Page 49 of Skin Deep

Chapter16

Harrison

The ride back to Gigi’s villa was as quiet as dinner. Stars filled the night sky, and her attention was on them as I drove. When we first got in the car, she’d looked at her phone. It seemed like she’d sent a text.

It didn’t matter to me if she had been engaged or not, but what made me suspect something else was going on was her response to the asshole at the restaurant. Something about him rubbed me the wrong fucking way. He looked at me like I was a fast-talking New York roach too good for his expensive loafers to step on.

He could look at me however he wanted to, but it didn’t sit right with me that he seemed to treat Gigi the same way. I didn’t expect that she would take it. Maybe in general she didn’t. Or maybe she didn’t care about him enough to give him a reaction. He was lucky I didn’t drown him in his soup.

The car reacted to my foot going heavier on the pedal. Since I was getting comfortable with the streets and the winding turns, I took them with ease.

“Do you love him? Elias?”

The question seemed to slide out of my mouth, but the anticipation of hearing her answer made my hands squeeze the wheel. The sketched picture in Gigi’s house came to mind. The two hands. Elias must have been the fiancé.

After a few minutes had passed and she didn’t answer, I didn’t think she was going to. Her entire mood had changed. Maybe I was misreading her, but there was something about her that felt heavy. It made me think she was stuck in the lonely hour with no way out.

“Turn here,” she said, directing me down the right road, even though I remembered.

I took the turn, and a few minutes later, we were parked in her driveway. I didn’t shut the car off. The lights illuminated her place. I stared out of the windshield. She stared out of her window.

“I do not know,” she said, “if love is the right word to use. He was older and he fascinated me. He was an artist. He was good with his hands.”

She was being honest, but it pissed me off.

“Is he an asshole like his brother?”

A grin that didn’t touch her eyes came to her face. “I said he was good with his hands.”

“But?”

“He was not good with his words.” She took a heavy breath and sighed it out. “They are not truly blood brothers. They are stepbrothers. Both men become petulant when they do not get what they want.”

“They both wanted you?”

“They wanted to share me, but at the same time, Elias wanted to own me. It was very confusing, at times.”

I turned to look at her.Share her? Own her?Very confusing…at times.What did that even mean? The entire situation seemed fucked up. And I was confused as hell, too—with my reaction. I couldn’t tell if the anger that rose in me was because I could tell something was off with her when she talked about it, like it was too heavy, or because I was jealous.

Both. It was both.

Why would anyone ever want to share this woman? She was gorgeous, yeah, but she was also complex in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t sure how deep her sincerity ran, but it was hard to fake the look in her eyes.

The sadness reflected through the window and hit me square in my chest.

Something inside of me seemed to soften and harden at the same time. When it did, I felt my entire being become armor in her defense.

I almost wanted to shake my head. I was protective over Mari, but this was different. This felt like fire in my veins. An anger I wasn’t used to feeling.

It made me feel alive. It made me feel feral.

She shrugged, meeting my eyes through the reflection. “I have not made wise choices in my life, when it comes to men. They never seem to want me in the same way I want them.”

“How’s that?”

She turned toward me. “Like you want her,” she whispered.

Without even having to think about it, my hand reached out and touched her face. My thumb stroked her lip. She breathed out as her eyes closed. When she opened them a second later, they seemed hot enough to burn. It was that same look in her eyes the first night we were together.

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