“But Tamara will give a shit.”
“Please stop using Tamara as an excuse to push me away.”
“I’m not using her as an excuse. She was groping you earlier! I saw her.”
His pupils expanded and bled darkness into his irises. “You were watching me?”
Heat pulsed against my jaw. “I was looking around and happened to see her andyou.”
“You’re the first girl who’s turned me down.”
So this was what his strange behavior was about? No longer feeling threatened, I unclenched my fingers. “I’d say get used to it, but I doubt you’ll ever need to get used to it.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t even react to my indirect compliment.
“Seriously, can you let me out now? This place reeks.” When he didn’t, I reached around him for the doorknob
He swiped my arm and spun me around so fast he had me pinned to the door with his forearms bracketing my head.
I’d been wrong to relax. Liam was unpredictable.
“Ness”-the way he spoke my name, all rough and low, had my stomach swishing-“I’m not like my father.”
I’d expected him to say many things but not that. “Then don’t hold me against my will.”
His breaths shuddered against my forehead. Slowly, almost painfully, he pushed himself off the door…off me.
And he let me go.
At four the following afternoon, I entered a modern-looking building not too far away from the The Den. I checked my phone for Sarah’s floor number and pressed on the button that had a big six on it.
As the elevator rose, so did my nerves. What if her generosity was a ploy? What if she’d called up a bunch of other Pine shifters and they were going to ambush me?
I massaged my temples as the elevator doors swept open on the sixth floor. Where was all this anxiety coming from?
I hadn’t slept much last night, getting to bed way too late and getting woken up by Lucy way too early. It was as though she wanted to make me pay for going out. Or maybe she was making me pay for the missing bike-the one I’d left at Aidan’s house the night he shot Liam. I told her someone had stolen it while I’d gone into the DMV to get the sign-up forms. It beat explaining what had really happened to it.
I’d contemplated retrieving it, but I didn’t want to risk Aidan putting a bullet in my skull…if he was even home. Considering his injuries, he could be bandaged up like a mummy in a hospital bed.
When I arrived in front of Sarah’s door, I pressed on the buzzer. A long minute later, there was grumbling followed by footsteps. Sarah opened the door, a pink silk sleep mask that read Go Awaywedged up on her forehead. Smudged crescents of makeup framed her squinty eyes.
“Shit. Is it noon already?”
I smiled. “It’s 4:00 p. m.”
“Shit,” she said again.
The outfit she’d worn last night was draped over the back of a lavender velvet couch. Her buffed, white stone floors were strewn with various other articles of clothing. She nodded for me to come in.
“For a girl who wanted a hundred bucks for headphones, you live in a mighty fancy place.” I studied the crystal chandelier that dangled over a leather coffee table. Each crystal was shaped like a raindrop and hung at different heights. “Are your parents in?”
“No. Why would they be?”
“Don’t you live with them?”
“God, no. The second I turned eighteen I was out the door.”
“So this is all yours?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have a roommate?”
She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t do roommates.”
“I wish I could live alone too.”
“You live at the inn, right?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh.
“Sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
Over her black sleep shorts and black tank, she wore a turquoise silk bathrobe with a heron print.
“Want a glass of water? Or coffee? Or-”
I smiled at her attempt at playing hostess. “Just a dress.”
“I need coffee first.” She padded away toward the open kitchen. The stainless-steel appliances shone as bright as the gray ceramic tiles around them. The place was seriously sick, straight out of a lifestyle magazine. As she filled a percolator with ground coffee, I put my bag down on one of the many stools propped under the marble kitchen island. She flicked the switch, then gestured me toward a doorway that was twice the size of a normal doorway
Like the rest of her apartment, her bedroom was monstrously oversized and covered in clothes.
“You can’t afford a housekeeper?” I asked before realizing how critical that sounded.
Then again, she was a slob, and she didn’t strike me as ignorant of the fact.
“I don’t like people touching my stuff.”
“Yet you’re okay with letting me borrow a dress?”
She cocked an eyebrow as though just grasping how egregious that was. Then again, everything about this girl was a contradiction. She drove a Mini yet lived in a marble palace; she DJed in a club yet obviously didn’t need the money.
“Dry clean it before giving it back.” She flashed me a smile that pried her sleep-filled eyes wider. She slid a mirrored door open with great flourish. “I’m wearing the yellow one. Take your pick from the others.”
I stared at the row of hangers dripping with silks and satins and tulle and sequins. “Are you a gown hoarder, or do you really attend that many fancy parties?”