“I did invite you over,” I agree. “Because you’ll do anything I ask without question, and I needed something.”
Color drains from her cheeks.
“I needed a phone number,” I say with a shrug. “And you gave it to me.”
Her brows pinch in pain and her chest expands with a sharp inhale.
“And as for me not telling Jessica,” I take another step back, “it clearly wasn’t memorable enough for me to mention.”
Her breath stutters and she opens her mouth to speak. “If you ever speak to her again, you and I will have a very different conversation.”
“Dominic,”
“My girl is waiting for me. Enjoy your evening.”
Jessica doesn’t say a word to me the entire evening or on the drive home. Not once. She sits pressed against the car door, staring out the window, arms crossed like she’s barricading her own chest. At the table, she laughed with everyone else. But to me? Nothing. I might as well have been an empty chair beside her. Every time I looked at her, she look somewhere else. Every time I shift, she leaned subtly in the opposite direction.
I’ve dealt with colder.
But her freezing me out sits like a cement block in my chest. By the time we walk through the front door of my house, something is rattling in my ribs.
She heads straight for the stairs.
“Jessica.”
I take two long strides and catch her arm, making her halt in the living room.
She turns, eyes sharp but wounded under all that attitude.
“What?” she snaps.
My chest tightens at the tone. “Can we talk now?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” she mutters, yanking her arm back, and starts walking away.
“The fuck you don’t,”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” She whips her head around, looking ready to bite.
“Then talk to me,” I fire back. “You’ve ignored me the entire night. Again.”
“You didn’t seem lonely,” she says. “You had company after I returned to the table.”
Shit. She saw me talk to Valencia on the balcony.
“Yes, I told her to—”
“I don’t care what you two talked about,” she cuts me off. “Do you still fuck her?” Her voice breaks on the word. “Or any of the other women who throw themselves at you because apparently they’ve all heard stories. And Valencia sure has some of her own.”
Does she think she doesn’t measure up to women like Valencia?
“So that’s what this is,” I say quietly. “You’re jealous.”
Her face goes red, her breathing sharp.
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“I’m trying to talk to you,” I counter.
