Page 61 of Love Her

By the timeMarcus came back, his question was forgotten, and he tossed a card out to pay the bill. “I trust tonight was satisfactory?” he asked our group, as though he were a waiter.

“Yeah,” Wes said, while Zane shrugged his shoulder.

“Whatever,” Zane said—and Marcus offered me his hand.

I grit my teeth and took it, letting him lead me back through the restaurant, as I kept on a very forced smile.

“Would you like to come back to our place for a nightcap?” Marcus asked, once we were outside.

“No—I want to prepare for my interview,” I said, aiming for just the right amount of vapidity to sell it, and already summoning my own car.

“Suit yourself,” he said, as their driver arrived. Then he pulled me in for a kiss and I squealed, a queasy mixture of off-balance, surprised, and horrified. I fought without thinking, which only made him laugh, setting me back more carefully on my heels, where I straightened my dress without thinking.

“See you soon, Arnold will be in touch,” he said, getting into the front seat of the car, while Wes and Zane made for the back.

“Nice to meet you,mom,” Wes said, and I couldn’t help it, it made me flinch—whereas Zane walked by like a shark, on his way to the streetside door.

“That ass is satisfactory,” he muttered, where he knew only I could hear him.

Somehow I managed to bite my tongue and wave them off.

31

RHAIM

Lia didn’t look like herself that night when she came on camera, so I called right away. “You okay?”

“No, not very,” she said, kicking off her heels.

“Stressful day?”

“Not really,” she said, looking over at me. “And…that was the problem.”

She went on to tell me all about her wedding “plans” and then her dinner with Marcus and his offspring.

“They were assholes, of course.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But the thing is, Rhaim…all day long…everyone ignored me.” She shrunk herself into a small, beige colored ball on the bed. “I didn’t get to decide a thing. The only time someone asked my opinion was when the waiter wanted to put pepper on my salad.”

“I’m sorry, moth.”

She gawked at the camera briefly. “Wow—if I’m earning a ‘sorry’ from Mister-I-Don’t-Apologize, something must be sincerely wrong.”

I inhaled, and then shook my head, even though she wouldn’t see it. “I’m not enjoying not being in control of this situation.”

“You and me both.” She rested her face in the palms of her hands.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said—without looking up.

And suddenly the plans I’d been putting into progress with Sable, framing Zane, now one-hundred-percent confirmed as Marcus’s shittier son, with Bix’s death next week—I knew needed to shift them forward.

Lia needed to be out of the shadow of Nero’s bad decision as soon as possible.

Once and for all.

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