Page 53 of Adam
If there’s one thing stopping me from slamming her against the wall right now, it’s how much I enjoy watching her falter every time our eyes meet. That nervous laugh, the way she trips over her own words. It’s better than foreplay, and I can’t resist pushing it a little further.
“That’s a hard one.” I click my tongue. “I hate P!nk for sure.”
“What? I love her.”I know that, baby, but teasing you is more fun.“You’re crazy.”
“I know that.”
She snorts. “Birthday?”
“July 3.”Should I tell her I already know hers is March 28?
Her eyes travel all over my arms. “Favorite tattoo?”
I push myself up to sit, tugging the sleeve of my T-shirt higher, exposing my upper arm. “This one.”
She scrunches her face. “Mickey Mouse?”
“Mickey freaking Mouse!”
“Any special reason his eyes are Xs?”
“Yeah. He saw things he shouldn’t have.” I raise a brow, tilting my head forward. She catches the joke and smiles coyly.
“Any tattoo with a meaning?”
“Not really.”
Suddenly, awkward silence stretches across the room. She sits still and awkward, like her little interview’s over and she’s run out of reasons to keep me here or doesn’t know how to entertain me.
Little does she know she doesn’t have to say a damn thing.
She entertains me just fine with those fleeting glances she pretends aren’t there.
But I see them.
Every. Single. One.
And I wait for the next like it’s a fucking reward.
“Now my turn,” I say abruptly, cutting through the silence. Her eyes snap back to mine. “Don’t you have any friends?”
“No,” she replies quietly, as if she’s embarrassed about it.
“How’s that possible?”
She lets out a long sigh.
“I was always the rich brat,” she says flatly. “Or the messed-up kid no one wanted around. That’s what they used to call me at school.” She shifts forward, elbow on the armrest, face buried in her palm. “No girl ever wanted to be my friend. I still don’t even know why.” She gives a small, bitter shrug. “Maybe it was the bodyguards. Maybe it was just me.”
Her eyes flick up to mine. They’re wet, but she’s holding it in. “Have you noticed no one talks to me with respect? Orat all?” Her voice sharpens. “No one ever brings it up. I don’t know what my father threatened them with, but it worked. I was surrounded by people, and not one of them ever said a real word to me.”
She exhales, something between a laugh and a sigh. “Not the nanny or the maids. Not even my mother, if you can call her that.” She pauses, her voice dropping. “I’ve been alone for as long as I can remember.”
She speaks the words, and my mind fractures. I can’t stop thinking about them. Her father. Her mother. Every fucking person who ever touched her world, every stranger who dared to make her shrink even for a second.
My poor little orchid.
If she only knew how I can fucking relate to her. If she only knew how alike we really are. She grew up alone. Lonely as hell, cut off, shoved in the dark. And I look at her and it’s like staring at every wound I’ve ever carried, every night I wanted to tear the world apart just to feel less empty.
