Текст книги "Breaking Him"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, 

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

~William Congreve

I went straight to my old room, leaving the bag for Dante to handle.

It was a huge old house, with ten bedrooms and several living spaces, but while I heard people working (cooking, cleaning, preparing) somewhere in the house, the kitchen and dining room I assumed, I didn’t pass by one soul as I made my way through, which was a relief.  I wanted a brief respite before I went straight into battle again, especially here, where every unchanged thing I saw brought back bittersweet memories.  From the entryway to the old den where we used to spend hours our senior year of high school watching movies.

All of it was bad, but my old bedroom was the worst.  The second I walked in the door, I had an almost overwhelming urge to flee.

I shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself, staring at the dresser that remained exactly as I’d left it, covered in sweet, little knickknacks, almost all of which had been gifts from either Gram or Dante.  Every one of those things had meant something to me once upon a time.  Years’ worth of Valentines, birthday, and Christmas gifts from the boy that had broken my heart and the woman who had tried to save it.

No matter the circumstances, I should not be subjecting myself to this, I thought, eyes fixated on a small silver key strung across the corner of the mirror.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?” Dante’s voice came from the doorway, mere inches behind me.  “She didn’t move one thing.  Ten years later, and she was keeping it for you exactly how you’d left it.”

“Like a tomb,” I murmured.

“Or a shrine,” he returned, moving past me, brushing against me like it was nothing, and setting my suitcase onto a large ottoman at the foot of a comfy armchair in the corner by my old bay window.

He didn’t look at me on his way out, but he did stop at the door, clearing his throat, his back to me.  “If I were you, I’d search that dresser before my mom gets to it.  She’s going to clean this place out fast, mark my words, and everything in this room is yours by right, so claim it now if you want it.”

I waved my hand, dismissing the notion.  “She can have whatever she wants.  I won’t be taking any of it with me.”

Only his head turned as he leveled me with a hard stare.  “You’re going to want to double check that dresser, just to be sure.  Trust me.”

I didn’t trust him.  Never would again, but I nodded at him that I understood and as soon as he left, closing the door behind him, I went to the dresser and began to shuffle through it.

I knew, or at least some part of me did, what I was looking for.  I don’t think I really believed it would be there, but it was a thought somewhere in my mind.

Still, when I found the small, white velvet case I staggered a bit where I stood.

And, as I opened it, I had to sit down at what I found.

How?  Why?

He must not have known what was in this dresser, I told myself.  He couldn’t have.

And, while I could be a spiteful bitch, I was not a thief, so the first thing I did was track him down to give it back.

I heard his voice before I saw him, but no one else’s, and so I stumbled into them without any time to brace myself.

Blindly I reached one hand out, holding myself up with the wall, the other gripping the small, white box hard enough to imbed an imprint into my palm.

She was facing Dante, her back to me.

He saw me right away, and whatever he was saying trailed away, his attention properly caught at my presence.

At least I had that.  No matter what he’d done, how he’d betrayed me, at least when I was there, he couldn’t look away from me.

Not even for her.

She caught on quickly that they were no longer alone, but I had enough time to recover before she turned and saw me.

I hated her like every creature since the dawn of time has hated its natural enemy.

Blind, fear-induced, debilitating hatred that never let me see past the moment to the big picture.

She was a threat, my gut told me now.

My gut had been telling me this since I was fourteen.

She needed to be eliminated—was all my mind could ever seem to process when it came to her, because one undeniable truth had always resonated through me—her existence meant the end of mine.

The end of everything I cared about.  The end of the only thing I used to care about.

Still, I’d been so shocked when I’d been proven right.

A part of me, some pathetic thing deep down in my soul, still couldn’t believe it.

I gave her a lie of a smile.  “Tiffany,” I said in greeting, my voice fake friendly.

“Scarlett,” she returned; her soft voice even and unaffected.  She must have known I was at the house.  She’d had warning.

I hadn’t been given the same courtesy.  It was an effort not to glare at Dante for that.

“How’ve you been?” she asked, sounding like she actually cared.

Perhaps she did.  If I was doing terribly, I knew she’d love to hear about it.

I studied her for a time, not answering.  I hadn’t seen her in years, but she hadn’t changed much.  She was still beautiful.  It was an icy blonde, wintry blue-eyed beauty that appealed to men with a taste for the unattainable.

She was slight, rail thin, and petite, but somehow all the more intimidating for it, a delicate princess of a woman.

She, like Dante, was raised with money, and it had always been apparent in the way she dressed, wearing designer clothes even as a teenager.  It was no different now.  Her elegant black dress undoubtedly cost a small fortune, and her lavender stilettos were on point.

I hated her for it.  And I hated that I was still wearing the comfortable, torn-up, old jeans, plain white tank, and worn to death gray Toms I’d traveled in.

I hated that her hair and makeup were done so heavily and precisely that I knew she’d had a stylist do it for the occasion.

I hated that my hair was a messy mane down my back, and my makeup was minimal and what there was likely smeared from travel.

Basically when it came to Tiffany, there was no end to things I found to hate.  About her and myself.

The most toxic relationships in life are defined by the way they make us feel about ourselves.  She and I were the worst of that.  Whatever I was, always felt diminished by what she was.

“Just peachy,” I finally answered.  “You?”

She smiled wistfully, like the question brought her joy, and turned to glance up, up, up at a much taller Dante.

Seeing them next to each other, especially standing so close, made me want to wretch.

It brought out the worst in me, seeing him with the woman he’d thrown me away for.

It made me feel, yet again—story of my life—like trash.

“I can’t complain, can I, Dante?” she asked him.

My eyes shot to him.  I didn’t bother to hide the hate in them from him.

He was still staring at me.  As far as I could tell, he hadn’t so much as twitched since he saw me enter the room.

I almost smiled, not a happy smile, more of a you made your bed now die in it, you fucker smile, because this had to be even more uncomfortable for him than it was for us, and that didn’t make me sad for him.

I almost felt a twinge of pity for him though.

Imagine the burden of being the only person that hateful little me had ever trusted.

Now imagine betraying that trust in all the ways that would hurt me the most.

Hell hath no fury.

Every hard thing inside of me turned harder still against him.  Went from steel to diamond hard.

“I need a word,” I told him coldly, turned on my heel, and walked away.

He could follow me or not, but I couldn’t take even one more second in a room with the two of them.  I’d do something violent if I had to endure any more.

He chose to follow, though I didn’t acknowledge him until I was back in my room, door closed behind us.

I held up the little white box.  “This was in the dresser,” I spoke quietly.  God only knew who was eavesdropping.

Not a muscle moved in his face.  “Yes, I know.  I’d put it somewhere safe before my mother shows up here if I were you.”

I just stared at him.

He shrugged.  “It’s yours.  Gram wanted you to have it.  That much she made clear to me.  It was hers to give.  So take it.  Like I said, keep it safe if you don’t want my mother to take it from you.”

I was shaking my head, but I said, “I can’t believe your mom didn’t already take it.  It wasn’t even hidden.”

“Yes, I know.  I put it in there right before you showed up.  I’m well aware of how my mother operates.  She no doubt ransacked the place before they’d even taken Gram’s body away.”

I took a few deep, bracing breaths and thrust the small object at him.  “I don’t want it.  You take it.  I have no right to it now.”

He took a weighty step back, one so impactful I swayed where I stood.  “You’re the only one with any right to it,” he said, tone dull, lifeless.  “Whether you want it or not, I won’t take it.  Either you keep it, or my mother will.  I’ll let you decide.”

Without another word, he left.

I sat heavily on the bed, staring fixedly at the tiny thing.

I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, but one thing was for sure—I’d never be letting Dante’s mother have it, not if I got to have a say.

If for no other reason than pure spite, I’d keep it at least from her.

I began to unpack, hanging the few clothes I’d brought in the near empty closet.

I knew Dante had meant it literally about his mother ransacking the place, that even my luggage wasn’t safe from her grasping hands.

Luckily I’d packed a bit of jewelry for the trip.  I found a small gold chain that ironically, but not surprisingly, Gram had given me, looped the object through it, and strung the thing around my neck, tucking it into my cleavage.  The dress I was wearing would cover even the chain.

I hid the box in one of my shoes.  If his mother found that much, it wouldn’t be good, but at least all she’d be getting was an empty box.

I began getting ready for the funeral almost right away.  Nothing made a girl want to look her best more than facing a room full of her most despised enemies.

I spent nearly an hour on makeup, going full out—smoky eyes, red lips, the works.  I looked my best when polished to killing sharpness.

My hair was easier.  I left it down.  It was long and thick, a wavy, streaky brown mane down my back that needed only a bit of taming to look like I’d just come from a rather graceful tumble between the sheets, which suited me just fine.

I wore a form fitting black dress with a high collar.  It was polyester made to look like silk, and it almost succeeded.  What the dress did succeed in was accentuating every single one of my outrageous curves, the skirt hitting just above my knees.

I wore the red Louboutins Dante had given me (damn him) though it had been a struggle with myself to do so.

It was a testament to how much I hated the other people that would be attending the funeral that I’d let Dante see I hadn’t thrown them away, to let him see me wearing a gift he’d given me.

But desperate times called for desperate measures, and nothing made me feel more confident than a killer pair of shoes.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

“Jealousy is always born with love but it does not die with it.”

~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

PAST

When the teenage years hit, what Dante and I had just sort of turned, shifted a bit.  It was an unspoken rule that we belonged to each other in a new and more possessive way.

We just made sense.  Something naive inside of me couldn’t imagine anything else.

Neither of us could have tolerated someone soft.

I’d chew up and spit out a soft boy, a fact I’d since then proven many times.

Dante would eat a soft girl for breakfast.

We fit together, and it wasn’t until I was nearly fourteen that it even occurred to me that anyone or anything could come between us.

We were at Dante’s house, which was rare.  His mother didn’t work, and she hardly ever went anywhere, so being at his house was pretty much a guarantee of running into her, not to mention the fact that my grandma worked there and she’d kill me if she knew how much time I spent with Dante and that we were close enough he’d bring me to his home.

Dante had forgotten his backpack, though, and he was just running upstairs real quick to grab it.

He wasn’t quick enough.

His mother terrified me, but she was the kind of woman where you knew you shouldn’t let her see it.

But some things you just couldn’t hide.

I tried my best, but she was a shark and I was perpetually bleeding.  There was no way she didn’t notice.

Usually I had a tough skin.  I liked to think I had a tough everything, but I did have one weakness.

One.  In my entire child/woman body, and we both knew it.

Dante.  He was the chink in my armor.  My soft underbelly.

She didn’t single me out often, but every time she did, it was memorable.

And terrible.

I’d grown several inches over the summer and I was awkward with it.  Most of my clothes were ill-fitting.  Gram helped some with it, well, she helped what little Grandma would let her.  She wasn’t allowed to buy me anything nice or even anything new, but Gram still took an interest, making sure I went shopping a few times a year for the basics on consignment, but even she couldn’t keep up with how my body was growing.

I’d always been rail thin, skinny looking to the point of unhealthy, but all of a sudden, I had sprouted, and as I’d gone up, parts of me had started to grow out.

My legs had grown longer than was proportionate with my body, and I did not own one pair of pants that made it to my ankles, or one set of shorts that weren’t embarrassingly high, exposing way more of my upper thighs and butt than I was comfortable with.  And nothing in the world fit comfortably over my shapely hips.

My shirts were too tight, my dresses small to the point of obscene, and on top of all of that, I kept having growth spurts, so I felt less coordinated by the day.

And my breasts—which were the bane of my existence, had grown too large to hide.

I couldn’t talk to a boy and have him look me in the eye anymore.

Except for Dante.  He was good at being my exception.

Even when he pissed me off, he rarely disappointed me.

I knew he noticed my changing figure, but he never mentioned it, never teased me for it when we usually teased each other about everything.  He seemed to sense it was a sensitive subject for me.

I was waiting for Dante in the intimidating entryway of their mansion when she approached me wearing her usual unpleasant smile.

“Scarlett,” she said, eyeing me with cold eyes.  “Just look at you.  Growing up so fast.”  Each word was dripping in disdain.

I swallowed hard, my throat so dry the motion stung like sandpaper going down, and greeted her, keeping my most stoic mask firmly over my face.

“Come this way,” she ordered, turning her back on me to stride down the hallway to her wing of the house.

She just expected me to obey.  She was a bitch like that.

I wished more than anything that I had the nerve to call her one to her face.

I hated that I followed her without a word.

As much as I rebelled against the very idea, she intimidated me, and some insecure part of me always ached for her approval.

She led me to her study, and my entire body clenched tightly in dread when she locked the door behind us.

I stayed where I was by the exit not moving a muscle as she glided with her smooth stride to her antique desk and retrieved something.

A picture, I realized as she brought it close.

It was of a girl, maybe my age or a bit older.  She was beautiful, with pale blonde hair and wintry blue eyes.  She was slender and elegant, and even in the picture I could tell she’d never had an awkward moment in her life.

She was dressed in the kind of clothes you never saw real teenagers wearing.  The latest expensive trends, head to toe.

“Do you know who this is?” Dante’s mother asked me.

“A model?” I guessed.  She fit the bill.

“She should be one, but no.  This is Tiffany Vanderkamp.  Have you heard the name?”

I shook my head.  I knew this was headed somewhere bad, somewhere that would be disastrous to me, but I wasn’t quite sure which direction the disaster would come from.

“Dante hasn’t told you about her?”

I shook my head again.

She tutted, her face placing itself into something resembling sympathy.  I knew it was a lie, but she still had me half convinced with her perfectly arranged expression.  She was evil like that.

“Tiffany, or Fanny as we affectionately call her, is the young woman that Dante is going to marry when he graduates from college.”

Ah.  There it was.

She was a dirty fighter, so of course she’d gone straight for my soft spot.

I felt my stoic mask slipping off, being replaced by something akin to dismay.  I recovered it, but not quite quickly enough.

“Oh dear, I can see that he hasn’t been upfront with you about this, the boor.”

 "I-i-i-i—" Oh God, the stutter was here.  I’d known it wasn’t gone forever; it still came out to play at the most dreaded moments.

She smiled at me, looking delighted.  “You’re upset, aren’t you?  Did he lie to you?  Did he say you were special to him?  Naughty, naughty boy, just like his father.  Are you two having sex yet?”

I was shocked.  Completely.  We hadn’t even kissed yet.  "N-n-n-n—"

She threw back her head and laughed, the first time I’d ever seen her actually look happy.  Apparently all it took was making someone else miserable.

“You are,” she incorrectly guessed.  “Of course you are, you little slut.  No wonder he thinks he’s in love with you, but that will all wear off soon enough.  And of course you’re in love with him.  He’s a beautiful boy, but he’s not for you, do you understand?

I did not.  I set my jaw and shook my head at her, done with attempting to speak.

She was so wrong about so many things I wished I could have voiced it.

We had not done any of the things she seemed to assume, but she was right about one thing.

I was in love with her son.

But she was so wrong about the rest.  I owned him.  He was mine, and I was his.  She was underestimating us both if she thought she could change that.

Mutely I tried to hand the picture back to her but she waved it away.

“You keep that.  It’s yours.  And go ahead, continue doing what you’re doing.  Have your fun.  Enjoy it all while you can.  Be my son’s little plaything while he’s young and stupid.  Just never forget that you aren’t his future.  If he ever tries to put a ring on your finger, I’m cutting him off.”

Just then Dante began to pound on the door.

“Put that away,” she snarled at me.

I stuffed the picture in my bag.  It was embarrassing how relieved I was that Dante was rescuing me from his malevolent mother.

It’s not like she was beating me.  Her only weapons were words.

But they were lethal.

I didn’t bring up the incident or that girl to him for a long time.  I was embarrassed to.

And what if he told me it was none of my business?

I’d be crushed.

So I sat on it for a long time, letting it simmer inside of me like an infected wound.

“Never back down from her, okay?” Dante told me when we were free of his house.  “If she ever senses she can intimidate you, she’ll make your life hell.”

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

~William Shakespeare

PRESENT

I was just stepping into my shoes when someone knocked on my door.

It was Dante.  He’d changed into a dark, dark suit that set off his golden hair and skin to an unfair degree.

This was the look that suited him best; he was born to be a villain in black.

My shallow, superficial self was devastated by the sight of him.

It should have been against the law for him to go out in public like that.  It did indecent things to me.

“Are you ready?” he asked me, eyes on my feet, though he didn’t comment on the shoes.  “It’s almost time to go.”

“I won’t share a car with her,” I said quietly and vehemently.

I hadn’t even realized I was thinking the words.  They’d flown out of my mouth completely of their own accord.

But I meant them.  I would not, could not share a car with Tiffany.  I refused to share anything with her for the rest of my life.  I had shared enough.

He nodded solemnly.  “Of course not.”  He held out his arm.  “Let’s go?”

“Is Eugene driving me?” I asked.

He went from looking stoic to annoyed, which had been my intent.  “No.  I’m taking you.  Are you ready?”

“Is it . . . just us driving together?”  I wanted to know what I was in for.  The dreadful possibilities were endless, and it was telling that being alone with him was far from the worst option.

“Yes, if you’re all right with that,” he bit out the words.  I could tell he’d misunderstood the reason for my question, and it was almost a relief to realize that sometimes he could completely misread me.

“Fine,” I said.  I grabbed my small purse out of the room, taking his arm but giving him nothing, letting him stew on the misunderstanding.  “Let’s go.”

He led me out of the house without another word.

Moving with him, the way we walked together, how he opened every door and handed me into his car like it was his personal duty, all of it was painfully familiar.  If I let myself, I could forget for a moment, two, three, four, that we were years away from the time when we’d belonged so desperately to each other.

I tried to distract myself from it on the drive by antagonizing him.  “Is she staying at Gram’s?”

He glanced at me, then back at the road, tugging at his collar.  “I’ve no clue.  I assume she’s staying either at my mother’s house or with her parents.  I didn’t ask.”

“I won’t stay under the same roof as her.”

He started chewing his lip so intently, a nervous tell of his, that I had to look away.  “The only accommodations I arranged were yours and mine.  I honestly have no clue what anyone else is planning.  Well, besides my father.  He’s staying at Gram’s, as well.”

That didn’t surprise me one bit, and I couldn’t have cared less.  Still, it was a sore spot for Dante, so I did a bit of picking at it.

“Did he bring his mistress?” I prodded.

His mouth twisted bitterly and the look he shot me was not hostile so much as wounded.  “No.”

“Don’t you find it ironic how much you resent his mistress, all things considered?”

Oh, ho.  Big point for me.  That one was a doozy.  The black look he sent me for that had my heart beating faster and had me fighting not to smile.

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I hummed under my breath.

He hit the brakes, stopping the car so fast that I had to brace myself against the dashboard.

“Oh my God.  Really?” he ground out.  “Is there any low fucking blow you won’t resort to, on today of all days?  Can’t you save it for even one fucking day?  On this fucking day, when we bury Gram?”

My high at riling him went instantly to a low, and I had to look away, flushing with shame.  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.  Not even I was this big of a bitch, not even to him.  “I was just trying to distract myself by antagonizing you,” I admitted to the window.

“I’m well aware, but can you give a rest for a few hours?  Please.”

I nodded, stunned at how freely the P word seemed to roll off his tongue lately.

He began to drive again and the car fell quiet for a time.

Without even the distraction of messing with him, my thoughts went dark, to Gram, to the past, to how long it’d been since I saw her last, and how that was all my fucking fault.

“I still spoke to her every week,” I told him.  “She’d call me like clockwork, and I always made sure I was available to talk to her for at least an hour.”  It was a small bit of comfort for him, and I offered it up as a defensive apology.

“I know.  I know,” he said with jaw clenching stiffness.  Clearly, he was still upset.

That had been my whole repertoire on trying to make him feel better, so I gave up after that.

I couldn’t even make myself feel better.  How on earth would I know how to fix him?

My talent lay in making him feel worse, and if that was off the table, I figured I should just shut up.

It was a bit of a drive to the funeral parlor, I vaguely remembered, though I’d only been there a few times my whole life.

We were maybe halfway there when Dante put his hand on my leg.  His warm grip squeezed the spot just above my knee.

It was so familiar, something he’d done hundreds of times at least, that at first I just stared, my sensory memory at war with my current perception.

It took me a minute, but finally I managed to get out a quiet but firm, “Stop touching me.”

“It calms me, you know that,” he returned, his deep voice still rough with the storm of his temper.  “I need to get a handle on myself before we get to the funeral home, okay?  Need to.”

Who could argue with that?  Apparently not even me.

But a few minutes later I was glaring at him again.  His hand just kept inching higher.  Now it was at mid-thigh, my skirt going up with it, and I knew he was doing it deliberately.

“Knock it off,” I told him, tone as scathing as I could manage.

With a smile, he took his hand away.  Apparently it’d worked.  He was in a markedly better mood.

“Did you want to speak at the service?” he asked me.  “I’ll be getting up to say a few words.”

“No, thank you,” I replied.  I didn’t even have to think about it.  I couldn’t do it, couldn’t speak about Gram to a roomful of hostile faces.  Oftentimes I flourished under the heavy weight of that contempt, but this was so personal.  I couldn’t speak about her and not share too much about myself and in the sharing, expose my too raw emotions.  Also, this was just the sort of thing that brought my stutter back.  I couldn’t bear the humiliation if that happened.

Gram wouldn’t have asked that of me.  It would have been enough for her that I was there, that I’d come home for her.

Dante didn’t pursue it any further.

“Who else is speaking?” I asked him.

“My dad, me, Father Frederick.  We’re keeping it brief.  You know how she hated funerals.”

I was relieved to hear his mother wasn’t speaking.  She’d hated Gram, her mother-in-law, but she rarely turned down an opportunity to be the center of attention.

“There’ll be a short viewing,” he continued, “then the service, followed by a reception at her house.”

I’d figured as much, with all of the prep going on at the estate.

A short, tense length of time passed and suddenly we were there, parking, Dante handing me out of the car, giving me his thick arm to hold, heading inside, passing by countless, faceless black clad people.

I didn’t look at any of them.  I tried to look only at the ground, determined to get through this without breaking down.

She lived a good life, I told myself.  A long life, full of joy and surrounded by people who loved her.

But I already missed her.  I wasn’t ready to let her go.

The viewing was unpleasant, seeing her for the first time like that, her face so still in death.

I wanted to remember her smiling and animated, her eyes open, and filled with mischief or delight.

Still, it was like I felt her there.  I spoke to her coffin as though she could hear me.  “It won’t surprise you that I’m not too keen about being back here,” I told her quietly.  “Only you could get me into a room with these people, Gram.”

Of course there was no response, and the loss of her hit me anew, because there was so much I wanted to tell her from just the last few days alone, the last hours, things I’d only ever vent about to her.  She’d been my shoulder to cry on for so many years, held so many of the secrets that I couldn’t tell anyone else, not even my closest friends, and it struck me then that I would never again have anyone who I could talk to in just that way, as a child does to a parent.  She was the only adult figure in my life that had ever given a damn, and now she was gone, and I felt more alone than I ever had.

In a moment of utter weakness, I closed my eyes and set my shaking hand on her casket.  “What am I going to do, Gram?” I asked her quietly.  “I feel so alone in this world without you.”

Dante, who’d been a silent presence at my back, spoke then, “You’re not alone,” he said, his voice emotional.  Intense.

I acted as if I had not heard, as if he had not spoken.  Those words meant nothing to me, particularly coming from him.

“You were wrong, Gram,” I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it.  “Love doesn’t save our souls.  It kills them.”

I could hear Dante literally grinding his teeth behind me.

For some strange reason, Dante sat me next to him in the front row for the service.  I didn’t have the energy to fight him on it, so I took my seat, glancing surreptitiously around at all of the familiar faces and the significance of where they were sitting and whom they were sitting with.

Predictably, I clocked Tiffany’s location first, but she’d placed herself so close to us, directly behind Dante in fact, that it was hard not to.

I almost moved when she first sat down, almost got up and made a scene, but something kind of wonderful happened to stop me.

As she sat, mere moments after we had, she perched herself on the edge of her seat, putting both of her delicate hands on Dante’s shoulders.

I had my head craned around to stare daggers at her.  She was opening her mouth to say something, I’ll never know what, because we were all distracted by what Dante did next.

Without looking at her, without so much as acknowledging her, he pulled his shoulders out of her hands, leaning far forward to avoid her touch completely.

As he did this he glanced at me, his hand cupping the spot on my leg that had so soothed him earlier.

I allowed it to stay there purely for spite and turned my head again to meet her eyes, letting her see what was in mine.

You might have had him for a bit, my triumphant gaze told her, but it was all you’ll get.

You’re nothing to him.  Insignificant.  

Whether he’s with me or not, it won’t help you.  He’s done with you.

Whether I was the love or hate of his life, nothing and no one would ever overshadow me.

I swallowed the memory of every woman he had ever known.

Swallowed it whole.

I covered his hand with my own, still staring at her until, finally, her face drawn tight, eyes flashing at me, she looked away.

The victory was short lived, however.

I took my hand away from Dante’s when I saw who was taking the seat beside Tiffany.