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“Do I?” She lifted a brow. “Then tell me, do you still want to know where I was the night the asshole died? Lie to me and tell me you don’t. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
I gritted my teeth.
She’d backed me into a corner.
I wouldn’t lie to make things easier, and in this situation, even if I was, there was no salvaging things. She knew the truth. I wanted to know. I had to know.
It wasn’t as if I had some nefarious motive behind everything.
Her protection and her safety came first.
“Dammit, Sophia. It has nothing to do with me not believing in you. I want to keep you from going to jail. Why can’t you see that?”
“Oh, I see plenty. Until the incident in the club, I thought you were the only person who ever took anything I ever said at face value. There is no convincing me that any of what you’re saying is true.” She shrugged, strode to where her underwear lay on the ground, picked it up, and walked toward the door. “Honestly, I’m glad reality decided to slap me in the face. It’s easier to accept how my life will go moving forward.”
“Want to explain what any of that means?”
“You’re the one who said I picked you, and now I have to deal with it. At least my rose-tinted glasses cleared up, and I continued this with wide-open eyes. It really sucks when I find myself feeling compassion for my mother and the choices she made when all she’s done is view me as a disappointment.”
Without giving me a backward glance, she strode to the doors and walked out.
#
Twenty minutes after leaving the design school, Sophia and I crawled through traffic, making our way to my penthouse.
Neither of us had spoken a single word to the other since her dramatic exit from the fabric room. However, a heavy layer of tension blanked the energy between us.
Most of it probably came from my direction. She’d fucking written us off as another couple like her parents.
I’d seen it in her eyes. No, not just seen it. She said it by implying she understood Sarah Morelli’s choices.
Fuck that shit.
Bryant and Sarah Morelli were two people who held no trust for the other, who found some obvious physical attraction together considering the number of children they produced, but they had nothing of substance.
My hands clutched the steering wheel, my irritation with the whole situation boiling my blood.
Sophia had accused me of trying to use her feelings to manipulate her. Was that how her fucked up father kept his wife under his thumb?
She couldn’t possibly believe we were anywhere in the same vicinity of that toxic, hateful relationship.
The mere thought of it was like a slam to the gut.
All I asked for were the answers to the questions about her alibi.
She expected me to have complete faith in her, but she couldn’t trust me with her secrets.
I had a right to know, especially after all the shit I’d jumped through to get her out of jail.
I gripped the back of my neck, needing to ease the tension in my muscles.
I glanced in her direction. Her attention remained straight through the front windshield, barely shifting an inch since we entered the car.
What the fuck was she hiding?
When I asked her if it was another man earlier in the night, she’d never straight out denied the possibility.
Who would she have found to replace me?
