Page 60 of The Devil Gets His Due

One of them places her hand on his bicep and I see red.

I burst out the door. “Hi!” I say, my voice overly bright.

They look me over, assessing how expendable I am. I lean against Graham and place my hand on my belly.Not expendable, bitches.They move along quickly after that.

Graham looks down at me with a brow raised. “What was that?”

“You can do a lot better than those two. The brunette looked like your friend Anna, by the way.”

He glances back at them and shrugs before he starts walking. It’s an insufficient response. I wanted him to say, “I barely remember what she looked like”or“Anna is a monster who hates animals, children, and the poor.”Instead, he’s given me nothing.

“So what happened with you guys anyway?” I ask.

He shoots methatlook. The one that says,“what are you really asking me, Keeley?”I seem to be getting it from him on a daily basis, of late. “I told you this. It was just a relationship of convenience and it ended. That’s it.”

“Whendid it end, though?” I ask. “I mean, the girl sent your mom aChristmasgift.”

I wait for him to deny it. Instead, he scratches the back of his neck, stalling. “It ended in January,” he admits.

I come to a stop, something sinking in my stomach. “Beforewe got married, or after?”

He winces. “Look, we weren’t serious. She met my mom and Walter when they came out to New York last fall, and she struck up this friendship with my mom because…I think because she wanted it to be more. And I ended it the second I met you because I realized she and I were never going anywhere.”

He seems cranky now, and I’m not sure if it’s because I asked the question or because I ruined something for him. Maybe he ended things with this girl because, for a few hours, I wasDrunk Keeley, the version of me who is endlessly fun and makes big promises she can’t fulfill. Except…I wasn’t endlessly fun with him. Not at first anyway.

“It was over before I ever slept with you, if that’s what you’re about to ask.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “I remember being pretty awful to you.”

“I guess you weren’t awful enough.” A half-smile tugs at his lips. “And later that night you weren’t awful at all.”

A sharp spike of lust hits me. “But I was always calling you boring, and cheap, and not fun.”

He steps closer, his eyes resting on my face. “There’s something in the way you lob an insult, Keeley, that makes it sound an awful lot like foreplay. Every single time you call meboring”—his gaze falls to my mouth for one long moment—“it feels like you’re hoping I’ll pin you down and fuck you, simply to prove you wrong.”

Fuck.My core clenches hard at those words. Even if he has wildly misunderstood me.

I do think he’s boring. Well, somewhat boring.

But I also like the way his nostrils flare when I say it. I might like the way it leads to that slow perusal of his and the cord it tugs inside me.

I might think he’s boring, but that there’s an opposite side to him, too, something fierce and overwhelming, and I want to set it free.

He walks away, so I straggle after him, wanting to tell him how wrong he was and wondering, increasingly, if he had it right on the nose.

Every single timeyou call me boring, it feels like you’re hoping I’ll pin you down and fuck you, simply to prove you wrong.

We’re back at my apartment and I’m disconsolately flipping through channels on the TV. I no longer have Lola to distract me, so all I can think about is him and those words falling from his pretty mouth. And then I picture him acting on it, with someone other than me, and I’m turned on and angry all at the same time.

“You’re in a bad mood tonight,” he says, sitting beside me. “Do I need to agree to watchBridgerton?”

“I don’t feel like watching Daphne get laid right now,” I mutter. “Fucking Daphne.”

“Is this about the duke again?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

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