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“No, you don’t. Which is pretty much the point.” He sets the pen down and turns his head to study me. “I have a proposition for you.”
“No, thanks. Been there, done that.” My gaze moves over his muscled chest before rising to his face, my expression haughty. “You were passable. But I’m not up for a repeat performance. Sorry.”
His mouth opens and then closes again, before he bites out, “Passable?”
“What can I say? I’ve had better.”
The outrage on his face is obvious. “You were a virgin the first time we had sex.”
“And that only makes it worse, don’t you think?”
“That’s not even—,” he cuts himself off with a curse. “I’m not talking about sex, damnit. Will you just listen?”
I make a point of looking at the clock again. “Two minutes.”
Drake takes a steadying breath, even as his hands ball up into fists at his side. The suggestion that he isn’t any good in bed seems to have gotten to him more than anything else.
Then he lets out a rueful chuckle and shakes his head as the tension suddenly drains out of him. “I wish we’d met a different way.”
I do, too. But it doesn’t matter. I have to keep myself convinced that it doesn’t matter. “Do I need to call the nurse and have you escorted out?”
“I think I know who tried to kill you.”
The words drop into the space between us with the impact of a sonic boom. It sucks all the air out of my lungs. Maybe it’s how casually he acknowledged that someone did try to kill me. He is the only person who has. The police haven’t even bothered to come take a statement from me at the hospital and the hospital staff keep calling it an accident.
I barely have a voice left, my speech comes out in a harsh whisper. “What?”
“And I think it’s the same person who hurt your sister.”
Rage burns along every nerve-ending that leaves me shivering and ready to hurt something. “Who?”
Drake just shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you unless you agree to do this my way.”
“What caused this sudden change of heart?” I ask, not keeping even an ounce of suspicion out of my voice. “Suddenly you care when it’s your best friend getting hurt?”
His only reaction is to blink. “Of course. Why else?”
The words hurt even though I know they shouldn’t. Drake has made it more than clear that I’ve never been anything more to him than a means to an end. Only an idiot would expect more than that.
But nobody ever accused me of being the smart twin.
I need to walk away from this. Scratch that, I need to run before another Pratt twin ends up down for the count. Except I don’t want this to be how it ends.
In defeat.
Slinking away with my tail tucked between my legs like I’m just another victim of Havoc House.
Not the badass bitch who takes no prisoners that I’ve spent my entire life determined to be.
“How do I know this isn’t a trick?”
“You don’t.” A brief smile touches Drake’s lips, but there isn’t any humor in it. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me.”
I trust him about as far as I can throw a baby grand piano, but that isn’t the point.
My only other choice is to leave. That would be the smart thing to do, but it would mean that this story is over.
This story cannot be over.
