Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 543

I stood there with my mouth open and my cheek still stinging and my pulse roaring in my ears, and I could not have said, then, which of the two of us had just been slapped harder.

Scarlett climbed out of the pool with her dress clinging to her thighs and her hair flat against her skull, one hand closed around the wet chain, and she did not look at me once. Water ran off her elbows and darkened the floor at her feet. Behind me, Lucia and her three friends had gone quiet in a way that said none of them had expected her to swim, and I stood at the edge with my own hand still stretched out over the water, useless.

I had believed she would sink.

Then the headlights swept across the deck and a limousine rolled up the drive.

It stopped at the entrance, long and black and polished like something that had never once been rained on, and the rear door opened before the driver could reach it. Sparrow stepped out.

"There he is," Lucia breathed against my ear, and her hand closed over my wrist. "Your husband."

"Listen to me." Her grip tightened. "Men like that, who are strong enough to be feared. They love nothing better than the chance to protect what belongs to them. Walk to him. Cry if you can manage it. Tell him about the woman who put her hand on your face and let him take it from there. He will handle her, and the two of you will be closer for it."

My cheek still burned where the slap had landed. I pulled my wrist out of her fingers and took a breath that did not reach the bottom of my lungs, and I walked toward the car.

"Sparrow."

He turned his head a fraction.

"A woman slapped me," I said. "Out of nowhere. She walked up to me and put her hand across my face, hard, right in front of everybody."

He looked past me. His eyes went over my shoulder and stayed there, fixed on the far end of where Scarlett stood dripping with her fist around the chain, and I might as well have been talking to the wind.

"Sparrow, did you hear what I said?"

Sparrow looked from her to me and then back at her, and something moved across his face that I did not like at all.

"Are you sure?"

"What?"

"Are you sure it was her?" he asked. "As far as I know, Ms. Adams is a peace loving person. She does not raise her hand to anyone without a reason."

The floor tilted under my feet. I stood there with the tears still wet on my face and my own husband, the most feared man in this city, telling me he believed a stranger over the woman standing at his side. A fake wife, yes, but his wife in front of all these people, and better than a stranger no matter how you turned it around.

"She hit me," I said, and I said it loud, loud enough for her to hear, loud enough for the everyone to hear."