“That looks comfy.” Gideon observed while I alternated glaring at him and trying unsuccessfully to ignore him.
I vowed never to speak to him again, but I only managed to make that last five minutes. “Why would they do this to us?”
Gideon snorted scornfully. “Isn’t it obvious? They want us to talk.”
“Oh good.” I shot him a glare. “Were there any incredibly hurtful things you forgot to say last time? Because now’s your chance.”
He returned my glare and then looked off in a different direction.
This was going to be a long night. If I ever got out of here, I was going to channel my aggression toward Gideon and use it to punch their stupid heads in.
After at least twenty minutes of stony silence, Gideon got up and wove through the towers of boxes to the back of the basement. I wondered if he needed to find a corner to pee in. I also wondered if a stack of boxes would topple over and bury him for good.
A girl could hope.
But I heard him rummaging around out of sight for a few minutes. Then he returned a few minutes later with a bottle of wine, a canteen, and a pencil. The assortment was odd enough to make me more curious than pissed.
He sat back on the couch and set the canteen aside. Then he fumbled around with the pencil and the bottle of wine for a while. It looked like he was trying to draw on the cork. Yeah, that was a good use of his time.
“What the hell are you doing?” I finally snapped.
“Someone showed me a party trick in college—how to open a bottle of wine with a pencil.”
“Not possible.” I scoffed as I folded my arms and crossed my legs, staring in the opposite direction. But five minutes later, I heard him make a triumphant noise. I tried to ignore it, but eventually I had to look over there. He’d worked the cork off and was pouring red liquid into the canteen.
I looked away, refusing to glance in his direction until I heard his footsteps. “Do you want the canteen or the bottle?” He held both out.
I didn’t want anything from him. Except… hell, maybe if I got drunk, I could forget who I was trapped here with.
I grabbed the bottle which was the slightly less dusty of the two.
“You’re welcome,” Gideon muttered as he walked back to the couch with the canteen.
I took a long swig of wine and nearly choked. It seemed stronger than the stuff Brady had served upstairs. “What the hell’s your problem?”
Gideon sank down on the couch, took his own drink of wine, and glared right back at me. “My problem? Neither of us would be here right now if you hadn’t randomly decided to be a total bitch toward us all those months ago. Seriously, who does that? Who lashes out at strangers with the sole purpose of bringing them down?”
Me.
I did that. I couldn’t deny it, and I couldn’t defend it, but I’d given it a lot of thought in the last few weeks and I’d come to at least a partial explanation of why I’d acted the way I had.
I kept drinking while I contemplated if I wanted to tell him about it. I didn’t owe him anything, at least not now that he’d hurt me far more than I’d ever hurt him.
Taking another swig of wine, I stared at him. So much pain from such a handsome man.
“What?” he growled as I kept staring at him.
I couldn’t tell him. I just couldn’t. But then I did. “I think I recognized you.”
“What?” He glared at me. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying with all the racket from the rec room.
“I recognized you in thoseDown to Earthvideos.”
Gideon must’ve heard me, because he scoffed. “You’re rewriting history.”
“No, I’m not.”
Instead of looking angry, he looked puzzled and I realized he hadn’t heard me.