Текст книги "Breaking Him"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

CHAPTER

TWELVE

“When I’m good, I’m very good.  But when I’m bad I’m better.”

~Mae West

PAST

Gram was old but that didn’t make her any less glamorous.

I’d never seen her without a face full of perfect makeup, expertly coiffed hair, and a flattering designer dress wrapped around her still trim figure.

She lived in a nowhere town now, and it was the town she’d been raised it, but she hadn’t always lived here and it showed in every sophisticated flick of her wrist.

In her heyday, as she’d say, she’d been an actress on the silver screen.  For nearly a decade, she’d reigned supreme as the undisputed Queen of Hollywood.

She’d lived a life that people had written books about.  Many, many books.

I read every one I could get my hands on.  Every time I’d finish one, I’d start badgering her about what was true and what wasn’t.

It tickled her when I did this.  She was a passionate storyteller, and she loved to reminisce about the good old days.

The books never got it right.  There were always some important pieces of her many escapades that they left out, and the way they portrayed her was always off.  They liked to make her into either a ruthless femme fatale or a clueless starlet, a caricature of a woman, when she was not that.  Gram was complex, her personality rich in delightful contradictions.

I worshipped her.

I’d just finished the latest biography on her glory years, and I had a million questions for her.

This one had been much different from the others I’d read.  Instead of focusing on her movie career or the set dramas she’d been involved in, this one was all about her love life.

We were in one of the sitting rooms in her fancy mansion of a house.  She was serving me tea, a habit she said she’d picked up when she was shooting a film in England decades ago because it added structure to her day.

I studied her.  I’d read a lot of things, but I hadn’t quite believed them and it was an embarrassing subject to bring up, so I’d never asked.  “You had boyfriends before you met Grandpa?”  I asked it as if he had been my grandfather.  I’d taken to doing this because Gram seemed to expect it of me, but I only did it with Gram and Dante.  The rest of their family was much less welcoming.

She threw back her head and laughed.

I smiled with her.  She had one of those of laughs, it was a tinkling, delightful thing, and it brought joy to a room.

“Oh yes, dear girl, I had boyfriends before I met Grandpa.”

My eyes widened.  I hadn’t quite believed it when I’d read it.  “H-how many boyfriends did you have?”

She laughed some more.  “I was a wicked, wicked woman,” she drawled.

“Gram!” Dante protested.

She nudged me playfully and nodded her head toward her grandson.  I glanced at him.  He was across the room, sprawled out on a couch, eyes closed, but he wasn’t sleeping.  He was listening to us, and occasionally he’d add something into the conversation.

“Look at the power you have over him, Scarlett,” said Gram conspiratorially, but loud enough for him to hear.  “He’s heard all of my stories a hundred times, but he’ll listen to them all again if it means being in the same room with you.  Not even fourteen and you’ve already brought him to heel.”

“Gram! Gram!” We both protested.

“And look at her, dear boy,” she called out to him.  “Here is a girl that will adore you the way you deserve to be adored,” she told him.  “Treat that like the precious thing it is.”

She looked back and forth between our blushing faces.  “Don’t fight it, my lovely children.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Love will make your life worthwhile.  It’s the most powerful force on earth.  Let it rule you and you won’t be sorry.”

Dante was sitting up now, eyes open and trained on his wicked grandmother.

She smiled at him fondly.  “Your grandfather’s love saved my soul.  All I want is for you to love and be loved in the way you deserve, and I’m green with envy that you found it so early in your life.”

“What happened to Grandfather?” I asked her, changing the subject, but I was curious.  I’d never been told how he’d died.  I’d always wondered but they never talked about it.

“Cancer, dear.  Dreadful thing.  I didn’t have enough time with him, but then a lifetime wouldn’t have been enough, I think.”

She looked sad for a long moment, heart-wrenchingly so, but then seemed to shake it off.  “You should try acting, my dear.  Your face was made to be onscreen.

“Really?  You think so?” I was highly flattered.  The way Gram talked about acting, in reverent loving tones, I could tell it was a sacred thing to her.  That she thought I was worthy was everything to me.

“Oh yes.  You have a face that doesn’t come along often.  Once in a generation, if that.  So expressive but so lovely.”

I eyed her doubtfully.  I didn’t spend a ton of time looking in the mirror, and the only family I had was my grandma (and to say she was homely was putting it kindly), so I’d never had any reason to think I might be pretty, let alone beautiful.  If I had to come up with one word to describe my looks, I’d have picked wild, or messy.

She smiled at me, then sent a meaningful look toward Dante, who’d taken to lying down and listening to us again.  “You don’t believe me, but you will.  You don’t favor your grandmother, obviously, but your mother was a stunning girl.  Breathtaking.  Like you.  But if you really have your doubts, if somehow you don’t see your beauty when you look in the mirror, just try to notice how other people react to you, how they stare.  Don’t you ever wonder why they stare?”

“Because I’m the trashcan girl,” I said simply.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dante shoot up again, and I knew I’d agitated him.  He hated when anyone called me that.  Even me.

“No, my dear.  The people who call you that are being cruel and jealous.  It says more about them than you, and it’s much easier to hate someone that they envy.”

I was still more than a little skeptical, but she shrugged and went on.  “And you’d enjoy the escape of stepping into someone else’s shoes, I’ll bet.  Life hasn’t been easy on you, but when you act, you can live any life you want.  There’s nothing like it.  Please at least consider giving it a try.  If for no other reason than to humor me, okay?”

I didn’t hesitate.  “I’ll definitely try it, Gram.  I’ll give it my best.  For you.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell." 

~Joan Crawford

PRESENT

I took my shaking self to the bathroom the instant Dante had left my room.  I gripped the counter and told myself to breathe, my trembling limbs barely holding me up.

I told myself that the shaking was relief at his absence.

When it passed, I went into the living room.  I smiled in spite of myself when I caught sight of the mystery man.

Ah.  Anton.  I should’ve guessed.

“Hopefully Demi didn’t get you punched in the moneymaker with her little stunt back there,” I said in greeting.

The tall man that lounged comfortably on our oversized sectional rose at my entrance, his rueful grin a familiar, endearing sight.  “It was a close thing, I think, but despite her best efforts, I seem to be unharmed.

I hugged him briefly, air-kissing both of his cheeks while he bent down far enough to real-kiss mine.

“So that was the guy, huh?” he said, his trained actor’s voice steady, his knowing eyes something else.

 I shrugged dismally.  I hated to give Dante that much credit, whether he’d earned it or not.  “He was a guy, one I prefer not to talk about.”

I fingered his beard.  He was growing it out for a role as a scruffy biker, complete with long brown hair that he kept tied back in a neat little bun.  I’d hated the change in his look when he’d first gotten the part, but lately it was really growing on me.

Anton was Hollywood good-looking, versatile, and ever changing but polished to gleaming, with perfect teeth, handsome features, and total control over every muscle in his face.

We’d met two years ago shooting a doomed pilot.  The show had never made it on air, but at least I’d gotten Anton out of the deal.

We were so much alike that it scared me sometimes.  He was basically a male version of me.

We’d dated for about five minutes, and I’d even been about one drink from sleeping with him, but then I’d realized that I actually liked him, so friends it was.

He grinned.  “You’re starting to like this biker vibe I have going, aren’t you?”

“Fat chance, beardo,” I told him, making a face at him as I moved to take a barstool at the counter.

“Dante has a temper,” Demi pointed out from the kitchen, where she was staring at the cupcakes forlornly.

“Yes,” I said succinctly.

“But he’s not what I was expecting,” she added.

My lip curled.  “He can be charming—”

“It’s not that.  I figured he’d be charming.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know.  I knew you hated him, and I guess I just figured he hated you back.  But he definitely doesn’t hate you.”

I waved my hand in the air as though warding off the notion.  “It’s complicated.  He’s as hostile as I am, he just hides it better, but don’t let him fool you—he's a fucking beast when it comes to breaking hearts.

She nodded, her eyes so solemn that I had to look away.  “That I gathered.  I’m sorry I said Anton was your boyfriend.  I thought I was helping, but I made things worse, didn’t I?”

“On the contrary,” I assured her.  “Your interruption couldn’t have come at a better time, so thank you.”

She smiled cheekily, shrugging, “Anytime.”

“What was he doing here?” Anton asked from the sofa.

I looked down at my hands, bracing myself for the pain of saying it aloud.  “Gram died.”

They both gasped.

“Oh no,” Demi uttered softly.

“Not Gram,” Anton muttered, followed by a steady and vehement string of cursing.

Just like anyone important in my life invariably knew at least something about Dante, they also knew about Gram.  She was the only person I considered family and talked about as such.

“What happened?”

“A fatal stroke.  That’s why he was chasing me around.  I guess he didn’t want to tell me over the phone.”

“But he didn’t tell you last night?” Demi asked.

Anton coughed and I glared at him.

“He didn’t.”  I knew they’d heard what he’d said back in my room, or at least enough to suspect, but I had no intention of hashing it out.

“What can I do?” Demi asked, sounding so sincere and concerned that I could hardly stand to hear it.

I nodded at the open bottle of scotch I’d left in the kitchen earlier.  “Hand me that, will you?”

There was only one thing to be done.  Because crying in my room alone held no appeal, and crying in front of other people was even worse—I was throwing one hell of a drunk.

I was hoping this one was more successful than the last attempt.

Or, at the very least, less disastrous.

Demi and Anton didn’t hesitate to join me.

I stopped drinking out of the bottle (because we had company now) and made myself an oversized tumbler of scotch.

Anton and Demi did the same.  Demi despised scotch, so I knew she was just being a good sport.

“I hope you can stomach this stuff,” I told Anton as he took a long swallow.  “It was way too low class for Dante the Bastard.”

“I think it’s fantastic,” he told me, toasting the air.

“You don’t have to drink scotch for me, Demi,” I told her.

She shrugged and toasted at me.  “It’s for your gram,” she said and took a long, painful-looking swallow.

We got good stinking drunk and watched reruns of our favorite reality show, Kink and Ink.

I nodded at the screen at some point after drink number three.  “I’d go lesbian for a day for her,” I told an extremely drunk Demi and a fascinated Anton.

“I’d suffer through some pretty terrible things to see that happen,” Anton said.

Demi shook her head.  “She’s pretty and I like her, but uh uh.  Only boys for me.”

“What about this?  There are only three people left in the world.  You,” I nodded at Demi, “Frankie,” I nodded at the hot lesbian tattoo artist on TV, “and Justin Bieber.  You have five seconds to pick.”

She didn’t hesitate, blurting out “Frankie!” before I’d even finished talking.

We couldn’t stop laughing after that, giggling our asses off.

“I vote that when we sober up we drive to Vegas to get tattoos at her shop,” Demi said at some point.

“It’s only a five-hour drive,” Anton pointed out.  “Four if I’m driving.  What kind of a tattoo do you want, Demi?”

She flushed when he said her name, and it was only in my drunken state that I realized for the first time that sweet Demi had a huge crush on jaded Anton.

Oh no.

I wanted to tell her to run in the other direction.  He was too much like me.  He’d had his heart ravaged by some sadist years ago and what was left of him ate little girls like Demi for breakfast.

I made a note to tell her such when I’d sobered up enough to be taken seriously.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered.  “I’d have to brainstorm about it on the drive.  Something pretty.  With color.”

“What about you, Scar?” he asked me.

I nodded at the TV where someone was currently getting a heart with initials in the middle of their back.  “I’d get the opposite of that.  There are too many love tattoos.  I’d get an anti-love one.”

Anton’s rueful grin came out to play.  When I was in this state, it was really hard to remember why I’d never slept with him.  He was way too good-looking for his own good, beardo, man-bun, and all.  “Yes, yes, we know, Scarlett.  You don’t believe in love.  You’ve said it many times.”

For some reason, that set me off.  I blame the scotch.

“I never said I don’t believe in love,” I said heatedly.  “Trust me, I believe in it.  I know love.  It lives in me still.  Like a cancer, it thrives under my skin, metabolizes in spite of all of my attempts to eradicate it.” I had to take a few breaths I was talking so quickly and passionately.  “What I said was that if you feel yourself falling, you should run like hell.  Avoid it.  If it tries to set its hooks in you, rip them out.  If it tries to shackle you, break the chain.”  I was waving my hands around to illustrate my point.  “Love is never satisfied with half-measures.  It won’t take parts of you.  It will own all of you, every single, longing piece.

“Love will make you its slave,” I stated venomously.  “It will ruin you.  Grind you under its heel until you don’t recognize what’s left.

“Love will take your soul.” I looked pointedly at Demi.  “If you’re very unlucky, it might even turn you into someone like me.

“I do believe in love,” I reiterated.  “I believe it’s the most destructive force on earth.”

When I finished my impassioned rant, they were both just staring at me.

Demi looked like she might cry.  She was hugging Amos, her eyes huge with pity and sorrow.  “Oh, Scarlett,” she whispered.  “I’m so sorry.  Dante is such a bastard.”

Even Anton didn’t look right.  His mouth was twisted bitterly, eyes boring into me, something powerful moving behind them.  “That fucker,” he said succinctly.  “Excuse me.”  He got up and left the room.

Getting his rage in hand, I knew.  He was another one with a wicked temper.  So my type.

Why hadn’t I slept with him again?

“You’ll find love again,” Demi told me tremulously, sounding like she really believed it.  “Just when you least expect it I bet you’ll run into some wonderful man that makes your heart race again.”

I knew better, but I kept my piece.  Demi could stay sweetly naive, her soul light and beautiful.  I didn’t want to take that from her.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

There is only one heart in this universe that calls to mine, and it does call.  Constantly, relentlessly, it sings out to me in a captivating, resonating voice.

Day after day, year after year, it calls to me.

But I won’t listen to it.  It belongs to a liar.

When Anton returned, he seemed more or less back to normal, and we didn’t comment on his absence.

We were still huddled on the couch watching people get tattoos, and he rejoined us without a word.

“There’s like a six month waitlist to get ink in her parlor,” I pointed out in true buzz-killer style.  I liked crushing dreams.  It was a hobby of mine.  “And from Frankie herself?  Who knows.  Probably years.  You’d probably have to know somebody.”

“Well, poo,” Demi said.

Anton and I shared a smile.  She was way too adorable for her own good.

Meanwhile on Kink and Ink, someone was crying as they described the reason for their angel tattoo.

“I hate it when this show gets emotional,” Anton said, rising from the sofa to refill our glasses.

“Why does the term emotional have such a negative connotation?” Demi asked him, sounding riled.  “Humans are emotional creatures.  I’m emotional but that doesn’t mean I run around crying all the time.  I’m more likely to laugh and love harder because I’m emotional.”

I blinked at her after she’d finished her own little rant.  I liked this sassy side of her.

I sent Anton a sideways glare because he seemed to like it too by the way he was looking at her.  I made a note to have a talk with him at some point.  He was not allowed to mess around with Demi.  She was too innocent for him.

At some hazy point Leona came home.  I was pretty numb by then and so it didn’t hurt quite as bad to tell her about Gram.

“Oh Scarlett,” she said, coming to sit beside me, taking one of my hands into both of hers.  “What can I do?  Do you want to talk about it?”

I thought about that.  “I do not.  The scotch is helping.  This show is fucking awesome, so that helps, too.  You drinking with us?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

Even later than Leona, Farrah showed up and joined us in over-toasting my gram.

At some point I was so sloppy drunk that I even confessed to Leona, “I slept with him last night.”

Her eyes widened and I could see by how horrified she was that she was far from as drunk as I was.  I was at the drunken stage that was incapable of horror.

“You what?”

I nodded, giving her what I imagined was a thoughtful look.  “What indeed, my friend.  What indeed.”

I thought she was going to drop the subject, and I thought that was odd, but eventually she came back with a stunned, “You slept with him?”

How to explain?  I thought about it and, “It’s complicated.”

“Clearly,” Anton drawled.

“Are you guys in a better place, then?” Leona asked.

“Not fucking likely.  It’s complicated.”

“Sounds that way,” Leona said, still giving me worried eyes.

“We have history.”  What a light, little sentence that was to hold such clenched, fathomless, unabated pain inside of it.

“I still can’t believe you slept with him,” Demi added.

I shrugged.  It was hard to articulate sober, harder now.  “Have you ever done something that hurts you just because you know it hurts the other person, too?”

They were all just staring at me.  I shrugged again.  “I hate his lying, conniving guts, but sex with him can be a religious experience.  He remembers things about my body that even I forgot.”

“Ah.”

“Oh.”

“I see.”

That they seemed to get.  The universal understanding of phenomenal sex.  Go figure.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

“Love is a trap.  When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.”

~Paulo Coelho

The morning of the funeral arrived too quickly.  I packed light and went with dread to the airport, making it to my flight with mere minutes to spare.

Leona dropped me off, her best friend eyes worried on me as we said goodbye.  Though she never voiced her concerns, she didn’t have to.  She knew this was an unpleasant trip for me, unhealthy for my state of mind, but it was unavoidable.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her chidingly, avoiding eye contact.

That was the closest I’d get to voicing my trepidation of the ordeal to come: Acknowledging the fact that there was something I might not be fine with.

“I know you will,” she assured me.

We kissed cheeks and said goodbye.

And off I went.  Heading back into hell for the sake of Gram.

Oh the irony.  She’d been one of the few people in my life that’d actively tried to keep me out of it.

I wasn’t even mildly surprised when I found myself in a first class seat for the flight from LAX to Seattle.  It was so Dante.  The nonchalantly rich bastard.

I’d been conditioned to stay awake on airplanes, so I didn’t sleep a wink for that entire leg of the trip.  I’d brought a book, and it was a good one, but I couldn’t focus on it for shit.

Instead, I stared out the window and drove myself crazy.

Why did I still feel so much for Dante?  What would it take to make me numb?

I’d have paid a heavy price for numbness, felt I’d already paid it in the attempt to seek it out.

And for the price, nothing.  All of my efforts had been futile.  Every furious, vengeful, masochistic thing I’d ever done to get over him had left me at ground zero.

I still felt.  Too much.  With just the slightest provocation, I was wrapped up in him again, in the good and the bad.  He got to me, was so deep under my skin that even now, years after the end of us, it was a fight with myself not to let the bitterness of it consume my waking hours.

At SeaTac I switched to a tiny commuter jet for the short flight to the small town I’d been raised in.

That flight was shorter but worse for my peace of mind.  I hadn’t been back in years, and when I’d left, I’d been ecstatic to be done with the place.

I hadn’t planned to come back ever, and the reason for it . . .  fuck my life. 

One small relief was that Dante didn’t pick me up himself when I arrived.  I’d been almost certain that he would.

Instead it was an unfamiliar middle-aged man wearing a comfortable looking T-shirt and jeans and holding a small sign that said SCARLET.

Despite the spelling of the name, I figured it was meant for me.  Who else?

He was the only one in the tiny airport holding a sign, so it was a bit laughable, but I walked up to him with a straight face.

“You Scarlett?” he asked me, looking bored out of his mind.

I nodded and held out my hand.  “And you are?”

“Eugene.  I’m, er was, Mrs. D’s gardener.  Dante, er, Mr. Durant asked me to pick you up and take you to your, erm, lodgings.”

“Lead on,” I told him wryly.  It was a random welcoming committee Dante had sent, but frankly, it was a warmer reception than I’d expected from the town of my nightmares.

He took my one rolling suitcase without another word and started to walk.

I followed silently.

The town was a small one by city standards, but not tiny.  At about a hundred thousand residents, last I checked, it had a whopping three high schools, and more importantly, four Walmarts.

I couldn’t remember how many hotels it had, and didn’t particularly care which one I was staying at, so I didn’t ask.  Anything would do, because whatever it was, I was used to worse.

Eugene didn’t open the door for me, and I didn’t take exception to that.  I just got in the car, which happened to be an old beat-up truck, and stared out the window while Eugene steered us wordlessly through my despised hometown.

Time hadn’t been kind to the little hellhole.  I’d read a few years ago that it’d become the drug capital of Washington, the entry point for cartel distribution into the northwest, and the signs were apparent nearly everywhere I looked.

I took in every change I saw with a stoic face.  It was dirtier than I remembered, with more dead behind the eyes pedestrians loitering aimlessly in the busier parts of town.

It was as though every negative thought I’d ever channeled into this little slice of purgatory had taken root and poisoned each dark corner of the place while I was absent.

It gave me an unwilling and brief spiteful thrill.  The way I’d been treated here, it felt almost like justice, like it’d finally gotten the reckoning it deserved.

But all of that was stupid, emotional drivel.  It was only a place.  A spot on the map.

It was the people here that deserved a reckoning.  Not all, but many.  Too many hostile faces and names for me to recall that had helped to shape me into the bitter, little ball of hate I was today.

We were nearly to our destination before I shook myself out of my memories enough to realize just where we were going.

“I’d like to go straight to my hotel.  I need to freshen up and change before the funeral, since I still have a few hours,” I told Eugene, voice firm.  “Thank you.”

He shot me a glance, cleared his throat, and kept driving.

“Did you hear me?” I asked him when he didn’t respond.

“I did.  You’ll have to take that up with Mr. Durant.  He didn’t tell me anything about a hotel.  He just said to bring you to Miss D’s house.”

My jaw clenching in agitation, I pulled out my phone, sending off a hasty text.

Me:  Which hotel am I staying at?

Bastard/Stalker/Liar/Cheater/Ex/TheDevil:  You’re almost to the house, right?  We’ll talk when you get here.  

I shot Eugene a hostile look.  He’d officially reached collaborator status in my book.

I punched out another furious text.

Me:  I hope you don’t think I’m staying at that house.  

He didn’t respond, which was just as well, as we were pulling into the long drive that led to Gram’s large estate.

As usual, manipulative bastard that he was, Dante had orchestrated everything before I saw the trap that had closed around me.

There were several cars in the drive, and I assessed a few of them with an eye for whom they might belong.

A few nondescript sedans: whoever had been hired to prepare the huge house for refreshments after the funeral.

Silver Rolls Royce:  Dante’s father, Leo.

White Mercedes:  Unknown but worrisome.  Any sign of money pointed to either Dante’s family or someone even worse.

Black Audi: Dante, because he always freaking loved Audis.

I didn’t even want to get out of the truck, in fact, I sat there for a few awkward minutes, Eugene holding my door open for me, just staring at the house before Eugene muttered, “Well, shoot.  I can take you to a hotel.”

Sure, I thought scathingly, now he was offering, right as Dante emerged from the house.

With a heavy sigh, I got out of the car.

He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt.  I hadn’t seen him wearing anything but a suit or, well, nothing, for ages, and the sight struck me, reminded me of when we were teenagers.

Already off to a horrible start, I noted.  As bad as I’d dreaded it would be.

“I’m not staying here,” I told him as he approached.

He didn’t respond, didn’t even aim his stern eyes my way, just took my bag from Eugene and started heading back to the front door.

“What are you doing?” I asked his back, following him with a quick, furious stride.  “I need to go to a hotel to get ready.”

He paused at the door and finally looked at me.  I could tell he was angry with me, some remnant of the temper he’d last left me in still present.  “Your room is untouched.  Gram kept it for you from the time you left.”

This got to me.  The sentiment of it.  In my last year of high school my grandma had decided she was done dealing with my shit and kicked me out.  I hadn’t had to go far.  Just that five-minute walk uphill from my grandma’s trailer, and I’d been welcomed here with open arms.  It had meant the world to me.  Still did.

“The house will likely be sold by whoever inherits it,” Dante continued, “so I assumed you’d want to go through your old things yourself before all of that happens.  If I assumed wrong, Eugene will take you to a hotel, but in case you forgot, there isn’t one close.  You’re looking at a forty-five minute drive each way.  The funeral is in two hours, so you won’t have much time, but if that’s what you want to do, by all means, be my guest.”

I glared at him, temper boiling up.  “I should have seen this coming.  I should’ve guessed you’d pull something like this.”

“What did you expect?  Did you think I was going to put you up at the shitty hotel over on Main Street?”

“I’m used to shitty hotels.”

“You know what?”  His voice was unsteady suddenly, volume going up with every word, ”I don’t give a fuck what you’re used to.”  By the unholy light in his eyes, I could tell he wasn’t talking about hotels anymore.

Perversely but predictably, his apparent fury calmed my own.  I leveled a serene look on him, one meant to either stir him up or stop him cold.  “Okay, fine, it’s hardly worth arguing over.  I’ll stay here and I’ll go through my old room, though I can’t imagine I left anything behind that I wanted to keep.”

His jaw was clenched, eyes still flashing hotly at me.  Stir him up it was.  “You might surprise yourself,” he told me softly.

That made my eyes narrow, serenity gone.  It was amazing the landmines we set for each other with the most innocuous phrases, and I wasn’t interested in walking over even one of his, particularly not at the start of what was bound to be a trying few days.

“I’m quite certain,” I enunciated slowly, “that there is not one thing I left behind in this town that I have any interest in now.”

He seemed to deflate at that, eyes darting away, shoulders slumping, and without another word, I walked into the house.

Point for me, though I wasn’t sure it counted.  It certainly didn’t feel like a victory.