As she approached the stairwell, voices pulled her gaze up. At the end of the hallway, Troy and Duke paused in front of the hotel room doors, talking across the hall.
Something at the center of her body pulled hard. A complex, edgy sensation that made her restless. Maybe even a little reckless. And her mind started pinging with all the unanswerable questions she needed answered but that were as meaningless as the square root of infinity. Why was he acting like such a prick? If he hated her so much, why didn’t he just walk away from her at the club when he’d had the chance? Why hadn’t he humiliated her then? And what about the club? Why did he go there? Was that part of his lifestyle now? Who had he become over the last seven years? And why?
She didn’t really want or expect answers. Even if she got th
em, they wouldn’t change anything. But she did need to settle things between them for the here and now. Her future depended on it. She also had to get something from the past off her chest. He didn’t have to care one way or the other, but she had to tell him. It needed to be said.
“Troy.” She called to him while pushing her feet forward. Both men looked back.
Then Duke said, “Catch you tomorrow” and disappeared into his room.
Instead of turning to face her, Troy disappeared into his room as well.
“Troy—” She hurried forward, but the hard click of the door snapped in her face. A millisecond of shock stilled her. Then her heart raced. Her temper spiked. And she lifted both hands to pound on the door. “Troy Jacobs, grow the fuck up and open this door.”
The door opened a foot with Troy’s body filling the space. “Ellie,” he said, his voice infuriatingly condescending, like he was talking to a child. “Don’t yell in the hall.”
“Let me in. We need to talk. This tension between us is stupid, and it has to end.”
“I’ve had a really long day, with another really long day ahead in about six hours. And unlike you, princess, I don’t have a manager, bodyguards, and personal assistants. I have to take care of all my shit myself. So, no, I’m not letting you in, because talking is the very last thing I feel like doing with you.”
He started to close the door, and Giselle felt as if she were on the verge of insanity. As if she’d been pushed past her breaking point. Her brain felt like it was vibrating inside her skull. Like it was going to short-circuit and explode.
She pushed against the door again. “You’re driving me batshit crazy.”
“No, honey,” he laughed. “You managed that all by yourself.”
Snap. That was it. She’d had it.
She shouldered her way into the foyer of his suite, then spun on him. “I’m done with the eggshells. I have shit to say. If you don’t want to talk, fine. You can listen.”
He slammed the door so hard, the walls rattled. The pictures on the wall shook. Giselle jumped but stood her ground as he turned on her, hands at his hips, gaze furious. And, yes, in the suite’s small hallway, with only one light filtering in from the living room, he was menacing.
“Maybe I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “Did you ever think of that?”
“Why wouldn’t you want to hear me tell you that I’m sorry?”
He pulled in a breath as if he were going to yell, but held it instead, his expression shifting from anger to surprise back to anger. He finally said, “Because it doesn’t matter. You can be as sorry as you want, and it won’t change a goddamned thing. I’m sick of rehashing all this pain.”
Pain. That coupled with the look on his face when she’d first seen him on those stairs at the mixer gave her a little glimpse behind his constant wall of snide disinterest. Something inside urged her to push forward, to dig deeper, validate the fact that he was, in fact, the same man who had once loved her so completely. But to what end? He was right. Bringing back the painful memories wouldn’t change anything in their current lives.
“I don’t want to dredge up bad feelings, I just need you to know—”
“Don’t, Ellie.” He took one big step toward her, his eyes hot.
“I know you felt out of place with the people in our lives all those years ago. And I knew they didn’t treat you right even after I asked them to.”
He closed the distance and gripped both her arms hard, a flicker of panic in his eyes. “Stop it.”
She flinched at the pain but lifted her gaze to his. She talked fast to get all the words out before he threw her out the door. “But tonight, our situations were sort of reversed. And being the outsider gave me a tiny taste of what you went through then. I knew it was bad, but feeling it made me realize how bad it must have felt for you. So much worse than I realized.”
“Goddammit, El. Shut. Up.” He pressed her against the wall. Her heartbeat spiked. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Maybe not. But I just wanted you to know that I always knew they were the problem, not you, and—”
“I know that, El—”
“But I’ve never told you how sorry I was for all the unhappiness it—”