He turned his body towards me with a sly smile. “I did trash a hotel room once.”
“You did?” I asked with a laugh. “What happened?”
“I threw a vase against a wall. It exploded on impact.” He used his hands to mimic the explosion, complete with dodgy sound effects.
“A vase, huh?” I did my best to sound underwhelmed, wanting to lighten the mood. “Wow. How very half-hearted, of you.”
“Hey, I killed the TV as well,” he added. “I threw an open bottle of wine at it. Smashed the screen, ruined the carpet. The whole room had to be refurbished. That counts as trashing.”
“Totally,” I agreed with a sage nod. “You’re a danger to yourself and others. Maybe I should drink your whisky.” I reached for his nearly empty tumbler. “Just to be safe.”
“Back off,” he cried, lifting the glass in the air as he held me off with his other hand. “This shit is good.”
The brief struggle ended when he lowered the prize to his mouth and downed the last of the contents. We fell back onto the cushions in fits of laughter, remaining there after everything went quiet again.
“What brought out your inner carpet killer?” I asked, curious as to what would make him lose his temper so thoroughly.
An extra ripple of laughter filled the night air. “Inner carpet killer?” he repeated. “You’re funny.” I stared at his profile, entranced by the movement of his throat as he swallowed. “As for the why of it… that’s a whole different story.” He took a deep breath, as if to steady himself before turning his head towards me. “Your turn.”
I blanched. “My turn?”
“Yes,” he said with a decisive nod. “You didn’t think this little share-fest would be one-sided, did you?”
“Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking ahead.” I had no idea what to say. The only secret I had was the one I hid from him. “I don’t really have much to tell. My life isn’t anywhere near as complicated as yours.”
“Screw complicated,” he scoffed. “Are you going to tell me you don’t have a single deep, dark secret?”
“You mean something on par with all the drugs you haven’t done?” I grinned at him and sat up to empty my own glass before setting the tumbler on the ground beside the daybed. “I smoked some pot once. I think that makes me more badass than you.”
“Come on,” he crooned, sitting up beside me. “You know what I mean.”
My gaze dropped to my lap. “I do have one secret.” A part of me was tempted to tell him. Get the whole truth out in the open. But he’d said he wanted things between us to go back to the way they were before and, I had to admit, I wanted that too. If I told Dante I was Grey, nothing would ever be the same between us again. “I can’t tell you. I wish I could, but…” I didn’t want things to change.
He stared at me for a long time, but in the end, he didn’t push. “All right, I’ll let you off this once,” he said, nudging my shoulder with his own. “But only on one condition.”
“What?” I asked.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the daybed, he looked back at me over his shoulder. “I want to see inside your flat.” He’d launched off the cushion and made it halfway around the pool before the words sunk in. My flat, where I kept albums filled with the best of the photographs I’d taken over the years. The same place where I had an album entirely filled with pictures of Dante himself. My eyes widened as I remembered the framed photo of me and Gabi hanging on the wall, the one my mum took at the beach when we were fifteen.
Dante was headed for the one place that would surely give me away.
