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“I don’t know what you tell yourself. I don’t know you anymore.”
“Yes,tigrionok,you do.”
I flinch. Considering he’s pressed up against me, I know he can feel it. A car zooms by, and I can hear catcalls and wolf whistles as the back windows are rolled down.
“Get it, girl!”
“Awooooga!”
My cheeks flush with heat. With my current position on the hood of his car, and his position between my legs…well, it doesn’t exactly look innocent.
“Get off me.” It comes out as weak as it feels.
“Not until you tell me one honest thing.”
“What makes you think you deserve my honesty?”
He glowers at me, no doubt loading another scathing insult into the chamber, when his phone starts to vibrate in his pocket. When he plucks it out, I catch a glimpse of the name on the screen.
Celine.
My blood runs cold.Celine. It’s a reminder of how much I’m risking going back. How much I’m risking every time I let him inside my orbit.
How much I’m riskingright the fuck now.
Instead of answering, he turns his phone off. It dies mid-buzz. I place my hands on his chest—his impossibly hard, unfairly-sculpted chest—and push him away. I’m still holding out hope of finding the last of my dignity somewhere between here and home.
But before I go…
“Why didn’t you answer?” I ask.
His jaw twitches dangerously. “We’re in the middle of something.”
“No,” I retort, “we’re not in the middle of anything. She’s your wife. You should pick up her calls.”
“Are you telling me what to do?”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black if I’ve ever heard it. Telling me what to do is your favorite hobby.”
“Only to save you from yourself!”
“I was doing perfectly fine before I met you! You…you ruined me. You ruinedeverything.”
A shadow flickers across his eyes and he turns away from me. “I didn’t do anything you didn’t ask me to do,” he rasps, so softly I almost miss it.
I can only shake my head in disgust. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” I say. “You’ve never done anything for anyone else. You destroy people’s lives and call it altruism. You aren’t God, Ilarion. We aren’t little insects in your ant farm.”
When he turns back to me, his eyes are simmering with a deep anger that fails to hide the pain beneath them. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me. You don’t even know how I became what I am. Or how I happily let my father die.”
I take a step back, shocked by the force of his words. He’s mentioned his father a handful of times, but nothing specific. I knew that he didn’t have the best childhood, I knew his father wasn’t exactly warm and loving, but I always thought that there was a certain amount of respect there. A begrudging sense of responsibility.
Maybe I was wrong.
“W-what do you mean?” I ask.
He bitterly scoffs. “Forget it.”
He looks like he regrets what he’s said. In fact, he looks like he wants to get the hell away from me as fast as possible. He walks over to the car and slides inside.
