Page 122 of Sweet Ruin

Now?

Now?!

Nope. As far as his eyeline is concerned, I’m the only thing in the room worth looking at.

I want that to be flattering—and don’t get me wrong, it is.

But I’ve spent thirty-one years learning that no one ever spends time looking at me when there’s something as beautiful as her to look at instead.

He just hasn’t noticed yet. Once he does, he’ll forget I ever existed.

Yet as more and more time passes, I lose my patience. Finally, I’ve had enough.

“You’re really not going to look?”

He frowns, perplexed. “At what?”

I tip my head toward the door. “That.”

Kane finally glances in that direction.

But it’s like he resents every inch that his eyes have to travel. His brow is furrowed, his jaw clenched, his hands tight at his side. As if it hurts him to look at her.

Even once he does, he doesn’t linger. Half a second, maybe less, before he swings his attention back toward me.

“Alisa Vetrova,” he says. “Her father rinses money out of a chop shop in Brighton Beach. She’ll be gone before the ball drops.”

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“What else would you like?”

“She’s the most beautiful woman in this building. Maybe in this universe, actually.”

Kane’s mouth screws up. “No,” he says, “she isn’t.”

“Oh, come on. You have eyeballs. Do they work? I’m not normally inclined like that, but even I have a raging girl crush on her.”

But Kane shows no signs of being swayed by my arguments. “She’s ornamental. As empty inside as a matryoshka doll.” He drinks his champagne. “I’ve seen a hundred of her, and they’re each more disappointing than the last.”

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t nice to look at,” I mumble into my drink.

I don’t know why I keep going at this.

It’s like poking a bruise. I know what’s under there and I want to feel it anyway. I want him to say the thing everybody always says, in some polite version of it. Yeah, she’s a knockout.

Is that so hard? Just admit it, and then the world will go back to how it always has been. At least I’ll know where I stand in it.

But he won’t even give me that.

Instead, he’s standing here, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the obvious pecking order. There’s her, there’s all the other lifeforms above and below sea level, and then there’s me. The choice, if he had to make it, is obvious.

So why won’t he?

Just confirm the truth of it, dammit.

Stop being so fucking chivalrous.

Honestly, it’s pissing me off.