“He had the fucking nerve to tell me you don’t like Budweiser,” he said.
As if Budweiser meant anything at all.
As if that somehow proved she had a thing for him.
You’re fucking hallucinating, she wanted to say suddenly. But she had a feeling if she did it would come out much more fiercely than she wanted it to. The words were practically burning a hole in her chest. They blazed there, too hot to stand.
She took a drink of the Budweiser he’d fucking bought her anyway.
You should have listened, she found herself thinking.
But that just made it worse. Now her mind was going over and over the idea that Miller had known that. How had he known that? Had he seen her grimacing at Jessica’s party? He’d barely come anywhere near her, of course he hadn’t; he was even more furious with her at the moment than usual.She hadn’t even known why he’d been there. It didn’t seem possible that he’d noticed anything she did.
But then Christian decided to say more, after a moment of sulky staring.
“He said you like the blue raspberry thing.”
And okay, that was worse, that was way worse.
That made her go all hot and weird.
Because she had never bought that drink in her life. But she had always wanted to. She’d seen it on the menu and thought it sounded just like the Slush Puppies of her youth, then shied away from getting it when Jessica had rolled her eyes at the cheesiness of frozen cocktails.If you’re going to drink get something grown-up, she’d said, and Daisy had remembered.
She didn’t want to remember now, however.
She didn’t want to think about whatever had made Miller say that.
“He’s fucking mad,” she said, and laughed again. And it must have been convincing, this time, because it seemed to satisfy Christian. He settled back in his seat, looking smug somehow. Like he’d won something.
The battle of who loves me best, she thought, then wanted to laugh even harder.
There was no way on god’s green earth that Christian did anything like love her, she knew. Though she wondered, after she had chuckled over such a ridiculous notion, why she hadn’t thought it of Miller first.
Thirteen
She felt a tiny bit better about things by the time they got to the Hartford venue, a theater on the edge of the town center. A little tired from tossing and turning, but not quite as despairing about the whole business. After all, if he could do it, so could she. And she meant it, she really did. Until they got to the place, and someone from Harchester somehow met them in what seemed to be a tatty little dressing room.
At which point things started to go south pretty quickly.
The person wore a suit. His face was the color of a slate quarry. He introduced himself as an assistant to someone on the board of directors, which seemed very bad indeed. And especially when he looked so annoyed. “Now, we’ve been informed by your liaison at our company that you are handling this situation. But we are very concerned that you are not,” he said, once it was just them, surrounded by the remnants of glitzy costumes and bulbs around mirrors that no longer seemed to work.
And just as she was about to explain, Miller stepped in.
“Well, you can just pack that shit up and go back to where you came from,” he said. Followed by something even more astonishing. “Because there isno onebetter at this than my girlfriend.”
And yeah, he stumbled a little over that last word. She felt as if she could see him internally wincing, no doubt over how teenager it sounded. But the other part? Theno one betterpart? Oh, hereallysold that. It came out of him with all the sincerity in the world—like it had just been waiting there inside him all along. She heard it and honestly had to force herself not to shoot a wide-eyed look at him.
Instead she laughed, and sort of nudged him.
As if to say,Oh, you. Always exaggerating.
But then in response he said, “There’s no one in the world like her.” And heputhishandon hershoulder. And not even on the shoulder covered by the white-and-pink jumper she was wearing. No, he touched thebareone. The nude one.
She almost screamed.
Every hair on her head stood on end.How can you stand it, she wanted to ask him. But the moment the suit decided it was probably better not to challenge a six-foot-three-inch man with a face like a nuclear explosion, and turned tail and left in an incredible hurry, everything became very clear.
He whipped his hand away like he couldn’t. Like it was hell to do it. “That probably didn’t even look right,” he scolded himself, as he paced and shook his head overhis ridiculous efforts. All of him so stressed about it that she didn’t know how to tell him he was correct.
