I jerk back, startled.
“What did you just take?” His tone is clipped, sharp, laced with suspicion.
“Um. Paxil.” I instinctively lean farther away. His breath smells like coffee. I’m instantly pissed that no one thought to offer me any.
He straightens, towering over me with the kind of presence that should be impossible on a plane this small. And yet, despite the way the cabin jolts and shifts with every pocket of turbulence, he remains steady. Not so much as a stumble. Oh, what I would give to witness this huge man fall on his ass right now.
“What the fuck is that?” he demands.
“It’s an SSRI.”
“And what the fuck is that?”
“A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor,” I say, tucking the bottle back into my bag.
His face darkens, a vein pulsing at his temple.Great, now I’ve got his blood pressure up. I bite back a smirk.
“And what the fuckis that?”
“I have anxiety,” I say simply. He doesn’t get to know anything beyond that.
“Doesn’t everyone?” he scoffs.
“Uh, no.”
“What did youreallyjust take?”
I sigh, already exhausted by this conversation. “Honestly? I have an anxiety disorder, and my meds help me manage it.”
“There’s nothing honest about you,” he says, his gaze narrowing. “They get you high?”
“No. No way. Ican’tdo drugs. That would make my anxiety worse. The pills aren’t habit-forming. They just stop the nerve cells in my brain from reabsorbing serotonin, so my mood stays regulated. So I don’t always think so loudly that I can’t listen to reason.”
“Whatever. I don’t care.”
“Obviously, you do.”
“I don’t,” he snaps. “I just don’t want to have to carry you off this plane high—or deal with any more of you or your father’s bullshit.”
“You’re not going to have to carry me,” I say, sitting up straighter, folding my arms across my chest. “Now, what’s going on? Did Taylor get away?”
“Who?”
I roll my eyes. I’m getting tired of his games. “My half-sister, Taylor. Is she the one they can’t find?”
He lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Wow. You really think everything is about you, don’t you?”
I stare at him, deadpan. “So you’ve got multiple women held hostage in bakeries along the East Coast? Good to know.”
He blinks at me, his expression shifting from disbelief to outright disgust. Then, in a voice dripping with venom, he mutters, “How the hell did I ever find you attractive last night?”
The words bruise deep.
The memory of last night, the heat, the way he touched me, the way Ifelt, all of it twists into something ugly, somethinghenow sees as a mistake. An inconvenience. A surge of anger rises in my chest, but I shove it down, locking it away. I won’t let him see how much it bothers me. Instead, I meet his glare with a steady, unshaken voice. “Maybe for the same reason I found you attractive before I knew you were a burglar and a kidnapper.”
A flicker of something crosses his face. Surprise, maybe uncertainty. But he smothers it quickly, masking it behind an arrogant, distant expression. “I guess we’re both shitty people,” he says.
“No.” My response is immediate, unfaltering. “The difference between us is that when we find that money, you’ll know I had nothing to do with this. But you? You’ll still be a shitty person.”
