“Say something,” he rasped.
I held my arms across my chest and glared down at the floor. My toenails were red with a swipe of green and some black dots. Like a watermelon. A few days ago, things were going well enough for me that I cared about a cute pedicure design.
And look how that worked out for me.
When the doors opened, I cut in front of him and stormed down the short hall to our suite. I had to wait for him to open thedoor because I hadn’t bothered myself with something as silly as a room key when we’d left for the night.
And why would I? Ryan took care of things like that. He handled the plans, the private jets, the stylists who put me in all the right clothes to be perfectly presentable as his stupid fake wife. He put all the pieces together and he pulled all the strings, and I was nothing more than the right doll for this play.
I felt him staring at me as he held the door open, but I didn’t let that slow me down. I marched into the spacious suite, crossing the wide living space to the wall of windows overlooking the Strip. I focused on all the people down there, crowding the sidewalks and stumbling out of clubs while I struggled to wrap my hands around any of the events of the past hour.
“Emme, please,” Ryan said. “Talk to me.”
“You want me to talk to you?” I cried, jolting away from the window. “Okay, let’s talk. I finally understand why you needed to marry me. Makes a lot more sense now that I realize your story was a bunch of fucking bullshit and fifteen years of friendship is worth approximately eight soccer teams to you.”
He shook his head like I’d lost the crux of it in translation. “No, that’s not what happened at all.”
I dropped my hands to my hips. “Then you’re saying it was a surprise to you that my dad was going after the same teams? You just discovered that tonight?”
He clenched his hands into fists at his sides before shaking them out. His lips parted, but he didn’t say anything for a second. Then, “No.”
“Yeah, that was obvious, but thanks for only lying to me about the entire basis of our relationship.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” he said, taking a step closer.
I ducked around a potted tree and out of his reach. “You didn’t tell me the truth,” I yelled. “You kept the important stuff to yourself and you used me to provoke my father.”
“That’s not how it went,” he said, following me across the room.
“Do you know how hard it is for me to trust people?” I asked. “How hard it is to let anyone in? I basically have five people in the entire world that I trust. I thought you’d always be one of them, but I realized tonight you’re not. Maybe you never were.”
“Em, no, listen to me.”
“How long have you been planning this?” I asked, putting the dining table between us. “Just trying to get a sense of how far back the manipulation goes.”
“The only plan was to clean up my reputation,” he said.
“Bonus points for using my fucked-up relationship with my father to turn up the heat.” I shook my head. “Did you know he’d decided to deal with his demons and wanted to make amends? Were you hoping to cash in on his guilt?”
He pushed his fingers through his hair, hanging his head. “I knew about him going to rehab.” After a moment, he added, “Both times.”
I took a step back, those words hitting me like a gust. “Would you say you’re entirely full of shit? Or just mostly?”
He shook his head but didn’t meet my gaze. I felt my blood rushing through my veins, quick and bubbly. My hands shook the way they did when my mother went off on one of her rants. My head didn’t feel like it was truly attached to my body and I wanted more than anything to fall to the floor and curl into a ball.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said, his gaze still lowered.
“But you did it anyway. You lied to me and used me. And for what? Some soccer teams? That’s all I’m worth to you?”
I hated that I had to ask. That I was back in this tired, old place where I was forced to stare down the truth that once againI’d let someone become my universe only for it to slip away like a sandcastle at the shore.
“You’re wortheverything.”
Because I was good at accepting crumbs, I almost believed him.Almost.Then I remembered his deals hadn’t been inked yet.
“It wasn’t for the teams.”
“Then what the hell was it for?”
