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.