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“I’m here for a reason,” I add.
“Oh, yeah? Tell me about that,” he says, angrily shoving a whole potato into his mouth.
Why does it feel like he meant it sarcastically? Not that I care. “Like you don’t know already.”
He throws me a smug look. “Fill me in.”
I snort. “Is this some kind of big joke to you?”
Of course he knows why I’m here. He saw the gun, and I told him what I was planning to do.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
I slam my knife into the table. “Stop. Just stop.”
“Stop what?” He shoves more carrots into his mouth. “I’m just having dinner. So should you. It’s delicious.”
He’s avoiding the topic. Big time.
“So I can die? No thanks,” I reply.
He frowns. “Die?” He pours himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table. “You think I’d poison you?”
I shrug. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”
He laughs harder and harder until it almost sounds like a bellowing roar. “You really are funny.”
I know he thinks it is, but I don’t trust him. At all. And I especially don’t trust myself around him.
“You think, after all the waiting I did to get my hands on you, I’d want to kill you with food?” He raises his brow at me as if he’s questioning my reasoning, and I almost begin to doubt myself. But he’s the one keeping me captive, not the other way around.
“If you can’t have me alive, you’ll keep me dead,” I reply.
His laughter quickly dies out, and the look on his face turns dead serious. “I know plenty of worse ways to kill someone.”
Yikes. How many people has he killed? Five? Ten? More?
“Poison would be the last on my list,” he adds. “Now eat.”
“Or what? I get shoved back into that room again?” I try not to shiver at the prospect.
He chomps down on his food as he glares at me with annoyance. “Eat.”
No threat. No imminent danger. Yet there’s tension behind this single word, like a thunderstorm looming in the distance, daring me to challenge.
My stomach growls again.
The food is right in front of me, and it smells amazing.
If I had a small bite, would it matter? I’d still be able to kill him, right?
I swallow away my pride and pull the tray toward me under his lawful eye, scooping some of the veggies and potatoes onto my plate. But when I pick up my fork, I can’t stop my hand from shaking.
“It’s food, Jas. It doesn’t bite,” Liam says.
I clutch my fork harder and thrust it into the potato, making sure he sees as I bring it to my mouth and take a harsh bite, clattering my teeth together just to prove a point. I’m too hungry to care about the burnt taste, but I’ll be damned if I ever show him.
Still, he won’t stop looking at me as though I’m some kind of art exhibit he wants to explore up close.
