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“Fine, you didn’t like me leaving. I didn’t think you would,” I admit. “You enjoyed having me at your mercy. I was your good little whore and it took too much effort to go find a replacement. Awesome. Well,I’mnot sorry I got out from under your thumb, and managed to regain some independence, however inconvenienced you were.”
My voice rises with each word, all my old anger and frustration and fear and painerupting.
Dry laughter bubbles up from him. “Oh, you’re impossible. How many mental pirouettes is your mind making to come up to conclusions like those? You should write books, not edit them, with your imagination.”
“You told me soyourself. I could be your wife or your whore, right? And I chose the second, so you treated me like it.”
“I treated you like my fucking girlfriend, because that’s what you were!” he shouts back.
“Bullshit,” I snap, pointing down, toward the ground floor we just left. “Why haven’t I met any of them if I was your girlfriend?”
I’ve got him, and he knows it.
Where I sounded pissed, his voice is thoroughly exasperated, exhausted. “Because you didn’t want to? You used to run out of my car, and hid every time I waved at you, called your name, or even fuckingappearedin the same corridor when I was with my friends.”
I can only gasp.
He’s wrong.
Sovery wrong, about everything.
Only…I distinctly remember doing all that.
His circle of friends extended far beyond the guys downstairs back in his last year of school; it also included a bunch of girls who loved nothing more than to bully me. I always assumed he’d make things worse, openly making fun of me in front of them if I ever let him corner me with them in tow.
He sighs deeply. “Come on. The room’s this way.”
EIGHTEEN
Ivy
It’smyroom. Everything makes it crystal clear. The dark red wallpaper—my favorite color—and the ivy leaves and flowers carefully encrusted inside the mahogany of the double sleigh bed.
It’s a little too modern, considering where we are, but if I had an unlimited budget, and someone had made me pick sofas, rugs, consoles, bookshelves, I would have chosen everything in here.
“The clothes in the wardrobe should fit. You have an en suite here.” He waves right, to a closed door. “If you’d rather read than sleep, there’s a Kindle in the first drawer of the nightstand. It’s linked to my card, get whatever you want. I know you prefer hardbacks, but I didn’t pick up any for this place.”
I honestly don’t know what to say. He’s aware of my format preference?
And what about his,I didn’t pick up any for this place? Did he pick the rest?
I would have guessed Bella had a hand in the design of this room as it’s so perfect.
I decide not to ask.
“You have a lovely book collection in the townhouse, though. Special editions, first editions, the works.”
That, I can’t let lie. “The townhouse?”
“The one I moved into with the guys when we went to college.”
And I have a book collection there?
I stare back at him wordlessly. He’s still on the threshold, not taking a step inside.
He changes the subject. “It might not feel like it now, but you’ll like Basil when you get to know him, by the way.”
I take the new direction of the conversation like a lifeline. “Doubt it.”
