Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Who’s hungry?
—@PRyanPOfficial
That’s your inspired post today?
—Viego Martinez, Celebrity Blogger
Crap. I meant to send that as a text.
—@PRyanPOfficial
There are days, buddy. I just can’t with you.
—Viego Martinez, Celebrity Blogger
My hand shoots out to stop the forward momentum of the door Fallon’s determined to use to take off part of my facial features. I immediately begin begging, “Please, witch. Let me offer my condolences.”
Her eyes glance off mine before her voice, likely colder than the recesses of space, “Accepted, Mr. Kensington. Thank you for stopping by. Now, please, if you’d be so kind as to remove yourself from this property.”
I step closer to her, more drawn to her now than I was the first moment I felt the arc of attraction over five years ago. “Fallon, I’d like to speak with you.”
Just then, I’d like to think divine intervention granted me a reprieve or perhaps her mother intervened. A local delivery kid came up, struggling with ten boxes of pizza. “Delivery for 10 Mountain View Circle Terrace.”
Fallon opened the door wider, eyes bulging. “I ordered pizza, yes. But I ordered a single pie, not enough to feed the Seven Virtues University basketball team!”
“Lady, once the orders are in my car, they’ve been validated. It says to deliver ten extra cheese pizzas with pepperoni to this address.”
Fallon pulls up her app and shoves her phone in his face. “One! I ordered one pizza. What the hell am I supposed to do with the other nine?”
The kid, obviously immune to irate customers, drones in a bored voice, “You can keep the order or reject it. Those are your options.”
“You mean to tell me I can’t take one and send the rest back?” She’s outraged.
“No.”
“Listen, are you keeping the pizzas?”
“Well, I suppose if I want to eat—” she begins only to be cut off.
“Have a nice day.” The kid jogs back to his car.
“I’ll be calling your manager,” she shouts after him, making me want to grin because if it wasn’t for all of her years in the retail industry, she likely would have taken this kid’s head off.
He should feel grateful. Lord knows, I do because now I can offer, “Do you want help carrying those inside?”
“Where am I supposed to put ten pizzas?” Her voice sounds so bewildered and lost that my heart aches.
“I don’t know. Eat them?”
She shoots me a filthy glare that has so much more behind it than nine extra pizzas. I want to recoil from the pain and anger in it, but I persevere when she snaps, “Be grateful you have some use right now, Mr. Kensington, or I wouldn’t be letting you past the front door.”
“I’ll take whatever opportunity is presented to me just to talk with you for five minutes.”
“Fine. Get these pizzas into my mama’s…” Her head dips to the side and her jaw locks.
I want to sweep her into my arms to offer her a place to release her pain about Helen’s death, but I strongly suspect it wouldn’t be welcome. Not right now, at least.
“Just get them and follow me,” she concludes.
I lift the boxes easily after swinging my laptop bag over my shoulder. “Lead the way, witch.”
Abruptly, Fallon comes to a stop somewhere between her mother’s formal living and dining rooms. “Let’s be clear, Mister Kensington. I’m not your witch, your sweetheart, your babe, nothing. I am absolutely nothing to you except some stupid kid you had sex with. Are we clear?”
My heart cracks open with regret. I’m still holding the stupid pizzas when I ask her, “Will you let me apologize?”
“For what?”
“For the things?—”
She cuts me off. “We did? For great sex? There’s no need.” We walk into the kitchen and she lifts half the boxes and places them on the table. Removing the remaining stack from my arms, she places them beside the others before flipping the lid on the top box and taking a piece out.
My stomach growls in protest at the smell of the cheese and spice combination that fills the air. I haven’t had more than mini-pretzels and a few Cokes since I boarded the flight in Austin this morning. I’m starving, and the woman I’m in love with is surrounded by dinner for forty yet wouldn’t be inclined to offer me a bite of food if giving it to me meant saving me from certain death.
Of that I’m sure.
Lowering the tip of the pizza into her mouth, Fallon reaches for her phone. She fiddles with it for a minute before dropping it on top of the box. After she chews, she glances at it pointedly before she presses it. “You have five minutes, Mr. Kensington. Then I want you to get the hell out of my life and stay out.”
I scramble to find words that will convince her to let me stay longer than her five-minute timer. “You could have come to me, Fallon.”
She immediately shakes her head. “No, I couldn’t.”
My brows snap together. “Why the hell not?”
“That’s between me and my mother.” When she doesn’t offer any further reason, I just gape at her. She snaps her fingers beneath my nose to get my attention. “Tick tock. Your time is running out.”
“I can’t apologize enough, Fallon. You were trying to tell me that night the money you were making at Devil’s Lair was for your mother and…”
Bitter laughter escapes her sweet lips. “And what? Nothing’s changed.”
I emphasize, “Everything’s changed.”
“Really? Tell me why?”
“Fallon, you were telling the truth.”
“I tried to tell you the truth the night you showed up, but you wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise. What does it matter?”
I’m flummoxed. She drops her half-eaten piece of pizza in the box and lashes out at me. “What did you think, Ethan? I’d be so devastated over my mother’s death I’d open my arms and accept you back into my life with your worthless excuses and half-assed trust??”
“The only thing I thought about was apologizing to you.”
She slams her hand down on the phone to stop the timer. “Then fucking apologize.”
“I’m sorry, Fallon.”
“For what?”
“For thinking you were one of them?”
“One of who?” she snarls.
“One of the people we’ve been investigating inside Devil’s Lair!” I thunder.
It’s so quiet in her mother’s kitchen I think I hear the grease popping on the still scorching pizzas. I go to clarify my remarks, but Fallon holds up her hand to stop my words. “Let me get this straight.”
I nod, a tiny knot of terror forming in the pit of my stomach.
“You were investigating Devil’s Lair?” Before I can say a word, she demands, “Yes or no answers, please.”
Oh, shit . “Yes.”
“And you knew I worked there?”
“Not at…”
“Yes or no,” she snaps.
“Yes.”
“Instead of asking me about it, you tried to make me bleed by eviscerating me.” Before I can provide affirmation, she sneers. “Sorry if the fact I’m still standing offends you.”
“Fal…”
She makes a slicing motion in the air. “I’m asking the questions.”
I snap my mouth shut and wait. I pray she doesn’t go down the path I think she’s headed because if she does, it’s nowhere good.
Her chest heaving, Fallon stares me dead in the eye. “After knowing me for over five years, after talking to me almost every single day—either via text or phone—you still thought I could be that person? That I was jealous of my best friend in the entire world? The person who was here when my mother died. The person whose life-threatening injuries brought us closer. Somewhere in your twisted mind, you gave credence to the shit you accused me of that night?”
My “Yes” is riddled with shame because I did and I can’t deny it.
Her head ducks to the side, and she hits the timer to start it again. It starts counting back from thirty-two.
“I suspect in your thorough research you called in to Devil’s Lair, didn’t you?”
No, no, no. Not this. Anything but this. “Fallon…” I plead.
“Answer the fucking question, Ethan!” she screams.
“Yes.”
“Did you like the way I talked to you?” Her voice turns into “Filia’s”—a seductive purr.
I can’t lie. If I do, she’ll never believe me again. “At first, No. Once I realized it was you? Yes.”
“You fucking hypocrite.”
“What? How can you say that?”
“These people who work there aren’t there to get their rocks off. They’re there out of need. Do you think they like doing that kind of work? That they want their children to grow up to do that?”
His lips tighten at the corners. “I’ll concede some of them are like that.”
“Yet you have the goddamn nerve to stand here and convince me they did something wrong? The people who stood by me? That I was wrong because I dared to use my voice to try to save my mother . Yet, it’s perfectly fine for the high and mighty Ethan Kensington to get hard because he was looking out for the greater good? Fuck you, Ethan. Fuck you and fuck whomever you were working for.”
Fallon storms out of the kitchen. I’ve no choice but to follow her. Still, I can’t help but bellow her name to try to stop her.
She whirls on me like I’m fresh chum in shark-infested waters. “Get out of my mother’s house.”
I lift my hand to touch her cheek, but she slaps my hand away so hard I feel the sting radiate up my arm. Tears fall down her cheeks as she reaches for the handle of the front door. She flings the door open and stands next to it. She points at her mother’s porch, a silent demand for me to leave.
Not wanting to push her further, I cross over the threshold. Fallon’s tears are still falling fast and furious and I want nothing more than to hold her, to make things right. But I savaged that.
Me.
Not anyone else, not her mother’s death.
She reminds me of just that. “A few weeks ago, I’d have given anything to have you here.”
“I’m here now, Fallon.”
“Funny, now it means absolute crap.”
Her gorgeous indigo eyes hold mine as she slams the door in my face.