Page 41 of Tall, Royal Hater
Esmeralda threw me off balance when she tugged on my arm. I squeaked and slammed a hand and knee to the mattress to stop myself from face-planting the silk-covered duvet.
“What the fuck?” I rumbled.
She grinned proudly. “Admit you like him.”
“Did you not hear me just now? I don’t bloody like him.”
“Okay, fine.” She tugged on my arm again, and air cracked through my shoulder joint. I gaped from my arm to her, but hereyes shone with impish determination. “I will let you go if you admit youlikedhim at one pointandtell me what happened that made you start acting like you hate each other.”
“It’s not acting,” I said through gritted teeth as I tried to pry her hands off me. But fucking Neves, her nimble fingers had an insane grip. “We hate each other.”
“Stop lying and tell me.” She yanked on my forearm as if it were the cord of a steam engine’s whistle.
My other arm shook as I fought her pull, causing strain on my joints. “Bitch, my shoulder!”
“Tell me.”
“All right!”
Esmeralda instantly stopped pulling and grinned with innocent excitement. She didn’t let go of me, but there was no trace of the wicked mastermind fairy who’d just tortured me for information.
“Go on,” she encouraged sweetly, and my hanging mouth slackened further.
I pulled my lips into a snarl and narrowed my eyes. “Does your fiancé know how evil you are behind this bullshit innocent façade?”
“Of course,” she said, chin tipped and brow audaciously arched like the fucking queen in the making she was. “But he has permission to punish me in a way you do not.”
I choked on a shocked sound as my brows flew up. I angled my head, trying to think of something to say, but I was coming up blank. I shook it off. “Do you know what? I’ll let you have that.” I nodded in acknowledgment. “Good on you, girl. Get the spanking you want.” Esmeralda’s grin deepened, and I rolled my eyes with a reluctant smile. “You gonna let go now, so I can sit down?”
“Will you tell me?”
“Yeah, I will, you stubborn little bitch.” She let go, and I huffed in mock annoyance and climbed back onto the bed. She shuffled closer, and I let out a resigned breath. “Yes, fine. I, once upon a time, in first year, liked your stupid-ass bodyguard, private secretary, whatever he is. But he shut me down.”
Her brows lifted in surprise. “You told him?”
“No. He assumed—not that he assumed wrong—and told me I was a spoiled brat who he only put up with because you cared about me, and that nothing I’d do would make him want me. So, I threw some insults back and might have said something about his dad, and that was the end of that.”
Esmeralda’s expression slipped and fell and plummeted to the centre of Neves throughout my explanation, all hope depleting from her posture. I held still in her silence, waiting for her to react. It took some time for the confused flicker of emotions to set into a frown.
“I can’t believe Sher would say that. You know that’s not true. At all. And he should never have said something like that to you.” She let out an adorably frustrated breath. “If I’d known, I would have set him straight immediately. Actually, I’ll—”
“No,” I said roughly. “There’s no need to bring it up after five years. It’s in the past, and I’d like it to remain there. I don’t fucking care anymore anyway.” That was partially true.
She opened her mouth to argue, but I gave her a hard stare. “Esmeralda. No.”
I felt a little mean as a drooping shadow cast over her eyes. The plucking sensation heightened when she asked, “You said something about his dad?”
It was no secret that Shehryar’s dad had ditched his mother and him when he was a child, and I wasn’t exactly proud of the fact that I’d used that knowledge to hit him where it hurt most.
I gave a small, shameful shrug. “He hurt me, so I lashed out. And I regretted it. But he ignored me and was so bloody rudewhen I tried to apologise that I didn’t bother again. I decided if he thought I was a bitch, then I was gonna act like it. And it kind of just escalated over the years into mutual abhorrence for each other.”
That hatred wasn’t going to change. The past few days had solidified that fact.
After a minute of silence, Esmeralda shook her head. “You’re both idiots, do you know that?” I pushed my lips into a defensive scrunch. “You turned one angry moment into five years of animosity, and for what? Because you don’t truly hate each other.”
My face deadpanned. “Are you not getting it on purpose? Or is this a side effect of getting engaged?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not blind, Mariyah. You two may act like you can’t stand each other, but it is very obvious how you look at each other.”
