Breathe. Do not yell. Do not throw the bowl of tomatoes at his head.
“Were you going to tell me we’re expecting guests, or was this supposed to be a surprise?” My fingers strangled the strap of my bag. “Or am I not invited to the meal altogether?”
Greta chopped faster, her eyes fixed firmly on the garlic.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dante said.
Ridiculous?Ridiculous?
My patience snapped clean in half.
I’d tried my best to be sympathetic, but I was sick of him treating me like a stranger he was forced to share a house with. After the magic of Paris and the progress we’d made over the past few months, our relationship had suddenly regressed to where it’d been the summer of last year.
Then, it’d been understandable.
Now, after all we’d shared? It was unacceptable.
“Which part is ridiculous?” I demanded. “The part where I ask my fiancé for the common courtesy of informing me when we have guests over toourhouse? Or the part where we’ve grown so far apart in the space of one week that I wouldn’t be surprised if youdidexclude me? I’d like to know, because I’m damn well not the one being unreasonable here!”
Greta’s knife hovered, suspended, over the cutting board while she gaped at me with wide eyes.
It was the first time I’d raised my voice in front of her since I moved in and only the fourth time I’d raised my voice, ever. The first had been when my sister “borrowed” and lost one of my favorite signed books in high school. The second had been when my parents forced me to break up with Heath, and the third had been the night Dante found Heath in the apartment.
Dante’s skin stretched taut over his cheekbones.
The tension was so stifling it took on a life of its own, crawling into my lungs and sinking into my skin. The air-conditioned room blazed like we were in the middle of the desert at high noon.
“I just remembered I’m expecting a grocery delivery soon,” Greta said. “Let me check where they are.”
She dropped her knife and bolted faster than an Olympian competing for gold.
Normally, I would’ve been embarrassed about making a scene, but I was too fired up to care.
“It’s a dinner,” Dante growled. “Christian didn’t tell me he’d be in town until yesterday. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“Then you could’ve told me he was coming over yesterday!” My voice rose again before I forced more oxygen through my nose. “It’s not about the dinner, Dante. It’s about yourrefusalto communicate like a normal person. I thought we were past this.” Emotion clogged my throat. “We promised we wouldn’t do this. Act like strangers. Shut down whenever things got hard. We’re supposed to be partners.”
Dante rubbed a hand over his face. When it fell away, I glimpsed the conflict in his eyes—remorse and guilt at war with frustration and something else that chilled the breath in my lungs.
“There are some things you’re better off not knowing,mia cara.” The endearment I’d initially despised and grown to love barely touched my skin before it dissolved. Soft yet rough, like the churn of waves in a raging storm.
The wistful notes lingered for an extra beat before his face shut down again.
“I’ll see you at dinner.”
He walked out, leaving me with a pit in my stomach and the unshakeable sense that our relationship had somehow been fundamentally altered.
CHAPTER33
Vivian
Dante and I barely exchanged a word during dinner. I did, however, push his fish into his vegetables when he wasn’t looking and delighted in his look of absolute horror when he saw his food had touched.
Besides that one petty act of retribution for his behavior, I focused my attention on Christian and his girlfriend Stella. Christian was perfectly charming, as always, but something about him made me uneasy. He reminded me of a wolf dressed in perfectly tailored sheep’s clothing.
Stella, on the other hand, was warm and friendly, if a bit shy. We spent the majority of dinner discussing travel, astrology, and her new ambassadorship with the fashion label Delamonte, which was, coincidentally, a Russo Group brand.
As far as last-minute dinner guests went, it could’ve been much worse.