“Sounds stupid.”
“Yeah. It probably is.”
I cross my arms over my chest, watching as she keeps fucking around with the bottle. It’s like she’s practicing different techniques. Sometimes she spins it fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes with a funny little flick of her wrist that nearly sends it sailing off the table.
“Are you trying to make it land on me?”
“What?” she asks, startled. I can see her big eyes widen behind the sunglasses. “No! God, Curse.” She abandons the bottle on the table, leaning back against her bench, her pink mouth going all sulky at my suggestion.
She even looks good when she’s pouting. She should look spoiled and ridiculous. But instead, she’s just fucking cute.
The bottle is still spinning from when she just let go of it. When it finally stops, the neck of the bottle is aimed directly at me.
“Ignore that,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’” she asks. “You just said it was stupid. And it is. I wasn’t actually playing. I was just trying to entertain myself.”
“I see.”
“It’s not like you’d let me kiss you, anyway,” she says quietly. “You don’t even let me touch you.” She goes back to picking her nails. Apparently, she’s finished with this conversation.
But I’m not.
“What did you just say?”
“I didn’t say anything,” she says to her nails. She won’t look at me. And it’s suddenly fucking infuriating.
“Yes, you did,” I say. “You said that I’d never let you kiss me. Because I don’t let you touch me.”
“If you heard what I said, then why did you bother asking me to repeat it?”
“Aurora…”
“Well, it’s true,” she snaps. “I made the mistake of touching you once. Your cheek. That first day at your house. And you made it painfully clear that you never wanted that to happen again.”
“Because I don’t.”
I can’t take it. Can’t take her softness. I’d fucking crush it right out of her.
“I know! Jesus! That’s what I’m talking about. I’m saying that I understand!”
But even if she understands, she seems agitated. The skin at the side of one of her nails has started bleeding, but she keeps picking at it.
Fuck me. I can’t keep looking at that little bright point of blood on her creamy skin.
“Do you want to touch me?” I ask. My voice doesn’t sound right in my ears.
“No,” she says immediately. “I want to get all of this over with. So I can divorce you as soon as possible. And never have to see you again.”
Good. She should never want to see me again. That’s what I’ve been trying to get across to her since I was eighteen fucking years old.
But my blood is pounding too hard in my veins now. My inner ears throb with the thunder of my heartbeat. If I stopped to think about it, I might even realize that I’m shaking.
But I don’t stop. And I don’t think. In a deadly-quick movement, I half stand, bending at the waist and reaching for her. I seize her under her arms, lifting her and dragging her across the table’s surface until she topples onto my bench.
“What the-”
