That term of endearment was like nails on a chalkboard, and I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. “I’ve been trying to let you do that, call me babe. But I just can’t anymore.” I took my bag from him, rang the buzzer for Mom’s unit, identifiable by her name printed on the label. “Please, please don’t call me babe. Or anything else like that. I know it’s weird, but it’s a thing with me. So, please don’t.”
He was silent a moment. “Okay,” he said, looking away.
And that was it.
I eyed him. “I’m sorry, Myles. I’m just—it’s a thing.”
He nodded, but he wasn’t looking at me. “I got it. It’s a thing. No cutesy pet names. Lex or Lexie.” A pause. “I guess I thought maybe that didn’t apply to me, since we’re…” he trailed off. “Never mind. I thought wrong. Message received.”
My heart sank—I’d hurt him. Pissed him off. “Please try to understand, Myles. I care about you. It just rubs me the wrong way and I hate it. It’s not you.”
He nodded, and I saw right through the fake grin he put on for me—it was the stage-Myles grin, the ten-thousand-watt mega-star grin. The smile that surely had melted the panties off thousands of women, the grin that had been splashed across tabloids andPeople, Time,Newsweek, Rolling Stone, GQ, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, even a two-page modeling spread inVanity Fair.Thatgrin.
The one that hid the real Myles North from the world.
“I got you, Lex. It’s cool.” The wink.
I hated the wink.
You know what I hate almost as much as pet names and talking about emotions? Winking. It’s stupid.
He could get away with it once in a while because he was Myles Fucking North, and for sure a future Sexiest Man Alive. But I hated it.
He did it because he knew it annoyed me, because it made me roll my eyes and huff in irritation.
This time, he did it to piss me off.
“Hello, sorry, who is it?” Mom’s voice, on the intercom.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Lexie and Myles.”
“I was indisposed when you buzzed, sorry for making you wait.”
“Indisposed,” I said, laughing. “Mom, it’s me. You can say you were in the bathroom.”
A long pause. “In the bathroom. Yeah.” She buzzed the door. “Come on up, sweetheart.”
“Dammit, Mom—” I started, but the intercom was already silent and the door was buzzing.
Myles laughed. “Not even Mama gets a pass on sweetheart?”
“No one gets a pass,” I growled, my ire all the way up, now. “Not you, not Mom, not the pope, or the president, or God himself. No one.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“And don’t fucking wink at me,” I snarled, my voice icy and dripping poison. “It’s stupid and smarmy and you just look like an idiot.”
He chuckled. “Noted.”
I glared at him as we hiked the steps to Mom’s floor. “What’s so funny?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
I knew I was being stupid and irrational, but I was helpless to stop myself. I was about to see Mom, and I knew she knew something was up, and I’d have to tell the whole stupid story all over again and I hated myself for it, and for Charlie for pulling me into this— and for thinking any of it was in any way Charlie’s fault—and at Myles for being so damned amazing even as I was being a bitch to him, because he wasn’t lashing out at me, wasn’t fighting, was just accepting my bitchiness without seeming fazed.
But I knew he was upset—I knew I’d hurt him, and that I had damage control to do.
If that was even possible anymore.
