Page 145 of House of Lilith

“What do you think, I’m stupid?” I ask as I sit up straighter, my eyebrows pulling down. “Of course I know you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. But youcanmake yourself strong enough for it not to affect you.”

“Not to affect you?” she echoes, her eyebrows shooting up. And she sounds frustrated as she says, “Oh, like what happened with your ex? That must havenothingto do with your romantic choices.”

For a second, there’s silence during which my mind is buzzing and her face twisting into this expression of sudden realization and consequent panic.

“How do you know about my ex?” I demand in a low, serious voice.

She glances away before she says, hesitantly, “Ricky told me.”

“No,” I growl, my mind running marathons as my frown grows deeper. “Ricky wouldn’t do that.”

There’s one long moment of silence during which she looks as if she’s trying to force herself to say something, making me hold my breath. “Maybe I got him drunk on Feinmann’s whiskey,” she finally says, quietly, and then raises her eyebrows, pressing her lips tight.

I push myself off the bed, making her double back to get out of my lap. “You didwhat?” I ask her, a growl in my voice and daggers in my eyes as I stand there, naked, in front of her bed.

And her eyes are rounding in what seems to be both shame and apology, but it’s starting to really hit me now, what this whole night really was, and I’m finding it harder and harder to control my anger.

I hear her get off the bed, but I’m already grabbing my clothes off the floor.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” she pleads as she tries to grab me by the arm.

I stop to shoot her a warning look, but it doesn’t scare her. “I really am,” she mutters.

I tear my eyes away and without throwing her another glance, I put on my clothes and I march out of her room, seething inside.

*

I find myself pacing in my tent without really remembering how I got there, eyes unseeing, teeth gritting and fists clenching.

Thinking about what just happened, back in her room, rewinding and rewinding and rewinding. And every time I rewind, I find something new, a fresh slap across the face.

Inviting me to her room.

That first question about the ‘old flame.’

Literallyshutting me up by kissing me.

Fuckingkissingme, being all cuddly and shit.

Worst of all, making me talk about my brother. My fuckingbrother. And I don’t talk about fucking feelings. That’s the whole fucking point of not doing serious.

It makes me let out a bitter laugh. Here I thought I’d be enjoying myself tonight, unwinding after stopping yet another one of my brother’s rampages, and finally getting to see and feel her again, this time someplace with minimal danger of being interrupted. Someplace I’d have an actual shot at getting her truly relaxed.

Exactly,my fox’s voice booms from the shadows, teeth gritted and tone mocking all at once,and it neveronceoccurred to you that it was too good to be true.

I stop pacing and he just keeps going.When it should’ve occurred to you the moment she asked you to come to her room.

He. Is.Pissed.

And it makes me feel both unsettled and drained all of a sudden.

“Yeah, well,” I tell him as I come to sit on the bed, my voice dropping with fatigue as I run my hand over my face, “I was bone tired, I’d been gone for what seemed like a fucking eternity, and I just wanted…”

Yeah, you just wanted,he drawls mockingly.And she invited you to her room and everything smelled of her and you were getting her undivided attention, and, well...He lets out an angry scoff.The boy got caught up in a fantasy, right?

It makes me grit my teeth, what he’s saying, it makes me burn with the need to shut him up as soon as possible.

But he seems to be in the middle of a rant, his voice taking on a disgusted note,Butthen, then she startedopenlyseducing you to get you to talk. And you… You just lay there and let her humiliate you.

---