Page 73 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

“What. Are you.Doing here?” I hissed, not daring to look at Rachel.

“Needed to take a piss.” He spared a half glance to my right. “Rachel. Been a while.”

To her, I said, “I can explain.”

To him, I seethed. “I told you I didn’t need a ride back.”

“That was before you got wasted.”

“I’m not wasted.” I was, at most, a little tipsy. We’d had a consistent stream of appetizers being brought to us the whole night, and I’d been careful to space out my drinks so I wouldn’t be hungover tomorrow.

Gardening was hard work. Especially when you didn’t know what you were doing and your muscles weren’t accustomed to all the bending and squatting and uprooting.

“Okay. And are you aware you had the wrong guy? Because I looked him up.”

He had to be fucking joking.

“I’m gonna…” Rachel clutched her purse to her hip and made an awkward gesture toward the door.

“Rachel. Wait. Rach.” I followed her, desperately trying to scramble together an explanation. But every time I opened my mouth, my mind blanked.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”

“I do, though. This isn’t… I’m sorry for not telling you?—”

“Alice,it’s okay.” She stopped by the door and squeezed my hand in reassurance. “You don’t have to apologize for this. We’re good.”

“We are?” Because this was kind of big. And she was kind of acting like it wasn’t.

“We are. I promise. We’ll talk later, okay? I think he needs you a little more than I do right now.” She nodded toward Dominic, who was now glaring ice-cold daggers at the bar like it’d shanked his puppy and he was trying to figure out the best way to cause it pain.

“He’s fine. Let me grab my coat, and we’ll hop in a cab together.”

She shook her head, her mouth parting like she wanted to say something else. Instead, she hugged me.

Really,reallytight. Too tight, almost.

“You know I love you, right?” she muttered. “You’re my best friend, my favorite person in the whole world, and I love you.”

I frowned, hugging her back. “’Course I do, Rach. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I really just didn’t know how…”

“It’s fine. I get it.” She gave me one last squeeze before stepping back, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a trick of the light or if the rims around her eyes really were that pink. “We’ll talk about it later, as much as you want. Just not now, okay?”

She left, promising to text me when she got home, and I shrugged off the uncanny feeling that something was fundamentally off about her reaction.

I’ll just call her tomorrow. Everything’s going to be fine.

We were much better at communicating as adults than we’d been as teenagers. We’d figure it out; always did. Right now, though, I had some impromptu murder plans to follow through on.

My fists tightened when I turned back to find Dom at the bar.

Talking to Tristan.

I stormed toward them, nails digging into my palms.

“And how did you get into accounting?” Dominic was asking, eyes narrowed.

Tristan was staring up at the angry fallen angel interrogating him with open-mouthed confusion, visibly buffering. Meanwhile, Darius was glaring at Dom with the same cutting intensity Dom was anchoring against Tristan. It was uncanny.