Nash’s taunts stung me, but I ignored him because he didn’t deserve mine. He stared at me from his seat at the couch.
Watching.
Waiting.
Never saying a word.
A hunter content to stalk his prey.
My pursuit for the Sisyphus statue had been less of a punishment and more of a reprieve from Nash. Now I was expected to sit in this office all day as he glared at me like he wasn’t sure what method he wanted to use to kill me.
I made sure to avoid the soup kitchen during peak hours in the week since our run-in, but I still had to sit in the same room as him during work.
“I’m just saying that you and Nash are always at each other’s throats, and I’ve never seen anything like it. No one stands up to him.” Ida Marie’s voice was a whisper.
She adjusted her sewing machine. We had taken over Nash’s desk to redo hemming on hundreds of textured gray curtains that came cheaper at this length.
“Everyone should,” I muttered back. “He’s a tyrant.”
I’d been born with a spine, and I fully intended on using it. Flowers wilted. Girls didn’t.
“A tyrant no one has the guts to stand up to except you.” She slanted her head my way, for once looking sharp-eyed. “You either have a death wish or… I don’t know. Something.”
I fed the thick fabric to the machine, increasing the pressure on the foot pedal, feeling in my element for the first time in ages. “I think you’re looking too much into this. I hate bullies, and he’s the biggest one I’ve ever met.”
Understatement.
Nash made Hannibal Lecter look like the second coming of Jesus.
Ida Marie had the decency to seem ashamed. “Sorry. I thought maybe… you liked him? He certainly seems taken with you.” She released her hands from her curtain for a second, causing the stitch to veer left. “I mean, I sound like I’m five, talking about preschool crushes, but you two are always staring at each other—”
“Yeah, that’s a hard no.”
In fact, I had done a good job of avoiding one-on-one situations with him since he left without sex.
With the exception of the Soup Kitchen Incident.
I couldn’t see the bruises around my neck, but they existed, rearing their heads every time I remembered what it felt like to be judged by someone I’d once respected. Someone childhood Emery considered a savior.
“—but I was reaching,” Ida Marie continued. “He’s always with Delilah anyway.”
I had never talked to Delilah, but I saw her long enough to know she wore a wedding ring on her finger the size of a small country. Nash was a bastard, but he was a loyal and proud one. No way did cheating or being the other man interest him.
Mags, on the other hand, was fair game.
And why the hell did it matter?
Answer—it didn’t.
The only use Nash provided me was getting off, and I had Ben for that. Our phone sex the past few weeks had been more intense than usual, like we both needed to exorcise our frustrations by way of orgasms.
Ida Marie peeked at my stitches. Her eyebrows crept up her head. “How are you doing that?”
I lifted my foot off the sewing machine pedal and hovered over her machine, skimming my eyes across her set up. “Your feed throw timing is off. You actually might want to adjust your hook timing.” I fiddled with a few buttons, my ass bent over—and I could feel Nash’s glare scorching it. “Here. Try that.”
“Thank you.” She inched her foot onto her pedal until she accustomed herself to the new settings. “I should have minored in fashion, too, instead of going all-in on interior.”
“I actually majored in fashion and minored in interior.”
“Huh. Why are you working interior then?”
I sat back down at my station, working the fabric under the needle. “No market for fashion designers in this part of town.”
I tucked my chin down and focused on my curtain, not bothering to elaborate. Talking about the way I had entered college with stars in my eyes and a dreamer’s mentality enforced Nash’s accusations that I had fucked up my ‘ten minutes as an adult.’
Fashion design made no sense to Virginia. Her argument hinged on my lack of style, but it never was about style for me. Fashion is showing people who you are on the inside because most of them never bother to look past the packaging.
Tell me another way to speak without speaking, and I’ll learn it, live it, breathe it.
FROM CAYDEN’S DESK, Chantilly turned off her machine and stalked over to me. “Coffee, Miss Rhodes.”
“I’m in the middle of a stitch, and—”
“Coffee. I’m not asking.”
Unbelievable.
Chantilly had taken Nash’s demands as an invitation to order me around—more than she already had been. Yesterday, I dropped her dry cleaning off and picked the purple Skittles out of her family-sized bag.
“Actually, I think it’s time for lunch.” Cayden stretched his arms above his head before standing. “Anyone want to grab a quick bite to eat with me?”
Hannah and Ida Marie left with Cayden, but I stayed because I was even broker than usual. This morning, I had sent in the twenty-five-hundred-dollar donation to the Winthrop college fund.
I also didn’t want to chance leaving for the soup kitchen only to have Nash head there, too. Safer to suffer in hunger than risk another fight and be banned for life. Turned out, Nash funded most of the meals served there, which meant he owned me in more ways than I knew.
Chantilly hung around the office, waiting for Nash to invite her to lunch. He didn’t. She left soon after him, her head dipped down like a five-year-old who didn’t get the toy she wanted for Christmas.
My mind shot into overdrive. I fired a text to Reed once I was alone.
Emery: I have to be in Eastridge for the fourth of July. Please gag me and drop me off in the middle of the ocean.
Emery: Kidding
Emery: Sort of.
Emery: I need a ride… Haling Cove is sort of on the way from Duke, and I happen to know a blonde-haired, blue-eyed best friend who owns one hell of a Mustang…
Maybe Reed could come and be a buffer between me and Able. That scar on Able’s head had never faded. Our presence would probably throw him off balance.
Reed: Sure. I’m headed to Eastridge to go yachting with Basil and her family. We leave a few days before the fourth.
Fuck.
I had to go to the art gallery with Nash to view the Sisyphus sculpture and get his final approval. Another thing I dreaded. No way would I show him the triumphant Sisyphus now. He’d get the defeated, depressing one whether it’d been sold or not. I’d make sure of it.
Emery: Gahhh, no. I have something with work.
Emery: I’ll figure out another ride. Don’t worry about it. Hope you’re giving them hell in Durham, Reed.
I set my phone down when a wrapped lump fell to the desk in front of me. A sandwich. The label read Tuccino’s, the overpriced delicatessen a block over that catered to women of the Range Rover-driving, toy poodle-holding, flawless-credit-history variety.
Nash stood in front of me, that perma-bored expression glued to his face, staring at me like he expected a thank you.
I didn’t touch it.
Didn’t thank him.
Didn’t do anything but stare at him, face blank, a half-smile on my lips that I knew would taunt him.
In reality, I was flexing the hell out of my stomach, praying it wouldn’t growl at the scent of what smelled like pastrami on rye.
Holy crap, I wanted that sandwich.
I also wanted to not be poisoned sometime this century, and I trusted Nash Prescott like I trusted the phrase, “just the tip.”
“Eat the fucking sandwich, Emery. You look like ninety-nine percent of your weight is in your tits, and a half-starved preteen under my employment is bad PR.”
My fingers pried open the wrapper, holding eye contact with him and loathing that smug expression. I took a slow bite of the sandwich, chewing with an open mouth before I spit it at his foot.
The second it left my mouth, I regretted it.
One, I was hungry. Real hungry. The type of hungry where it felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself.
Second, wasting food made me feel like a shit person. Everyone I knew at the soup kitchen would kill for this sandwich, but my pride never let me back down.
Funny that Nash’s mom had been the one to tell me that pride changed angels to devils, and here I sat in front of her devilish son, turning into something that reminded me too much of him.
Nash ground his teeth together, his jaw so ticked, I couldn’t help but notice how defined it was. I had it in me to feel bad about wasting the food, but not about spitting it at his foot. He treated me like dirt, second only to Basil Berkshire.
I would not cower in front of him.
Not be his charity case.
Not walk into whatever trap he thought he was setting.
I. Would. Not. Lose.
“Thank you for the sandwich, Mister Prescott.” With a smile on my face, I took care in wrapping the sandwich up so the paper covered every inch and tossing it into the trash. “I enjoyed it very much.”
I’d enjoy it more if you’d bend me over this table and make me scream or turn around and leave. My grin never wavered. Take your pick, asshole.
Nash was wordless as he pivoted and left. As soon as I was sure he was gone, I fished the sandwich out of the trashcan, unwrapped it as carefully as I could, and scarfed it down my mouth in five giant bites.
I would rather choke to death swallowing this sandwich than swallowing my pride.
