“What the fuck what?” she snaps, chin lifting.
“Hiller.” Her green eyes flare. “The district attorney.” I bend, my face an inch from hers. “The fuckingdetective.”
She side-steps me, moving to her desk and packing up her things. “Look, I’m not happy that you kept what was happening with the case from me.” Her head comes up. “Reallynot happy.”
Those threads of my temper, the ones I’ve been struggling to contain all night…snap.
I stride over to her, but she’s still talking.
“But I understand what you’ve been struggling with, all the feelings this must bring up for you. Do I wish you would have talked to me about it? Yeah, of course I do. Same as I know that I didn’t handle my response to finding out what you kept from me well because I did the same thing—I didn’t discuss it with you and then I kept what I was going to do in response from you.”
“Yeah,” I grit out. “You fucking did.”
Her expression doesn’t waver. “But, the truth is, I needed to do it on my own.”
“No, you fucking didn’t.”
“Damon.” She sighs, rubbing a hand over her face. “Look. I get we have a lot to talk about, a lot to work out about how we communicate. But this is an extreme situation and this has been a really long day. Ashitday. Can we just table this for tonight and talk about everything tomorrow?”
That’s reasonable.
Logical.
But the rage I’ve worked for years to bury, to tame…it’s fucking spiraling out of control.
And she’s caught in the crossfire.
“No.”
She blinks, eyes going wide. “N-no?”
“No. Fuckingno.”I turn away from her, gripping my hair as I try to tamp down my rage.
She talked to?—
Sheexposedherself to people who might hurt her, fuck up the career she loves?—
No. Hellfuckingno.
Fury, hot and furious and completely out of control, bursts free.
And then, unbidden of any logic or love, the words just fly out of me, sharp as a knife and just as dangerous. “Christ,” I snap, “if this is what it’s going to mean to be in a relationship with you, where you don’t fucking trust me to protect you, then I don’t want it.”
There’s silence.
Long enough for me to process the idiocy I’ve just spouted, for my temper to disappear like a puff of smoke.
“Fuck.” I spin back to face her. “I didn’t?—”
But I don’t get the chance to let her knowIknow precisely how fucking stupid I am.
Because she says, “You d-don’t want it? Don’t wantus?”
“Baby, I?—”
My cell rings, and if it was anyone else calling, I would have ignored it.
But it’sKylie’sringtone.
