and now you’re dumping your lack of self-esteem on me.”

Pressure gathers in my throat. ”My lack of self-esteem?”

”Yes.”

The bluntness lands almost as hard as the accusation itself, leaving me staring at him for a beat before I manage, ”Bold of you to say that.”

”Is it wrong?”

My lips part.

”One look at your ex and you fucking shrink,” he says coldly. ”Every time he opens his mouth, you act like he still gets to decide what you’re worth. Then you run.”

Heat flashes behind my ribs, equal parts fury and the sickening awareness that he’s saying it like he’s figured me out.

”Who the hell is he that you’re that scared of him?” He continues before I find my voice. ”Because from where I’m standing, that’s exactly why people keep walking all over you. You keep letting them.”

My nails bite into my palm. Not slapping him is suddenly taking far more restraint than he deserves.

”What does any of that matter to you?” I rise and take a painful step toward him. ”Seriously. Why do you care? Or are you just pissed because I walked away before you could keep escalating things? Because I didn’t sit there while you talked down to everybody the way you always do?”

”I don’t talk down to people,” he counters without a trace of irony in his expression.

My brows pull together. ”You do. Constantly.”

”Maybe it only feels that way because you’re already down.”

The room goes quiet. For one awful beat, there’s nothing in me but the shock of how deliberately cruel that was.

I point at him, too stunned to find anything more eloquent. ”You’re a piece of shit.”

A smirk creeps across his mouth. ”Heard that before. Usually from people like you. Weak, indecisive, stubborn as hell even when you don’t have the guts to do anything.”

Cold skates down my legs. The worst part is how accurately he knows where to aim. Everything I let him see earlier suddenly feels stupid in hindsight.

I hate the smirk on his face. Hate every word. Hate that I let myself believe the version of him in the car was real. That for a few stupid minutes, I thought he might actually be someone I could trust.

”You know what?” I straighten as much as the pain allows. ”You and Paige aren’t even that different. You think you’re better than her, but you’re not. You’re just as cruel, just as obsessed with making people feel small.”

I hate that my next words hurt to say.

”I thought you were my friend earlier. I actually believed you in that car. Then you get angry and suddenly everything I trusted you with becomes ammunition. You’re worse than Ezra. At least he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Two-faced, vile asshole.”

Trey’s smirk disappears. ”Worse than him? I didn’t break up with you or waste three years of your life. He did. Do you even know how much of a fool he made of you? Yet every time you see him, you let him get inside your head and run like he still owns you.”

”I wasn’t running!” The words tear out of me. ”Some of us fight differently, Trey. I’m not you. I don’t have a black card to wave around or enough money to buy a store just to win an argument. I fight with what I have. Everything I’ve done, I did with what I had and what I could manage, and I’m still here. So forgive me if I’m not rich enough, powerful enough or condescending enough for you and your brother. I survived anyway!”

The last words leave me on an uneven breath, and I turn away because I can’t stand looking at him anymore.

His footsteps draw closer.

Hope, stupid and unwanted, flickers anyway. Maybe he finally gets it. Maybe he’s come to his senses and he’s about to admit he crossed a line.

”Do you really think this is surviving?”

I whip around, pain biting into my feet.

Trey is closer now, watching me with an expression I barely recognize. ”Do you think this is a life?”

The question leaves me with nothing ready to throw back.

”Even if you’re right about Paige, even if she’s every shitty thing you think she is, why do people still want her? Why did she get the mate you wanted so fucking badly?” His voice stays low. ”You ever stop and think about that?”

The hurt on my face must show because something flickers across his expression, but it doesn’t stop him.

”No. You’d rather make yourself the victim. Nobody gets anything from that, Sadie. Pity doesn’t pay you, doesn’t make people respect you, and it sure as hell doesn’t make them love you.” His mouth twists. ”You should know that better than anyone. After giving Ezra everything, look where that got you.”

My hand swings to his face, but he catches my wrist inches from his jaw.

I yank back hard enough to drag both our arms between us, but he holds on, fingers locked around my wrist while I twist and pull against him. It gets me nowhere.

”I hate weak people.” He leans in until his face is close to mine. ”I fucking despise them. The ones who get so comfortable being miserable they start treating it like home. They drag every shitty thing that happened to them everywhere, make the same dumb choices, let the same people keep hurting them, then call it survival because admitting they’re stuck would mean they actually have to change.”

His voice cracks on the last word. Just barely, gone almost before I register it.

”I hate that,” he growls.

Then he releases me.

The loss of his grip is so sudden that my arm drops uselessly to my side while he turns and walks away. His bedroom door slams a few seconds later.

I stay where he left me, glaring at the closed door, furious that even with him gone, his words still have the whole room.