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I watched his lips purse. I swear the more mean his mouth twisted the handsomer he was. It was out of hand. I squirmed in my seat.
"Not him," he said, tone hard. "You'll break it off with him, of course. I don't want you to stay tied to him for any reason, not even as an excuse."
"There was nothing going on between me and Anton. Never has been." I saw his face. "I was messing with you. Again." I caught his expression. "I don't know how you can be surprised. I'm not going to say it's your fault that I did it, but you made it too easy. Irresistible for me. And do you have any clue how angry I was?"
"That hurt," he said simply.
"Yes, it did," I agreed, just as simply. "And Anton's perfect as a cover, if I need one. No one ever wants to believe that we really are just friends."
His mouth twisted bitterly. "That's understandable. You are a very convincing couple.
"I told you, we are strictly friends."
"You think that doesn't make me jealous, too? I see how close you are."
"Would you rather I not have had anybody when I didn't have you? Did you want me to be alone?"
I saw I'd gone too far, as I tended to. I corrected the behavior with a quick and necessary subject change. "What do I need the cover for, anyway? Is your mother having me followed?"
"Worse and better."
I cocked my head to the side. "How so?"
"You've been living with one of her spies."
"Excuse me?" I asked him slowly, carefully, as though the way it came out might affect the answer.
"My mother has had someone close to you for quite some time. She knows things that only one of your roommates could know. So we have to be very careful. All of your living habits are being reported to her. That's why you still have to stay there some nights. Why you have to have a cover for the nights that you spend with me. It could be worse. At least they're all gone half the week with work."
It could be worse? I gave him a look of accusing bafflement. "One of my closest friends has been betraying me to your mother?"
He sucked in a breath, punched it out, and said, "Yes, I'm afraid so. Any clue which one it might be?"
I shook my head. I only knew one thing. No matter which one it was, if he was right, it would hurt like hell when I figured it out.
And in the meantime, there was the hurt of doubting three women who had each come to mean the world to me in their own ways.
Farrah, who made me laugh every day, rain or shine. Demi, who made my heart lighter and less cynical. Or Leona, who had taught me what it meant to have girlfriends, to need them, to know the power of being supported by other women.
It was only after a while that I realized Dante and I had been staring at each other. His expression mirrored mine exactly, a moment of perfect understanding, that I'd only ever had with him, where I realized that we were taking the same information and doing the same pragmatic thing with it, processing it identically.
His mouth twisted up bitterly, but his eyes were affectionate on me, and I realized he'd just come to the same conclusion.
It was just another thing I'd made myself forget: The way we dissected life, with a razor-sharp cynicism that held just the perfect amount of shining optimism peppered in. Who else could ever love that about me the way he did?
What was a partner, if not someone who made you feel less alone in the universe? Someone who validated your existence just by understanding you completely and loving you anyway?
Jesus, I was in trouble.
"Just be careful," he finally said. "You can't let any of them know that you suspect them. You have to behave as if each one is the culprit."
I hated that, hated it, but I knew he was right. It was too much to risk if he was that certain one of them was spying on me.
"We'll know who it is soon enough," he continued. "If they're on my mother's payroll to spy on you, they'll be quitting the airline job soon. Adelaide wouldn't be satisfied with a part-timer."
"It can't be Leona," I said finally. "She and I go too far back."
"I'd say she's the least likely, but better to be safe. Like I said, we'll know soon enough."
