He laughs cruelly. “Right. Because five-foot-nothing Cat, who’s in fucking Mexico right now, could have come and saved you.”
The Mustang turns sharply into the House of Cards garage. Ryan drives way too fast, swinging recklessly into his assigned parking spot. I’m taking off my seatbelt before he’s even pulled to a complete stop.
“I would have been fine!” My voice sounds too high and sharp. “Don’t start thinking that I need you. You meannothing.Just like I mean nothing to you. Once I’m out of this apartment, you can go back to pretending I don’t exist until next Christmas.”
“Fine by me,” he snaps.
“And for the record,” I add, stepping out of the car at the same time he does. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Yeah?” he asks, voice low, eyes narrow. “Maybe not this time, Pips.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
And suddenly I’m a stupid teenager again. Just a sixteen-year-old girl hopelessly in love with a boy she can never have, drinking at parties she shouldn’t be at, drunk dialing his number when she’s too dizzy to get herself home.
I clench my jaw.
“Tell me, Pips, why is itmeyou always call when you’re scared?”
Something trembles in my chest but I shut it down and look away.
I slam the car door and tear off his jacket, throwing it at him before I march toward the entrance to the lobby. I keep my eyes straight ahead, but I can’t help but see him turn away in my peripheral vision.
Instead of going to the elevator with me, he heads right into Velvet and Vice. I’m sure that once he’s inside, he’ll find some girl who won’t spend the rest of the evening yelling at him.
My chest feels tight when I press the elevator button. I just hope that if Ryan does bring someone home, she won’t be able to hear me cry.
21
RYAN
My stomach growls loudly right as I turn into Dad and Emily’s neighborhood. It’s the first sound I’ve heard since Pippa climbed in the passenger seat of my car.
Pippa hasn’t said a single word to me since our fight in the car. Her commitment is honestly kind of admirable. Every time we’ve run into each other in the hall, she acts like I’m a ghost. Even when I texted her to let her know when she should be ready to leave if she wanted a ride to our parents, she avoided giving a direct answer by putting a thumbs up on the text.
Even now, she just keeps staring out the window. The silence is like a physical presence around us, pressing against my skin. Honestly, the tension is practically unbearable. It’s getting hard to stop myself from blowing up at her and telling her to get the fuck over herself. So what if we slept together? She told me that I’m nothing to her. Message received, loud and fucking clear.
The other part of me wants to grab her and kiss her into submission. Because damn, it’d feel good to get her on her knees and make her swallow my cock. I’m fucking ready to show her what an asshole Dom I can really be.
Which would make Christmas day with our parents a real treat.
So yeah. With those two options on the table, silence is probably safest at this point.
There are only a few cars in the driveway today, and I pull up behind them. Pippa’s out of the car like a flash, rushing to the front door before I’ve even turned off the car. I wonder if she seriously plans to go all day without talking to me.
Guess I’m about to find out.
When I get to the living room, my relatives are already getting moving on our pre-dinner cocktails. Uncle Tommy’s mixing himself a Bloody Mary, extra heavy on the vodka, while my Aunt Paige glares at him in disapproval. I don’t know how they’ve stayed married for decades, since he’s a barely functional drunk and she’s so prim and stuck-up that even Queen Elizabeth’s ghost would tell her to pull the stick out of her ass.
On the other side of the couch, Emily’s sister Melissa, orAunt Melissa, as I’ve been ordered to call her, is sipping on a venti Starbucks Frappuccino from her pink bedazzled takeaway cup. Aunt Melissa has two hobbies: gluing rhinestones on random shit and nitpicking people. And since I don’t see a glue gun in her hand, that means the only thing on the menu is pointed criticisms.
Not exactly my Christmas dinner companions.
Fortunately, my stomach rumbles again. “Back in a sec!” I wave to them all. “I have to grab a snack to hold me over.”
Leaving Pippa to deal with our so-called family, I head right to the kitchen, where Emily has a bunch of Christmas cookies in Tupperwares. Nothing like some sugar cookies to stop my stomach from rumbling before dinner. Emily smacks me playfully on the arm.
