Page 31 of Vow

It wasn’t happening.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked.

Haven clenched her jaw, and passed the flowers another look. Not that those damn things were very far from her mind lately—clearly. It just irritated her so goddamn much that he could act as though nothing was wrong, and they were perfectly fine. That nothing had happened, and he hadn’t watched her leave his house a few days earlier after telling her he didn’t love her.

Like he didn’t send her flowers that same day with this confusing fucking note!

“Do you care to tell me what that note means?” Haven said.

Andino made a low noise—sexy and husky at the same time. “Which note would that be, baby?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Oh, you’re in that kind of mood today.”

Jesus.

Maybe calling him was a mistake. He seemed bound and determined to work every fucking nerve she had, and happily so.

“You know exactly which note I mean, Andino,” Haven said, refusing to indulge the bait he offered. If they got in to that argument, then she knew there was no way in hell she would get the answers she wanted. “The one you sent along with these fucking flowers.”

“Do you not like the flowers?”

He posed the question so genuinely that she wanted to laugh. Instead, she just let out a frustrated noise.

“Because if you prefer another type, Haven, just let me know, and I will have those sent to you tonight. Is that what you—”

Oh, my God!

“This isn’t about the flowers!”

Andino made another one of those noises. “Then why are you yelling at me about them?”

Yep.

Every nerve—this man knew how to work them like a pro.

“The note—what does it mean?” she asked quietly.

There, she’d managed to gain back some semblance of control. How long it would last, however, was an entirely different story. Probably as long as it took Andino to start acting … well, like himself, apparently.

“It means exactly what it said,” Andino replied after a long pause. “That I am a terribly good liar, which means you were exactly right when you said that to me before you left my house. I am a good liar—I lied. And so, I felt the need to tell you exactly that.”

“That you love me, you mean,” she whispered. “You love me.”

“I don’t know how to not love you, Haven.”

God, yeah.

That’s what she wanted to hear.

That didn’t mean she wanted to know it, too.

Those were two very different things. Like the different parts of her that kept warring back and forth day in and day fucking out about this man. Her heart and her soul knew exactly what they wanted—Andino. Her mind, on the other hand, was the part that kept screaming no, and bad, and run, girl.

Because him saying that—that he loved her—only left her feeling more pain and confusion than ever. He had made the choice. He had done this to them. She felt like rope being tugged in two entirely different directions. He had control of one end, and her mind had control of the other.

Healthy, and unhealthy.