Page 70 of Sweet Addiction
“Yes.” Her voice is strong and sharp, but this woman isn’t yelling. She isn’t screaming or stomping her foot. She’s standing in front of me, head held high, holding strong, and putting up a great front.
“You’re not going to like it,” I warn as I take the last few steps needed, closing the distance between us.
Her chest lifts as she sucks in a quiet breath, her nerves showing like a fighter’s tell before he throws a punch. “Try me.”
“You wear so many faces, Dillan. I’ve been watching them for years. And before you say it, I’m not saying you’re like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m saying you’re different for different people. You slip into who they need you to be. Your family gets one version of you. You’re smaller for them. I watched it the other night at dinner. Your friends get another version. For us, you’re bubbly and smiling, but it doesn’t reach your damn eyes half the time. And when you’re with a group of people you’re not completely comfortable with, you’re quiet. You tryto act comfortable, but you’re not. You are a complex woman,principessa.”
She throws her hands in the air, the only indication she’s losing her cool, and God, she’s beautiful. “What the hell is the difference between princess andprincipessa?”
I grip the back of my neck and look away, deciding how far I want to push her tonight. How fucking far I want to be pushed.
“Rome...” Her voice wavers, and my decision’s made before I take my next fucking breath.
“Princess is a tease,” I tell her, close enough to see the green flecks in her aqua eyes. “Someone who needs things done a certain way. Someone who’s been coddled their whole life. Someone who can’t and won’t do anything for themselves.”
“I am not?—”
“That’s why,” I say slowly, needing her to hear me because I’m only telling her this once. “I said it was a tease. I know that’s not you. But damn, if the fire in your eyes when I call you that isn’t seventh-level-of-hell hot.”
Dillan’s mouth tightens as she glances away, unable to make eye contact. “Andprincipessais different?”
Studying her, I know this next part can go one of two ways. Really good or really bad. And there haven’t been a whole lot of things with Dillan Ryan that have gone really good between us. “Principessa,”—I reach forward and tangle a long soft lock of hair around my finger and tug—“might sound the same, but it’s completely different. In my family, aprincipessais someone who’s cherished. Someone you protect at all costs. Not coddle.” Her brow raises, but I keep going, obliterating any line I’m not supposed to cross. “Not because she can’t protect herself, but because you want to protect her.” I smile, thinking of the way Nonna explained it to me when I was still young enough to think girls were gross. “Because she’s worth it.”
She shakes her head the tiniest bit but refuses to look at me. She also doesn’t smack my hand away and lets me keep my hold on her hair, so that’s something. “And what about stell?—”
She stumbles over the word I let slip once or twice. “Stellina.” I smile and lift my other hand to her face, forcing her eyes gently to mine. “It’s an Italian slang.”
“For what?” Dillan asks with a definite pout to her lips and what looks like tears pooling in her eyes.
“Little star,” I admit, and her lip trembles. “What can I say, you’re tiny,Theia.”
“I’m not that small,” she grumbles, and I drop my hands and move them under her arms, lifting her and carrying her to the glass doors that lead to the back porch. Without the lights on outside, our reflections might as well be peering back from a dark mirror. I place her on her feet, standing over a foot taller than her.
“Tiny, Dillan. Some days, I swear you barely eat. You weigh next to nothing, and I’m not entirely convinced you’re tall enough to be riding in a car without a child safety seat like my nieces and nephews.” I wrap my arms around her waist and lower my face to hers. “But if you weren’t so damn stubborn, you’d be fucking perfect.”
“Why do you have to be such an asshole?” she asks, hurt filling her voice. “One minute, you’re sweet in a way no one would ever believe you’d be capable of, and the next minute, you make me wonder if I imagined it because you’re a complete dick.”
“Lucky, I guess.” The joke falls flat. “I’m going to need you to explain something to me.”
“What?” she asks, our eyes still locked through our reflection.
“How did I hurt you? That night at your parents’, I asked who hurt you, and you said it was me.” It’s fucking haunted me since.
She pushes out of my arms. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Stop running, Dillan...” I gently grab her wrist and tug. “Tell me.”
“Why? So you can tell Lucky tonight was just another night too? That I’m nobody important? That I don’t matter? That the night we had was like any other night to you, when I swear to God, my world stopped spinning and tilted two years ago, and my mind quieted like it never had, only for you to screw me over the very next morning and remind me exactly why I don’t trust people? Why people suck?”
I reach for her as I try to wrap my head around everything she just said, but she smacks my hands away. “Don’t you dare touch me now.” She takes another step out of reach. “And if that wasn’t enough, you blackmailed me into pretending to be your girlfriend.Blackmail, Rome. I know your dad is into some shady shit, but seriously, you blackmailed me. So yeah, pick a time. You’ve hurt me more than once.”
I stare at her like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the real Dillan Ryan. Tears fall from the corners of her eyes. My fucking heart cracks wide open, and pain like nothing I’ve ever felt before hits me harder than any opponent ever has. “Are you kidding me?”
“About which part?” she snaps.
“Two years ago, I gave you the closest thing to the real me I’ve ever given anyone. And the next damn morning, I wasn’t ready to talk to my shithead little brother about it, so I blew him off. He was an idiot. A senior in college with a big mouth and a bigger attitude. I wasn’t going to tell him anything about that night. About you or what I was fucking feeling. I’m a man, Dillan. We don’t do feelings well. I don’t share that kind of shit with anyone, including my brothers. It wasn’t his business. It was ours.” The initial guilt I feel turns to fury pretty fucking fast. “Tell me that’s not why you threw me out. Tell me we haven’t wasted two years fighting because you overheard half a conversation and didn’thave the balls to ask me about it. Because you might be a lot of things, but I never thought a coward was one of them.”
“I’m sorry, what? I’m supposed to hear you say those things and be fine with it? I’m not sure what whores you’ve slept with before or since, psycho, but that’s not me. I don’t screw random guys who don’t mean something to me. So yeah, hearing those words from you hurt, and I reacted. It had nothing to do with balls and everything to do with self-respect. That doesn’t make me a coward in my book.” She walks away, stomping her way up the stairs to the bedroom, and I follow behind.
