CHAPTER
THIRTY
“If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.”
~Laurence J. Peter
I woke up to a steady knocking on my bedroom door.
I cast one bleary-eyed look at Dante, who appeared so deeply asleep as to be unconscious.
“What?” I called out, and even then he didn’t twitch. He’d always been a sound sleeper.
He slept like a guiltless baby, the bastard.
No answer. Just more knocking, and still more, going and going in a precise, continuous rap. Not hard, not soft, not fast, not slow, just steady and determined.
Whoever it was seemed to have no intention of leaving until I answered that door.
But the thing was, I really didn’t want to. There was a limited number of people it could be, and not one of them I wanted to see this early. Or ever.
I wasn’t even dwelling on what they’d discover when I opened that door. It was bad enough that I knew what I’d succumbed to in the dark, lonely hours of the night. I certainly wasn’t thrilled with the notion of anyone else discovering it, but there was no way we could hide it.
First of all, we were both naked. Dante didn’t even have a sheet to cover him. He was sprawled out on his back, exposed to the air, sleeping the sleep of someone utterly capable of trust, which was ironic since he’d been the one to rob me of mine. The Bastard.
Second, the room reeked of sex. I reeked of sex. I’d lost count of the things we’d done over and through the long hours of the night, and the evidence was everywhere, most particularly inside of and all over my well-used body.
Third, the room looked like it’d been ransacked. The bedspread was over by the window for some reason I couldn’t remember, every knickknack on my dresser had been knocked over or off, and Dante’s pants were literally directly in front of the door, like he’d left them there to send a message.
I wondered idly if he’d had the possessive foresight to leave a sock on the doorknob.
I glanced around, trying to decide what there was to be done about it, and also, where the clothes I’d gone to bed in had ended up. All I could see were his clothes, and they seemed to be everywhere, making it impossible to miss that there was a naked man in my bed even if I’d gotten rid of the naked man himself.
“Open the door, Scarlett,” a soft female voice that I’d recognize anywhere called.
My entire sated body stiffened.
Well, hell. I wasn’t going to hide this from her, of all people. In fact, if I ever had to set eyes on her again, this was the demoralizing setup I’d have chosen.
I stood, negligently wrapping a sheet around the essentials, but not bothering to cover too much. Let her see what he’d picked over her last night. Let her see what she could never compete with. Just as her rail thin body always brought out my worst insecurities, I knew my over the top curves made her feel just as inadequate.
How could a man desire two women of polar opposite looks? I’d often wondered. And worse, which type does he prefer?
Though some part of me, my gut I guess, always knew that it was me.
He was a slave to this body, helpless against every curve and hollow of it. If there was one thing I was certain of about him, it was that.
I swung the door open wide as I answered, hiding nothing. Well, nothing in the room. On my face was pure stoicism.
On my face I hid everything.
My hate. My contempt.
My jealousy. My fear.
“Good morning, Tiffany,” I said, deadpan.
And since Dante was sleeping and not dead, finally something jarred him out of his enviably peaceful slumber.
With a jerk he sat up. I watched his body flex with the movement, gaze darting from that drool worthy sight up to the dawning horror on his face.
I couldn’t decide which thing I liked looking at more.
“What the fuck, Tiffany?” he snarled, the horror turning to something darker, something I liked even more if for different reasons.
As he began to scramble to find something to cover himself with, I turned back to the bane of my existence.
I saw her face when she noticed his back.
I saw her go pale as she took in every scratch I’d left on him.
She shot one hostile glance my way.
I feigned a cringe. “Ouch. Those looks like they hurt,” I said with a mock sympathetic pout.
“They do,” Dante grumbled, still looking for clothes.
The chain around his neck and what hung from it were conspicuous when he was naked and moving like that. I didn’t imagine she could miss seeing them any more than I, and that didn’t make me sad.
“What do you want?” I asked her, trying to make my tone neutral but landing on borderline rude.
I hated that she was still shamelessly watching him.
I was starting to understand the phrase claw her eyes out.
“I just had to see this with my own eyes, though I still can’t quite believe it,” she said, directing the words at Dante’s naked back, using a tone with something in it, some bit of ownership for him that I simply could not tolerate.
My hands were in fists, and I knew it wasn’t a good sign. My temper was quickly running away from me. “Are you kidding me?” Disdain dripped off the words. “Did you think we needed your permission?”
For that, she looked at me.
I took a step closer to her. “He was mine before you ever had him, and even when you did, know this, a part of him was still mine. You never got what I had. You had what was left when I was done with him. Even last night, and it was a long night, what I got from him had no piece of you in it.”
For that, I got the reaction I craved. In her dilating pupils, her shortened breath, her quivering lip, I saw how I’d annihilated her with a few brutal sentences.
Good. I had no mercy for her. She’d helped to ruin everything I cared about, helped to make me less whole.
But still, she didn’t speak to me, didn’t address my words.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” she asked him, a world of accusation in her voice that I for one thought she had no right to. “We’re sleeping under the same roof. Did you think you could keep this from me?”
It took him so long to answer that I thought I might scream, but then, “I think it’s none of your fucking business,” he told her in a tone so black and deadly and overflowing with scorn that it made me shiver.
“You think that?” she glanced at me, her scathing eyes at my throat.
Even then, I didn’t catch the significance.
“What else don’t you think is my business?” she asked, something pointed in her tone that I didn’t catch right away.
It was the sort of thing that would float around for a while before it parked itself in my consciousness.
“I think none of it’s your fucking business and it never was,” Dante thundered back, his gorgeous temper coming out to play. “How’s that? Clear enough for you?”
“You’re going to regret this,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was speaking to him or me.
Either way, I took exception. I opened my mouth to lay into her again when she added.
“You go to bed with trash, Dante, and you can expect things to get dirty.”
My mind went a little hazy for a time.
Only seconds, I believe, but certainly enough time to do some damage.
When I was cognizant again, a naked Dante was behind me, arms wrapped around my chest, holding me back.
Tiffany was in the hallway clutching her bleeding nose with both hands, a boxer clad Bastian apparently appearing from nowhere and holding her back, as though she might attack me.
I thought it was cute that anyone thought I needed protection against her. The prissy, entitled bitch couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag.
“Get out of here,” Bastian told her sternly. “Quit fucking instigating, and go.” He aimed her down the hallway and nudged her until she started to haltingly move.
“You’re going to regret this,” she sobbed as she stumbled away.
“Come back here,” I snarled at her, trying to heave myself out of Dante’s impossible hold. “Let me do a few more things I can regret, you fucking home-wrecking whore!”
There was an awkward, pregnant moment when she was gone, punctuated only by the sound of my rage-filled, panting breaths, when it was the three of us left in the hallway, none of us dressed.
I noticed that Bastian looked pretty freaking edible when he was half naked right about the time that we all realized my sheet had slipped down to my waist in the struggle, leaving me topless.
Dante started cursing as he yanked it back up. “Avert your fucking eyes,” Dante barked at Bastian.
Bastian, who’d clearly only shown up to help, raised his hands in the air and started walking away with a muttered, “You’re welcome for the help, brother.”
“Wow,” I said when we were shut back into my room. “You know that’s the first time I’ve put my hands on that little princess bitch.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She never does her own dirty work, always keeps her hands clean. She’s an instigator, not a fighter.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said succinctly, not looking at me.
“You really hate her, maybe even more than you hate me.”
“I never hated you. I was just extremely upset with you for a very, very long time.
Whatever he wanted to call it, it had felt a lot like hate, but I didn’t get into that with him. Instead, “What’d she do that you hate her that much? Did she sleep with Nate too?” It was supposed to be a joke, one in very poor taste, but a joke.
He flinched.
My brows raised and I tried to fake a smile. “Oh ho. She did? Is that what happened?”
He cut his hand through the air in a way that had me taking a step back, though I was already several feet away from him. “I don’t give a fuck who she sleeps with.”
“You sound defensive,” I accused, trying not to let my tone sound as wounded as I felt at the idea of him getting jealous over her.
His angry eyes studied me. “Not at all. I said the exact fucking thing I meant. I don’t give a damn what or who she does.”
I didn’t miss the implication in every word he said. “So did she or didn’t she fuck Nate? Now I’m confused.”
His hands were in fists now, his shoulders heaving. “Now you sound like the jealous one. You’re the one that brought up fucking Nate! Would it bother you if she slept with him?”
I couldn’t help it. Meeting his rage filled eyes steadily, before I could stop myself, I gave him the truth he didn’t deserve. “I don’t give a damn what or who he does.”
Oh no. Now I’d done it.
He was up, approaching me for that, something spilling out of his eyes that I couldn’t stand. “That thing with him, was it only to hurt me?”
“Stop it.”
He was on me, hands in my hair, our faces pulled close, though I refused to look at his. “Tell me. Please. For so long, I didn’t think I could forgive you for that. I was sure I couldn’t, but, fucked up as it is, if you tell me you did it to hurt me, tell me you did it to break me, tell me anything as long as you tell me you didn’t feel something for him, before or after, then I can forgive it.”
I was trembling, head to toe. In rage. In fear. “Stop it. Fuck you. I don’t owe you anything. We were done when it happened. You betrayed me before I ever betrayed you.”
“Promise? Do you swear it?”
“I don’t owe you anything,” I repeated.
“Please. Tell me you did it to hurt me. Tell me it only happened after I hurt you. Please.” The arms holding my head angled to his were trembling as badly as I was.
Our combined shaking felt powerful enough to move the ground beneath us, to bring down the house that held us.
“I don’t owe you anything.” I had to force out every gutted syllable.
“I’m begging you. Have you ever seen me beg? Begging you. Tell me, lie to me if you have to, but tell me you did it hurt me. Tell me he didn’t mean anything to you.”
My hands were gripping his now for support. I thought I might collapse otherwise. This was why he always won. He used every weapon at his disposal, created new ones for his cause, until I felt too defenseless to fight him.
“I did it to hurt you,” I admitted, the words wrenched from my soul.
He tried to kiss me, but I fought him, heaving away.
“What about you and her? Was that only to hurt me?”
He looked so crushed at the question that I lost my breath.
He couldn’t even meet my eyes.
“Answer me. I answered you, so you answer me, you son of a bitch. Was that only to hurt me?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was unsteady. “It’s complicated.”
I should’ve known better than to ask. The wound had been festering but at least it hadn’t been fresh. Now it felt opened anew, and it hurt much more.
Of course, that wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. I wanted an answer as uncomplicated as mine had been.
The Bastard.
But I’d known the answer before I asked it. The timeline didn’t add up. He’d betrayed me with her before he ever had a reason to want to hurt me like that.
“I hate you,” I told him, quietly and vehemently.
“I hate that I still love you.” Just as quiet, just as vehement. Far more destructive.
God, with just a few words he’d almost defeated me. I was a sore loser, though, so I did my best to recover and limp away.
I was nearly clear of the room, one foot already in the bathroom, when he finished me.
“I hate that I’ll never stop,” his voice was soft but no less impactful.
I went into the bathroom and locked him out.
I was in the shower before I realized what he’d done. I’d gone to bed with one chain around my neck and woken up with two.
I held up the newest one. It was a key.
The bastard had put it on me while I slept.
He’d keep me chained to him in spite of everything. This I knew. I hadn’t needed proof.