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Yep, she’d said that lump of shit in the original email, too, so it was looking like she had indeed simply re-sent it. The woman didn’t know when to stop, did she? “I can see you’re pissed, but just ignore her. I’ll deal with it, Dane.”
He slowly stalked toward me. “Will you? Funny. Because she prefaced the email with how she was sorry to bother me ‘again,’ but she worried her first email went astray.”
Hell.
“I checked my email account, but there was nothing else from Heather—not even among the spam or the deleted emails. Which means either there was no other email, or you erased it so thoroughly you even wiped it from the deleted folder. The look on your face is making me lean toward the latter theory.”
I shrugged. “Getting rid of your shit-mail is part of my job.”
Impatience flickered across his face. “This is something I would have wanted to know about, which you’re well aware of. But you deleted it without telling me about it. Why?”
“You can’t guess?”
His nostrils flared. “She’s not getting away with this.”
My stomach sank. “Dane—”
“No, I made it clear to you that if she made another move, I wouldn’t let it go. It’s not just about the emails, Vienna. Simon hinted that she’d made life hard for you when you were a child. A traumatized child. She should have been dealt with a long time ago.”
“She was handled. Melinda and Wyatt put a stop to it.”
“A stop to what exactly?”
I pressed my lips tight together. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to talk about it, it was that I knew hearing the details would only piss him off more.
“She’s going to pay, Vienna.”
Panic fluttered through me as he turned and headed for the door. “She’s quite capable of fucking up her own life, Dane—she doesn’t need help with that. Just leave it.”
“Not a chance.”
“Seriously, it would bother her more if you just ignored her.”
“I intend to do a lot more than ‘bother’ her.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Dane, I’m asking you to leave it. Please.”
“Not happening, Vienna.”
I took a panicked step toward him. “You retaliate, Dane, and I’ll walk.”
He halted, and his body went rigid. Absolutely rigid. Then, finally, he very slowly turned to face me. His gaze was darker than I’d ever seen it. His eyebrow flicked up. “You’ll walk?” he echoed, his tone daring me to repeat it.
Refusing to be intimidated, I lifted my chin. “I owe you. I know that. And I don’t want to go back on my word. But I can’t lose Melinda and Wyatt.”
“That’s not a reason to let Heather walk all over you. She does these things because you let her get away with it. People will only treat you how you allow them to treat you.”
“I don’t care if she feels the need to act like a bitch toward me.”
“I care.”
“No, you care that she dared to cross you. That’s different. Heather has been a bitch to me since the day I met her. She’s never going to change. Nothing you do or I do will make a damn bit of difference. If you acted on this, it would only hurt Melinda and Wyatt. She’d use it to hurt them; to make them choose her over me. And they would. I know that. I get it. I wouldn’t hate them for it—she’s their daughter. I’d hate you for it.”
His brows snapped together. “Me?”
“Yes. Because you know what Heather’s trying to do; you know what her game is. If you play into her hands, you’ll have done it knowing I could lose two of the people who matter most to me. You’ll have put your need for vengeance over what I feel and want. And for what? It’s not as if you care for me. We’ll be divorcing in under a year—that’s your plan. What does it really matter to you if your fake wife has to deal with some family bullshit?”
A muscle in his cheek flexed. “It matters.”
I inwardly snorted. “I won’t lose Melinda and Wyatt just because you don’t like people crossing you. They’re important to me. I didn’t talk for four whole months after Deacon beat my mother, because I didn’t want to tell anyone what he’d done; I wanted to protect him. No matter how good Melinda and Wyatt were to me, I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust that they wouldn’t send me away. So I didn’t speak to them, didn’t let them touch me. I barely ate. Barely slept. Had nightmares all the fucking time.”
Pausing, I crossed to him. “They were so patient with me. So good to me. Never raised their voices, never raised a hand to me, never got annoyed with me for not talking. They just let me be. Even when I started talking, they didn’t pepper me with questions. They were … they were what I needed. And they made sure I had Simon in my life and that I properly understood his disorder. If putting up with their daughter’s bullshit is the way to repay them for all that, so be it. And I didn’t grit my teeth through years of Heather’s crap just for you to go and ruin everything now.”
