“Where the fuck have you been?” I demanded.
She had one chance to come clean. To tell me the truth. But just one.
“I was studying,” she said, but her eyes shifted down, avoiding my gaze.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” I seethed. “I know where you’ve been. And I knowwhoyou’ve been with.”
Looking up at me, she glared. “Because you’ve been tracking me through my phone? Because you don’t trust me?”
“Why should I trust you when you just lied to me?”
She folded her arms. “If you were tracking my phone, you’d know I spent most of the day at the library. Studying.”
“We both know that’s not all you were doing,” I ground out, as visions of her and Gavin kissing flashed through my mind.
“Fine!” she said. “I stopped for pizza before I came home. I didn’t eat all day. If I was doing something inappropriate, don’t you think I would have turned my phone off?”
“You’re going to stand there and tell me kissing another man isn’t appropriate?” I sneered. I pulled out my phone and showed her the pictures Dmitri had texted me.
Gasping, she ripped the phone out of my grasp.
“You still have someone following me?” she said, before slamming my phone down so hard on the entry table that she had probably shattered the screen. “You said you’d tell me when I was being watched. You lied to me! I can’t believe you.”
Shaking her head with disgust, she pushed past me, heading for the bedroom.
I reached out to grab her, but she rounded on me, shoving her finger into my chest.
“You’re such an asshole,” she said, shoving me backward. “You look at this one moment, this one instance, and decide it’s everything. Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me that ‘not everything is what it seems’? You’re a fucking hypocrite, Stefan.”
“Me?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re kissing some asshole and I’m the hypocrite? We’re still married, or did you forget that small detail?”
“How could I forget?” Tori demanded. “You never let me forget what this is, and what I mean to you. How I’m something you own.”
“That’s not what this is,” I tried to say, but she wasn’t done.
“Gavin did kiss me tonight,” she said, her voice turning to steel. “But I pushed him away right after. Which you would have known if you’d just fucking asked instead of standing there accusing me like this.”
Despite her explanation, I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
“You expect me to believe that?” I said. “You’ve been hanging all over him this entire semester. And you’ve spent every waking minute with him ever since school started.”
“He’s my classmate!” she shot back.
I scoffed. “You can’t expect me to believe that. He was at the club with you that night. He made a claim for you then, did you know that? Said he wouldn’t have to drug you to get you into bed with him.”
Her eyes went wide. “He said that?”
“It’s obvious he’s into you. He’s made no secret of that, and still you hang out with him. Why should I believe that you would turn him down now that he’s finally made his move?”
“Because I’m in love with you, you idiot!” Tori shouted at me.
The words hung between us like an invisible wall.
I was blown away.
I had never dared to believe that Tori could love me. Especially with all the secrets I had—all the ones she knew, and all the ones I was still keeping from her. But she did. And I could tell from the look in her eyes that she meant it. That she truly did love me. Despite everything. Or maybe even because of it.
I speechless.
