Fake Dating The Enemy Forward

Chasing After Her

Jax Pov

“You always do this.” Riley screamed.

She shoved me away, hard and then disappeared into the hallway. .

I stood on the balcony, lips burning from our first kiss together. Tonight wasn’t planned, but I’d do it over again if given the chance.

There had been a time when I thought being close to her would be enough. After that kiss, I saw how wrong I’d been. I wanted more.

You always do this. Her voice echoed in my skull.

No. Riley always did this. Right when I thought maybe I could stand a chance with her, she vanished and withdrew.

And now she was running through a crowded penthouse, hair falling out of its pins, hating me with every fiber of her being while I stood on a balcony like a statue and tried to remember how to move.

I couldn't let her disappear again.

Not when I'd finally found her after three years of trying and failing to forget her.

I pushed off the railing.

My legs carried me toward the glass doors. I needed to find her. To explain. Something. I didn't know what. I never knew what to say to her, never had, not in college when I'd watched her from across lecture halls and not now.

The doors slid open.

The noise hit me like a wall, music and laughter and the clink of glasses, a hundred masked strangers moving like fish in an aquarium.

I found Coach Mercer near the kitchen, barking at two rookies for trying to climb onto the marble island.

“Coach.”

He glanced at me, then at the phone in my hand. “You look like hell, Callahan.”

“Have you seen Riley?”

“The media girl? She just left here. Five minutes ago. Maybe ten.” His expression tightened. “ Why? Did something happen?”

I pushed past him.

“Jax.” His voice stopped me. “Whatever this is, deal with it before it becomes a distraction.”

Too late coach.

I scanned the crowd, searching for green silk and auburn waves and the only face that had ever mattered.

I didn't see her.

I saw the woman in red instead. She emerged from the shadows by the bar as if she’d been waiting for me in a strapless short that made her look like she was trying a little too hard to be sexy.

"Jax Callahan," she purred, and the voice sent a shiver down my spine. "Alone at last."

I stepped back. "Do I know you?"

Her smile widened, and it didn't reach her eyes. "You really don't remember me? That stings."

"Should I?"

"Oh, Jax." She laughed, and I almost raised up my hands to cover my ears. "You haven’t changed a bit, have you?"

She moved closer, her perfume hit me like the scent of funeral homes.

"I'm not interested," I said, my voice flat. "Move."

"But you were so interested in her." Her head tilted.

My stomach dropped. "You were spying on us.”

"You weren’t exactly in a private space, remember. If you didn’t want anyone to see you guys, you could have taken her to one of the rooms in this massive mansion.” She stepped even closer but I refused to back down. “You see, I think you wanted to be seen from the start. Just by a special audience. Am I right or am I right?”

This b***h. Who was she anyway? I itched to go after Riley, but this weird woman whose name I didn’t even know yet, looked like trouble I couldn’t afford.

“What do you want?” She was probably some fanatic journalist, and that would explain why it seemed like she might know me. Or at least, the old me.

She reached up and grabbed the front of my shirt with surprising strength and pulled me down, and her mouth crashed against mine before I could shove her off.

A flash went off somewhere to my left.

I shoved her hard, pushing until she stumbled back into a bystander who laughed and raised their drink like this was part of the show.

"Who the hell are you?" My voice betrayed the barely controlled rage in it.

She straightened her dress, completely unfazed, and smiled that same sharp, terrible smile.

"You still don't recognize me?" She touched her lips, still painted despite the kiss. "That's sad, Jax. Really. I thought I meant more to you than that."

"I don't know you."

"Not yet. But you will. This is just the beginning." She turned away from me, steeping into the crowd.

Another flash went off, and I whipped around, searching the crowd, anxiously. Someone had taken a photo. That photo would prove Riley right about me.

"No," I breathed.

I pushed through the crowd, ignoring the shouts and laughter, scanning every face for a phone or a camera. But the masks made everyone anonymous.

I found the spot where the flash had come from, empty. Just a spilled drink on the floor and a couple making out against the wall.

Whoever took it was gone.