Page 11 of Crocodile Tears
She’d deleted all of them during the skink incident, and I missed checking to see if she’d posted any new photos of herself with her animals. I’d kept tabs on her over the years from my fake Insta or “Finsta” account as people called it.Maybe she knew and that’s why she deleted her socials . . .
“What doyouwant?” Her voice was tight, her expression sharp enough to slice me in two.
Fuck. I’d rather have fallen into the lion enclosure than hear the bitterness in that question coming from her lips.
I thought I’d be more prepared for this reunion, but the impact of her standing in front of me was making my hands shake. I kept them tightly clasped under the desk as Dove folded her arms and popped out her hip.
At that telltale movement, a wry smile curled my lips.
There were still flashes of the girl I’d known—in her popped hip, in her stubborn frown, in her indomitable spirit that could stare down an apex predator and not be cowed. But she was arresting in a different way now too, beautiful, sexy even. Her hair was dipped in a deep, vibrant purple—her favorite color. I knew from her Insta that she'd been dying her hair like that for years. Her glasses were new though—rose-gold wire trim, highlighting her big brown eyes—eyes that were currently staring daggers into me.
I cleared my throat and lifted my chin. "It's good to see you, Rogue. It’s been a while.”
“Don’tcall me that,” she bit out.
I shrugged, pretending to be indifferent. It took every ounce of acting training to keep my face in a casual neutral.
What had I been thinking? That she would call me my old nickname in return and we’d go back to fifteen years ago, when we’d been muddling our way through our first Dungeons & Dragons campaign like the fantasy-obsessed tweens we’d been? No. Time had irrevocably changed us, and I knew from the look on her face there was no going back.
“Some of us have real jobs, Deacon,” she growled, her voice lower and more rasping than last I'd heard it. My muscles tensed hearing that perfect bedroom voice, one that was meant to be intimidating but instead carried sultry notes.Focus, Deacon, I thought as she asked, “What do you want from me?”
To go back to when you didn’t hate me, I wanted to say. To go back to when she and I had been best friends for three brief and beautiful summers. But I knew being a hopeless nostalgic would get me nowhere with Dove.
“What do we want from you?” Cody scoffed, his restraint finally snapping. He slammed his phone down on the desk and slid it across toward Dove. "Care to explain this?"
Dove's eyes widened in surprise as she was confronted with a video of herself ranting behind a chain-link fence to a group of my fans. Normally, being called a “worthless waste of space” was par for the course. Everyone felt they were entitled to loudly share their opinions on celebrities, probably thinking we’d never hear it. But I hadn’t expected Dove of all people to be filled with such vitriol. Maybe my skin wasn’t as thick as I’d thought, or maybe Dove had always been my Achilles heel.
Cody’s voice was cold and cutting. “After all that he's done for you?—”
"Cody." I held up a hand, worried he might say too much. "Give us a minute."
The vein in Cody's neck popped out, and I could see he wanted to rage at Dove. I gave him a look that told him enough.Bad idea, buddy.So instead, he took a controlled breath taught to him by his court-appointed anger management counselor.
"One minute," he said, holding up a finger. “One! And then we talk damage control."
He waited until I nodded in agreement to exit, shutting the door loudly behind him. His footsteps boomed down the stairs until Dove and I were left in awkward silence. Suddenly, the room felt incredibly small. I could tell she was mortified by the video but too stubborn to admit it to me. She was a private, curmudgeonly, introverted person—the opposite to me in every way.
I thought she might apologize or come up with an explanation for the videoorsimply shout at me some more, but instead she asked, "What have you done for me?"
"Hm?"
"Your finance bro lackey over there just said ‘after all you've done for me’.” She tipped her head to the door that Cody had just disappeared from. "Was he talking about you filming here or something else that you’ve done for me?”
"Don't worry about it," I replied, knowing that comment would get a rise out of her again. As Dove’s eyes flared, I smiled wider. “We've got bigger concerns."
She let out a sarcastic huff. "You'vegot bigger concerns." She waved a patronizing hand at me. "I'm fine."
God, I missed the way she could put me in my place.Maybe Iama sadist.It was a weird thing to miss, but no one in my circles dared to talk to me this way anymore. Dove never sugar-coated anything.
“We can’t ignore this issue,” I pressed.
“Tell that to the Almadran skinks!” she erupted, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation.
I’d known she and I would have our reckoning one day about the skinks, but I hadn’t thought she’d be quite so enraged about it. “I’m sorry about the skinks, okay? That was all Zap though. I had nothing to do with it.”
Her mouth fell open and she glared at me. Clearly, that hadn’t been a sufficient apology.
“You have all the money in the world and still couldn’t buy a good idea to save your freaking life, Deacon. Why don’t youdosomething about this? Anything!”
