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Elijah’s whole face darkened, and I braced myself involuntarily. I wouldneverhave said such a thing in the past, for fear of quick, violent retribution. This time though, it never came.
“You deserve better,” is all he said. “You deserve the world, Angel. Let me give it to you.”
A dam broke inside me, besieged by words I’d heard so many times before. More memories came. They flooded my spinning head, and all of them were bad.
“Have dinner with me,” Elijah asked again.
“Never—”
“And not at that shitty pizzeria your boyfriend is running either,” he cut in quickly. “I mean at arealrestaurant, like we used to. Somewhere Michelin rated. Outside of town—”
“Elijah, you’re crazy. Totally out of your fucking mind.”
My words seemed to derail his entire train of thought. His expression went totally blank. Like a deer in headlights.
Then, just as suddenly, everything came back at once. His eyes were angry now, as he fixed them on mine.
“You know, that shitty little pizzeria is exceeding occupancy requirements bydozensof people,” he stated coldly. “And not just at the grand opening, but every day.”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying. My veins froze solid, as an all-too familiar fear gripped my heart.
“Elijah…”
“The fire marshal would be very interested to hear about that, don’t you think?”
My lungs felt flat and deflated, totally depleted of oxygen. I struggled to breathe through the lump in my throat.
“Elijah, no…”
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he went on. “There are plenty of other violations, too. There are access problems, wiring issues, and the roof isn’t nearly to code…”
My fear morphed quickly into a bitter, scathing rage.
“And that old parking lot has a dozen citations just waiting to be written,” he droned on. “If just one person happened to trip…”
“ELIJAH!”
He stopped talking for once. His face was impassive.
“Elijah,” I seethed, my voice dripping with acid. “If you mess with Aegean’s grand re-opening I’m going to physically kill you.”
He twisted at the waist, looking back at me gleefully. “Is that a promise?”
My lip curled in utter disgust, especially upon his smile. This is exactly what he wanted. I got flashbacks from every fight we ever had, where I ended up enraged and he ended up smiling in victory.
“I don’t want any of that to happen,” he added, after a while. “Neither does fire warden Dominguez. We’ve had interesting discussions, he and I.”
“You mean you already bought and paid for him.”
Elijah shrugged. The wind blew a fresh wave of powder against his face which melted quickly against his stubble.
“Have dinner with me,” he said one more time. “Just give me a chance to talk, and we can avoid all this.”
Emotions flashed through my spinning brain: fear, anger, revulsion, despair. I wanted to scream, cry, lash out in fury! I thought about Tyler, Jay, Luca…
The restaurant…
For a split second, I almost said yes.
