by R. K. Lilley
Because, obviously, I was contrary.
“Same thing I wanted last night,” he replied, face and voice gone very solemn.
“Not likely, stud,” I drawled out, though some part of me quickened at the thought. Or at least at the picture his words brought up for me, a flash of the two of us writhing naked in bed. “Not in the mood. And even if I was, you weren’t exactly impressive enough for another round. One lackluster performance from you was plenty to last me for quite some time, thank you. You aren’t what you used to be, if you know what I mean. Or hell, maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to having better.”
He flinched just the slightest bit, tried to catch himself, smoothed his features into blandness in a blink, but I caught the slip. “I still want to talk, is what I was trying to say,” he added, voice gone stiff and formal now.
I could tell I’d struck the nerve I’d been going for. There we go. Point for me.
I flashed my teeth at him in a snarl thinly disguised as a grin. “Care for a drink?”
Perverse creature that he was, that made his smile reappear. “I don’t think so. Not falling for that again. Not today. That was a dirty trick, you know, but I suppose it was my fault. And as for last night, I’d like to defend myself; obviously I had way too much to drink.”
I eyed him top to bottom, the regard deliberate and insulting. “That’s what every guy says when he’s past his prime.”
“I had a lot to drink. You know because you served it to me.”
“Excuses, excuses.”
“Want me to prove it to you?” His smile was way too self-assured.
“Don’t make me slam this door in your face and call the cops if you don’t leave.”
“Sorry. That last one just slipped out. I really meant it about the truce.”
“A truce?” I tasted the word in my mouth, and it tasted as wrong as it felt. “You call that note you just sent me a truce?”
“The shoes were for the truce. The note was for that cheap shot you took at me last night,” he tried, smiling again, back to his charm routine. “But now that I got it out of my system, I’m back to just wanting a truce.”
“I don’t like you coming to my home,” I pointed out. He knew as much, but it never hurt to point out boundaries when it came to Dante. There was a time we’d been boundary-less, and the results had been disastrous for us both.
“I know. That’s why I tried to catch you the first time at work.”
“Work is not better.”
“Okay. Well. Noted. Now we need to talk. It’s important. Can I come in?”
I thought about it for a while. “I’ll give you five minutes, but then you need to leave me the hell alone.”
“It’s important,” he reiterated, face gone solemn again in a way that made me start to panic.
I hid it well; I am an actress after all.
I gave him a long suffering sigh and, knowing it was a terrible idea, knowing I’d regret it now and later, I let in the man that had broken my heart in so many ways that it would never heal again.
CHAPTER
TEN
“Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”
~Laurence J. Peter
“Oh God,” Dante breathed out as I closed the door behind him. “You’ve been baking? It’s like you knew I was coming.” He made a beeline for the kitchen.
“Oh yeah,” I drawled to his back, trailing him slowly. “I made all those cupcakes just for you, you narcissistic ass.”
“Are those German chocolate?” he asked. “Like you used to make?”
“Not quite the same recipe. I tweaked it a bit. Spoiler alert: The secret ingredient now is hate.”
He laughed, shooting me a sideways look out of his devastating eyes that made my traitorous knees go weak. “So you did make them for me.”
I gritted my teeth as he helped himself, but the truth was, though I hadn’t been expecting him, and emphatically did not want him here, I did want him to eat one. He had a surprisingly sweet tooth for a man with a rock hard body, and he’d always loved it when I’d baked for him. He and his sweet tooth was actually the whole reason I’d ever learned to bake.
I wanted him to taste and be reminded of one of the many things he’d thrown away when he’d ruined things with me.
Demi was hovering near the hallway that led to her and Leona’s rooms, looking back and forth between the two of us like she didn’t know what to do.
Dante waved at her, mouth full of food.
She glared at him. Or tried to. It was a baby lamb glare. She looked like she meant it, but it came across like a Disney princess trying to make a mean face for the very first time.
It was adorable and ridiculous. She was a soft-hearted girl, and she had my back, would muster up every meager ounce of hostility inside of her for the sake of me and protecting my notoriously hard heart, and I loved her for it.
“I’m good,” I told her. “I can handle him.”
“I know you can,” she reassured me, still aiming her princess glare Dante’s way. “I’ll give you privacy, but you holler if you need anything, Scarlett dear.”
I bit my lip to keep from outright smiling, because who wouldn’t smile at a twenty-two-year-old who called them dear? God, I liked her. I’d tried to fight it, but Demi was an irresistible sweetheart, damn her. “Thanks, hun,” I told her.
She left with one last adorable sneer at Dante.
“She seems nice. I like her,” Dante said when we were alone.
“She hates you,” I assured him.
His cupcake eating face was not one ounce offended by that. “I’d imagine she does. It boggles the mind, the things she must’ve heard about me. I assume everyone living in this apartment hates my guts?”
“Everyone,” I agreed blandly and unpleasantly.
He finished his first cupcake, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, rummaging around in my kitchen without a qualm, and downed a large cup of water with a few big swallows. “God, that was amazing. You haven’t lost your touch. And by the way, I’m glad to hear I must still be on your mind if your roommates know that much about me.”
I cursed him—a long, fluid tirade.
He didn’t so much as blink. “That was a lot of vowels,” he stated serenely when I’d finally finished.
His calm made my hellish temper boil up at an excessive and alarming rate. I looked away from him and tried to tamp it down. As I’ve said, I have a very healthy fear of my own temper. It has made me do some terrible things.
In my peripheral, Dante continued to watch me as he took a long swig from the bottle of scotch I’d been working on, grimaced briefly (his rich, entitled ass hates cheap scotch), and reached for another cupcake.
“What do you want?” I asked him, yet again.
He took his time answering, finishing off another cupcake, taking another long drink of my subpar scotch before saying, “Just give me a minute to enjoy this, will you? Do you know how long it’s been since I had one of your cupcakes?”
I did, of course. I opened my mouth to answer him when I saw him shrug his shoulders slightly and wince.
He was at an angle to me, and involuntarily, my eyes shot to his back, covered in a suit now, but I still knew what was under there.
He craned his head trying to follow my gaze.
I gave him an insouciant smile. “How’s your back?”
“Scratched me up good, didn’t you?
I shrugged, still smiling.
“I’m flattered you still have that urge.”
My smile died a short, violent death.
“What urge?” I asked through my teeth, mood plummeting to dark with a few careless words from him.
“I think you know the answer to that. You marked me up rather impressively, considering that I didn’t even feel it at the time. Your claws are as sharp as ever.”
I shrugged again. “Oopsies. It was an accident,” I told him, knowing he’d never believe it even if it was the truth.
&n
bsp; His mouth twisted into a self-deprecating smile that I despised. “I didn’t mind. To tell you the truth, it was enlightening. I didn’t think you still saw me as your territory to mark.”
Point for Dante.
“Enough with the useless banter,” I gritted out. “Tell me what you came here to say and then leave.”
His smile died its own short, slightly less violent death, his whole face going somber again. “We should sit down for this,” he told me solemnly. “And go somewhere more private. Your room, I guess.”
I stared at him incredulously. Even now, knowing him as I did, the sheer nerve of him threw me off balance. So much so, I found myself leading him to my room, letting the devil even deeper into my sanctuary without much of a fight.
He made himself right at home, perching on the edge of my bed without asking, his eyes solemn and probing on my face in a way I couldn’t stand.
“What do you want? Just spit it out.” I shut the door behind me as I spoke, hovering in front of it, in case I needed a quick escape.
There was always such familiarity, such an unspeakable intimacy between us when we were alone. Distance and time had never dulled it. Even my outright hostility could not kill it, and I had tried my best.
“It’s not that simple,” he said in a bracing way that did indeed make me want to brace. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I don’t want to have to tell you this.”
“Enough with the fucking dramatic suspense. Just spit it out,” I repeated, less and less certain by the second that he was just messing with me because every note in his voice, every line in his body was telling me to worry. Something was very wrong. My rage at him, my enduring spite had let me overlook it since my first sighting of him yesterday, but it’d been there all along. He’d not been acting like himself because something was wrong.
“What is it?” I asked, voice softer now, tentative with a dread I could no longer deny.
He couldn’t look at me, and I took a step back involuntarily as I saw the light hit his eye and noticed a sheen there.
He was crying?
Oh God. Something was wrong. My hand went to my chest, gripped my shirt over my pounding heart as my mind flew to the only thing we both still shared.
The only person.
Oh no. Not that. Not—
“Gram is dead.”
Denial was my first reaction. “That’s not possible. Bullshit. I call bullshit.”
“You think I’d lie—“
“Yes. Yes, I think you’re a lying bastard.” I did believe that. I needed to believe it. It was a firm part of the very foundation that kept me going.
His damp eyes glared at me. “You think I’d lie about that?”
I didn’t. Dante’s gram was Switzerland. She was neutral territory. Sacred ground. Even with us.
“I just spoke to her a few days ago,” I explained to him, as though it would make him change his mind. “She sounded fine.”
“It was very sudden. A fatal stroke. No one expected it.”
It all made sense suddenly. He hadn’t been himself for this little fucked up reunion. Not by a long shot. He was usually more of a bastard. When I took a swipe at him, he took two back, but this time he’d been reticent, talking about truces, letting volatile subjects drop.
No. Not Gram. Any loss but her I’d have taken with a stoic face and a hard heart.
But I had no hardness in me, no protection on my heart, superficial or otherwise, when it came to Gram. In my less than happy childhood, Dante’s grandmother had been the stuff of fairy tales. I’d always felt, and still felt, that she’d saved me in a lot of ways.
She’d been the only thing connected to Dante that I couldn’t let go of as an adult. She was too essential to me.
And she was gone.
I staggered where I stood, and Dante, predictably, wretchedly, was there to catch me.
I tried to shove him away, but he wouldn’t let me, pulling me to him, my face to his warm, familiar chest, where I gasped in and out, in and out, trying to fight back hated tears.
Breaking down in front of my worst enemy was not something I would ever give in to easily. It went against every ingredient that made up the sum of who I was.
Which just goes to show how weakened I felt at that moment, because I found myself clutching at his shirt, digging my cheekbone hard into the firm, plump pad of his pectoral.
Melting against him, I let myself cry.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”
~Bruce Lee
“Let it out, Scarlett,” he uttered, a deep rumble that came wetly out of his throat as he tried to hold back his own tears. “I know it hurts. Believe me, I know.”
Gram was in her eighties, so this should not have come as such a shock.
Of course I knew she wasn’t immortal, but something about her, her spirit I supposed, had always seemed, always felt so indestructible to me.
“I know it hurts,” Dante murmured into the top of my shaking head. “Believe me, I know,” he repeated.
I went from shaking to seizing up, body going stiff as a board.
God, I was an inconsiderate bitch. Of course it hurt. And not just me.
I hated Dante like aspiring actresses hate cupcakes, but Gram was Dante’s grandmother and not my own, and here I was forcing him to comfort me.
“I’m s-s-s-so s-s-s-sorry, D-d-d-dante,” I stammered out.
My eyes shut in horror, eyes burning as the hot lids made contact with each other. I felt my skin flushing. I didn’t have to look to know I was red with shame. Worse than crying even, my dreaded stutter from childhood had emerged.
A little noise escaped from his throat, a little pained, distressed mewl that I knew was a direct reaction to the re-emergence of my despised stutter.
Great, now he was feeling sorry for me, which was the thing I hated the most.
I tried to pull myself together, shifting away slightly to look up at him.
My eyes darted quickly away at what I saw. I couldn’t take his unguarded expression.
Could not handle what it did to the traitorous organ that was trying to pound its way out of my chest.
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?” My voice came out small and faint, but far steadier than I felt.
“You think it was easy to tell you? You think I wanted to? You were determined to distract me, and I was just as determined to let you. I didn’t think I’d pass out like that when we were . . . finished.”
“You were drunk.”
“Well, yes. My drunk brain didn’t realize it was doing drunk things, but as you well know, sober or senseless, I wasn’t about to turn that down.”
My only excuse was that his unguarded expression had taken down some of my own defenses, but at his words, I felt myself blush. It was inexcusable, even under the circumstances.
I pushed away from him, and he let me, going back to perch on the edge of my bed, facing me. I could feel his eyes on my face. Mine stayed on his shoes.
“Was she by herself when she had the stroke?” I asked him, voice trembling, body trembling. I couldn’t bear the thought of that, of her dying alone.
“Yes. Staff found her after she’d already passed.”
I took deep breaths, still fighting the good fight against hated tears. “When is the funeral?”
“Day after tomorrow. I already booked your flight home.” If I could have found the composure or the breath, I’d have pointed out that that dreaded little town was not my home, but I couldn’t find either.
“I took care of everything, actually,” he continued. “I’ll email you the info. Sit down, Scarlett, before you fall down.
I tried again to look at him, glancing up briefly, eyes again darting quickly away at what I saw.
That face. Those eyes that saw everything I wanted to hide. No, I still couldn’t take it. Not at all. Not even close.
A fierce whisper escaped him, one that carried across the
room and hit me straight in the gut, “Come here.”
Every clenched part of me seemed to break at once, and I didn’t even feel myself move, didn’t even will it, but one moment I was standing several feet away from him, and the next I was in his arms, sobbing like the broken child that Gram had always tried so hard to fix.
I cried for what felt like hours, until my soul felt scraped raw, and he was there with me, arms around me, face in my hair, legs tangled with mine.
We had melded ourselves so close together in our mourning that it felt like there was only one of us.
After a time, a whisper came out of him, one that ached, and I ached with it, “I couldn’t believe it at first either. Didn’t want to. Still don’t.”
I opened my mouth to say something, what I wasn’t even sure, but the sound of the doorbell ringing again distracted me.
“You expecting anybody?” Dante murmured into my hair.
I sighed. “No. I’m sure it’s for Demi. She’s a social creature. Makes friends everywhere. Has people over constantly.” As I spoke, I realized I was babbling into his chest, and I straightened. Having a weak moment was one thing. Lingering at it was another.
I stood, turned my back on him, and took two decisive, necessary steps away. I didn’t know what to say to him, what to do with myself, but I knew I couldn’t wallow in his arms for another fragile second.
We were both silent for a solid minute and then another. I stared at the wall, my shoulders hunched, fists clenched.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I turned around to look at him again.
His gaze was so warm on me—tender—and I didn’t know what to do with how that made me feel. He hadn’t had that warmth in his eyes for me in years. I’d made sure he had no reason to. Gone to drastic measures to make sure.
Why was he looking at me like that now? Shared grief? Rekindled feeling?
“Stop looking at me like that,” I told him slowly, reproach in every syllable of every word.
“Like what?”
“You know.”
“You think I can help it?” he countered softly. “When could I ever help it?”