Page 67

Luckily, I don’t have to. “Later, princess. I want to go back to the topic of your birthday. I didn’t forget it.”

She snorts, her obvious annoyance with me enough to get her to drop the subject of Haven… for now. It won’t last, and I’ll have to give her as many details about Haven’s ordeal that are widely known so she understands how she’ll only hurt her old friend if she continues to dig, but I can’t stand the idea of Loni believing that I wouldn’t celebrate the day she was born.

“Honest. Look.” I reach into my suit jacket pocket. Tucked in there with my useless cigarette case, I pull out the long, skinny black box. “Here. I bought this for you. Happy birthday, Loni.”

With a hint of suspicions lingering around her, she accepts the box. Flipping it open, her face falls. “Oh. A gold bracelet. How… thoughtful.”

I blink. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s… fine. Jewelry. That’s what a husband buys his wife, right?”

That’s what I thought. It seemed a safe bet. For every occasion in my mother and father’s marriage, he bought her jewelry. The fact that her collection was bigger and more expensive than that of any of Dad’s Used is one of the only reasons Mom still sticks it out instead of moving into her own place.

I realize my mistake almost instantly. A simple gold bracelet… for a woman whose only piece of jewelry is the ring I haven’t been able to replace yet… and a reminder that, like the ring, she’s just another stock-standard piece, doing what the Order expects of her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What was I thinking? Sure, this is only one part of her gift—due to a slight miscalculation I uncharacteristically made, I have to wait until tomorrow for the rest—but, first, she believes I forgot her birthday. Now, I followed her to the Court, and instead of begging her for her forgiveness, I made it worse with a half-assed present.

I have to fix this, and it starts by getting her to like the bracelet.

I hold out my palm. “Here. Give me. Let me put it on you.”

She snaps the box closed on the bracelet. “I’m fine.”

I want her to wear it. “Come here.”

When she doesn’t make a move toward me, I go to take her hand and, oh, she doesn’t like that.

“Loni?”

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses, and my heart sinks. She hasn’t said that to me in weeks, and right when I thought that she was beginning to trust me again, I fucked it all up again.

Goddamn it!

Loni takes a purposeful step around me as I curse myself to hell and back. “This is what I get for giving in so easily.” Her pretty hazel eyes flash on that last word. “Now you think you own me. No one owns me.”

“I don’t want to own you, Loni.”

She snorts, already starting to cross the floor of the Court. “Yeah, right.”

If I can’t convince her… “I mean it.”

“Whatever.”

No. She’s not going to dismiss me—dismissus— again that easily. “Listen to me. You’re my wife, and?—”

Loni pauses, whirling around, pointing a finger at me. “It’s a piece of paper. It’s a promise in front of poor Father Francis that you stole from me while I was in shock. Because, I don’t know if you remember… I don’t know if you even know what it’s like to have blood splattered all over you, your high school boyfriend dead on the flower, your fuckingbullythe one who put him there?”

I narrow my gaze on her. “He wasn’t your boyfriend. Not really. We both know that.”

A hollow laugh. “Of course that’s what you get out of all of that. Jesus Christ, Adrian. How broken are you?”

Without Loni Heller?Shattered.

“I’d blame the Order, but you were even worse when we were kids. Or, hell, maybe that still means it’s the Order’s fault. Grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, an entire damn town laid at your feet… no wonder you’re all called the Owed. You think you deserve it, don’t you? That you deserve me. You don’t.”

Oh, princess… don’t you think I already know that?