The smile fades from my lips.
I don’t believe him.
Maybe my father did pull the trigger prematurely, maybe he didn’t and Eric is a liar.
I find I don’t care either way.
Eric tries to deflect, and the attempt is so obvious that it’s lame, “Rumours spread around the ball. Gossip, probably, but I heard from a few that Dray has your contract.”
A shrug jerks my shoulders. “All I know is Asta’s contract is open to the gentry.” The look I shoot at him is unkind. “How fortunate for some.”
Eric’s jaw tightens.
He shifts around the windowsill to face me. His boots plant on the floor as he slumps against the frosted glass. “You blame me for this mess?”
I stare at him, unflinching.
Eric is much smarter than I gave him credit for.
Darker than I saw before, but I see now in his deceptively soft eyes and the lie of his kind face.
“I think you leveraged,” I say, firm.
His face shutters.
“I think,” I start and pull myself up to sit on the table’s edge, “that you leveraged your favour with me, and that got under Asta’s skin, and so she was in her father’s ear, and you invited me along to play snowmen, right under Dray’s nose… while you knew how he felt, but I didn’t. I think you are a bigger player at the table than you let on.”
Slowly, his face hardens to steel.
Muscle by muscle, emotion fades away, until his expression is a vault.
But I’m not finished. “You, Eric Harling, are of a fallen family, are you not? It makes sense that you have the skills, the social playbook. What I don’t like is that you used me.”
“Used you…” He scoffs. “You offered—”
“What?” I bite, my teeth bared. “I offered what?”
“It was you who prompted me—”
“To fuck me?”
He turns his hot cheek to me, but not hot with shyness or embarrassment. Hot with a silent anger in him, stirring and stirring.
“That was me,” I agree. “I used you—but in a different way. I wanted to position you as my future. Someone I thought was kind. But the way you used me…” My stare darkens as the tension in my body turns me to stone. “You put me in Dray’s warpath, and Asta’s, even more than I already was, and you did it knowing the impact on me, the threats I would face, all while wearing the lovely smile of the charming suitor. I was a pawn—” My mouth curls around the rest “—that was already fractured, and you pushed for more damage. That is who you are, Eric Harling.”
I push off the table and take a step towards him.
His gaze follows me. “I didn’t invite you here to talk. I asked you to meet me, for this.” He reaches for the satchel on the windowsill. “The New Year gift. It doesn’t seem right to keep it.”
My eyes roll back, and a scoff snares in my throat.
That’s bullshit if I ever heard it.
He went out of his way to return cologne?
Please.
He just doesn’t like the way this conversation is going, he expected much less from me, and that was his backup excuse.
