“No,” he said. “You’ll give that to me, Marist. I was the one who forced that upon you, so it’s my shame now, you understand me?”
His hands came down off the counters, and he took a cautious step toward me, like he was worried I might dart away if he got too close. A fawn in the woods, not aware of the wolf’s approach.
“You may have learned I’m a decisive man.” He sounded firm and powerful. “Once a decision has been made, it’s final.” As he drew in his next breath, his voice faltered. “But I have questioned myself every day since that morning, worrying the damage I did to us will be too much to overcome.”
“There is no us,” I said.
“Which is why I’ve stayed away all these months.”
So, he had been avoiding me. “Except when you showed up as a guest professor in my class.”
He blinked slowly. “I’ll admit I wanted to see you. I decided that was the safest way. What could I possibly do to you in a room full of people?”
“Embarrass me?”
He lifted a sharp eyebrow. “You did that to yourself. You behaved like a child, so I treated you as such.”
He had a point, but I didn’t want to concede to it. I shifted on my feet and put my hands on my hips, assuming a confident posture. “What I meant is, Royce and I love each other. We don’t lie to—”
“Has he said that?”
“That he loves me?” I narrowed my gaze. “Better. He shows me.”
Macalister wasn’t fooled, and he used the opportunity to take another step my direction. “He hasn’t, then. How exactly does he show he loves you?”
“I don’t have to explain it to you.”
“With his fancy gifts?”
“No,” I snapped.
It was a demand. “Then indulge me.”
He asked for it. “For starters, we fuck all the time.”
His expression shuttered. “Everyone in this house is aware. It’s yet another reason I’ve made myself scarce.” He sighed almost dramatically and leaned in like he wanted to impart his wisdom. “I know you’re young and inexperienced, but surely you’re intelligent enough to know that sex does not equate love. I imagine for Royce, sex is meaningless.”
I wanted to laugh. “It’s not.”
“For you, I’m sure it isn’t. But he will tire of it and eventually lose interest.”
My ears burned hot. “He won’t, and I know it.”
His blue eyes sharpened on me. “Oh?”
“If sex was meaningless to him, he would have slept with other people the year before we got engaged.”
He had the same reaction when I moved a chess piece he wasn’t expecting. “What?”
“I waited for him, Macalister. And for a year, he waited for me.”
It was like he couldn’t reconcile the idea in his head. “He told you this?”
“Yes.” My lips turned up in a smug smile.
There was a level of dread in his voice that made my blood run cold. It sounded as if he was outraged for me. “And you . . . you believed him?”
Macalister was a splinter trapped in my skin, working deeper and more painfully each time I tried to get him out. He infected my mind and planted seeds of distrust.
When I didn’t dignify his question with a response, he stepped back, maybe worried my delusions would rub off on him.
“Don’t be a fool,” he lectured. “Lying is the only thing my son truly excels at.”
I didn’t sound as convinced as I would have liked. “We don’t lie to each other.”
He shot me an incredulous look. “No? You already confessed to me that you do.” It felt like he’d struck me in the center of my chest, and my heart slowed. “How easy do you think it is for him to do the same?”
That was the thought Macalister left me with as he exited the kitchen, abandoning me in the darkness.
TWELVE
THE MORNING OF MY COLLEGE GRADUATION CEREMONY, I had a nightmare. It was the worst possible kind, where nothing seemed wrong during the dream—not until I woke up, and horror descended on me.
I’d dreamt about Macalister.
My subconscious had placed us in the candlelit dining room the night of the initiation, where I was naked, and he was in his tuxedo . . . only it was just the two of us. I was flat on my back at the end of the long, elegant table. His cold hands were splayed on my spread thighs, and his tongue slipped inside me. My hands threaded into his hair, holding on while he tasted and feasted, dragging a moan from my lips.
When I woke, I was hot and uncomfortable all over, but the ache between my legs throbbed the worst.
Wrong.
Not that I had any control over my dreams, but I felt the shame regardless, and anger toward Macalister, like he’d put the thoughts in my brain.
I brushed my hair back off my heated face, rolled over in the bed, and my sleepy gaze found my fiancé who was already awake. Royce stared at the screen of his iPad, his blue eyes following intently whatever it was he was watching.