Page 110 of She's Like the Wind

He doesn’t follow.

The end!

“How long, Moonbeam, are you going to punish me for a mistake I made when I was a kid?”

He’s frustrated.

Well, bud, I’m heartbroken, so I get the right of way out of difficult conversations.

“You cheated on me.” The words are choked out of me.

“What if I didn’t?” he challenges.

“Get the fuck out of my office.” I’m furious that he’s using our past to corner me into…what?

I don’t know what Dom wants. He says he won’t give up onus?But what does he mean? I can’t be friends with someone who’s betrayed my trust. And as for anything beyond that—there’s too much history, too much weight. Whatever we were, whatever we could’ve been, it’s buried under everything we never said.

He sighs.

“And I can handle Jason,” I add, annoyed.

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t have to rescue me. I don’t need backup vocals while I’m singing lead.”

He shrugs carelessly. “I wasn’t rescuing you, Moonbeam. I was agreeing with you.Loudly. The way men have to, sometimes, when women get talked over.”

I cross my arms because my heart is ready to pop out and land on his hand. “I don’t need a man to do anything for me.”

“Baby, I do this for all women…for anyone, in fact, who’s being treated unfairly.”

God! He has to be a good guy to top it all?

“And who the fuck made you the savior of all womankind?”

His expression softens. “Not saving anyone. Just doing what I know I have to. I work in rooms full of people like Jason all the time. When I see misogyny, I say something.”

I stare at him. It’s harder to hold onto my anger when he says things like this, when I know he means them.

I purse my lips. “Still don’t need saving.”

“I know,” he says with a small smile. “You never did.”

On that note, he leaves my office.

Five minutes later, I can still smell his cologne.

Damn him for getting under my skin.

Damn me for letting him.