Towards the dishwashing nook, where I had to simply dump all the dirty items and pray someone would have time to get to them later, because we didn’t have a dishwasher anymore.
But the second I stepped out of the nook, I found myself being jerked to the side – down towards the storage rooms. A hand had appeared in the crook of my elbow, and I almost fell into Drake as he pulled me away from the kitchen.
“Come with me,” he hissed. “We need to talk.”
Drake
“Well?” Rafael asked, bristling with fury.
I turned to look at him. We were inside the frigid air of the walk-in, but his anger was as heated as it had been at family dinner – maybe even more so. I had pulled him in here on impulse, but now we were here, I was struggling to grasp for something to say.
I hadn’t thought it through. I just couldn’t bear him looking at me with a glare like that.
“You need to get some things straight,” I said. The words came out more heated than I’d intended them to, like I was trying to start – or continue – an argument, when my intention had been just to talk. “You can’t talk to me like that in front of the others or accuse me of things that aren’t true.”
“Like what?” Rafael sneered. I could see where this was headed. It was like a car crash heading in slow motion. But I still had my foot on the accelerator, and I couldn’t seem to take it off.
“Like accusing me of sleeping with Grey,” I said. “That’s you, as far as I’ve heard.”
I hadn’t heard. I’d heard the opposite from Beau. But something in me needed to know for sure. I needed to hear it from Rafael, to be looking into his eyes so I could be sure he was telling me the truth. The challenge hung in the air for only a fraction of a second before he snorted derisively.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Not a single person here told you I slept with Grey. They know me better than that. I wouldn’t stoop that low.”
“And I would?” I challenged him. “You think that little of me, that you assume I would fuck someone just to get a job?”
“I don’t know you at all,” Rafael said coldly.
For some reason, that bothered me more than anything else he’d said. I slapped my hand on the surface of the metal shelf next to me. It was cold to the touch and a slight tone vibrated from one side of it to the other. “Then don’t assume things about me!”
“I’m not assuming you’re taking pills,” Rafael spat back. “I saw you. Are you going to tell me I misunderstoodthatbecause we’re not best friends?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, then realized what I’d agreed to. “I mean – no, obviously not, but – you did misunderstand!”
“I saw you take a baggy of pills out of your pocket and put them in your mouth,” Rafael said, his voice rising to the same volume as mine. “What about that is there to misunderstand?”
I stepped closer to him, needing him to keep quiet so the others wouldn’t think I was some kind of junkie as well, and he stepped back until he was leaning on the shelves. “Shut up!” I hissed. “I don’t need everyone in this whole place knowing my business.”
“You don’t want them knowing you have a drug habit?” Rafael asked, his eyes flashing a challenge. “Well, too bad, because I think they have a right to know.”
“I don’t have a drug habit!” I shouted, hitting my hand on that shelf again – too hard, this time, but I was so frustrated with him that I needed to get my feelings out somehow. “Would you just fucking listen to me?”
Rafael cocked his head to the side. The vibrations from the shelf faded fast, but not before I’m sure both of us had time to register the fact that everything on it had jumped a couple of centimeters into the air.
“Kind of hard to listen to someone who gets violent when they’re angry,” Rafael said. His voice was heating up, but I couldn’t tell whether it was anger or fear driving it.
I hoped it wasn’t fear.
I didn’t want to scare him. I didn’t want to come across that way.
“Fuck!” I yelped, putting my other hand against my forehead and dragging it through my hair. “You’re so fucking annoying, do you know that? I’m trying to tell you –”
“You’re yelling in my face,” Rafael countered, but he was yelling too.
“You’re not listening!” I was up in his face now, too close, and I knew this wasn’t helping my image – but I couldn’t help it. He seemed to know exactly what to say in order to push all my buttons and get me so riled up that I couldn’t back down. “They’re just painkillers, for fuck’s sake!”
A sliver of doubt crept into his eyes, but he still scoffed. “Sounds exactly like what a junkie would say.”
“I’m not a fucking junkie!” My hand landed on the wall by his head, supporting me but at the same time boxing him in on that side. “If anything, you’re the one who’s neurotic and paranoid about absolutely everything!”
