Still, she recovers quickly. “I don’t need to do anything dramatic,” she says. “I just need to ruin your position here.”
“My position here is already ruined.”
That stops her too.
Because it’s true. There is no good ending for me in this house.
I take another slow breath and ask, “Why are you really here?”
She blinks.
“Because this isn’t about me,” I say. “Not really. This is about the fact that he paid attention to me in front of you, and you can’t stand not being the center of the room.”
Her face changes immediately. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No,” I say. “I think I do.”
She steps closer so fast I almost think she’ll shove me again. Instead she stops just short of it and says through her teeth, “Stay away from both of them.”
Ethan and Viktor.
The son she’s marrying and the father she can’t control.
I wonder suddenly if she even hears herself anymore.
I meet her gaze and say, very quietly, “You should leave before you make this worse.”
She holds my eyes for a second longer, then lifts her phone, gives the screen one last deliberate tap, and slips it back into her pocket. “This was your warning,” she says. “You won’t get another one.”
Then she turns and walks out.
This time I lock the door the second she’s gone. I stand there for a moment with my hand still on the knob, breathing too hard for someone who barely moved. Then I lean my forehead against the wood and close my eyes.
Wonderful.
Just wonderful.
There’s another knock, and I freeze. For one stupid second I think Camille has come back.
The knock comes a second time, quieter now, but more certain.
I don’t move at first. I just stand there with my hand still on the lock, heart thudding too hard, listening.
Then his voice comes through the door. “Sienna.”
Everything in me pulls toward it.
That’s the problem.
Raw and immediate and humiliating in how strong it is. My whole body still knows him. My mouth still remembers him. My skin still feels too tight from the last time he touched me. If I open this door, I know exactly what will happen. He’ll step inside, look at me once, and whatever shaky resolve I’ve managed to scrape together in the last five minutes will be gone.
I want him. That’s the truth.
I want his hands on me. His mouth. His weight. I want to crawl back into the bed I just left and let him ruin my ability to think all over again.
And that is exactly why I can’t let him in.
He tries the handle. The lock holds.