“Because you didn’t give me any other choice,” he hisses.
I fold my arms over my chest. “What are you talking about?”
He grabs my elbow and steers me toward the exit. “Let’s not talk about this here.”
We get into the car waiting out front for us, and we’re both quietly seething as we stare out our own windows while the car navigates back toward Dex’s building.
Tonight didn’t go well. At all.
I’m afraid of what that might mean for the two of us going forward.
CHAPTER 41: Ainsley Bradley
Two New Friends
Neither of us says a word the entire ride home, up the elevator, or in the hallway. I wait until he locks the door and turns around to face me before I unload.
“You didn’t want to talk at the lounge, but we’re home now.” I fold my arms over my chest.
He rubs the side of his face as if this conversation is already taxing to him. “What do you want me to say, Ains?” He sounds tired.
“Why’d you bring me with you if you were only going to ditch me?” I demand.
“You asked me to bring you. I had work to do. I’m sorry, but part of my job is entertaining clients, and not every aspect of my life involves you.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I practically yell. “But if you want to really give this a chance, we need to be honest with each other. And to be honest, I was pissed you left me at that table.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come,” he yells back at me.
“I didn’t know you’d just leave me to fend for myself and play a game I have no business playing!”
“What did you think was going to happen?” he demands.
The truth is…I don’t know. Not that. “I guess between the opulence and wastefulness and then being left alone, I just felt out of place.”
“Maybe youwereout of place.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yell.
“The whole point of it is to be a VIP experience. It’s a place for the rich and famous to spend their money so I can line my pockets with it. Or so my father can, anyway.” He spits the last part as if the words taste sour leaving his mouth, but I can’t focus on that.
All I can seem to focus on is the fact that he just agreed that I was out of place.
I wanted him to deny it. To reject the very thought that I didn’t belong there. We’re partners now, and I should be by his side.
Instead, his words manage to spike my anger and leave a hole in my chest that makes me feel cheap and unworthy at the same time.
And that’s no way to feel as someone’s wife.
“Sorry I made you drag me along,” I hiss.
“Ains, don’t be like that,” he says, his tone switching to a bit of begging now.
“I’ll sleep in my old room tonight. We can talk tomorrow.” I stomp off toward the guest room that was mine when I first moved in, and those are the last words we speak for the night.
Don’t go to bed angry, right?
Well, I am.
