✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER EIGHTEEN】

—chapter eighteen.

  ❛ walls back up, the guard goes up too. ❜  

IT STARTED OFF HAPPIER THAN IT ENDED.

"We should go on a, an um...date."

"H-AIOW!"

Elodie shrieked from under the counter, slowly rising clutching her head. She set the bottle lifted from underneath down and cradled her skull, groaning through the pain. In the moment, she gave no cares as to who heard or saw her - to tell the truth, she was a bit too overwhelmed to think about any of that just then.

"Sorry...?"

He really did not sound it, though. When she looked his way, Diego was hiding laughter behind his hand, trying not to mock her pain (but also finding the reaction far too funny to not chuckle, at least a little). Flipping him off sobered him up a little, but the man still smirked openly.

"Glad you find my pain funny, Robin Hood. You know for that, you gotta pay the full price today."

From a couple of seats down, a man frowned. "What a sec-why does he get a discount?"

"He doesn't, don't worry --" she lowered her tone so it was only heard by Diego, "dicks with no consideration for my head, don't get discounts." Elodie shot back a smile and turned away, not caring about what he said next. Her act of faux anger was an easy ploy to catch her breath (and stop the pounding in her head) before they moved along with the bomb he had just dropped.

"Come on, you really mad at me for laughing?"

"Oh, no," she retorted. Elodie turned back around, hands on her hips. "Not about that. I am mad, though, that you thought you'd just spring that on me while in such a precarious situation. Obviously, I'm gonna be freaked by someone saying that to me, like that, at my place of business."

"Uh - oops?"

"Oops is right, asshole. Oops is right."

She was smiling, though. Despite how flustered it had made her and the pain in her head, Elodie couldn't help but smile back at him. She would chalk it up to a possible concussion and refuse the truth that he really just made her happy, but it was obvious to anyone that the young woman was just eager to hear that from him.

She already knew they were not a typical couple, and she did not want that. She liked keeping their scheduled evenings and mornings, and wasn't eager to flounce around the city like a fool with a new broad on her arm. But, well...