Page 17 of Ruthless Rebel

“Then give me five minutes, River. Five minutes, then I’m out of your hair for good.”

I swallow past the tightness in my throat and release a measured breath.

“Okay. But ?I'm not answering any questions I don't want to answer.”

“That works.”

I pull out the chair in front of him and sit, wondering what I’m about to get myself into. Did I really have a choice, though? No matter how much I pushed back, he seemed to be determined to get an answer out of me.

Now that I’m in what feels like his lair, my entire body is rigid with tension. I can also feel Kelly watching me. As Talia isn’t across from us anymore, I’m sure she’s joined her and they’re talking about me.

“So,” Jericho begins and steeples his fingers, “when did you get back to New York?”

I blink several times. The last time I saw him, he would have had no reason to think I’d gone anywhere except Juilliard.

“I wasn’t aware you knew I’d left.”

“News travels.”

“Right.” I’m inclined to believe his answer over the possibility of him checking on me. He made it clear before we parted ways that his feelings had changed toward me, so why would he care what happened to me after? His recent checking is different. “I’ve been back in New York for close to ten months now.”

He seems surprised to hear that. “Oh. That’s quite some time.”

“It is. So, what else did the news tell you?” I want to know what he knows. That way, I can prepare myself.

You have to be prepared when you talk to someone like him.

Jericho Grayson has a penchant for finding things others can’t. I’ve never really known exactly how he does it, but he can. The same way he can solve any math equation within seconds and figure out the answer to…anything.

He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.

“The news told me that you stopped dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet.” His jaw tenses, a tell he knows more details than what he’s giving me. It leads me to believe that he must have checked things out. “And you never got married to your fiancé.”

Yes. Hedidcheck me out.

Jericho’s gaze flicks down to my ring finger, bare of the ring that once lived there.

I wonder if he’d believe me if I told him I had to pawn it to buy food. I’ve never told anybody that story.

I still can’t talk about Sasha either. I don’t know when I’ll be able to. My ex-fiancé left a hole in my soul as big as the galaxy. And it wasn’t because of love lost. That would have been better. I could have handled it more than the truth of the lie he was.

That lie is part of the reason Sasha is behind bars in one of Russia’s maximum-security prisons.

I hold my breath and push his deceitful face out of my mind. I don’t want to think about him now, or ever again. Even if I fear the very real possibility that he’ll get out of jail and find out that it was me who put him there.

Jericho’s stare intensifies, and I realizes it’s because I haven’t said anything, so I think of the same lie I’ve been telling those who don’t know the truth.

“It didn’t work out.” My voice holds a rasp of pain. “Neither of them. The Bolshoi Ballet and the engagement.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

For some reason, his answer irritates me, and I recall a movie I once saw with a similar scenario. A girl had run into her ex and got upset with him when he told her he was sorry to hear her engagement was off. At the time, I thought she was overreacting, but now I get it.

She was upset because he was saying she didn’t find happiness with this other guy, but deep down she wanted to be with her ex and have that said happiness with him.

While I don’t wish to go back there with Jericho, I’m annoyed he feels bad that I couldn’t find happiness with someone else.

I know he meant my dancing career, but my mind fixates on the broken engagement.

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