Page 45 of Between Love & Ruin

Plus this “man talk” is really wearing me out.

“Dominic was hungry too so I thought he could join us,” I lie straight through my teeth because I cannot tell him the stupid excuse he gave to me. “It would be rude to not invite him, right?”

Dominic passes and gives me one of his stupid, idiotic smirks that really gets on my nerves.

“Sure,” Mark says with a shrug. “Maybe this way you could tell me about what you guys are working on.”

“Well—”

Dominic cuts me off with a cough, and I furrow my brows. “That’s confidential.”

“I am her boyfriend.”

“I am aware. But that doesn’t make confidential things non-confidential for you. You know how legal things go, right?”

Mark shifts in his seat beside me, and I continue to stuff my face with the salad I ordered because these two men managed to successfully kill my appetite.

“I know all that stuff very well. I just didn’t know partners needed permission to discuss stuff between them too.”

I scoff at that, pulling both of their attention to me. The only difference is that Dominic looks at me with a smile, and my boyfriend looks at me with a frown.

“We don’t discuss stuff, Mark.” I can’t stop the words from flowing from my mouth. “Plus, you rarely talk about work with me. So, why should I?”

“That’s different. I am a consultant; you don’t know anything about what I do.”

“And I am a writer, and I can vouch you don’t know shit about it either.”

He chuckles. “Those are two very different professions. Being a writer and being a consultant don’t even compare.”

“You are right, Mark,” Dominic says, and I stare at him in disbelief. Is he about to prove me wrong about how highly I thought of him?

Mark relaxes beside me and gives me a look that could only translate to “you-see-that.”

“Being a writer and consultant are two different professions and cannot be compared. You know why?”

I glare at him, wondering what words could come out of his mouth now.

Out of all the things, I didn’t expect him to agree with Mark on this. Because I know the way Mark enunciated each word was less about how different these two things are and more about how he views my career.

He has always made it known that he believes that my career is going to be short-lived.

“Being a writer requires you to put on all the other hats you can only dream of. You have to be a muse; you have to go through a heartbreak, a rebirth. You have to face emotions no human with as much empathy and emotional intelligence as yourself can face. You have to observe and learn and then portray it in a beautiful symmetry of words. You have to bare open your soul for people to read and form a judgment of. So, yes, being a writer and a consultant can never be compared.”

Would it be weird to say that all I want to do right now is get up, round the table, and hug this man who never fails to catch me off guard?

Tears gather in my eyes at how beautifully he put it across. I would never expect anyone to take my stand, let alone defend my choice—that I am proud of—in front of Mark.

But Dominic did.

And it says more about him than anything else could.

“Am I right, Sienna?” he asks, his eyes soft around the edges when he looks at me, and my heart swells with an emotion I am too scared to put a label on.

I smile, as wide as I probably can.

“Yes, you are right.”

Mark gets up abruptly, causing us to break eye contact and look at him.