Page 57 of Bossy Wicked Prince

He praises me because he reallyseesme. I could get addicted to that feeling—and that makes it dangerous.

“The work’s not that hard,” I tell him. “Anyone could do it.”

“That’s not true. Do you have any idea how many assistants I’ve fired? It’s not easy to find someone who can keep up with the fast pace here.”

I snort. “They thinkthisis fast-paced? They should try manning eight tables on date night. This is nothing.”

“If it was nothing, then you wouldn’t be too exhausted to pick your own pizza toppings.” He fixes me with a penetrating stare. “I’m taking some duties off your plate, whether you want it or not.”

I sigh. “Don’t. The amount of work is reasonable. The schedule I stayed late to work on doesn’t even need to be finished for another month. I’ve been overscheduling myself on purpose. There’s some stuff on my mind I wanted to be distracted from.”

“Like what?”

You.

Your hands under my panties.

Your lips on my neck.

Obviously, I can’t just tell him that. So I hedge a little.

“My mom has been hounding me about coming home for Thanksgiving. I don’t want to leave her by herself, but Ireallydon’t want to go.”

“Why not?” His gray eyes are curious.

I don’t tell a lot of people about my dad. People can be weirdly judgmental about addiction, even though it’s a sickness. Just like cancer, nobody chooses to get it. I don’t want to hear someone blame Dad for what happened—it’s not like there’s a pill he could take that would have made everything better.

For some reason, I can’t imagine Nate doing that.

“Mom and I never had a great relationship,” I say slowly. “She was used to being in control–of her job, of her husband, of her house. The only thing she wasn’t able to control was me. She wanted the best for me. For me to go to the right school, get the right job, have the right friends. But our definitions of ‘right’ never matched up.”

Nate holds my gaze, not interrupting. He’s patient that way. I find myself telling a story I haven’t thought about in a long time.

“I can still remember Mom’s face when I told her I wanted to invite all the kids in my class to my first-grade birthday party. I didn’t want anyone feeling left out. I pictured everyone going to the park, having a picnic, and running around playing tag. She wanted me to invite the popular girls for manicures and makeovers. Everything was a battle between us. So when I was seventeen, I moved out. Saved up my money from waitressing at a diner and got my own place.”

“You were so young.” Nate reaches forward, and for a second I think he’s going to take my hand. Instead, he grabs a napkin from the side of the table, and I swallow my disappointment.

“I was young, but I was stubborn back then.”

“Back then?” he challenges, his lips twitching into almost a smile.

“Fine, I was always stubborn.” I take a breath, bracing for the part of the story I hate remembering most. “But after I left, Mom put all the blame on Dad. He always had a problem with drinking, and she blamed that—even though he tried not to drink around me. She left a week after and served him with divorce papers.”

I don’t even realize I’ve been nervously fiddling with my napkin until Nate reaches for me. This time, he really does take my hand, rubbing his thumb over my wrist gently. Encouraging me to keep going.

“With Mom and me both gone, Dad got worse. He was fired when his boss found him drinking vodka on the job. At least, that’s what he told me. He might have already moved onto heroin by then.” My chest tightens. Even now, it surprises me how much it all still hurts. “Things got worse after that. I didn’t know he was behind on the mortgage until he lost the house. I was focused on my own life then.”

Nate squeezes my hand reassuringly. I shoot him a grateful smile, but it’s strained. My whole body feels heavy, bogged down by all the memories.

“Even when he was sleeping on the street, the only thing he really cared about was getting his next fix. Mom called the cops on him when he broke into her house. He was trying to steal something he could hawk, but he ran after she called them. I wasn’t sure if I’d see him again—but the next night, he broke into my house while I was sleeping. I heard him rummaging around, and I came out and found him unplugging my laptop.”

Nate swears under his breath. “You must have been terrified.”

“I was, when I thought it was a burglar. When I saw it was just Dad, I was just angry and so…so fuckingsad. I worked so many hours to buy that laptop. He said he was just borrowing it, that he’d pay me back, but I knew better.”

“I didn’t know much about addiction then. The only thing I could think of to do was to show him some tough love. So I called him out on it. The needles, the track marks, the stuff he hawked to pay for drugs. His own damn wedding ring.” I swallow. “I said awful things. I told him?—”

If you’re gonna be this weak and stupid, you deserve to die out on the streets.