My jaw was wound so tight my molars were starting to hurt. The street started blurring through the unshed tears stacking over my anger, and while I had about a million things to say, none of them were worth making a scene in public.
“Pretty?” he asked with breathless exasperation, as though the word itself was an insult. “You’re willing to settle for some asshole who lies and tells you you’re pretty? You want someactualhonesty?Flowersare pretty. They’re soft, subdued, harmless. Their beauty doesn’t leave a mark, or haunt your every waking moment, or make you feel so out of control that you’d bewilling to walk barefoot on broken glass for one last hit. You’re notpretty, Alice. You’re devastating.”
His breathing had grown labored, the air around him crackling as my own skin started to tingle. He hadn’t noticed the small group of teenagers who’d halted in their tracks, whispering amongst themselves like they were trying to figure out whether Dominic was really Dominic or just a really convincing doppelganger.
One of them took out their phone.
I turned my face away from the lens, grabbing his arm. “We have to go.”
“I’m not done.”
I started herding him backward while simultaneously stuffing my fingers into his jacket pockets. “Where are your keys?”
He fished them out of his back pocket and unlocked the car. I ducked my head before slipping inside, using my hair as a makeshift curtain.
A major overreaction by almost any measure, especially since I wasn’t even the target of interest. Except for the part where my brother had an entire team at his PR firm dedicated to monitoring a plethora of keywords related to Dominic, gathering dirt on him for retaliatory purposes in case of another orchestrated media attack.
It would take just one of them to recognize me if a picture were posted anywhere public. My family would lose their minds.
“And smart?” Dominic continued, reaching over and pulling my seat belt over my chest while I was busy trying to hide my face. “Smart, Alice? Notonething in the last two weeks has gone according to plan for me because you’ve outmaneuvered me at every fucking turn. I’m supposed to be torturing you, but somehow, you’ve managed to wrap me so tightly around your little finger—again—that I would have dropped to my knees andbarked like a fucking dog if you’d asked me to in there, just so long as it meant you wouldn’t go home with someone else. You’re not smart.Mydumb ass is smart,” he practically spat. “Stop selling yourself short. You’re fucking lethal.”
“Watch the road, would you?” I complained.
He’d whipped past a car trying to get into his lane because he was more focused on my face than the traffic signs.
“I may have ruined your date tonight, but believe me when I say you haveobliteratedmy life.” He was gripping the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white, his muscles bulging and agitated as he paused to work up to the next bit.
“However,” he eventually said, his tone considerably more even, almost chastised. “None of that excuses my behavior tonight. I shouldn’t have done what I did, and Iamsorry. Really, I am, and I wouldn’t do it again. I… your personal life isn’t any of my business, and it’s never going to be.”
I eyed him, the sharper edges of my anger thawing a touch. “So I’m good to play our accidental sex game with whoever. You don’t care.”
His neck strained, his molars grinding. He looked ready to rip out the steering wheel. “It’s not a sex—” He cut himself off. Inhaled. “Again, none of my business.”
“What about any of the other games we invented?”
There were a few hundred of them. At least.
“That’s your prerogative,” he ground out, sounding like he was in pain.
“Hm.” Some of the tension in my upper back eased, and I sagged into my seat, turning to face the window. After a few minutes, my mouth twitched. “Devastating, huh?”
Dom huffed out a long, slow breath like I’d put the weight of the world on his shoulders with that one remark. “To put it mildly.”
I bit my cheek, reciting his declarations in my head. “And lethal.”
“Unfortunately,” he agreed, sounding subdued, like he’d finally started to run out of fuel.
“And since you were ten? Really?”
“Stop acting like any of this is news.”
Wasn’t it, though?
I toyed with the hem of my dress, thinking, trying to slot all this new information into what I already had filed away. It wasn’t a fit.
The car slowed to a stop in front of my building. This time, Dominic unlocked the door before I asked. My fingers grazed the handle, but something stopped me from pulling it straight away.
“What else?”
