Page 34 of This Cruel Fate

“I believe you owe me something,” Adonis said. A small smile played on his lips.

She didn’t know what he was talking about.

Before she could say as much, he spoke again. “My suit jacket.”

“Oh. Right.” Xolia managed a small laugh. “If you wanted to see my room that badly all you had to do was ask.”

“I didn’t think you’d be that easy,” he quipped.

She shoved him but led him to her room all the same. As soon as she opened the door, she realized her mistake. The rest of the apartment might’ve been ambiguous as to its occupants, but the room was littered with the evidence of Marshall.

His side of the bed was still unmade, the pillow dented where he rested his head. His clothes were scattered around the floor, and a picture of him and Xolia sat on his nightstand.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself. She stopped in the doorway, but it was too late. Adonis was already cataloging every item that didn’t belong to her.

He stepped into the room, his jaw tensing slightly. Xolia winced.

“I didn’t realize?—”

“We’re broken up,” Xolia interjected.

“It doesn’t look like it,” Adonis said while pointedly looking at a pair of boxers on the floor.

Xolia ran her tongue along her teeth. “You saw me leave with Marshall at the gala. Surely you thought?—”

“I did, but then you never mentioned him again,” said Adonis, whirling around to look at her. There was something almost vulnerable in his eyes. Hurt, maybe. “I kind of thought…”

He trailed off and it was more than Xolia could bear. Why, why, why? She felt like an idiot. An idiot for talking to Adonis, an idiot for staying with Marshall so long. For all the premature growing up she’d done, she felt woefully immature and naïve when it came to relationships. They hadn’t had any examples of romance or family in their lives. It wasn’t fair, the way her feelings hadn’t faded for Adonis; they were just buried under years of forgetting. As soon as he’d come back, they’d been there again, to remind her of every bad decision and lackluster kiss and touch from Marshall.

“I was with him,” Xolia said, voice brittle, “but we broke up. I left him.”

Adonis worked his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because. . .”

“Because why?”

Xolia groaned. “Because I didn’t want you to know, okay? When I saw you for the first time again—I guess I just… He never made me feel like you did. And it wasn’t that I didn’t try to make things work, I mean, Marshall is so good at assimilating, and that’s what I was supposed to want, right? But it’s not and you came back?—”

Adonis cut off her word vomit with a bruising kiss. It was far from the soft and tentative kisses of their teenage years. His lips were insistent against hers, and as soon as her shocked mind caught up with what was happening, she gave as good as she got. Electricity sparked through her; her brain short-circuited on the simple pleasure of a kiss. She forgot it could feel like that.

He licked along the seam of her lips, and she opened her mouth for him. He greedily deepened the kiss, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck.

A low moan escaped her, and she placed her arms around him, pulling herself closer to him. Adonis broke the kiss to look at her with darkened eyes. “Does he kiss you like this?” His mouth was back on her, biting and sucking at her neck.

“No.” She whined—something she had never done for Marshall.

The ringing of the phone jolted them apart. His lips were swollen, and his hair was thoroughly mussed. She was sure she looked no better. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered before drawing his phone from his pocket. He left the room and the soft sound of his greeting, still slightly breathless, faded the farther he walked away.

Xolia didn’t know if he was sorry about the kiss or the call. She focused on her breathing, trying to calm the erratic beating of her heart. Once she had calmed down enough to form logical thoughts, she made her way to the closet and pulled out the suit jacket, still safely tucked in the far back on Xolia’s side. She gently folded it over her arm and left the bedroom.

Adonis was slipping his phone back in his pocket. They made eye contact, it was heavy. The kiss had done nothing to diminish the tension between them if anything it was only denser. A tangible thing she would have to work around.

She held out the jacket to him. “I think this is yours.”

“Thank you.” He took it from her and slipped it free of the plastic hanger. Nonchalantly, he threw the jacket over his shoulder and held out his right arm for her. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

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