Page 72 of Vicious Arrangement
When I finish the drink, Jace refills that, along with the next and the next. I drink slowly and steadily until it’s late enough I’m positive Aria’s all tucked up with her guard monster ready to bite me if I go near her room.
She’ll be asleep when I get home. I check my watch. It’s already eleven-thirty. Almost the witching hour when all good nurses are asleep.
I’m not drunk but close.
So it’s a good time to call it quits.
I pay the tab, drop an extra large tip and call a car to head on home to SoHo.
Chapter Nineteen
ARIA
I pace the terrace upstairs,outside the living room. Angus kept pace for a while, but then he got bored and went to our room to no doubt eat and drink some water.
All I’ve been able to do to keep my anxiety and the anger in my veins from building absolute burning pyres is slowly drink the whiskey Asher left.
And yes, I’m angry at Noah, and I’m anxious for him to get home so I can have it out.
I’m furious at the way he acted. Not just by making out I’m his property, but how he seemed to suddenly leap backwards in whatever progress we had, to rampaging as if Asher and I were in the wrong.
How?
By getting along while we waited for him to arrive?
Of all the deplorable, asshole behaviors I can think of, that took the cake.
He—
I stop. There’s a soft ding of the elevator, and I go to the door of the apartment as the elevator doors swish open and Noah comes in. I wait, wondering what he’s going to do. The light’s on in my room, the door open, and for a moment I think he’s going to go down the hall to my room, but he doesn’t.
He slides his shoes off, not bothering with the laces.
It’s clear to me he’s planning to slink off to his room like the snake he is and hide there.
I narrow my eyes, toss back my drink, and set down the glass on the table before storming in, going right up to him.
“What the fuck,” I spit, poking his chest, ignoring that tantalizing scent of him that coils around me, tempting me with the freshness of bergamot and the spice of pepper, now accentuated by the scent of whiskey, “is wrong with you?”
“Back off, Aria,” he says.
I ignore him.
“No. You’re not the boss of me. In all the literal and figurative ways, you’re not the boss. You don’t own me. We’re married, it’s called, even in this fake and empty hellish landscape of a marriage, a partnership.”
“Aria,” he warns.
I step closer and poke harder. “Just so you know, I have male friends. Female friends, too. So I will see and be friends with anyone I choose. I’ll hang out with them whenever I like.”
His eyes darken and glitter, but he doesn’t touch me. “Oh, will you?”
“Yes, I will. Besides, it’s not like you’re really into me. We fuck and that’s it. You’ve made that pretty damn clear.” I poke him again. “And guess what? I’m fine with it. I really am.”
He sighs. “Look, you don’t?—”
“What, understand that it’s just fucking and nothing else? Because I get it.”
“No,” he says, grabbing my hand as I poke him again, “you don’t. It’s way more complicated than that.”
