How did you stay with him for so long?
Because he hadn’t shown her this side immediately. She hadn’t gone on her first date and looked for exits. She hadn’t woken up from their first overnight together fearful for her safety. A frog in slowly boiling water. “Spit out whatever you want to say, Peter.”
“Have a seat.”
“No.”
His face darkened. “You—”
Her phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her pocket.
“You’re talking to me, put your damn phone away.”
“It’s for work,” she lied. Peter might be wholly lacking in empathy, but he would understand work.
It was, actually, a text from her mother, with something silly about the engagement party. She ignored it and, listening to her instincts, clicked on Samson’s name.
Please come to my room. Right now. If I don’t answer, open the door, no matter what you hear or don’t hear.
It didn’t matter if Samson barging in would confirm Peter’s assumptions about the two of them. She didn’t want to be alone with her ex. She tucked the phone away and hoped Samson would get the text soon and that his recent coolness wouldn’t extend to ignoring her now.
“You want to work on our presentations together?” Peter’s smile was smarmy.
She snorted.
“Please, Rhiannon. It’s been years. Can’t we put this unpleasantness behind us and be colleagues? I’m sorry for the way you felt you were treated when you left Swype.”
The way she felt she’d been treated, and not the way he’d treated her. Ugh, this asshole. “Peter. Get out of my room. Go away.”
Once when they’d been dating, he’d told her that men thought in black and white, that they were literal creatures, and she’d taken issue with the flip-side assumption of that statement: that women were emotional, wishy-washy, shades-of-gray ambiguous creatures. Funny enough, he didn’t seem to have enough self-awareness to understand his argument was full of holes pierced by his own behavior. He’d never been able to take simple, direct orders. Not from her, at least.
He ignored her literal go away now too, though his mask slipped. “Bet you wouldn’t tell Samson to go away. You seem chummy.”
Aw shit. “We’ve been working together.”
“You’re closer than colleagues.”
“You’re hallucinating.”
“Am I? I think you’re sleeping with him. If so, it’s unfair you have an inside track on this bid.”
“It’s not an in. Samson doesn’t have enough ownership in this company to make any kind of difference. I need to prepare my presentation for tomorrow. Now please leave.”
The smile dropped, and so did any illusion that he wasn’t an asshole. “If you think fucking that idiot football player is going to get you anything but a lousy lay, you’re as stupid as I always thought you were.”
“Lousy lay? If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black.”
His cheeks flushed red. “I could show him the pictures.”
She went rigid. “You know what happens when you go down that route.”
A knock came on the door. It startled Peter enough that he stepped away. Before either of them could speak, the door opened and Samson stuck his head in the opening.
She’d never been happier to see someone.
Confusion crossed Samson’s face as he took in Peter’s presence. “Excuse me. I didn’t realize something was—” Then his gaze fell on Rhiannon’s face, and he stopped and shoved the door wider, stepping over the threshold. “Is everything okay in here?”
“Everything’s fine,” Peter snapped.
“Peter was just leaving,” she said, with as much calm as she could muster.
“I was not.”
“I want you to leave,” she insisted, dropping all pretense.
“But you want him here? I see what’s going on.” That familiar cold fury was in Peter’s voice, the fury she’d always shrank away from toward the end of their relationship. “Fuck you, you bitch—” He strangled on the last word because Samson strangled him.
It took a blink. That was all. The same fraction of a second it might take someone to swipe right or left on a photo.
Samson pinned her ex against the wall with his arm across Peter’s throat. “If I hit you,” Samson said, in a calm, quiet tone, the same chilling tone he’d used when the drunk on the rooftop had called him the Curse, “I could kill you. Do you see how that’s possible?”
Peter gave a short nod, his range of motion limited by Samson’s grip.
“I don’t care what your relationship with Rhiannon was, but if you ever speak to her like that again, if you ever ignore her request to leave her alone, I will find you. One hit is all it would take. Understand?”
“Yes,” Peter choked out.
Samson waited a beat, then stepped back, releasing him. “Leave,” he said, and Peter bolted like his feet were on fire.
Samson closed the door and looked at Rhiannon. “You okay?”
She should say yes. She should nod and grab her sweatshirt and put it on. Layers on layers. No vulnerabilities.
But instead, she sank to the side of the bed and dropped her head into her shaking hands. The bed depressed next to her, and a big hand rubbed up and down her back in a soothing motion.
This wasn’t so much a reaction to Peter scaring her, though that was part of it. No, this was about Samson.
He’d come, right when she’d asked him to. She hadn’t really even doubted that he’d come, not if he got her text. When had she decided to trust him like that? When was the last time she’d dared to trust a man like that?
Hope, her enemy. It had crept in and taken root.
The remnants of fear and anxiety twisted her up inside. He scooted closer and she pressed herself against him, pathetically grateful for his warmth. “I’m scared of the dark.”
“What?”
Her words spilled over each other. “It’s me. Not Peter. My little brother went missing one day during a game of hide-and-seek. I went looking for him and got locked in a shed. They didn’t find me for almost nine hours.” Her mom’s employer had taken an ax to the door, because no one had had a key to the old shed. She could still recall the smell of her mother’s sweat when they’d gotten her out. “I’m not claustrophobic, but I can’t stand the dark.”
He seemed to know exactly what she needed and when, because he shifted and drew her into his lap. He squeezed her so hard, she made a noise. He loosened his grip immediately, but she rested her hand on his arm. “No, you know I like being held like that. Can you do it again?”
He squinted at her, but obliged. “You’ll have to tell me if I hurt you.”
“Tighter,” she said instead, and murmured happily when he complied. Her own little head-to-toe compression force.
“You two had a personal relationship? You and Peter?”
She was held so snug, it was like she was in her own world of comfort, a world where she could confess anything. “Peter and I dated when I was at Swype. He had pursued me for years, and it was flattering. He was a great boyfriend at first. Then he stopped being a great boyfriend. He started to make me feel . . . small. I hated it. It took me a couple months, but I ended things.”