“So—”
“You make a cute drunk! That’s what our dear old friend here is trying to say. Isn’t that right, Rhodesie?” Eaton kicks him on the butt.
I set my jaw. “Ihatebeing called cute. It’s degrading.”
I agree,Furi announces, though I don’t remember asking her.
My three friends burst into laughter, and I truly don’t know why. I shove to my feet—a little too fast—but the wall is there to catch me.
“Okay, come on.” Zadyn reaches for me. I try to rip my arm away, but I’m too slow. “We’re leaving. You can yell at me the whole way back, let some of that anger out.”
“There are far more effective ways of relieving anger, in case you didn’t know,” Eaton crows as Zadyn tries to corral me.
“Oh, Zadyn is well aware,” I spit, wriggling against him. “He’s an expert at relieving anger. He relieves it all the time, with any female who looks at him, right? He’s just a fuckingmachine.”
“Alright, I really need to get her back,” he says to Eaton.
“Take the carriage. I’ll call for another.” He winks.
“Are you staying?” Zadyn asks Mar.
“I think you can handle this one on your own, don’t you?” She smirks at me.
“Oh, don’t give me that look, Mar,” I growl. Then Zadyn is scooping me up in his arms and carrying me out the door. “If you don’t put me down, I’m gonna torch your ass.”
“You’ll thank me tomorrow.”
“Good night, dear! See you in the morning!” Eaton says with a wave.
We get to the carriage, and Zadyn tosses me inside like a sack of potatoes.
“I hate you right now.”
He shuts the door and slides in across from me. “Good. What else?”
“What else?” I sputter.
“You want to get some things off your chest? Go ahead. I’m all ears.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bottling it all up isn’t going to do any good.”
“Neither is blubbering about it.”
“Serena.”
“Alright! You want me to spill my guts? Fine. How about the fact that I’m a complete mess right now, and I can barely hold it together?How about the fact that I almost married my arch-nemesis? Or how I was dead, and then I wasn’t, and now reality seems all fucked up? I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and my feelings are in knots, and I just want to…I just?—”
“What?”
“I just want it to stop.”
His eyes soften. “I know.”
“Please don’t try to make me feel better right now?—”
“I’m not. I’m sayingI know.”
