Free Misperception (Finnegan Brothers Book 3) by Morgan Black Page A

Slade is just drunk. We'll take him home as soon as he gets down and this will all be forgotten, right?” She eyed him carefully, daring him to disagree.
    Micah looked at Zoe and then back at me. “If that's what Lena wants…”
    I nodded my head vigorously. “It's what I want, Micah. Listen, I'm really sorry our night ended like this. I'll make it up to you, I promise.”
    He shot Slade one more nasty glare up on the roof. “Text me when you're home.”
    I nodded again, “Of course I will.” I landed a quick kiss on his cheek before Zoe led him away. She tossed me a look over her shoulder and I mouthed ‘thank you’ to her. She smiled back.
    The party started to return to normal after somebody had turned music way up so that you could hardly hear Slade’s yells anymore. I walked up to the edge of the house so that I could get a better look at him. He had a mark on his face and was still holding a beer bottle. It almost looked like he had been in a fight. “Slade, you have to come down.”
    He moved over to the edge of the roof and sat down with his legs dangling over the edge. I could almost touch his boots. “I saw you watching us. I know that you saw me and Adriana.” Well shit. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks and was glad the night masked my embarrassment. He continued, “But there is something you don't know.”
    I tried to talk calmly to him almost like he was an injured animal. I hoped it would bring him down. “What do I not know? Tell me, I'm listening.”
    He looked away for a moment and I thought that he would slump over at any second. That would be really bad for two reasons. One, because he would fall off the roof and break his neck and two, he would fall off the roof on to me and I would also be dead. But instead he just shrugged his shoulders like he still had some ownership over his faculties. “The whole time I was fucking her I wanted it to be you. I even said your name.” He shook his head back and forth, clearly disgusted with himself. I didn't react, hoping that it would continue to calm him down, but he kept going. “I said your fucking name, Lena. I could have any girl in the world and yet I want you! Why the hell is that? Why do you still have this hold on me after all this time?”
    Now it was my turn to look away. “I don't know.” I looked back up at him and his eyes met mine, “It was only one night, Slade. I don't know why you keep thinking about it as more than that. I never loved you, and I never will. I loved Blake, and it killed me to hurt him. And what you and I did, it can't be erased. So we're stuck with the consequences of our actions.” It was like suddenly a switch had gone off my brain. I had to live with the consequences of my actions. If that meant that Blake wouldn't help me out with his brother standing on the roof, then I had to deal with that. It was time to accept it and move on. “We have to move on, Slade. Both of us. It's not right to keep reliving it, it just hurts Blake even more.”
    He laughed and took a swig out of his bottle, which looked nearly empty in the moonlight. “It's always you, Lena, always thinking about Blake. Do you ever think about yourself? Do you not love me because of him? Or do you not love me because you don't care about me?”
    I knew the answer in my heart. “I don't love you because I just don't. I care about you, but I don't have feelings for you in that way. Sometimes people just have sex, Slade—you should know that better than anyone.”
    He laughed again. “Of course I should know that better than anyone. I've slept with almost every girl at this party.” Then he started yelling again, “Including you!” He attempted to stand up, but when he reached for the shingles to pull himself back onto his feet, the bottle slipped from his grasp. He turned to grab it as it fell off the roof, landing only inches from my feet. As he twisted his body to maintain his grasp on the shingles, he lost his footing and my eyes