Chapter 9 Brielle
Brielle
My foot sinks into the snow with a cringe-inducing slurp. This weather is the worst. Small flakes continue to fall around me as the wind forces them into my eyes.
I put my head down and trek along the desolate streets cursing each step when a car slows down and puts their blinker on. It’s too damn cold and wet for me to give them a second thought other than to make a mental note that they are there for my own personal safety.
Just as I’m passing by, I hear a voice talking. I glance around to see if there is anyone else on the road with me, but it’s primarily deserted on this small side street. I look back at the car to see the passenger-side window down.
“What are you doing?” Damian snaps from the driver’s seat.
I stop but don’t move any closer to his car.
“Going home,” I call back.
“It’s snowing.” He says it like he’s mad at the clouds for daring to release water in these below-freezing temperatures. Or maybe he’s mad at me because of it.
“I know. That’s why I’m trying to get home fast and not stop to chat.” I turn and start walking again. But again, I hear him call my name.
“Brielle. Get in the damn car.”
A part of me really doesn’t want to, simply for the fact that he demanded it. But another part of me, the smarter and colder part of me, is looking at his warm, dry car with unbridled envy.
I open the door and slide onto his leather seat, kicking my shoes together outside of the car to get the snow off.
“Thanks. Sorry if I’m a little wet.”
He runs his eyes down my body, landing on my heels. Without a word, he maneuvers back onto the street and adjusts the heat, turning on the vents by my feet. The warm blast of air almost hurts, like a million sharp pins stabbing into my feet, but I’m grateful for it all the same.
The car is silent. No talking, no music, even the windshield wipers glide noiselessly without making that squeaking sound on each pass.
I take out my phone, killing time by scrolling through my notifications, and end up knee-deep in a news article about a contentious celebrity divorce.
By the time I look up, we are in a different part of the city.
“Hey, my apartment is that way,” I say, pointing behind us the way we came.
“I told you I needed to talk to you, but you left before I was off my call.”
“Okay. So, do you want to talk, then?” I ask hesitantly. We’ve been in the car together for the last ten minutes, and he hasn’t said a word. If he wanted to talk to me, he could have said what he needed to say on the way to my apartment. “If not, this next right will bring us back around.”
“I know where I’m going, Brielle. We can talk when we get there.”
“Where is there?”
“Dinner,” he says casually.
My pulse kicks up. Like on a date?
“You can’t just take me out to dinner. I have plans tonight. I need to get home.” It’s a complete lie, but the thought of going on a date with him… another date?… a non-fake date?… makes my stomach swoop and swirl.
“No, you don’t,” he states matter-of-factly.
Shoot. I did already tell him that I didn’t have plans tonight. But that wasn’t an agreement to make plans with him.
“You can’t just pick me up off the street and take me wherever you want,” I snap.
He lets out a heavy breath, his jaw tensing with irritation.
“We have seven days before we need to be the loving couple who have been together for months. And that was your doing. So now, we need to make a plan so that one of us—” He cuts his eyes over to me accusingly. “—doesn’t say something out of line that blows this whole thing up.”
“Oh.” That actually makes a lot of sense. We had barely talked to each other all week after last weekend’s disaster, but we have another shot to make this right, and it would be foolish not to plan properly.
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
It isn’t like I haven’t thought about the upcoming retreat over the past week.
It’s kind of been the only thing playing on my mind.
But where he is focusing on how to make sure we can pull off being a couple in order to solidify this deal, my brain keeps circling around the same question… how did I get myself into this mess?
“Yeah,” he says, arrogance dripping from his voice. “Dinner or home?”
He lobs the ball clearly in my court. If I say I want to go home and not work on our act together, and then we fall flat on our face… that’s on me. But if I agree to this dinner, does that make it a date?
“Fine. Dinner. But I’m paying my own way,” I say, drawing a line in the sand.
“Fine with me.”
He continues down the road in silence for another few minutes, tension filling the space around us. If this is the energy we put off next weekend, we are definitely going to give ourselves away as big, fat liars.
My voice cuts through the quietness in a startling burst of noise. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I ask.
“No.”
That’s it. That’s all he says.
“I have a sister. Evelyn.”
He looks straight ahead, and I swear, if he weren’t driving, he would have closed his eyes and heaved in a breath.
Damian pulls the car into a parking garage and deftly maneuvers it into a tight spot.
This neighborhood is… well, it’s very neighborhood-ish. Apartment buildings line the street, along with small, run-down-looking shops and restaurants. There’s nothing upscale or fancy about this side of the city.
I follow him to the edge of the garage where it meets the street and pull up short when he stops. He looks down at my classic black heels and glares. They aren’t particularly high, but the slingback style leaves my heel open.
“Are you going to be good in those ridiculous shoes?” he asks.
I bristle at his comment. That’s the second time he’s mentioned my choice of footwear, and both times to tell me that he disapproved.
The snow is still piling up along the sidewalk, but I shrug at the mild inconvenience so that he doesn’t know how biting the cold is on my bare skin.
“Yeah. I was going to walk all the way to my apartment in them. I’m sure I can make it to wherever this restaurant is. ”
He nods, still looking at my feet. When he raises his head, a flash of heat morphs into a dangerous scowl. He leads the way back into the snow, walking down the street and around the corner. A beat-up Vietnamese place boasts an open sign, or “ope” since the “n” is burnt out.
Damian pulls the door open, and I don’t bother hiding my surprise that this is the place he’s taking me to.
“It’s good. You’ll like it.”
“Oh, no doubt. This is my favorite kind of place. I just didn’t expect you to like it,” I tell him honestly.
His lip twitches like he’s holding back a smirk. “Mark it down as something new you know about me.”
“No siblings. Likes hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese food.” I mimic writing it down like I’m taking notes.
The place is empty except for an older couple at one of the tables. It’s a tiny establishment with only enough room for four small tables and two larger tables.
We place our orders separately, each paying for our own.
I’m glad that he didn’t try to pay for my meal after I told him that I didn’t want him to.
It isn’t like I don’t love free food, because I do, but it felt important to have a boundary in place in this weird arrangement we’ve found ourselves in.
He gestures for me to choose a table, so I grab a small one in the back, as far away from the door as possible to avoid the icy blast every time it opens. And also, so that if anyone we knew walked by, they wouldn’t see us.
If Damian has any idea that I’m trying to hide us spending time together, he doesn’t say—or simply doesn’t care.
“Have you talked to the Vitales at all?” I ask.
“Just long enough for him to give me the details for next weekend. He’s refusing to talk business until we’re together.” A wave of frustration rolls off him.
The woman who took our orders brings out our meals and sets them down. Damian looks comically out of place in his perfectly tailored business suit, sitting at this plastic-topped table with a cafeteria-style tray in front of him. But he’s entirely unfazed by it, like he does this all the time.
“He says hello to you, by the way.”
“Who?” I’ve completely lost what we were talking about as I took in the image of him in front of me.
He stills with his chopsticks raised and glares at me. “Leon Vitale.”
Oh. Right. The reason we’re here together at all.
“If you talk to him again, tell him I’m looking forward to next weekend.”
“We’ve lied to him enough, don’t you think?” he counters.
He has his head down, fully immersed in his bowl of pho. I take the opportunity to stick my tongue out at him and make a face. It’s a quick reflex that I don’t even contemplate before it’s already done.
“I can see you,” he says, a hint of amusement lacing his voice.
I could apologize. But I don’t.
“Tell me something about yourself. Something one of your girlfriends would know about you,” I say, changing the subject. We’re here to get to know each other, right?
“I don’t have girlfriends.”
I send him a disbelieving look. Seriously? The man is gorgeous, even if he does know it, and rich. He’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, but I’m sure there are plenty of women who would line up to stake their claim on him anyhow.
“Your turn,” he says.
“That’s what you’re telling me as your thing? That you don’t date? What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I never said I didn’t date. I said I don’t have girlfriends. And yes. I answered your question. Same question back to you.”
He’s such a dick.
I huff. “Okay, I grew up outside of Denver, Colorado.”
“Do you do any winter sports?”
“No. Winter sports are pretty expensive, whether you own your gear or rent. We didn’t really have the money for that when I was growing up.”
His brow ticks, but he doesn’t make any comment about that. I had an idyllic childhood, so it isn’t like I’m embarrassed by our financial struggles. We were solidly working-class. No shame in that.
“What brought you to Boston?”