“Don’t play coy with me, Alexa,” he said, batting her hand away from his face.
Stepping back, Alexa shook her head, dread a living thing inside her. “Grant, I don’t—”
“Don’t fucking deny it!” he roared, lunging up from his chair. He grabbed her by the biceps and got right in her face.
“Grant, stop. Deny what? What happened?” she asked as she curled in on herself. His fingers dug into her arms like hooks.
He shoved her free and brushed his hands down his shirt as if to straighten himself, and then he glared at her. “How do you think it felt to have one of the sheriffs tell me, in front of the mayor, that he saw you riding on the back of Maverick Rylan’s motorcycle? A goddamned degenerate Raven Rider piece of shit.” He spoke with a quiet reserve that was somehow scarier than when he’d raised his voice.
Alexa broke out in a cold sweat as nausea swept through her. “I . . . I can explain.”
“I’m sure you can.”
She shook her head and held out her hands. “It was innocent. He was helping me—”
“Oh, I’ll bet. I know exactly what Rylan wants to help you with.” He picked up his glass off the carpet and poured just enough bourbon in it to finish in one big gulp. She hadn’t even seen the glass fall, he’d moved so fast.
Alexa’s mouth was so dry it was hard to talk. “He rode by my mom’s house on Saturday morning and happened to see me hauling trash to the curb. I was doing some cleaning for her, and I wanted to get rid of the garbage instead of letting it sit there in a big pile. He offered to get his truck to take the stuff to the dump for me. That’s all.”
“What do you take me for, Alexa?” he asked.
“I don’t . . . Nothing. It’s true. I only went with him to get his truck because things had been really tense with Mom and I wanted a break before we got into an argument. You know how she is,” Alexa pleaded, her head spinning, her heart thundering in her chest.
“Oh, I do. I live with her daughter, after all.” He chuffed out a humorless laugh and shook his head. Paced back to the table and poured himself more liquor.
His words hit her like a body slam, knocking the breath out of her. Regret and guilt twisted inside her. “That’s all that happened. He was just helping me.”
Grant turned to her and glared, his face flushed. From anger or the alcohol, Alexa wasn’t sure. “You made a fucking fool of me. Twice. First, by parading around town with a known criminal. And second, when I refuted the sheriff’s words, saying, oh, no, that must’ve been someone else because Alexa was at her mother’s. Only to have Davis insist he’d seen your face clearly while you’d been waiting at a red light on 15. Hanging all over another man.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. “It didn’t mean anything. He used to be very close to my mother because of how long he and Tyler had been friends. He was just helping. That’s all it was.” She heaved a breath, trying to calm herself down, trying to keep everything from falling apart.
“It’s not how close he is to your mother that worries me,” Grant sneered.
Alexa’s stomach dropped to the floor. “Seriously?” she asked, the thought voicing itself without her permission.
His head tilted as his eyes narrowed. “You don’t agree that sneaking around behind my back and lying warrants suspicion?”
The air felt thick as she drew it into her lungs, as if her sensation of dread had taken on a physical form all around them. “I wasn’t sneaking around. And we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were in public. In broad daylight.”
“And by your own admission, you went to his house,” he said, his tone like he’d just produced the smoking gun.
Alexa put her hand to her forehead, absolutely at a loss for how to pull this back from the brink of disaster, and beyond stunned at how different this night was going from what she’d planned. She’d expected to come home and seduce Grant, to show him her gratitude for his thoughtfulness earlier, to make love to him slowly and thoroughly until they were both sated and sleepy. “I . . . I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry I didn’t mention seeing him. I should have, and I’m sorry. Frankly, I didn’t want it to cause a fight when seeing him had been completely random and unlikely to happen again. And honestly, I was so surprised by the trip you planned for us that all my thoughts were focused on being with you and us being together.”
“At least you don’t deny lying to me. I’m giving you all this”—he gestured with outspread arms at the room, the house, the physical proof of his wealth and power—“and lies and deceit and betrayal are what you give me in return.” He braced his hands on his hips and shook his head, disgust pouring off of him.
The guilt inside her twisted, morphed, flashed hot. Anger took root in the center of her chest. “I don’t need all this, Grant. I need a man who trusts me. Who doesn’t assume the worst of me. Who knows I can be in the room with another man, even someone I used to date, and remain faithful. I give you that kind of trust, and what you’re giving me in return is suspicion and accusation.” The more she spoke, the faster the words spilled out of her, and the stronger the anger grew inside her. And, oh, man, the well of anger inside her was deep. So deep. Scary deep. How had she not seen that before?
Color raised higher in his cheeks and his eyes blazed with anger and outrage. “Oh, you don’t need all this? Is that it? You’d rather go back to the shithole of a life you had before me? Is that what you’re saying? You have nothing without me. You are nothing without me.”
Oh, my God.
“How could you say such a horrible thing?” she whispered, calling him out in a way she never had before. “How could you even think it?” Nausea rolled through her at his words. Was that what he really thought of her? Why are you so surprised, Alexa? And how much more do you need to hear before you grow a spine?
“Truth hurts, sweetheart.” He glared at her. He stared at her like she was trash, which was exactly how he was trying to make her feel. But she wasn’t feeding herself his running commentary this time. Not this time.
“Yeah, I guess it does,” she said, staring at everything she thought she’d wanted. And seeing for the first time that it had all been a pretty charade. A pretty charade she’d let herself believe in with all her heart. “You know what? Let’s take a break before one of us says something else we don’t mean.” Because she needed a moment. Just one. To decide whether to try to fix what was broken . . . or start packing her bags.
Do you really need to think about it? She suddenly felt like she was standing on the edge of a tall cliff and about to plunge into a free fall.