Page 118 of Pretty Little Threats

I take a quick breath.

“I want to know what you did with Irene.” I grab my phone from my pocket, pulling up the picture. “And I want to know who the fuck you’ve been seeing behind my back.”

Dare scowls and snatches the phone from my hand. He stares at the picture, his body going preternaturally still. I even think he stops breathing. Slowly, ever so slowly, his gaze moves from the phone to my face. “Why did you take this?”

My chest cracks open. He isn’t even going to try and explain? All he wants to know is why I took the fucking picture? He doesn’t care that I’ve spent days spiraling about the texts. He has no clue how much those messages turned me inside out. No idea that the tiniest sliver of hope I had been clinging to is disintegrating right in front of him.

Until she’s as useless as your dead wife.

Those words scream through my mind. Dare really is as heartless as everyone says.

“When can I see you again? I love you, Dare,” I hiss, channeling my anger into the one thing I can manage. My heart trembles in my chest. I let myself love him, and he never even cared. I hate myself. I hate that my dad was right. I hate that fairy tales aren’t real, but most of all, I hate that I hate him, because he was perfect. At least, the illusion he created was perfect.

He was everything I didn’t know I wanted.

But that was all part of the game. All part of the plan to tear me down.

“When did you take this?” he asks again.

I was so stupid to consider us star crossed-lovers, but in the end, isn’tRomeo and Julieta tragedy?

None of it was real, and I spent weeks—no, months—letting him in. I thought I finally found someone whosaw the real me.

“You’re not even going to deny it?” My voice rises with every word. “How long have you been fucking her behind my back?” The affair is the least of my worries, but if I think too hard about the things he told my dad, I might fall apart.

“Rose,” he warns.

I go to shove his chest, but Dare catches my wrist. “Let me go!”

“When did you take this picture, Rose?”

“Why, scared I’ll find her? I will, you know. Orion is the best private investigator in New York City, and once I find that bitch, I’ll rip her throat out.” Even I realize I sound crazy. His throat is the one that deserves to be ripped out, but even with how much he’s hurt me, I still want him. That’s how desperately I crave love. I’ll fight for some fucked-up fake relationship.

He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You gave this to your PI?”

“Yes.”

He takes a breath, but the way the air draws into his lungs is violent, like he’s ripping the oxygen from the room to feed himself. My own breath freezes in my lungs. Time slows, like the minutes before a storm hits and the atmosphere charges, electricity gathering and surging together until it all comes out in one deadly explosion.

Only, Dare’s isn’t loud.

It’s two soft words that stab into my heart.

“Get out.”

Dare is just going to toss me to the curb like yesterday’s trash?

“Excuse me?”

“Get. Out,” he says, releasing my wrist and stepping to the side.

I shake my head. No. He can’t get rid of me when it’sconvenient for him. We made vows. We swore before a priest, and I’m not leaving to soothe his conscience. “You can’t kick me out, Dare. What’s yours is mine, remember?”

Dare levels me with a look that chills me to the bone, and I recoil, despite all my bravado. “You haveno ideawhat you’ve done.”

“Me? I have no idea? What about you? Irene was sweet. She never hurt a fly. She was a mother, a grandmother, but I’m the one who has no idea? Tell me what you said to Irene. Tell me why my dad has that footage of you threatening her.”

“Your fucking dad,” he growls, clenching his fists at his side.

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