Page 84 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

I had no patience left. None.

His eyes narrowed, zoning in and out as he sucked in a long breath. He held up a hand when I opened my mouth, evidently needing another minute of silence to think. Until, eventually, “Okay, so just as a quick refresher since my memory seems to be failing me rather spectacularly here… Iprankedyou with my promposal, Rachel clued you in, which prompted you to…”

“Hire the sad clown to go to the game on my behalf while wearing your sweater and wipe his tears with the quote, unquote, ‘love letter’ you left me.”

His left eye, still narrowed, started to twitch.

“And then… the party,” he said.

“You got your chance to humiliate me back when the bottle landed on me, and you took it.” I would have done the same. But that knowledge hadn’t made it hurt any less.

“And the rant afterward. When you told me to leave.”

I swallowed, my fingernails biting into my palm.You wanted to have an honest conversation, so have an honest conversation.

At this point, what did I have to lose?

He walked out that door, and chances were good this really was over.

“I didn’t want you to leave, Dominic.” I folded my arms over my chest, shrugging as though this next part wasn’t that big of a deal. “I just didn’t want to love you anymore.”

I’d never seen the color drain from someone’s face so fast.

27

Dominic hadn’t saidanything in almost three minutes.

And if he was still breathing, I couldn’t tell.

Eventually, the silence became awkward enough to make me wave my hand in front of his face. “Hello? What’s happening?”

Was it his software? Was it stuck?

“Dom?”

Before I could start snapping my fingers or poking his cheek, the doorbell chimed. I wasn’t sure who it could possibly have been, but they couldn’t have had worse timing if they tried. So I opted to ignore them.

“Alice. Open up. I know you’re home,” a familiar, static-infused masculine voice demanded from the other side of the door, and my soul almost left my body.

Knock knock knock.

That was ultimately what snapped Dominic out of his trance… sort of. He came back to himself, sort of, and started to breathe again, sort of. “Is that…”

I grabbed his arm, adrenaline pounding into my veins. “Hide,” I hissed.

“We’re not done.”

“Now! He has my lock code and no conceptual understanding of boundaries. Go.”

Thankfully, he listened, and I had the foresight to slip his untouched breakfast into the fridge and double-check to make sure he hadn’t actually taken his shoes off before running to the closest mirror.

My eyes were puffy, cheeks discolored, and there was a certain wateriness to my face as a whole, but it would be fine.

I could just say I was sick. With something super contagious. So, as nice as it was to see him, he probably shouldn’t come in.

Knock knock knock. “I can hear you shuffling around in there, you clunky little turnip.”

Damn him and his supersonic hearing aids. Adrien really hadn’t thought that gift through.