“Unless you hit me hard enough to give me amnesia, no! And if you try to brain me, Iwillpress charges!”
He looks at me like I’ve just grown feet out of my ears. I’d laugh if I weren’t so furious. But forgiveme? How dare he!
“If you want me gone from the bar, fire me!” I shout, pointing a finger in his face. “But until then,I’m staying!”
Chapter Fifty
Grant
Aspen storms out of the locker room, leaving me watching the door swing shut behind her.
Okay, that isn’t how I thought the talk would go.I expected her to be a little peeved that I bought the bar. It wasn’t that difficult to convince Owen, and it doesn’t take long to run a transaction through when you have enough cash on hand to close the deal. But when I told her I wanted to forgive her and start over, I thought she’d be relieved. Even happy.
Aren’t people supposed to feel like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders when they’re forgiven?
She reacted like I insulted her, and it’s pissing me off. She won’t accept my forgiveness unless she gets amnesia? What the hell kind of gratitude is that?
I stalk out of the locker room. She’s trying to get behind the bar to work with Satoshi. I take her arm firmly—without hurting her—so that she knows I’m serious. She’s shockingly warm. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was feverish. But I know it’s from her unreasonable anger.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“I’m done.” She keeps her eyes on a spot between two vodka bottles, refusing to look at me. Her cheeks are flushed unnaturally red on her otherwise pale face.
“No, you’re not.We’renot.” I tilt my head in the crowd’s direction. “You want to do this in front of all of these people?”
Her eyes flick toward them, then return to me. Stubbornness sets in her chin, and she nods jerkily. “Fine. Two minutes. I’m on the clock.”
“You forget I’m the one paying you.”
Her lips flatten until they look like angry dashes. “You want to talk in the back?”
I gesture at her to follow and take her to the owner’s office. It’s a sad little space with a tiny window that overlooks the employee parking lot, a metal desk, an ancient desktop computer that probably doesn’t boot anymore and piles and piles of disorganized documents and receipts. When I pointed out the mess, Owen said he throws them in boxes and passes them on to his accountant when he gets tired of looking at them.
I don’t offer Aspen a seat, and she doesn’t take the folding metal chair. I stay standing as well, towering over her.
“You’re being unfair,” I say.
“Why? Because I didn’t kiss your feet for your grand act offorgiveness?”
“If you’re going to kiss me, I prefer you kiss my mouth. And it wasn’t an act. I want us to move on. I don’t understand why you’re angry about that. I’m letting go of what happened between us, when you’re the one who used me.”
She lets out an impatient breath. “Is this about the things I auctioned off? Because I don’t know why you’re hung up about that. You didn’t tell me they were ‘loaners.’”
God, she’s frustrating!She’s the one hung up about the auction.
I rein my temper in. If I lose it, this conversation won’t go anywhere productive. “You’re twisting what happened. I only said that about the things Josephine picked out for you because I didn’t want you to sell them online again.”
“Why? Afraid I’d take my money and quit?”
The more she talks, the more slippery my grip on my temper becomes. I do my best to modulate my tone. “No. I want you to keep them and wear them.”
“Which I do now, so it shouldn’t matter what I did with the things before, just like I don’t harp on you about—” She shuts her mouth, her face going white, then red.
“About what?” I demand.
The bright fury in her vanishes as abruptly as a light bulb going off. Her shoulders sag a little, until she blinks and straightens them again, like she’s realized she’s letting her vulnerability show in front of somebody she can’t trust.
My gut burns. Earlier I might’ve chalked it up to anger over being insulted, but it’s not anger, it’s pain. She didn’t used to be so on guard with me. I was the one person she let in, trusted enough to be her first.
