CHAPTER
TWO
“Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.”
~Katharine Hepburn
I approached him again as I was taking dinner orders. I’d skipped him on my first sweep, only getting to his seat when everyone else was taken care of.
With every other passenger, I’d politely inquired what they’d like from the menu.
Dante, as always, got special treatment from me.
“We’re out of everything but chicken,” I told him flatly. “Take it or leave it, princess.”
Dammit, I’d overdone it. That actually made him smile.
“I’ll take it,” he said, sounding amused.
I hated it when he sounded amused. It made me want to smile, and also perversely, to smash a blunt, heavy object over his head.
“It’s good to see you, Scarlett.” The fucker actually managed to sound like he meant it. “You look as amazing as you always do. How’ve you been?”
Shut up, I wanted to say. Just stop talking.
Just leave me alone.
Forever.
But I’d never say any of that. It would be too much like letting him win.
And if he won, I lost.
I’d lost enough.
“Peachy,” I said through my teeth.
“I saw that commercial you did. The one for the body lotion. You were really good.”
He was making fun of me, of course.
“Fuck you,” I drawled.
His brows lowered, bright eyes squinting at me. “I wasn’t being sarcastic. You were good. Beautiful. Charming. Charismatic. I’d bet a lot of money that the exposure from that is going to get you some offers.”
“Offers for what? Go on. Let’s hear it. Stripping? Prostitution?”
He sighed. “For an acting job. God, you don’t make anything easy. I was trying to say something nice to you.” He sounded sincere.
“Why?” My tone was outright hostile.
His mouth twisted, his eyes imploring me as he answered with a soft, “Because, insane as it is, I miss you.”
He sounded like he genuinely meant it.
It made me feel violent, so unhinged that I couldn’t keep it in, couldn’t hold back a quiet and vehement, “Go fuck yourself.”
I turned on my heel and stormed off.
Add another point for The Bastard.
Make no mistake. He can be a charmer but Dante is every bit as difficult as I am. This is not some scenario where I’ve tormented a sweet man in love.
I have tormented some sweet men. Broken hearts and shattered dreams.
Men are punching bags, and I have a hell of a right hook.
But (unfortunately) none of those broken hearts belonged to Dante. His heart is black and cold and made of sterner stuff than most.
I’d tried once. Given it my all when righteous rage had driven me to do some awful things in the name of revenge, things done for the sole but futile purpose of stomping his lying black heart under my heel, but in the end I’d done more harm to myself than to him.
That wasn’t to say I wasn’t capable of hurting him. I could and had many times.
But it was never enough.
Breaking him until he was as broken as me was the only thing that would ever be enough.
I tried to ignore him as much as I could for the duration of the flight, but it was impossible to snub him completely.
Still, he was served everything last and with insolence.
I sneered as I handed him his food. It was burnt. I’d left it in the oven for an extra ten minutes. On purpose.
“Thanks,” he told me cheerfully. I could feel his eyes searching my face, but I refused to look at his. “Would a gin and tonic be too much trouble?”
“Yes,” I said curtly and stormed off.
But back in the galley, as I was refreshing another passenger’s champagne, I remembered how much I liked to get him stinking drunk.
I made him a triple in the biggest glass I could find, and put a laughable splash of tonic on top.
I didn’t add ice, stir it, or give him a straw.
We had limes, but I didn’t add one.
I wanted it to be a bitter drink. Let him taste how he made me feel.
Just the thought of getting him good and drunk had me in high spirits, recovered from the debilitating round earlier and determined again to play this game.
I handed him his glass of bitter with a bright smile.
He eyed it warily. “What’s this?”
“Your gin and tonic. Drink up.”
He tipped it at me in a toast and took a drink. His eyes stayed on me while he did it, so I got to watch them scrunch up as he got a proper taste.
“Not to your liking?” I asked him archly. “Too strong for you? Need something weaker?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’ll drink it. Almost forgot how much you loved to get me drunk for no good reason.”
“If you’re determined to have that talk about God knows what that you mentioned, then yes, I’d rather deal with you drunk. You’re more pleasant.”
“Fair enough.”
“And clever.”
“Really?”
No. It was an insult, you ass.
I hated it when he didn’t play along.
“Absolutely. You’re actually funny when you’re drunk. Hell, inebriated you is almost human.”
He winced. That one had gotten to him.
Hit scored. Point for me.
I made another sweep through first class, and a quicker one through coach.
Dinner flights were nonstop busy, and I’d never been more happy about it than I was on that one.
I passed him again on my way up to the front galley. He was nursing his glass of gin and nothing.
That wouldn’t do.
I made him another, delivering it to him with a smile that was all teeth.
I set the second drink next to the first.
He glanced at them, then at me.
“Oh I’m sorry. Did you need me to put a nipple on that?”
He laughed.
“You used to drink like a man,” I told him, undeterred.
He finished off the first one, eyes on me all the while.
That was another thing about him. He rarely backed down from a challenge.
I wish I could say it was one of the many things about him that I hated, but frustratingly it wasn’t. It had saved me when we were kids. Who knows what added hell I’d have gone through without his cursed stubbornness.
I took the empty glass away, intending to refill it immediately.
When I returned, the second drink was nearly finished.
I set down a third without a word.
I kept an eye on him, delivering a fourth as he was finishing up the third. And then a fifth. And so on.
“You did this on purpose,” Dante said to me. Even when he was blitzed, his speech was barely slurred. But I knew the signs. He was trashed in the extreme.
Hit scored. Another point for me.
I stayed busy for the duration of the flight, and Dante stayed drunk.
We were deplaning when I realized he might not even be able to make it off unassisted.
Everyone had deplaned and he was still swaying in his chair.
“What should we do with him?” Demi, the youngest of our crew, asked. She was a sweet little thing, and somehow on her, sweet didn’t annoy me.
The cabin crew was up near the door, ready to go, the pilots waiting for us in the jet bridge.
All that was keeping us was The Bastard.
“He’s hot,” Farrah, who worked the back galley, added. “Like, fuckhot hot.”
“He’s too drunk,” Demi pointed out. “That’d be rape.”
“I wasn’t being literal,” Farrah said wryly.
“Should we call a paramedic?” Leona asked, eyeing him. “That’s the protocol for this level of inebriation on the ground.”
I rolled my eyes. “No. I’ll handle the fucker.”
With an annoyed sigh I headed toward him. “Flight’s over,” I told him, voice stern. “You need to get your drunk ass off this plane.”
At that he staggered to his feet.
“We still need to talk,” he pronounced slowly.
“If you can’t get yourself off this plane unassisted, we’re calling a paramedic for you,” I told him coldly.
Yes, I had done this to him. Didn’t mean I’d help him.
He nodded jerkily and started to move past me.
I stiffened as he squeezed by me in the aisle.
He put his drunk face into my hair and inhaled.
My hands clenched into fists, but he moved away before I could do anything productive, like, say, punch him in the face.
I grabbed his things out of the overhead bin. At least he hadn’t brought much. One small carryon that didn’t weigh a thing.
“We divided up your bags,” Leona called out to me. “You get that, and we’ve got your stuff covered.”
The girls were starting to file off the plane directly behind Dante the Drunk.
I was the last out of the jet way. Dante was already parked in a chair by the time I caught up to the rest of them.
“What should we do with him?” the captain asked me. As the lead flight attendant, he was my responsibility.
I rolled Dante’s bag over to him, perching it beside him. He was staring at me, but I never even glanced at him directly.
I turned back to my expectant crew. “We leave him. He’s a big boy. He can fend for himself.”
I got some strange looks, but everyone was ready to be done for the day, so no one argued.
“You won this round!” Dante called to my retreating back. “But I’ll find you again!”
I was at the back of our crew, and I didn’t break stride as I held up my hand, waving goodbye to him with one expressive finger.