I look around as if he’s seriously asking me why I’ve apologized. “Clearly, I’m trying to make this shitty situation a little more tolerable. But now I think that would require you to be someone who’s tolerable to be around, not just nice to look at.”
“So, you think I’m attractive?”
I bite my tongue as he takes a step closer.
“No.” I stiffen my nose, standing my ground.
“That’s what you just said— that I’m nice to look at.”
“I just meant—“ I look down at the book in his hands. “Why are you reading that?”
“This?” He lifts it up to me, and I squint my eyes at his stupid question. “Because it’s fun to read.”
“You like history?”
“You don’t?”
“I prefer fiction.”
“I thought you were smart?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, shouldn’t smart people like scholastic shit?”
“There’s so much wrong with that question.”
“What?”
“Scholastic. Do you even know what that means?”
“Do you?”
I huff and turn around, but he grabs my wrist with a chuckle, pulling me back to him.
“Lighten up, I’m just teasing you.”
“Oh, insulting people is your way of teasing?”
“No.” He breathes. “It’s my way of flirting.” The look in his eyes, and the soft tone he’s shifted his voice to, throws me off for a second. The center of me is dizzy, and I’ve forgotten how to speak. What is happening to me? I force myself to take a step back from him, and he chuckles, like he knows how my body reacted to him.
“This’ll be fun.” He smirks and opens the book up again, leaning against a bookshelf.
“You and I have extremely diverse ideas of what’s fun.” I cross my arms over my chest, and he breathes a laugh through his nose. It’s like nothing bothers him. He seems to get pleasure out of making me squirm, and I hate it. Hate him more than I did moments ago, and fear this hate will soon become unmanageable.
This is much worse than being dutifully affectionate towards a suitor. This is pure abhorrence, and I refuse to marry a man I can’t even stand to be in the same room as, let alone breathe the same air.
That’s the problem, though– this is a ride I cannot get off. I’m stuck in the front row, tipping over the edge and falling away from myself. From the last bit of control I had left in my life. This is it, this is who I’m stuck with, Adrik the asshole Mikhailov.
I can’t imagine it getting much worse than this.
ADRIK
A FEW HOURS EARLIER
“That is it, Adrik. We are not doing this anymore. I’m not bailing your ass out again. Either you step up to your responsibilities, or you will be exiled.”
There are many things about life I find amusing. My father yelling at me in the middle of the night while I’m drunk, is not one of those things. He’s got that purple flush to his skin from screeching so loudly— veins popping, eyes bulging, fists raised to teach me a lesson.