She pushed me then, swatting away my grip when I tried holding her arms still. “You know nothing!”
A quick lunge to the left and I blocked her from leaving before she made it across the living room and into the foyer. “The shit I don’t know could fill a library, but you not loving him? That is fact, nani.”
“Spare me your Hawaiian pet names, you bata.” Aly ignored my smile, grunting low, then sighing as I held her away from the door, earning another painless smack against my shoulder. She was taking it easy. If Aly wanted to injure me, she would have put in a lot more effort. The small taps at me were warnings that held no real vigor. “You don’t know anything about me and Ethan. He loves me. He sees me. He fucking respects me!”
“And I don’t?” I stopped her from leaving, holding her still by the elbows. “You really believe that?”
“Yes,” she said, jerking out of my touch. “Of course I do. I did leave for a reason, didn’t I?”
Grunting, I closed my eyes, tried to rein in my anger, the blinding fury that filled my head when she reminded me how she left and why.
“So you say.” It was a weak response, childish, but the anger inside me would not cool, not when the reminder of that night, the sting of it, still felt like a hitch in my side that I could never be rid of.
She tried moving around me again, but I jumped in front of her, feeling stupid and desperate, pushing back the inclination to stand in front of the door and block her path. I wanted her to tell me she’d missed me, that I was right, that Ethan, no matter how she felt about him, wasn’t me.
“You are being a brat.” She sent an elbow to my rib before she had a hand on the door knob.
“Yeah, well, my favorite toy is being tossed off to some asshole who doesn’t know how to play with it.”
That stopped her suddenly and I knew, the moment Aly turned, hands balled into fists, that any swats that came my way now would hurt something fierce. She wasn’t playing any more. Not even close.
“It?” she said, taking two slow steps toward me. "Toy?"
“Aly…”
Her voice was lethal; like something that would kill me if she'd let it, but I couldn't step away. “You know what, you son of a…” She lifted her eyes, absently shooting her gaze behind me toward that wall of framed pictures before she amended her curse. “You’re a selfish, spoiled joko!” She wanted to hit me, I could feel it, see it in the white knuckle grip she held at her fists, but Aly was subtler than I was. Anything she did, physically, was level and thought through, unlike that spontaneous acceptance of Ethan’s proposal. ‘Imbecile’ leveled at me in Creole seemed to appease her a little. “I am not an it or a toy…”
“I know you aren’t,” I said, grabbing her, a little desperate, a lot turned on by my anger, by hers.
And when I grabbed her face, hopelessly holding her still as though my kiss could bring her back, make her admit that she still loved me, Aly only frowned, hauling back to smack me across the face so hard I stumbled. “You will never, ever have me again, Ransom.”
Anger filled the air between us and even the throb on my face and the curl of her mouth didn’t ebb my unjustified upset. She’d never been this angry, not in the past, not in Miami and though my own fury bubbled, I couldn’t help but watch her, see the difference in the woman in front of me and the girl I’d loved for half of my life.
“Is that what you tell yourself? That I was just a plaything? Something to amuse you when you felt like it? Is that how you justified my leaving you?” she said, my face inches from hers. She didn’t even flinch. “After everything you did, the things you didn’t do, you have the nerve to try and convince me that what we had shouldn’t be buried in the past?”
I should have matched her anger, but instead, my feelings for her flared even hotter. This was the Aly I had first gotten to know, the Aly I had first fallen in love with, fiery, confident, angry. But I couldn't be angry with her—all I knew is how much I wanted her, how much I still needed her, needed what we had been to each other. She didn’t fight me, barely moved or breathed at all when I slid one finger over her cheek. “You want me to remind you what we were?”