If she were sober, he would appreciate the term of endearment. As it was, it just irritated him further. Diesel took her hand and led her through a door next to the stage, which led to the kitchen eventually. They were in a secluded hallway, no staff in sight. He pushed the door to the ballroom closed behind him.
“Why would you tell the whole damn room I’ll take the winner on the track?”
She just looked at him blankly. “I just told you. I thought it would increase the bid.”
His stupid shaggy hair was in his eyes and he raked it back off his forehead. “I told you straight out when I gave you the car—a twenty-five-thousand-dollar investment on my part—that I would be happy to donate it but I wasn’t driving it. Plain and simple. My one stipulation. And you just ignored that.”
For a minute, she looked horrified and contrite, like she’d just remembered he had said that. Which was very possible. But then her bottom lip jutted out. “Oh, come on, don’t be mad. What’s the big deal?”
“It’s a big deal because I asked you to respect my feelings and you haven’t.” God, this was pointless. She was bombed and he was an idiot.
“Maybe it’s something you just need to do, you know, like getting back on a horse.”
“To what purpose? And that’s my decision, not yours!”
She raised her wineglass to her lips and started to drain the liquid.
Diesel lost it. Without even any thought behind the action, he reached out and yanked it out of her hands. “Lay off the f**king wine.”
“Hey!” Her face contorted into fury and she reached for it. “Give me that back. You can’t just take that away.”
“And you can’t just announce that I’ll drive that race car, but you did. And I most certainly can just take this glass away. I just did.” He held it up over his head, knowing she couldn’t reach it, knowing he was letting his anger force this conversation in a terrible direction, but he was just so hurt, so frustrated. He didn’t understand her sometimes and this was one of them.
“Give me that.” Her voice was steely cold and she reached out and shoved him in the chest.
Diesel was caught off guard. He stumbled and his knee buckled. When embarrassment was added to his anger, the last of his control shattered. Turning toward the wall, he hurled her glass at it, feeling a sick sense of satisfaction when it exploded in a spray of glass shards and deep red liquid. As pieces rained down onto the carpet and the wine trickled at a slower pace through the beige paint, her shriek of shock penetrated his momentary triumph.
Damn, what the hell was he doing?
“I’ll just go get another one,” she told him.
Diesel turned back to her, suddenly weary. “I know. What I don’t know is why.”
Her look was one of belligerence, defiance. “Well, I don’t know why you won’t share any of your feelings with me. Maybe I wouldn’t have offered for you to drive if you had just taken the time to explain it to me. I had to learn about your accident from watching a goddamn YouTube video.”
“You found out enough to call me out in that magazine article.”
“I didn’t call you out! I was reporting from an unbiased angle. People want to know what happened to you, how you’ve moved on. I want to know, and I’m your girlfriend!”
“I don’t recall you ever asking me outright about the accident.” He took her by the elbow and moved her back away from the broken glass, knowing that what he was saying was unfair. She had asked him to talk to her on more than one occasion and he had blown her off, unable to show her any signs of weakness.
“You’re a liar. You just didn’t want to tell me. You don’t care about me enough to share your feelings with me.”
He knew Tuesday was struggling with her grief, knew that she loved him. But he was frustrated, afraid of losing her, either to wine or someone else when she saw clearly how unexciting he and his life were. But he still heard the insult and reacted in the worst possible way. “It’s just all about you, isn’t it?”
That was probably poking the bear. Especially given the bear was drunk. But Diesel was hurt, he was tired, he was embarrassed by the attention of the night, all the damn questions about his accident. He wanted to have it out. Clear the air. Have them both say what they meant.
Except sometimes you get exactly what you intend, and you don’t like it.
Tuesday’s expression changed and he expected drunken anger. That’s not what he got. She had retreated, pulled back into herself. “Oh, really? I didn’t know that’s how you felt. And if you do, I question why the hell we’re even together.”
Diesel couldn’t meet her eye. At the moment he wasn’t sure why they were together. There were issues she needed to deal with and he couldn’t fix them for her.
But she wasn’t finished. Though she wobbled a little on her heels, her words weren’t slurred. They were just harsh. “I did try to talk to you a few times and you shut me down. You can stand here and say I’m the only one with a problem, but I’m not. You don’t know how to share your emotions. And if you think for one goddamn minute that you have dealt with the repercussions of your accident, or hell, even your mother’s and brother’s deaths, then you’re kidding yourself. You’ve just locked it all in a box inside of you marked Don’t Touch and told yourself you’re fine.”
He wasn’t about to agree with that, even if somewhere inside him it struck a chord of truth so powerful he was suddenly afraid. “I’m dealing just fine.”
“And if you think everything in our relationship was about me I’d argue that it was the exact opposite. It was about you. What you wanted.”
That pissed him off. “We’re not talking about sex, and that was a dynamic you liked, don’t deny it.”
“I’m not talking about sex either,” she said disdainfully. “You’re right, I enjoy you being in charge of what happens in the bedroom. I’m talking about the fact that when you withhold your feelings, yet expect them from me. That’s selfish.”
It was so unexpected, he could only stare at her in shock. No one had ever called him selfish before.
Tears filled her eyes. “Tonight, I just needed you to support me. And you made it about what you didn’t want to do. I wasn’t trying to put you on the spot, I was just trying to get through the night.”
When she put it like that, he felt guilty, and that made him angry. “I wanted the same thing. Just a little support and understanding. Instead you splashed my business all over. I think maybe we need to take a break here, spend a little time apart and see where we’re at.”