Blindsided (Roman Holiday 3)

“You don’t have a choice,” she said.

“Don’t I?”

He walked faster. He had longer legs, and he was in better shape, and she got a stitch in her side almost immediately. She pushed her fingers into it hard and kept going, but she fell behind anyway.

“You’re being so immature!” she called. He didn’t stop. He didn’t care. He just hated her, couldn’t stand to be around her, wanted her gone.

Roman hated her.

The force of it brought her to a halt with an upwelling pain that choked her throat and filled her eyes with tears.

It wasn’t right to care what Roman thought, wasn’t right to cry, and she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t, not over him, not after all the tears she’d shed lately.

She was supposed to be the one who hated him. That was the natural order of things, and she wanted to. She wanted to so much.

She wanted to be angry at her grandma for shutting her out and taking away the life Ashley had been waiting to live for so long, the future she’d been grooming herself for, and she wanted to despise Roman for being the one who was there to grab the property when it had been grabable.

But instead she liked him. She liked him a lot, and she loved her grandma, and it hurt too much, being left behind to deal with all this shit. It wasn’t fair. And for Roman to make it even worse?—well, fuck him. If that was how he felt, if he couldn’t endure her company, just … fuck him.

“I’m filing a complaint against your resort!” she called.

He stopped. His back heaved and sank beneath his jacket. A black suit jacket in the ninety-degree heat. Something weird there. Some compulsion to always look good, always seem calm, always be perfect.

No wonder she got under his skin. She’d never been perfect for one second of her existence. Not even close. He hated her for getting her grubby fingers in his business? Fine. Let him hate her. She would make him hate her more. She would twist her hands up in all the wires and cords of his life and tangle them mercilessly until he couldn’t find a way to sort himself out again. Wipe her grubby palms on his perfect chest and smear all her disgusting emotional secretions on him.

And he would have to take it, because he didn’t have the upper hand. He couldn’t have it back. She was keeping it. Her hold on him was the only thing that felt good in her life right now.

He could hate her all he wanted. She would like him back, and he could hate that, too. She would keep him with her, screw with his head, make him as twisty and confused as she was.

Fuck him.

“There are Key deer on the property. They’re a protected species, and if you knock down Sunnyvale, you’ll be destroying their habitat.”

Roman turned around.

His eyes weren’t blank. They were squinting and mean, fired up with rage.

Good.

“Sunnyvale is not a habitat,” he said. “It’s a bunch of shitty apartments.”

“They drink in the pool. It’s a source of freshwater.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Tell it to the EPA.”

His face filled with scorn. “The EPA’s got nothing to do with it. It’s Fish and Wildlife, but they won’t care, either, because I have a permit to build from Monroe County Planning, and it’s totally aboveboard.”

“I knew that.”

Roman stepped closer and put his hands on his hips. A performance of control, but his face—his mouth—still looked like she’d punched him and he wanted to punch her back. “No, you didn’t.”

“Whatever. The point is, I’m going to find the right allies—the Save the Key Deer people, or whoever—and they’ll help me hire a lawyer who knows all about this stuff, and we’ll file a complaint, and a judge will stop the demolition.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Not for my own sake, Roman. Just to save the baby Key deer.”