Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(21)

“Okay. Well. Noted. Now we need to talk. It’s important. Can I come in?”

I thought about it for a while. “I’ll give you five minutes, but then you need to leave me the hell alone.”

“It’s important,” he reiterated, face gone solemn again in a way that made me start to panic.

I hid it well; I am an actress after all.

I gave him a long suffering sigh and, knowing it was a terrible idea, knowing I’d regret it now and later, I let in the man that had broken my heart in so many ways that it would never heal again.





CHAPTER





TEN





“Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”

~Laurence J. Peter





“Oh God,” Dante breathed out as I closed the door behind him. “You’ve been baking? It’s like you knew I was coming.” He made a beeline for the kitchen.

“Oh yeah,” I drawled to his back, trailing him slowly. “I made all those cupcakes just for you, you narcissistic ass.”

“Are those German chocolate?” he asked. “Like you used to make?”

“Not quite the same recipe. I tweaked it a bit. Spoiler alert: The secret ingredient now is hate.”

He laughed, shooting me a sideways look out of his devastating eyes that made my traitorous knees go weak. “So you did make them for me.”

I gritted my teeth as he helped himself, but the truth was, though I hadn’t been expecting him, and emphatically did not want him here, I did want him to eat one. He had a surprisingly sweet tooth for a man with a rock hard body, and he’d always loved it when I’d baked for him. He and his sweet tooth was actually the whole reason I’d ever learned to bake.

I wanted him to taste and be reminded of one of the many things he’d thrown away when he’d ruined things with me.

Demi was hovering near the hallway that led to her and Leona’s rooms, looking back and forth between the two of us like she didn’t know what to do.

Dante waved at her, mouth full of food.

She glared at him. Or tried to. It was a baby lamb glare. She looked like she meant it, but it came across like a Disney princess trying to make a mean face for the very first time.

It was adorable and ridiculous. She was a soft-hearted girl, and she had my back, would muster up every meager ounce of hostility inside of her for the sake of me and protecting my notoriously hard heart, and I loved her for it.

“I’m good,” I told her. “I can handle him.”

“I know you can,” she reassured me, still aiming her princess glare Dante’s way. “I’ll give you privacy, but you holler if you need anything, Scarlett dear.”

I bit my lip to keep from outright smiling, because who wouldn’t smile at a twenty-two-year-old who called them dear? God, I liked her. I’d tried to fight it, but Demi was an irresistible sweetheart, damn her. “Thanks, hun,” I told her.

She left with one last adorable sneer at Dante.

“She seems nice. I like her,” Dante said when we were alone.

“She hates you,” I assured him.

His cupcake eating face was not one ounce offended by that. “I’d imagine she does. It boggles the mind, the things she must’ve heard about me. I assume everyone living in this apartment hates my guts?”

“Everyone,” I agreed blandly and unpleasantly.

He finished his first cupcake, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, rummaging around in my kitchen without a qualm, and downed a large cup of water with a few big swallows. “God, that was amazing. You haven’t lost your touch. And by the way, I’m glad to hear I must still be on your mind if your roommates know that much about me.”

I cursed him—a long, fluid tirade.

He didn’t so much as blink. “That was a lot of vowels,” he stated serenely when I’d finally finished.

His calm made my hellish temper boil up at an excessive and alarming rate. I looked away from him and tried to tamp it down. As I’ve said, I have a very healthy fear of my own temper. It has made me do some terrible things.

In my peripheral, Dante continued to watch me as he took a long swig from the bottle of scotch I’d been working on, grimaced briefly (his rich, entitled ass hates cheap scotch), and reached for another cupcake.

“What do you want?” I asked him, yet again.

He took his time answering, finishing off another cupcake, taking another long drink of my subpar scotch before saying, “Just give me a minute to enjoy this, will you? Do you know how long it’s been since I had one of your cupcakes?”

I did, of course. I opened my mouth to answer him when I saw him shrug his shoulders slightly and wince.

He was at an angle to me, and involuntarily, my eyes shot to his back, covered in a suit now, but I still knew what was under there.

He craned his head trying to follow my gaze.

I gave him an insouciant smile. “How’s your back?”

“Scratched me up good, didn’t you?

I shrugged, still smiling.

“I’m flattered you still have that urge.”

My smile died a short, violent death.

“What urge?” I asked through my teeth, mood plummeting to dark with a few careless words from him.