I flipped the deadbolt behind me when she continued trying to reach for the handle and asked, “What are you doing, Monroe?”
Her blue glare snapped to me before quickly falling away, as if she didn’t know how to hold my stare. As if Mallory Monroe had ever backed down from anyone or anything, even alook. “I’d think it’s obvious.”
“It really isn’t.” I gestured to her. “This isn’t you. Andthat?” I added, jerking my head toward the door behind me.
At that, some of those shields began to solidify. “You have no room to talk,” she said through clenched teeth.
“I do when we’re married,” I shot back in the same tone.
“Hardly.” The word burst from her on a disdainful laugh, but the sound was filled with a pain I had a feeling she hadn’t wanted me to hear. “And again, you haveno room?—”
“Years,” I said over her, referring to our conversation from this afternoon. “Something you clearly don’t believe, even though I’m your best friend and have tried explaining. But, sure, let’s believe other people about me.” I gave her a look that showed exactly how much it bothered me that she did. “But right now, we’re talking about you, andthis isn’t you. None of this is. Not what you’re wearing, not that you’re going on a date at all, and not that guy.”
She made a face like she had no idea what I could be alluding to, but I knew her well enough to know she was forcing it. “What’s wrong with Davis?”
“Well, for one, his name isDavis,” I said. “That’s a last name.”
“And Hudson isn’t?” she countered, but I continued over her.
“Not to mention, he was wearing slacks and a polo.”
A stunned laugh left her as she took a couple steps back that I automatically matched. “I like the way he was dressed.”
“And he was nervous,” I added, instead of responding to her outright lie.
“So?” She tossed her hands up before letting them fall. “What if I find that adorable?”
A disbelieving huff burst from me, my tone slipping into something between a sneer and a tease, “Oh, Peach, I think we both know you don’t, just as we both know you don’t wantadorable. You need someone who pushes your buttons and drives you crazy. Someone who isn’t afraid to fight with you until your anger’s spent and you’re tapping out. Someone who will put their life on the line for yours without hesitation.”
Her wide, wonder-filled eyes dropped to my shoulder instinctively before darting away again. But just as quickly, shefortified those diamond-tough walls around her heart, and that infuriated stare narrowed on me. “You have no idea what I want or need.”
I bit back the response that was quick to rise because, as much as I’d always wanted it to be me, it never had been.
Still...“I know it isn’t him,” I said with a soul-deep confidence.
As if she’d still heard the words I’d managed to keep back, her expression slipped as the tension between us grew to a steady hum. Subtle, hesitant, full of restrained longing, and wholly unfamiliar. Then again, I wasn’t familiar withthisMallory. The energy that normally sparked between us was alive and fiery and begged to be acknowledged. One pulsed through my veins...the other danced across my skin.
I wasn’t sure which was more addicting.
Either way, the current buzzing along my skin was begging me to erase the rest of the distance between us. But I knew Mallory enough to know how that would go, and I didn’t feel like blocking a strike to my chest right then, or giving her another reason to demand I leave, when I’d come for a purpose.
Not that I knew how to get us back to that when the sight of her all made up had my chest aching because I knew she was putting on a show. Whether it was to prove a point, to try to change who she was, or to pretend, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t her, and it’d been for someone else.
My gaze darted over her again as I remembered her infuriated features and hissed threats when I’d first seen her the day of Briggs and Lainey’s wedding.
“Say a word, Gray,one word, and I’ll be the one to shoot you this time.”
It took everything to keep my smirk in place when it felt like my jaw had hit the floor as soon as she’d entered the tent we’d gathered in to prepare for the wedding.
Breathtaking.
Breathtaking and . . . not my Mallory.
Forcing my mouth into even more of a smirk, I mumbled, “I always knew you were missing something. Princess Peach needed her dress.” I scrunched up one side of my face as hers flushed with anger. “Now if we could just find you a crown...”
“I’m burning this thing as soon as the ceremony’s over,” she seethed. “And then I’m coming to kill you.”
My smirk shifted into a full smile at that. “I love when you’re violent.”
