My heart skips unsteadily at his strange reply.
The way his smoky golden eyes follow my every move, I can see why he said it. I don’t think he’s blinked once since we sat down. And somehow, frighteninglyso, I’m undisturbed by his gaze. I find myself drawn deeply into it, the way a flame lures a wayward moth to its death.
“I’m sure I’ve seen you before,” he says, out of the blue, and after a few nerve-wracking minutes have passed. He digs an elbow into the table and rests his chin on the palm of his hand.
“Certain of it.”
He speaks with a confident vagueness, not allowing any emotion to cross his annoyingly handsome face. It’s like he’s saying words just to say them, with no particular purpose.
“Maybe you’ve seen me at one of Mom’s conferences? I join her sometimes for moral support.” Well, there’s the first lie.
My appearances at Mom’s work gatherings and social calls aren’t for her to find strength in having her daughter there. She brings me along to portray an image of strong family values, as a hard-working single mother. Having one without the other would taint their view of her, after all. Prioritizing her child over work would call her devotion into question, but the reverse would see her labeled as negligent and self-serving. Neither will do.
The world has to see Mom as perfect. Anything less would be a travesty.
His chin flicks left to right. “That isn’t it.”
Colter falls silent again as if to put some thought into it. I do the same, but not long enough to find a meaningfulanswer. I’d have remembered meeting him somewhere before. He’s one of the very few celebrity figures, in Midnite City and outside of it, who has caught my interest and held it for an embarrassingly long time.
I can’t even remember why, but the longer I sit here contemplating, the less it seems to matter. A teenage crush can’t be turned into a reality when he’s about to become my stepbrother.
“You’re the chick who was on TV a few years ago,” he says with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just had theireurekamoment. “You told anyone who would listen about your time with Tom Henderson. You tried stealing the spotlight from his grieving family…—”
Asshole.
Of course he remembers it like that.
A tight, nauseated knot forms in my belly and releases tendrils of heat throughout my body. My face turns several shades darker, and tears instantly line my eyes at his sudden, and rudely conveyed memory.
Embarrassment is an understatement. I want to keel over and die of shame.
It’s been so many years since that night, and yet, it’s still stored in the memory of someone who has far too much going on in his life to bother with such trivialities. I turn away from him to hide my body’s uncalled-for reaction. Not because I’m worried that he’ll see me turningred-faced and flustered, but because of the realization that’s hitting me hard and heavy.
This is how I’ll go down in history.An attention-seeking chick who tried to steal the spotlight in this city’s dark hour.
“How did you think it would work?” he asks, leaning back in his chair.
I stutter out a syllable, but cut myself off by shaking my head. I’m not ready to fight this battle.
“No, seriously.” His voice becomes cold as ice. “I want an answer.”
“Because…” I let the word do a lot of heavy lifting while I consider the outcomes. Something compels me to speak, but I can’t figure out what. I have no need to prove myself to Colter, or to feel like a fool for his amusement. But what if I’m mistaken in his intention? Maybe he genuinely wants to hear my account, and if he does, there’s always the possibility that he will become the second person who believes me.
When I come to a conclusion, instead of sayingit happened, I answer. “I was a kid. I didn’t know any better.”
“Fucking mental,” Colter says.
And suddenly all those warm feelings his lingering eyes conveyed vanish behind a thick wall of ice.
“Is this going to be a problem? Are we going to have a problem?” I don’t know where the questions come from.
The hostility with which he mentioned Tom Henderson unnerved me. It left me wanting to speak, sothat I don’t have to relive the past. But he’s the one who put them in my head, knowing full well that it wasn’t an appropriate thing to ask.
“No,” he says flatly. “I don’t suppose we will.”
“Why bring it up at all?”
“Because it’s where I remember you from.” His voice is steady. Completely neutral. Unfazed by the fact of kicking me into a freefall of emotional torment.
