Page 40 of The Problem with Dating
“We’renot,”I stressed. “Look, Marco, I don’t know what drugs you’ve been taking since our divorce, but they’ve really fucked with your mind if you think you’re coming inside my house foranything.”
“Echo, this is important,” he replied, ignoring my protests. “The press might be reaching out to you, and-”
“The press?”If I thought I didn’t want anything to do with Marco and his drama before, I sure as hell wanted nothing to do with him now.
His jaw tightened, and through clenched teeth, he said, “There might have been a slight altercation between me and the woman I’ve been dating recently, and…well, things might have gone public.”
“Oh, God.” He was here to beg for my silence. I wasn’t sure where Marco was in his political career, but domestic abuse made for tantalizing television, and the media were worse than vultures. And, of course, I’d be a great resource for gossip and sensationalism. Though the divorce papers cited irreconcilable differences, that still didn’t mean that there was possible dirt to uncover.
I guess I hadn’t really left Marco all that far behind when I divorced him.
“If they show up, I just need you to tell him we drifted apart, and that was all,” he went on. “It’s the story I told everyone after you left, so it would just keep things simple if you stuck to the script.”
My laugh lacked warmth. “You got a lot of nerve, Marco,” I said, not disguising my contempt for him at all. “Instead of showing up at my house to apologize for the crappy way you treated me while we were married, you show up in some desperate bid to save your image, and you really thought I’d go along with it?”
He looked truly affronted. “Oh, c’mon, Echo,” he scoffed. “We both know you’d never accept an apology from me, so why bother?”
“Yet, you believe I’d do you a favor?” I asked incredulously.
Before he could reply, the familiar rumblings of a truck cut through our bickering, and I wondered what I’d ever done to the cosmos to deserve such bad fucking luck.
And Marco was so engrossed in his self-preservation, he hadn’t even noticed Gideon storming across our adjacent driveways into my yard. It wasn’t until Gideon was damn near upon him that I stepped out from under the doorway and intercepted a very angry Gideon Hayes.
“Gide-”
“Who the hell is this?” But before I could answer, Gideon looked over at Marco and asked, “Who the fuck are you?”
And because Marco was too arrogant for his own good, he repeated the same question. “Who the fuck areyou?”
“Goddamn it,” I growled. “Will you two knock it off.”
Gideon looked down at me like I was crazy before returning this attention back on Marco. “I’ll tell you who I am,” he said. “I’m the guys who’s going to knock you on your ass if you don’t step back some and tell me who the fuck you are.”
I didn’t have to look behind me to know that Marco was taking offense. He really believed he was someone, and Gideon speaking to him as if he were just some common citizen was surely pushing his buttons.
I continued to look at Gideon. “Gideon?”
“What?” he asked, still eyeing Marco.
As badly as this was going to go, with both of us so fresh in our feelings still, I couldn’t let Marco get crazy with him or Gideon would probably kill him. “That’s Marco.”
With my hands on his chest, I could feel Gideon’s entire body lock up. His voice was deep, low, and violent when he asked, “What did you just say?”
Instead of answering him, I turned to face Marco. “You need to leave, Marco.Now.”
“Not until you-”
I hadn’t even felt Gideon move from behind me when I saw a fist come flying from the side, straight into Marco’s face.
“Gideon!”
Marco must have seen it coming because he’d taken the hit, but it hadn’t knocked him out. Marco was doing his best to ward off the attack, but Gideon was out for blood. I’d just been about to work my way in between them when I felt a pair of strong arms push me back onto the grass.
“Gideon, stop!”
“You’re going to kill him, Gid. Stop!”
Nathan and Sayer were pulling the men apart, trying to yell some sense into their enraged brother, but Gideon wasn’t having it. I had been so focused on Gideon and the situation with Marco, I hadn’t even noticed that Sayer and Nathan had pulled up with Gideon.
