5. Calliope #2
Three weeks? I look at my phone, no messages no calls absolutely nothing. Vex never told me it would be three weeks so how the fuck does Soren know?
“He didn’t tell me it would be three weeks.” The words taste bland in my mouth like I’m talking around cotton. “To replace a battery?”
“Said it was more extensive than that.” I catch his gaze in the rearview. “Three weeks minimum. I don’t speak car so I can’t give you exacts.”
“Well, tell him I want an itemized invoice.” I grind my teeth.
Are we even there yet?
“Finally,” I mumble seeing our turn up ahead.
And he goes right past it. “What the…” I look at the doors. Unlocked. “Are you kidnapping me?”
“No.”
“You missed your turn.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah.”
He glances at me in the rearview. Then when he can’t see me properly because I’m on the passenger side he adjusts the mirror.
“What is this?”
“A ride to work.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Marquis.”
“We started badly. I’d like to amend that,” he begins.
“Oh hell no.” I go to grab my handle. He locks the doors. “I will murder you.” I glare at him and unbuckle my seatbelt.
“Callie. Sit,” he says, adjusting the rearview mirror as I move.
“Murder. Talk.” I shuffle behind him, my left hand taps his seatbelt, just so, so I know where it is. “Take me to work. I’m already late.”
“I said we started badly,” he tries again.
“We absolutely did not get off on any foot,” I snap. “You’ve been a condescending asshole since the interview.”
“Have I?” he counters. “We have not had a conversation before now. That is why we are speaking now.”
“Though I do recall yelling at you.” Ah yes when Lazarus introduced us. I lost my actual shit.
“Yelling is not a conversation. I would like a conversation.”
“I’d rather murder you.” I move quick. Grabbing the seatbelt, tugging and looping it around his neck.
I’m pretty sure he lets it happen.
But I do it anyway.
He gasps. Those eyes find mine in the rearview. He slams on the brakes somehow still functioning without air and glares at me.
“Ugh. Why won’t you just pass out?” I tug harder.
He laughs.
“I hate you.”
He says nothing. I let go.
He unwraps the seat belt and despite being in the middle of traffic with horns honking at us all around he gets in my face.
“You meant that.”
“For the smallest of moments.” I hold up a thumb and forefinger. “You lived. How, disappointing.”
“Remind me not to take you for coffee.” He coughs. “Violent little thing.”
“Only on Mondays.” I smirk. “I’m less violent on Fridays.”
“Less violent?”
“You should feel lucky I tolerate you.”
“If this is how you handle men you tolerate, I’d like to see what you do to the ones you don’t.” He smirks.
“I’ll never tell,” Oh my, I’m flirting with him.
I sit back against the seat because I’m in his space and he smells unreasonably good for someone I want dead.
A horn lays on behind us, long and furious. Only then does he turn back around like nothing happened. Like I didn’t just try to strangle him with his own seatbelt in the middle of a city street on a Monday evening.
“That was attempted murder,” he says, but there’s no heat in it.
“Museum security,” I say. “It’s a brutal field.”
He pulls forward. Finally merging back into traffic with that infuriating smoothness. I resettle myself on my side of the backseat. Smooth down my uniform and try to remember who I am and what I believe in.
Which is not homicide.
I believe in paying my bills on time. I believe in Joy, even when she’s dying in some stranger’s shop. I believe in Hadley, even when she’s across the world sending me postcard breadcrumbs.
I do not believe in whatever this is.
Luckily he pulls up to the eastern gate. My hand is on the door but when I yank, it won’t open.
“Child locks,” I whisper to myself because I didn’t think about the damn child locks.
“Three weeks,” Soren says instead.
“Of what?” I yank hard enough to strain the opener thing.
“Door to door. Until your car is finished.” He smirks like he’s winning. I have no idea what he thinks he is winning but it sure as fuck isn’t me.
The only thing I got going for me right now is the singular fact he’s dropping me off and not parking and making me walk in with him.
But he could over the next three weeks.
“We were doing so well avoiding each other.”
“Were we?” He turns in his seat, those dark eyes pinning mine in that steady-too-long way of his, which I refuse to dignify with a reaction. “Or were you stalking me. Sitting in my chair, turning it just enough that it annoys me.”
I bite back my smile.
“Like I said we were doing so well.”
“And all seasons end.”
“Oh,” I chuckle and it isn’t kind. “We aren’t a season.” I pat his cheek and it is more like a slap. “We are enemies. Now open the fucking door.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Callie.”
“Calliope.” He hasn’t earned Callie.
Instead of answering he gets out of the car and opens my door.
Oh that really pisses me off.
“Don’t,” I hiss as he offers his hand. “I’m not a goddamn princess.”
“Clearly,” he says, and the word lands two notes lower than it should. My skin prickles in a way I refuse to examine.
I grab my lunch box and thermos and practically leap from the car, putting as much distance between us as possible. The museum looms before me, its stone facade looking especially judgmental today. Maybe that’s just my conscience projecting.
“Six o’clock,” Soren calls after me. “I’ll be right here.”
“Don’t bother,” I throw over my shoulder, not slowing my pace.
“I’ll bother anyway.”
Over my dead body, is what I think and don’t say.
I can’t believe I tried to choke him out.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Him that is what is wrong.
He is the problem.