Page 87 of A Vicious Love

Everything annoyed me. But seeing her already seated when I entered did something worse.

She sat beside Emmie, hands folded in her lap, listening to something Marcel said.

Until her eyes met mine.

“Jamison.”

My name again. Every time she said it, I wanted to break something expensive enough to matter.

“Sienna.”

She looked down first.

I took the seat beside her because the arrangement demanded it. I didn’t care.

I told myself that when my knee almost brushed hers under the table and she shifted half an inch away.

I didn’t care.

She might not be mine in a few weeks.

So fucking what.

She might wear another ring, walk beside another Crow, ask some cousin for his hand if he treated her well enough to make asking feel safe again.

So fucking what.

My hand curled on the table.

Dinner began.

Conversation moved around us in polished waves. Marcel spoke with an older donor about estate restoration. Emmie included Sienna gently, as always. Harrison, seated across from me, watched everything with a level of interest that made me want to stab him with a dessert fork.

Sienna answered when spoken to.

Small answers. No comments about the flowers, or observation about the ceiling with the carved angels

I knew she noticed those things. That was what pissed me off. She still saw them. She just no longer gave them to me.

My hand rested beside my plate.

Her lap was inches away beneath the table. For three years, that had been where my hand went.

Not because I liked it.

No.

Habit.

She would ask. I would give it. She would set it in her lap and trace the tattoos over my fingers.

It had been distracting, and embarrassing.

I missed it. No. No. I didn’t miss it. I noticed the absence.

That was different.

The first course was served. Sienna picked up her spoon and ate because Emmie was watching her.