From my Bully to CEO

Chapter 17

PRESENT

SELENE’S POV:

The nerves hit me out of nowhere, hard enough to knock my feet from under me.

I was plotting this ever since he proposed that ridiculous deal—one date in exchange for his coordination.

I knew there was no way in hell I was going to have a normal date with Grayson. He must’ve known that too.

And then once I finalized how exactly I was going to humiliate him, I spent a week running through every detail. All the pros and the cons, any plot holes that I might’ve missed and every possible way of outmaneuvering every obstacle imaginable that he could possibly throw in my way.

I was ready for this.

Yet still, with every step closer to his car, my heart thumped a little faster. My skin prickled with awareness, every step heavy with second-guessing.

And all the smug giddiness I’d been feeling about besting him melted into a puddle of something weaker, smaller. Maybe this wasn’t such a brilliant plan.

Maybe I hadn’t thought this through as well as I’d believed.

Or maybe, just maybe, a part of me didn’t want him to see me like this.

The urge to turn around and run back inside grew until it was consuming every other thought in my head but I clenched my fists and forced myself to put on foot in front of the other.

This date wasn’t real, I reminded myself. It was just a way for him to assert his power, to see how much of me he could control.

But I wasn’t the same teenage girl subconsciously hoping to impress him with every word and every action.

I was Selene Hale and I was going to remind him that he never had any control over me and he never could.

That thought faltered the moment I actually saw him.

Grayson was leaning against his car, his suit making him almost blend in with the sleek black body of his car.

My heart stuttered to a violent stop before jump starting just as violently.

Grayson looked effortlessly breathtaking, one ankle crossed over the other. He wore a deep red button down, with the top button propped open enough to reveal that maddening line of skin at his collar bone. His sleeves were folded up to his elbows, revealing sculpted, veined biceps that captured attention too easily.

The faint glow of the streetlamp carved shadows along his jaw and my pulse fluttered, a little out of my control now.

He paired the shirt with loose black pants, the buckle of his belt glinting in the moonlight. His hair was just the perfect amount of messy with one stray strand falling over his forehead. It felt intentional, meant to test my very quickly thinning restraint.

I gave my head an internal shake, ridding myself of all the unholy thoughts. I was perfectly fine and was totally not thinking of l*****g that damned skin of his collarbone.

Dear God.

He had no right to look this good.

But maybe he did this intentionally. Maybe he knew I was going to battle him in every way I could and he decided to be the calm to my chaos.

His gaze snapped up to meet mine once he noticed me approaching—or more like standing still and devouring him with my gaze. I quickly rearranged my features into a sickly sweet smile.

His eyes slid down my body—sensuously slow. Like all the effort I'd put into wearing extra baggy clothes was for nothing and he could see right through the fabric. I couldn’t stop the shudder that ran down my spine.

His gaze pulled back up, just as slowly, before latching onto my face—my very dry, patchy face because I hadn’t even bothered with a moisturizer.

If I was feeling self-consious before, it was nothing compared to the absolute stampede of nerves in the pit of my stomach, suddenly comparing every inch of me to him.

But I swallowed it down. I knew this would happen. I counted on it. Of him dressing regally and taking me someplace fancy enough for me to stand out all the more loudly.

So, really, I had no one to blame but me.

His lips lifted in a ghost of a smirk, amusement dancing in his eyes.

I looked up at him through my lashes, my spine straight with confidence I didn’t really feel as I offered him a sickly sweet smile.

“So,” I baited. “How do I look?”

He was supposed to say something witty in response, some sly jab I could parry back with ease.

But instead, his smirk turned into something worse—a complete smile, bright, incandescent and entirely disarming. One that could challenge the moon overhead and definitely win.

It knocked the breath out of my lungs.

“Absolutely stunning,” he said, voice so warm it could’ve melted the hard steel of my armor.

His eyes glinted in the moonlight as he held my gaze—daring me to look away.

I waited for the cutting jab or the softness in his eyes to turn to mockery but he stayed so genuinely sincere, it made me want to hate him all the more.

He looked at me like I was most beautiful woman on the face of earth. Like all the effort I’d put into looking hideous had not worked at all.

His sincerity pressed against my chest.

“Thanks,” I said, pushing back the sudden bout of ache in my chest. That girlish sweetness still dripped from my voice like venom, even if it sounded a little weaker now. “Took a lot of effort.”

And it really had. Apparently, looking intentionally bad was harder than looking good.

He laughed—a warm, real sound that made my knees a little weak.

“I can only imagine,” he responded, pushing off the car and sauntering toward me with unhurried grace.

I tried not to step back.

“Are we going to go or not?” I snapped instead, making him stop before he could get any nearer.

He grinned, offering me a nod before he turned back towards the car and held the passenger side door open for me.

I eyed it for a second before I made my choice.

I slid past it and opened the back door instead, getting in. Like he was my chauffeur and not my date.

I waited for him to roll down the window and tell me to quit being dramatic but I only saw him shake his head, that smile still on his face as he rounded the car and got behind the wheel.

He was acting too gentlemanly and it rattled me more than his meanness ever could.

“Are you alright?” I asked once he started the engine and we were on the road.

“What do you mean?” He adjusted the rearview mirror so that it now showed me.

“You’re being nice,” I said, scooting to a side to slip out of the mirror’s line of sight. “It’s unnerving me.”

He titled the mirror once again, stubborn as always. Like this was another game he wanted to win.

I rolled my eyes but moved directly behind his seat, so that he couldn’t bother me with the mirror at all now. I could be a lot more childish than him. But honestly, anything was better than feeling his gaze burn through me—making me all the more self conscious about myself.

“I’m perfectly fine,” he responded, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the arm seat beside his seat. “I’m on a date with a gorgeous woman. Can’t I just be nice?”

I swallowed thickly. I hated this. I hated the direction this had taken.

Our banter and his prickly comments I could handle. But this? This softness, this honesty bleeding through his voice—it shook me.

We didn’t do this. We didn’t do vulnerability. And the last few times we had, it had ended with wreckage.

And it wasn’t what I wanted today. I wanted him to fight me. I wanted to remind him that this wasn’t real. He didn’t have to act like it was.

“Don’t!” I said finally, my voice low.

“Don’t what?” He asked, voice too innocent. Like he genuinely didn’t know what he was doing, how it was cutting through me.

I leaned forward without even realizing I was doing it. My knees pressed against the back of his seat, my face right next to where I imagined his shoulder was.

“Don’t say things like that,” I hissed. “Not to me. Not when we both know you don’t mean it.”

I caught of glimpse of him in the side mirror. His lips were curved in his usual smirk but there was something wrong with it. It wasn’t cutting or sharp like it usually was. This one made him look smaller, like there was something broken within him and I’d somehow caused it.

I inhaled sharply. He had no right to act like that, like I was somehow to be blamed for that look on his face when we both knew it was his doings that had pushed me away all those years ago.

I opened my mouth to retort, to fight, to defend myself but he beat me to it.

“What if I do, Hale?” His voice was soft, brittle—like it was very close to breaking. “What if I do mean it?”

I clenched my jaw.

There was a barb wire around my chest, tightening with very unexpected word he said, with every breath of softness in his voice.

I sank back into my seat, away from him. As if something as flimsy as distance could ever be enough to tame the flutter of my pulse.

“Then that’s your problem,” I snapped, pouring all my poison into my words. Because if I hadn’t, I was afraid it would’ve cracked. “Becuase I don’t want you to.”

He sighed. I wanted to punch him.

How dare he act like I was being difficult when he’d just unleashed a torrent of emotions within me, made me feel things I'd sworn never to feel again.

This date hadn’t even started and I already knew it was going to be a disaster.

And no victory could soothe the hollowness that was now settling heavily in my chest.