Chapter 23
“You’re not picking up your phone.”
He was seconds—literal seconds—away from being murdered with the butter knife sitting on the half-empty table to my left, and that’s what he chose to waste his dying breath on?!
“What. Are you. Doing here?” I hissed, not daring to look at Rachel.
“Needed to take a piss.” He spared a half glance to my right. “Rachel. Been a while.”
To her, I said, “I can explain.”
To him, I seethed. “I told you I didn’t need a ride back.”
“That was before you got wasted.”
“I’m not wasted.” I was, at most, a little tipsy. We’d had a consistent stream of appetizers being brought to us the whole night, and I’d been careful to space out my drinks so I wouldn’t be hungover tomorrow.
Gardening was hard work. Especially when you didn’t know what you were doing and your muscles weren’t accustomed to all the bending and squatting and uprooting.
“Okay. And are you aware you had the wrong guy? Because I looked him up.”
He had to be fucking joking.
“I’m gonna…” Rachel clutched her purse to her hip and made an awkward gesture toward the door.
“Rachel. Wait. Rach.” I followed her, desperately trying to scramble together an explanation. But every time I opened my mouth, my mind blanked.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”
“I do, though. This isn’t… I’m sorry for not telling you—”
“Alice, it’s okay.” She stopped by the door and squeezed my hand in reassurance. “You don’t have to apologize for this. We’re good.”
“We are?” Because this was kind of big. And she was kind of acting like it wasn’t.
“We are. I promise. We’ll talk later, okay? I think he needs you a little more than I do right now.” She nodded toward Dominic, who was now glaring ice-cold daggers at the bar like it’d shanked his puppy and he was trying to figure out the best way to cause it pain.
“He’s fine. Let me grab my coat, and we’ll hop in a cab together.”
She shook her head, her mouth parting like she wanted to say something else. Instead, she hugged me.
Really, really tight. Too tight, almost.
“You know I love you, right?” she muttered. “You’re my best friend, my favorite person in the whole world, and I love you.”
I frowned, hugging her back. “’Course I do, Rach. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I really just didn’t know how…”
“It’s fine. I get it.” She gave me one last squeeze before stepping back, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a trick of the light or if the rims around her eyes really were that pink. “We’ll talk about it later, as much as you want. Just not now, okay?”
She left, promising to text me when she got home, and I shrugged off the uncanny feeling that something was fundamentally off about her reaction.
I’ll just call her tomorrow. Everything’s going to be fine.
We were much better at communicating as adults than we’d been as teenagers. We’d figure it out; always did. Right now, though, I had some impromptu murder plans to follow through on.
My fists tightened when I turned back to find Dom at the bar.
Talking to Tristan.
I stormed toward them, nails digging into my palms.
“And how did you get into accounting?” Dominic was asking, eyes narrowed.
Tristan was staring up at the angry fallen angel interrogating him with open-mouthed confusion, visibly buffering. Meanwhile, Darius was glaring at Dom with the same cutting intensity Dom was anchoring against Tristan. It was uncanny.
“My dad owns the firm,” Tristan managed. “It’s a family business. How did you get into… finance?”
“Necessity,” Dom bit out. “Relationship status?”
He’d lost his mind.
This was as clear to me as the throbbing crimson creeping up Tristan’s neck, yet no one else seemed to notice.
Darius’s jaw was clamped tight as he ripped a freshly printed order out of the small black machine in front of him, and Tristan kept looking between the two men like he was closing in on a heart attack.
“S-single.” This was admitted with a glance toward Darius, who was too preoccupied with trying to summon a swarm of hornets around Dominic’s face to notice.
Dom’s eye had started to twitch. “Thoughts on marriage? How many kids—”
“Okay, that’s enough.” I wedged myself closer, my voice shaking with anger. “I’m so sorry about him. He’s on a plethora of medications he clearly forgot to take this morning.”
Dominic took the warning hand I placed on his bicep as permission to slip an arm around my waist and pin me to his side. Darius paused mid-pour, puzzled by the brutish possessiveness displayed by the man who’d spent the last few minutes aggressively hitting on his man.
Tristan’s expression lightened with a hint of relief. “Oh, are you two…?”
“Not even a little,” I ground out. He didn’t look convinced. Likely because more than half my torso was now fully pressed to Dominic’s chest.
It was hell.
He burned like fire and smelled like every sin I’d ever been tempted to commit. Fitting, since they all involved him.
Forcing my mouth into a wooden smile, I grabbed Dom’s hand. “Excuse us for a minute.”
He didn’t put up any resistance as I towed him into the nearest hallway and through the first set of doors that weren’t locked—a small, private dining room and soon-to-be crime scene.
I whipped around to face him, claws protruding. “What, in the ever-loving fuck, is wrong with you?!”
He made an exasperated gesture toward the closed door with his hand. “That’s who you’re considering as the father of your future children? That guy?”
“Have you lost your fucking mind? How are you here right now?”
“The glue stick you dared me to eat when we were in kindergarten had more flavor than that guy.”
“Dominic, you weren’t supposed to come inside. Why did you come inside!”
“He’s an accountant, Alice. Can you imagine having to sit through dinner every night, listening to him vent about QuickBooks or whatever the fuck?”
“You were supposed to drop me off, go home, and not come back. I told you I didn’t need a ride!”
“He looks like he collects used toothpicks and organizes them based on their flavor profile. I’ve never seen two people more ill-suited in my life. What was Rachel thinking?”
“You talked to him for thirty fucking seconds, Dom, shut up. She was thinking I’d like him, and she was right. I do like him. Because he’s calm, and considerate, and nice.”
“He’d bore you to death.”
“So what!” I threw my hands up in utter exasperation, my vision blurring.
“Maybe I like boring. Maybe I want something easy, and cozy, and… and safe. You had no right to barge in here and interrogate him the way you did. Can you imagine if the tables were turned? If I aggressively marched up to someone you were romantically interested in and embarrassed you like that in front of them?”
The tightness in his expression flickered. “So you are interested in him?”
“That’s not the point!”
His cheeks were as flushed as mine felt, the tension rolling between us potent enough to zap at my skin. For a long minute, we stared, our breathing heavy as a muffled mixture of chatter and music drifted around us.
“Boring. Cozy. Easy. Is that seriously what you’re trying to convince yourself you want?”
The fucking nerve. “And what is it you think I actually want, Dominic? You?”
I spat it out like an accusation, as though the suggestion alone was gut-churningly revolting.
Dom’s molten honey eyes narrowed. He stepped forward. “No, Alice. I wouldn’t dare make that mistake again.”
My teeth clenched, my fists tight at my sides as my shoulder blades skimmed the wall behind me. I hated how far my head had to tilt back to make up for the height difference. The absolute last thing I wanted was to feel smaller than I already did.
He braced a hand beside my head. Leaned in.
“You might be begrudgingly attracted to me now, you might not recoil in disgust when I kiss you, but imagine how pathetic I’d have to be to think it reached anything beyond that, especially after how much effort you put into rejecting me the first time around. ”
My hackles shot up. “Is that a fucking joke?”
“No, me sitting in my car for the last three fucking hours, immobilized by the thought of you on a date with another man, is a fucking joke. You’ve turned me into a fucking joke.” His jaw flexed, his throat working. Then, in a low, almost pained whisper, “I hate you.”
The moment I went to bare my teeth again was the moment I felt it, the barest skim of his fingers against the side of my fist. My mouth went slack, whatever retort I’d been about to snap back with dying on the tip of my tongue.
His eyes searched mine, and when I didn’t jerk my hand away, his knuckle nudged into my loosening fist, testing. “With every fiber of my being, I hate you, Alice.”
My breath hitched when his palm slipped over mine, coaxing it open.
“I hate you so much that I can’t leave, because then you’ll go home with him, and I’d rather be skinned alive.”
Our fingers threaded, and a balloon popped in the center of my chest, setting a thousand more butterflies loose. I stopped breathing. Permanently.
We were holding hands. Dominic was holding my hand. His thumb was stroking my skin, and it felt… like I was watching the sunset for the first and last time.
“You’re always there, Alice. Always. Every agonizing second of every cursed day, even when I close my eyes. It doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try to make it stop, or how many years go by. You are always there. And that is what, in the ever-loving fuck, is wrong with me.”
My lips parted, my brows furrowing as I started piecing things together.
“Yes, I’ve lost my mind. It fell out of my head when we were ten and you discovered the glittery marvel that was lip gloss and the limitless number of times it could be reapplied in any given day.
You laid claim to the vacancy, and I haven’t had a single moment of peace since.
” His searing gaze dropped to my mouth, tension and loathing creeping through his expression.
Then he tipped closer and pressed a threateningly gentle kiss on the corner of my mouth. Then my chin. Jaw. Neck.
My stomach quivered when he licked at the hollow of my throat, and again when he pinned my hand above my head. His fingers stretched out before rethreading with mine, his molten, half-lidded glare in full tact as he slipped my lower lip between his teeth.
His other palm trailed fire up my bare thigh, dipping under my dress, bunching up the hem.
But I gripped his arm before his hand could slip higher.
“If you think I’m about to let you touch me after the shit you just pulled, you’re even more out of your mind than you realize.
” My nails dug into the sleeve of his jacket.
I met his scowl with my own, refusing to back down.
“You do not get to mess with my personal life however the fuck you want, then whisper cryptic sweet nothings in my ear and expect me to melt at your feet.
“He might come off as boring to you, Dominic, and he might be a safe choice, but at least he doesn’t make me feel just a little worse about myself every time he opens his mouth.
It’s not wrong for me to want someone who actually likes me as a person.
Someone who, instead of waxing obscure poetry about his so-called hatred for me, isn’t afraid to be honest with me and tell me straight up that he thinks I’m smart, or pretty, or whatever else, because he doesn’t resent us both over how much he—”
We were interrupted by a heavy thump and the desperate rattle of the doorknob. Dom’s gaze remained bolted to my face as I shoved his hands away and yanked my skirt back down. The door swung open… and immediately slammed shut again.
“Darius, we can’t—”
“Shut up. Please just shut. Up. You’re not too old for me.
My dad will get the hell over it. But most importantly, if I have to watch one more corporate jackass hit on your pretty ass in front of me, I’m going to lose it.
Stop fucking overthinking everything for one fucking second in your entire fucking life, shut the fuck up, and just kiss me, you beautiful, infuriating—”
A chair toppled over as two bodies fought, slamming into the wall.
This conversation was officially over. Without so much as a glance back up at Dominic, I straightened my dress, flipped my hair over my shoulder, and slipped out of the room.
Two of the three men were far too preoccupied to notice. The third did the most maddening thing he could’ve possibly done.
He followed me out.