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He kept the conversation light as he drove, pointedly avoiding the subject of the kiss. He hadn’t initially intended to say nothing of it, but she was still as tense and unsure as she had been last night. The conversation they needed to have could wait until later. And they would have it.
After escorting her into the coffeehouse, he did a quick walkthrough of the studio, despite knowing Piper’s attacker could conceal their presence. The one thing that brought Levi comfort was that Devon’s hellcat sense of smell would pick up anyone lingering in the studio who shouldn’t be there.
Back in the coffeehouse, he said his goodbyes to Piper, reminded her to contact him if there was a problem, and then—barely resisting the urge to plant a kiss on her mouth—headed to Knox’s main office within the Underground. It was pretty close to the studio, so it was only a matter of minutes before Levi reached the small stairwell that led to the office. His demon squinted at the sight of Celeste leaning against the wall. For fuck’s sake.
Levi had expected her to seek him out eventually—maybe to continue their argument, or maybe to play head games with him. She’d regret it soon enough. He’d been tactful the other night due to Whitney and Joe’s presence. Now that he and Celeste were alone, he had no intention of holding his tongue.
She straightened and turned to fully face him. There was nothing confrontational about her body language today. She looked nervous. Sheepish. Awkward.
And he wasn’t buying it.
“What are you doing here?” Levi asked, keeping his voice bored.
She cleared her throat. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“Can we go somewhere private?”
“No.”
Her mouth briefly tightened. “Fine,” she said, her voice low. “I overreacted the other night. I know that. I was shocked, and I didn’t handle it well.”
“It’s Piper you need to have this conversation with.”
“I will apologize to her. I wanted to speak with you first.”
“Well now you have.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “You don’t have any interest in talking to me, do you?”
“No.” She was a fool if she’d thought differently.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek. “So you’re jumping on Piper’s bandwagon. I suppose I should have expected that. People always take her side.”
“You can’t play me the way you do your father and Whitney. Or have you forgotten that?”
Her eyes widened. “I never tried to play you.”
“Sure you did. But it doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago—”
“Not that long ago. And it wasn’t as if we simply had a one-night stand or something. We were together.”
He snorted. “Don’t pretend what we had was anything close to serious. You spent more time with the other men you were sleeping with than you did me during those four months.”
“Because you were always so busy! And you didn’t ask for exclusivity.”
“I’m not looking for you to justify anything. I’m simply pointing out that it wasn’t quite the cozy relationship you like to imply it was.” All of which he’d have said the other night, but he hadn’t wanted to make his and Piper’s announcement all about Celeste and their past.
“You cared for me,” she insisted. “You cared for your job more, I know that. But I did mean something to you.”
This time, it was his demon who snorted. “I never even really knew you. You wore a mask around me. A mask that started to slip when you couldn’t find a way to control me. It just kept slipping, little by little.”
Her eyes flashed. “You act like it was you who walked away. I ended things between us.”
“It was yet another attempt to manipulate me, though, wasn’t it? You wanted me to choose you over my positions.”
She perched her hands on her hips. “It’s so terrible that I wanted a real commitment from you? That I wanted more for us than a fling?” Taking a long breath, she held up her hands in surrender. “I didn’t come here to fight. I don’t want to rehash what happened back then. Like you said, it’s in the past. I’m more interested in the future.” She licked her lips. “Our future. I want us to try again.”
Fucking hell, the woman couldn’t be more predictable if she tried. “You want to pull me away from Piper,” he corrected.
“No, it’s not that. I reacted badly the other day, but it wasn’t fair of me to ask that you both give up the anchor bond. I know that, and I’m sorry. This here and now is nothing to do with the psi-mate thing. This is about us.”
“There’s not going to be an ‘us.’”
Celeste’s lips flattened. “Just because it didn’t work so well the first time round doesn’t mean we can’t make it work a second time.”
“I’m not interested in trying again.”
