She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “I know you. And I know that right now, the thing you want most is to get the fuck out of here. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Baby, there’s just a lot of stupid shit going through my head. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t need to.”
Mila marveled over how someone could be only a few feet away from her yet seem so damn unreachable. Honestly, she might as well have been speaking to him through plate glass. He hadn’t just withdrawn, he’d withdrawn from her. Had become distant and remote. And his “I don’t want to talk about it” was said with such finality that she knew there would be no getting him to share. No, he’d pulled down all the shutters. And she felt . . . alone.
“I imagine you’re thinking you should go home to process it all,” she said with a mocking edge to her tone. Oh, he’d be making excuses to himself about why he wanted to leave; he’d be telling himself it would be good for them. “You’re thinking you should spend a night in your own bed for a change, right?” She pursed her lips. “Maybe that’s true.”
“If you want me to leave, just say so.”
“If you want to go, go.”
“Jesus, what’s crawled up your ass?”
Her chuckle was void of humor. “Oh, I’m not gonna make this easy for you, Dominic. I’m not gonna be provoked into tossing you out of here. If you want to leave, you’re going to have to make the choice yourself. But if you do leave, don’t come back.”
Dominic frowned. “You’re saying I can’t ever leave this apartment unless I intend to end the relationship?”
“You’re going to play stupid now? Really? This is the ditch you want to die in?”
“You just said if I leave, I can’t come back.”
Her cat rumbled a growl at his derisive tone. Yeah, Mila didn’t like it much either, but she also knew the disrespect wasn’t real. He just wanted to provoke her.
“Tell me, Dominic, why should I waste my time on someone who could walk out on me after the crap that happened today?” Hell, she’d almost died from whatever drug the cheetah had pumped into her. “I don’t know what’s put you in self-protective mode, but you’re there. I see it. You’re giving off ‘Don’t touch me’ vibes, and you shot me down before I could even ask you to share what’s bothering you.”
He scoffed. “What the fuck is self-protective mode? You’re making this out to be bigger than it is. Like I said, I just have dumb shit going through my head. That’s all.”
“So you’re not itching to walk out that door and go home? The idea of staying here with me for the rest of the evening and throughout the night doesn’t bother you?”
Dominic ground his teeth. “Why would it?”
Mila shook her head. “Never pegged you for a coward, GQ.”
“Says the person who wanted to enter an arranged mating so that she wouldn’t have to put her emotions on the line,” he sniped.
“I’m not throwing you out of here, Dominic, no matter how personal you get. You want to leave, you leave.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. I’m starting to think you want me gone.”
Mila slowly stood. “You’re right, I don’t want you here.”
Dominic’s stomach bottomed out as hurt rocketed through him. He fisted his hands, ignoring the panic that now clawed at him. He was losing her with every word he spoke. And yet, he couldn’t seem to shut the fuck up.
“I don’t want you here . . . because I know you don’t want to be here.” With a calm she didn’t feel, Mila cleared the table. She expected him to push up from the table and storm out, but he didn’t. He would, though. Any second now he’d leave.
In the kitchen, she rinsed off the dishware and stacked the dishwasher, using the mundane chore to distract her from the anxiety churning in her stomach. When she walked into the living area, it was to find him settled on the sofa watching TV. But he wasn’t truly settled. He was still tense as a fucking bow. Still raring to walk out whether he wanted to admit it or not. And she wasn’t about to sit there and wait for him to do it.
Leaving him to brood, Mila did her laundry and tidied the apartment. By the time she was done, he was still watching TV. Still strung as tight as piano wire. And pointedly ignoring her. Whatever. Her cat took a swipe at him, but her claws were surprisingly sheathed. The feline was worried about him almost as much as she was annoyed with him.
Mila changed into a camisole top and matching shorts, settled in bed with her laptop, and chose a movie to watch. Emotionally drained after the shitty day she’d had, she fell asleep at some point only to jolt awake just as the laptop was beginning to slide off her lap. Cursing, she switched it off and put it on the nightstand.
She could hear the TV in the living room and sensed that Dominic was still in the apartment. That sure surprised her, but she wasn’t hopeful that he’d stay. No, he was a million miles away right then. Only he could close that distance, and he didn’t seem prepared to do it. Still, though, she wasn’t tossing him out, even though her sense of pride told her she should tear a strip off his hide. Nope. He’d have to take that walk himself.
Turning onto her side, she closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. She was just nodding off when the bedroom floorboards creaked. The TV was now off, she realized. Instead of using the bathroom and undressing as he usually did before bed, he sank onto the mattress behind her. He’d come to say goodbye, she thought. Come to admit he wasn’t ready for what had grown between them.
Swallowing around the knot of emotion clogging her throat, Mila said nothing. Just waited for him to say some little spiel and leave.
Adjusting the pillow slightly, Dominic sighed. “I was a replacement baby, you know,” he said, his voice low. “After my parents lost Tobias and became unhappy in their mating, they had me to ‘fix’ it. To bring them back together. To give them someone else to love. Only they didn’t love me. Not really. You’re thinking I’m wrong. That of course they loved me—they were my parents. But it’s not always that simple. It should be, but it’s not.
“I look uncannily like Tobias, and I think that hurt my parents. Made it almost painful for them to look at me. But at the same time, they loved that they had a living reminder of the son they’d lost. I was always compared to him, and I never came out on top. It disappointed them if I didn’t like what he’d liked, or if I wasn’t good at what he’d been good at. It was like they could never quite separate me from him in their minds.”
Mila squeezed her eyes shut, her chest hurting at the picture he was painting. She wondered if he knew that the loneliness he’d felt back then rang clear in his tone. Her cat leaned into him, wanting to soothe.
“I was never allowed in his room,” Dominic went on. “They hadn’t boxed up his stuff, they’d left it all exactly as it had been when he died. It was like a shrine to him. My mother would sleep there sometimes. I’d hear her crying, but I learned fast that there was no point in going to her. She didn’t want comfort. She clung to the guilt, wore it like a badge.