“We don’t have a contract with you,” I said, balking, but only so he’d think he managed to negotiate a decent deal. “And that’d take a dozen trucks.”
“Hmm.” Alex mulled it over. “Sounds like a you problem.”
“Fuck. Whatever.”
“When and where?”
“Forbidden Fruit. Next Thursday.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
I killed the call.
____________
When I got home, Tierney popped out of the bedroom looking like a trillion bucks in one of those dresses that made me want to throttle the designer. “Should we go to the movies?”
I blinked back at her, stunned into silence.
The movies? That was normal-people shit.
We didn’t go to the movies.
We went to underground clubs and Michelin-starred restaurants where the owners valued their organs too much to tell us we had to book a reservation, or on shopping sprees in places you could only get to with a private jet.
Movies were…well,ordinary.
Movies also meant a public outing. Together. This beautiful creature was going to be seen with my fugly-ass face. Tierney did not need to be reminded of the fact that I was hideous. No, thank you.
“I don’t like movies,” I drawled.
“You mean all of them?”
I shook my head slowly. Disappointment was written all over her face. I knew if I didn’t go, I’d just prove to her I was still the old asshole Achilles. The one who’d pretended not to care what she wanted to do.
Fuck. I was going to do it, wasn’t I?
“What did you have in mind?” I asked tersely.
“There’s a new Henry Cavill movie out.”
“What’s it about?”
“Uh…Henry Cavill being hot?”
I flashed her a flat glare. “Really selling it to me. Wouldn’t you rather I take you on a shopping spree on Crimson Key?” No one would dare whisper about my hideous face on my own private island. “Or eat at Casablanca’s?” I knew the owner of the restaurant and was positive I could get an isolated booth, even at an hour’s notice.
Tierney trotted over to me, coiling her arms around my neck. “I want to do something small and intimate. To share popcorn and a flat Diet Coke with you.”
I stared her down, confused. “Why?”
“Because we never got to do it when we were teenagers. We were always so scared of our families. I want us to have these moments. Even if we have to make them as adults.”
Don’t be a fucking baby.
Just say yes.
Look how much she wants it.
