Page 47 of Angelic Vengeance

The car dinged and the driver’s door opened. I jumped, but quickly regained my cool as Zach got in. I’d been deep in thought and the rain masked the sounds of his footsteps approaching from outside.

I watched Zach start the car and drive off without a single word or glance. Part of me was glad he wasn’t seeing my watery eyes. He’d changed out of his suit and into black sweats, reminding me of the day he cornered me in the library. My face warmed at the memory.

“Seatbelt.” His deep voice pierced the dark as we drove out of the Bronx. Not one look at me.

It took me a moment to understand what he’d said.

Right.

I looked away and put my goddamn seatbelt on. This always happened when he distracted me…

Out of boredom, or maybe to distract myself, I focused my attention on his hands. But then I remembered what I thought his hands would feel like on my body after that dream and now I needed something else to distract me fromhim.

I looked away and out the window, as we got on the freeway. I yawned but I knew I wasn’t sleeping any time soon; too much shit was going on in my head.

Maybe it was the exhaustion or maybe the defeat, but I didn’t ask where Zach was taking me. I couldn’t bring myself to.

The rest of the drive was silent and before I knew it, we were back in Manhattan. Zach parked on the curb of a diner which I guessed we were heading in to eat. I was practically starving; hadn’t been this hungry since survival testing in what I had thought was the CIA.

Minutes later we sat at a table, waiting for our food.

Zach sat in front of me, watching me in silence. For once, I didn’t return his stare, and instead focused on the inscribed cuts in the wooden table. However, the silence grew thicker with each second, stretching between us until I was suffocating from its tension.

“What did I do that was so bad you can’t even look at me?”

My eyebrows drew together as I finally met his eyes. I waited for the annoyance to fill my chest, yet it never did. I simply remained unmoving at his narcissism.

Men. Not everything was fucking about them.

When I didn’t respond, he leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Don’t give me that. Answer me.”

I wanted to. I wanted to scream in his face and tell him everything he did that hurt me. From trying to get me to like him, to making me like him. I wanted to drill it into his fucking head that I’d been doing perfectly fine before he decided to come into my life.

I lowered my eyes. I was too fucking tired and hungry to have this conversation.

A sardonic breath escaped him. “You know what’s funny?”

Nothing.

Everything was fucked.

And it was times like these, that he filled me with a fire, so intense, I only knew how to put out with violence.

He didn’t speak until I met his eyes again.

“When you think no one’s watching, you forget Ialwaysam.”

My heart dropped like a weight between my legs.

“When you want to put distance between us, you only push uscloser.”

My body physically tensed, despite my efforts to mask my emotional discomfort.

He continued to watch me with the same midnight-dark eyes, and I simply stared back. I didn’t respond because I knew it was true.

There was a magnetic pull between us, but that still didn’t mean it was right.

“But then you remember you’re withmeand…” He shook his head slightly. “You’re back to being miserable.”