Page 38 of Wicked Roses
“You’re not having sex with him.”
“You don’t get to decide that. I need to move on with my life. I need to get over what happened.”
“Do it without sleeping with him.”
And anyone else except me.
The last part is left out, though the insinuation hangs in the air. We spend a second challenging each other with our hard stares. Though we’ve fallen silent, the friction between us crackles. We’ve somehow ended up only a few inches apart.
She moves even closer, her light and feminine scent irresistible. Almost enough to make me slip up and lose my composure. She’s so close, so within my reach, it’d be easy to sweep her up into a kiss. Taste her sweet lips that are painted the same dark red as her dress. The same dress I’d like to shred off her with my bare hands.
I resist, biting down hard on my jaw. Her gaze flits over me in the same manner mine has raked over her. Shesmirks.
“Have you forgotten?” she asks, suddenly her voice a silky whisper. “I offered myself to you. The night of the charity gala.Youturnedmedown.”
“You were piss drunk. That wasn’t the right moment.”
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to wait for your approval? I can resume my life when you say so? It doesn’t work that way.”
“My security. They’re to follow you. It doesn’t matter if you’re with Ernest Jr. or any other friend.”
She almost laughs in disbelief, rolling her eyes. “Is that what we’re calling Chadwick?”
“That’s the most polite name I’ll call him. I can tell you the other ones. Most begin or end with ‘ass’.”
“Real mature. Are we in high school again?” She backs away and makes another attempt to step past me, but I grab her arm, keeping her in place. “Jon, let me go.”
“Repeat after me. You’re not to go anywhere without my security.”
“I’ll go wherever I feel like going... with or without your security.”
I wrench her even closer, pulling her up until she’s almost against me. My hard gaze trained on her face, I speak with a calm and measured tone. “My security goes where you go.”
“This is exactly what I knew would happen—you’d try to control things. You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“It’s for your protection.”
“That’s what you always say. You once spied on me and my college roommate ‘for our protection’.”
“I told you that wasn’t me.”
Half of the truth.
The instance Delphine’s referencing wasn’t me; it was her father framing me. He’d pieced together an elaborate scheme to make me look like the obsessive, possessive, controlling boyfriend he needed me to be. The final nail in the coffin of my dying relationship with Delphine.
But Ihadspied on her in the past. I had sent a guy or two up to Dupoint University to check on her. No matter what she says, it really was for her own good—I had to make sure her university was safe and no pervy assholes were trying anything.
Still, Delphine has no clue about that. She thinks the man Daddy Adams hired to pose as a mafia guy outside her college apartment window was mine.
“I’m exhausted,” she says. “I don’t have the energy to argue. Either let me go to my room, or I’m leaving.”
My hand tightens on her arm. “Phi, this isn’t up for debate. Somebody attacked you. We don’t know what the hell they’ll do next. You can hate me and say I’m controlling. That I’m an asshole. I don’t give a fuck. But I’mnotletting you go without security. They can either follow you with your consent or without, but they’ll follow you regardless. Your choice.”
For a long while, she stands in my grip and stares at me. I can see her mind hard at work, thinking over every word I’ve said in careful detail. Delphine develops a wrinkle in her nose whenever she does. Another quirk of hers I’ve memorized from the time she was fifteen.
When her silence stretches on, I know she has no counterargument—she’d present one otherwise. Deep down she knows I’m right. Every last word I’ve said is true. The security is for her own good.
Finally, she sighs. The sound is soft, like her last breath has deflated from her lungs. The sharp stubbornness on her face melts away. Replacing it is the same look from the night I found out what really happened to her. Pain and anxiety rolled into one.