Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,122
and slide sideways into Tanner’s sideboard. The entire thing jostles so hard that a pitcher rocks on its base and tips my direction, its contents spilling over the side of the furniture to splash down on top of me.
My teeth slam together and I lift my hands to notice that instead of water, the pitcher was filled with red liquid, my suit now fucking ruined as the red shit soaks into the fabric.
Head rolling over the floor, I stare up at the asshole who hasn’t budged an inch except for the slight tilt at the corner of his mouth.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice absent of actual concern. “Hope that suit wasn’t expensive.”
“There’s no emergency, is there?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“Nope,” he answers, his lips popping on the word.
“I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Tanner grins and tosses a pen onto the surface of his desk before pulling his feet down to stand up from his chair. Grabbing the strap of his bag, he keeps his eyes trained on me while settling it over his shoulder.
“I took a page from your girl’s playbook. Sex lube is slick as shit, isn’t it? You really should watch where you’re going. You might get hurt one of these days.”
Laughter shakes his shoulders, and he grins like he’s won the war. Walking my direction, Tanner steps over me rather than offering a hand to help me up, his foot sliding just a bit in the lube as he heads out of his office.
“Payback’s a bitch, Gabe. Remember that next time you want to fuck with me.”
He pauses. “Oh, and that was ink I added to the water that spilled. Also a touch of glitter since I remember how much you loved it in high school. Good luck scrubbing it off your skin.”
Chuckling again, he leaves his office as the back of my head lowers to the floor. The sound of the elevator dinging open is faint a few seconds later.
Closing my eyes, I lick my tongue against my top teeth and silently vow to teach Tanner a valuable lesson in the next few days.
. . .
My hand tightens over the steering wheel at the soft laughter coming from the passenger seat.
Casting her a narrow-eyed glare, I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling at the way Ivy fights the urge to laugh harder, her gaze sneaking peeks at my hands as she rolls her lips into a tight line.
“Don’t even say it,” I warn, barely hiding the humor in my voice.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes, her words strained. Laughter bleeds over her lips, the sound reminiscent of a leaky balloon. “It just looks like you fistfucked a unicorn.”
Her face is red from fighting the fucking giggles.
It didn’t matter that I’d scrubbed my skin for over an hour, the red ink and bullshit glitter stuck.
After scrubbing, the red dulled to a pink, the glitter catching light every time I move my hand a certain way. It only makes the staining look worse.
“Tanner is a dead man as soon as we’re done with your dad. The son of a bitch has declared a war I refuse to let him win.”
Ivy wipes a tear from her eye. “Technically, I started it.”
“Yeah, well, now I’m your ally, so we’re fighting on the same team for once.”
Her eyes snap my direction. “You mean that?”
Yeah, I think, I do.
It only took eighteen years for me to pull my head out of ass to figure out that beneath the hatred I’d felt for Ivy - beneath the need I had to destroy her - she truly was the only person who could distract me from the bullshit in my life.
That not only counts for something, in many ways, it counts for everything.
Reaching over, I tangle my fingers with hers. “We kept each other breathing, right?”
Her expression softens, the giggles gone and replaced by shock. “Careful with that. The sky might open up and strike us down with another storm for joining forces.”
“We are the storm, love. There’s not much the world can do to us now,” I say as I turn the wheel to take us off the main highway en route to her father’s house.
A few seconds of silence pass before she sighs and looks out the side window.
“Maybe we should postpone seeing my dad. I mean, number one, it’s not good that you’re walking in there looking like you just strangled an entire village of pink marshmallow Peeps...”