Page 64 of Chain Me
“Something happened,” I deduced. “Just tell me. If I did something wrong—”
“You? Make a mistake?” His eyebrows furrowed in mock shock. “The woman who’s gotten more people killed in her wake in a month than most will in a lifetime?”
Pain ripped through my chest, so potent that I pressed my hand against it as if that might lessen the blow. It didn’t. Once again, my defensive mechanism threatened to deploy. I wanted to say something equally harsh, enough to combat the way my eyes burned. But as I observed my hand in the waning daylight, something displaced even my anger.
“My ring.” Panicked, I felt around my seat, finding nothing. “It’s gone. Go back! I must have left it in the—”
“Did you not hear me when I said we were being followed? Yet you suggest we go back for a worthless trinket. And you still claim you don’t have an ulterior motive?”
I bit down on my tongue so hard that I tasted copper. Aching, I brushed my naked finger with my thumb as I tried to reconcile why aworthless trinket’sloss was troubling me so much. Especially when the man who’d given it to me didn’t seem to give a damn either way.
“You’re right,” I admitted, turning away from him. “It’s worthless trash. I truly hate you, and I spilled all of your secrets to a sister who abandoned me without a word.AndI hope her spies blow us both up because, obviously, I have a death wish. Hopefully mycancerwill speed along that outcome, at least. So tell your driver to hurry up to wherever we’re going. I’m bored.”
He said nothing, but I cut myself off from any senses that might decipher him. Instead, I did what I should have done all along—trusted my suspicious, doubtful instincts. Oh, how right they were.
But admitting as much hurt more than it should have. I hunched beneath the pain of it, wrapping my arms around my chest in a vain effort to mitigate the ceaseless throbbing.
But it didn’t.
All I could do was whisper out loud the confused, pathetic questions circling my brain in an effort to weakly combat the self-loathing.
“You want me to trust you, but how can I when every time I try you push me away, or insult me, or disappear?” Oh God. My voice was trembling, breaking openly. Tears stung my eyes, impossible to blink back. Oh well. He’d accuse me of lying regardless. I had nothing left to lose. “I confessed to you that night in the cathedral how you made me feel. You left days later, and I’m the cruel one? But now you return and I’m not only supposed to believe that you might give a damn, but that I might be—” No. I bit off any more. That was too pathetic. “I think it’s best if from now on we just…”
Existin a silence so heavy that I didn’t have to finish defining it. We fell into our roles far too well, retreating to opposite ends of the car, glaring from our respective windows.
He never offered a word in his defense or otherwise.
And I was too tired to demand one.
* * *
Our eventual destination awaited at the end of a paved driveway lined in trees and illuminated with orange lanterns. When my gaze fell over the structure, I gasped aloud as the driver finally came to a stop.
Poor Gray Manor would blush in shame.
Composed of stone, a sprawling mansion gleamed in the moonlight as if crafted from a fairytale. Light spilled from every window, painting neatly manicured lawns, complete with bubbling twin fountains placed on either side of the cobblestone driveway.
I still gaped as Dublin exited the car without a word. His hand appeared seconds later. Warily, I took it. Had he decided to apologize? I eyed his expression, hunting for any softness as he guided me up the path to the front door. There, a man wearing a stark black uniform ushered us inside.
“Show Ms. Gray to her room,” Dublin commanded him, releasing me. He turned on his heel and stormed out the way we’d come.
I watched, flinching as the door slammed behind him.
“This way, miss.”
I turned to the butler and tried to shift my attention to my surroundings, letting their beauty negate any pain.
Breathtaking was the operative word. I’d thought his beautiful penthouse suite was impressive, but this was luxury on an entirely different scale. My mother would approve of the plain-but-quality oak-paneled walls and polished floors. The golden light fixtures illuminating wide, open hallways with high ceilings and furniture in shades of emerald and ebony, however?
She’d scoff in disgust at those.
My room, unsurprisingly, was no less elegant. For all his moods where I was concerned, I couldn’t accuse Dublin of compromising my comfort out of spite. The bed looked heavenly—solid wood, carved with extravagant reliefs of roses and vines, draped in a ruby canopy. A wide window displayed a view of yet another garden, its details obscured in the darkness.
“Goodnight, miss,” the butler called before leaving the room and closing the door.
I swallowed hard, blinking as my eyes started to prickle. It was funny how silence could bring everything into painfully clear focus. Like the fact that I was alone again.
That my lips were still swollen—again.
