Page 113 of Toxic Temptation
“I made my father a promise before he died. I told him I’d always look out for her.” He gets quiet. “I’d have done it anyway, but the promise makes it sacred.”
I look at him through new eyes. Quietly, I ask, “What do you want from me, Waylen?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I want you to stay away from her. She needs someone who’ll make her the center of his world, and you’ve got too many other priorities.” He holds up a hand when I start to protest. “But I know you won’t listen to that. And I know she won’t, either. Vesper’s stubborn as hell when she wants something. So if you’re going to be in her life, treat her right. If you want her, you need to fucking earn her.”
I clear my throat. “I don’t want her.”
Waylen stands, still holding the water bottle. He looks down at me with something that might be pity.
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.”
38
VESPER
“Why do you look like someone just told you Santa isn’t real?”
I shove my phone into my back pocket and try to rearrange my face into something resembling normal. “Nothing. Just Kovan texting that he and Luka are spending the night at my place tonight.”
Waylen stops mid-stride on the Golden Gate Park path, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Shouldn’t the prospect of alone time with your boyfriend make you do a little happy dance? Should it not fill you with joyful, girlish delight?”
I punch his arm. “When have you ever seen me do a happy dance? Or do anything girlish at all?”
“Fair point.” He studies my face with those annoyingly perceptive blue eyes we both inherited from Dad. “Everything okay with you and Count Dracula?”
I roll my eyes to hide the worry on my face. “Everything’s fine.”
“Because you’ve been avoiding his house like it’s contaminated with plague.”
“I’ve been working double shifts. Jeremy has me on punishment duty, remember? That’s all it is. Everything between Kovan and me is fine.”
“So you and him are, what—madly in love and planning your wedding?”
There’s something in his tone that makes my stomach clench. “Sure. Madly in love. Obviously.”
He stops walking again. “You remember our promise, right? The one we made after Dad died? That we’d always be honest with each other?”
My heart starts beating faster. “Waylen, if you have something to say?—”
“I know about you and Kovan.”
I stare at him, waiting for him to elaborate, but he just points to the purple bruise decorating his left cheekbone. “Remember how I got this?”
“You said it was during training.”
“It was. It also happened to coincide with a conversation I had with your ‘boyfriend.’” He makes air quotes around the word “boyfriend,” and that’s all I need to know.
“He told you?”
“He did. Though I would have preferred hearing it from you first.” He gestures toward a bench under one of the cypress trees. “Sit with me.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“V—”
“Don’t.” I yank my arm away when he reaches for me. “I’m not twelve anymore, Waylen. Stop treating me like I am.”
“You’re being defensive.”
