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Chapter seventeen
Ashley
CoraSinclairisawitch. The good kind, in a flowy hippy skirt, who sweeps in with kittens and tells me I’m not broken. I’m not bad. I’m whatever I want to be, and I get to decide every minute of every day what that is.
She’s magicked me, and when she announces Gabe and I are cooking dinner, I no longer feel like stabbing him with a salad fork. So long as he keeps his mouth shut, anyway. So far, so good. He’s been silent since I walked away from him at the fundraiser.
“Try this one,” Cora says, pulling the cookbook off the stand, opening to a page, and handing it to Gabe.
He turns the cover my way, raising an eyebrow. “This is Ashley’s aunt.”
Aunt Celia has been judging me from the kitchen counter since we arrived. Is she following along with the tabloids and social media, watching the carnage she’s wrought with heryou two are going to fake datenonsense? Probably not.
Cora turns and squints at the cover. “Oh. She has a TV show, doesn’t she? I’ve never watched it. A lot of the recipes in there are tricky—if you have any tips, Ashley, write them in.” With that, she leaves us alone, the kitten chasing her long skirt up the stairs.
Gabe sets the cookbook down, and I reach for it like a shield. We’re making a vegetarian pasta dish. I scan the ingredients and when I feel the warmth of his body at my back, I read them a second time. His hands grip the edge of the counter on either side, trapping me, so I read the list again. If I don’t acknowledge him, maybe he’ll give up and go away.
“We need to talk,” he says softly.
“We need to cook.” I correct him, my finger skating over the first step in the recipe. I’m not ready to give up on my strategy of ignoring him, so I try to focus on the words in front of me. The warmth rolling off his body is dangerously distracting. His hair is still damp from his shower and his body wash lingers on his skin. I can’t stop myself from breathing him in, as much as I don’t want to.
“I thought you were acting like a spoiled brat because I turned you down.”
I spin to face him, but I’m not prepared for how close he is, or the pinched look in his eyes. “Thanks, that’s so kind of you,” I say sarcastically, putting my hand on his chest and pushing.
He doesn’t budge.
I push harder and he pins me to the counter. I hate that I gasp, that my eyes drop to his lips, and I want him to kiss me so bad I could cry. Fuck this guy.
“I was wrong,” he continues. “I hurt you, didn’t I?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snap, ducking under his arm and striding over to the sink, where vegetables from Cora’s garden sit, freshly washed. I can breathe again, but I’m feeling way too fragile to deal with this.
“Don’t lie.” He takes the veggies from me over to the counter next to the cookbook and reaches for a chopping board and knife.
I glare at the way his T-shirt pulls snugly on his broad shoulders. I’m tired of this. Today was nice. For once in my life, I felt needed and he’s taking that away. Reminding me of how much he doesn’t want me. “Fine. You want to know? Yes, you hurt me. But that doesn’t make you special.”
He’s silent for a beat. “It makes me just like everyone else,” he says quietly.
I don’t say anything. Since he’s commandeered the veggies and the knife, I put a large pot of water on the stove and resolve to watch it boil while I get my shit together.
Gabe goes to work on the vegetables, and I listen to him chopping, carefully and evenly. He’ll be thinking about how I’ve brought this on myself. How my behavior pushes people away. I know it does, but that doesn’t mean I can stop. I don’t want to stop because I don’t want to hurt.
Heat prickles behind my eyes.
“I’m not going to cry because you didn’t want me to suck your cock.” Why the hell did I say that out loud? I take a deep breath and let it out in a loud sigh. “Let’s try to get to LA without any more fighting, okay?”
The kitchen falls silent. No more chopping.
I can feel him behind me again. How does he move so quietly?
“I want you,” he says softly. “I turned you down because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop at one blow job. Believe me, I want to hear you gag on my cock. I want to come down your throat. Or on your tits, if you’d prefer. I want to make you come so many times you forget everything but my name.”
His honesty shocks me and the surge of desire his words send through me makes my knees go weak, but the nerve of this guy. I snatch the wooden spoon off the counter and whirl on him. “Don’t sweet talk me.”
He snatches the spoon and tosses it aside. It clatters onto the counter. “What are we doing, Ash?”
“Faking it.” Like we do everything. Gabe and I aren’t so different, after all. Both pretending to be what other people want us to be. Him in his golden cage, me in my twisted one, neither of us able to fly through the open doors.
