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When she and Parker were kissing, things were great. They were more than great, they were awesome. Dani had never had a serious relationship, and though she was definitely not the kind of girl who went all empty-headed and giggly over a boy, she really liked kissing. She liked being affectionate and close, even though Parker was very finicky about when and where he would show her affection. She wasn't the type of girl who wanted to throw a leg up over him and rip his shirt off in public, but she also didn't want people to think they were cousins or something, all right?

Not that she cared what other people thought, really. Okay, a little. But mostly, it was because she was in the first giddy stages of her first real relationship, and everything was new and exciting to her.

Well, everything except his staunch refusal to meet her parents.

Setting her fork aside, she aimed a dark look at her boyfriend, wiping her mouth with her napkin. What was his deal? He kept saying too soon, too soon, but they'd been dating for a while. Her parents were pressuring her to meet him, and anyway, she wanted them to meet him, too. That wasn't weird. It wasn't even rushed. They were dating, for God's sake! The longer Parker kept his distance from them (especially now that she'd admitted he was a bit older than her) the more it seemed like they had something to worry about.

And they didn't. She insisted they didn't. But they didn't believe her when he wouldn't even come for something as simple as dinner.

"Parker, these are my parents." Her expression was not impressed, and she pointed at him, huffing out a breath. "They want to meet you. I want you to meet them. They aren't going to hate you, they're going to like you because I like you, and you have nothing to worry about."

Okay, so maybe he had a couple of things to worry about. Such as, her father's apprehension toward their age gap, her mother's apprehension toward the length of time it was taking to even meet him, the fact that this was definitely another big step in their relationship. Okay, he had a few things to worry about, but Dani would be totally open to meeting his parents. Except, his parents were dead.

But she'd still be totally open to it.

Leaning toward him, she raised her eyebrows, tapping a finger on the tabletop. "The longer you wait, the more awkward it's going to be." Truth.

Dani was good at pointing out the obvious. She was also completely, ridiculously stubborn, and wasn't going to let go of this conversation until he agreed to meet her parents. Soon.

She didn't care if it took days of having the same conversation over and over and over again. This was important, and she was going to get her way.

Dani wished Parker didn't always automatically assume that the entire world was out to get him. Granted, he'd had some pretty bad experiences in his life, and he was an abrasive individual. To someone who didn't know how to handle him, she was sure he came across as rude and rough, and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for some to consider it not worth their time to try to shove past what he showed them and get to the heart of him. Dani hadn't really had to try, though, which was what made it so difficult for her to understand when Parker went off on one of his tangents about how she was the only person in the whole world who didn't hate him on sight. She wasn't the most patient girl. She wasn't even the friendliest girl, or the most accommodating, or the one most determined to take the bad boy and turn him into a white knight, oh my gosh. She was just Dani.

Just Dani, who had talked to Parker, liked him, and continued to do so. She knew plenty of people who were sweeter and gentler than she was, and plenty more who had more patience. Also, plenty more who were far less stubborn, though she supposed that had come in handy. She really hadn't given Parker a choice on whether he wanted to get to know her, or past that, whether or not he wanted to keep seeing her. She'd simply decided they were going to be friends, and then she'd decided that they were going to date. That had been a little rocky, and there had been a couple of misunderstandings, but they'd made it as far as they had without a huge blow up.

She was considering a huge blow up if he didn't agree to meet her parents. She wasn't just going to date someone and have it be a secret from her family. There was no reason for it to be a secret! She cared about Parker, and he cared about her. Her parents also cared about her and wanted to see her happy, and even if Parker didn't quite fit the bill of what they'd anticipated for their daughter, they would give him the benefit of the doubt because they loved her and they trusted her. Parker had nothing to worry about.

She told him so. "You really have nothing to worry about." Body language, like a picture, spoke so much more than words, and hers was tense and annoyed. "My parents are not like everyone else, they are my parents. If you'd just give them a chance, they'd give you one, too."

She huffed out an annoyed breath, scowling after him as he slid out of the booth. Oh, see reason? He wanted her to see reason? She'd show him reason with her right hook if he kept that kind of attitude up. Bad-temperedly, she scooted along the booth, accidentally knocking over his messenger bag as she did.

"Great," Dani breathed, watching his journal and a couple of other things spill out over the floor. A waiter passed by, glanced over the mess, but couldn't stop to help because he was delivering food. She simply grunted, maneuvering herself awkwardly to grab at the articles that had fallen out.

Hauling his bag back onto the booth, she started shoving things in, not the sort of girlfriend who would flip through his journal and snoop. That was private, she understood, even though she didn't keep a journal herself. What caught her eye, though, as she shoved things back in, was a letter.

A letter?

Brow furrowing, she hesitated, holding it up. Who was writing letters to Parker? His parents were dead, and as far as she knew, his family didn't exactly keep in touch. He'd been sent to Hillworth, after all, which she didn't imagine would be anything but a last resort for a boy with other options. So, who had written him a letter?

She felt a little bit guilty for a moment, but then she remembered how unreasonable Parker was being, and her temper flared back up again. Maybe it was a love letter. Maybe he didn't want to meet her parents because he was secretly seeing someone else, and god damn it, if that was the case, she was going to take him out back and beat him senseless. Nobody cheated on her, nobody.

All reservations abandoned, she opened the letter, settling back into the booth with a faint frown on her face as she began to read. Partway through, she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, chewed lightly while her eyes flicked back and forth across the page.

She didn't even think to hide it, simply sat right there, openly reading the letter from his bag, her frown deepening with every line as she went.

Dani had enough of a temper that the could recognize the warning tones of it in someone else's voice. Hell, her mother had the same temper, and that was where she had gotten it from. Hers was explosive, fast, and tended to scorch anything within a six foot radius of her the moment it was unleashed. It wasn't elegant and it wasn't pretty, but it was her temper.

Parker's, she imagined, would be more like her father's. Cold and quiet, with intensity and force behind it that lingered far longer than her own flashfire temper. That was fine; she'd dealt with the father's temper, too. All in all, Dani didn't mind a good fight every once in a while, so she wasn't particularly worried about the tone Parker was using.

What she was worried about was the fact that he had lied to her.

Holding up one hand, a single finger raised, she ignored him. Maybe she had no business reading the letter, but she'd started, and she was damn well going to finish. It didn't take her long, and by the time she was finished, she folded the letter neatly, set it on the table.

She looked up, expression very still. "Your bag fell," she said at first, gesturing next to her. "I picked your things up."

Her voice was quiet, but not calm; a restrained sort of quality dogged it, possibly masking temper, or hurt. It was difficult to tell. "That's a nice letter."

There was another beat of silence, and she curled her hands into her fists, rested them on her knees. "You told me your father died."

There it was -- the heart of it.

She did not like being lied to.

Dani was still staring at him, her face strangely immobile. Normally, she was very expressive, but the situation was wrong and awkward; they were wrong and awkward. They were still at the stage in their relationship where they spent as much time liplocked as they did talking about anything, really, but they couldn't have looked more like two people who never wanted to touch again. She scooted back in the booth to accommodate Parker's entry, and reached for her purse as she did.

She set it on the table next to the letter, the letter that had been in an envelope that had been still sealed. No, she hadn't had any right to open it. Then again, if she hadn't opened it, she would have never known that his father was still alive, that he was apparently trying to get back in Parker's life, and that the very idea of it made Parker so livid that he was talking to her like she was a child.

She hated that. He knew she hated that. She'd expressed, on occasion, how nice it was that Parker didn't talk to her like she was some empty-headed twit incapable of pronouncing words beyond two syllables.

"I opened the letter when I shouldn't have. I'm not going to defend myself, because I shouldn't have done it." She smoothed one hand over the letter, finally looked away from him to glance down at it as she did so. She was silent a moment more, gathering her thoughts.

Parker had lied to her. She'd lied to Parker, but only about things that she had to lie about; about patrolling, about where her bruises came from sometimes, about how she'd broken her arm. These were things she lied about to her parents, things she couldn't just go around telling people for the fun of it -- that would put her in danger, and anyone she told. It was for his own good that she hadn't told him.

This wasn't a situation like those. This was just Parker keeping parts of himself to himself, which she could understand to a degree, but not when he outright lied to her. She'd trusted him so many times just on the basis of his word -- hey, I need to meet you, can you come to the cafe? She'd been out of her bed at nearly eleven o'clock at night just because he'd said he needed to talk. In retrospect, he could have been being held hostage by a Negaverse agent or something, and she'd still come. Would have definitely still come even knowing the danger, because it was Parker.

The point was, he'd lied to her. And he'd lied to her about something big. And now, now he was treating her like a little kid.

Her fingers curled around the letter, crumpling it, and she said, "Excuse me."

Before she really gave him a chance to move, she shoved him with her elbow, trying to get out of the booth. She snatched her purse up, and when she looked back at him, her cheeks were red. If he recalled their near-fight on their first date, it would be a sign of things to come. She didn't know if he remembered. She barely remembered at the moment, because she was trying to hold back temper so viciously that she was actually giving herself a little bit of a headache.

Then, she couldn't help herself. She pointed at him, crumpled letter in her hand, and her voice was furious even if it was low. "Don't treat me like I'm some kind of child, Parker. You lied to me, and the only reason I don't know anything about this is because you didn't tell me. You said he was dead."

This bothered her, because she'd always operated on the assumption that Parker had no one in his life who really cared for him, who had really bothered to try since his parents had died, and that was how she explained his mistrust in the world and her. If he was just willfully pushing people away, then who knew how long he would manage to push her away, too.

Who knew the real reason why he didn't want to see her parents. Maybe it was because he didn't care about her enough. He'd lied about his father, hadn't he?

She drew in a shaky breath, and nearly backed up into a waiter. He reached out to steady her, and she jerked her shoulder roughly away from him, not even bothering to thank him. "Well?"

She said well like she expected something of him. She said well like her father said well when she'd done wrong, and she was standing in front of him feeling two feet tall trying to figure out how she was ever going to explain this one.

She said well, and her face was definitely red now.

Anger was a vicious burning in her chest, a tight band around her head that made it nearly impossible to focus on anything other than the emotion itself. Buried beneath it was hurt, a slow, dragging ache that she ignored because it was more difficult to deal with, just as it was difficult to watch Parker shove money at the waiter and stalk out of the restaurant. They'd argued before, but they were fighting just then, really fighting.

She'd known it would come eventually, but she hadn't realized how soon or how strongly it would hit them. Rooted to the spot, his words echoed in her head, actually made her grit her teeth against spewing venom and temper at the top of her voice as she desperately wanted to. Immature, maybe -- maybe she was being a little bit immature, but god damn it, she wasn't a child, and she could control herself.

Cheeks flaming, she hurried out after him, taking two short, agitated steps for his every long stride. Her purse was tucked tight against her side, hand vised down so tight on it that her knuckles whitened, as she caught up to him, sidestepped to block his path.

He was intent on getting around her, but that was fine. She didn't want a discussion, didn't want to stand in the street and try to work through an argument that she knew she wasn't prepared to tackle. She would say things she regretted, cause more damage than the situation warranted. She knew this, because it was exactly how she'd had friendships end in the past; too intent to be heard, too damn sure that she was right, she'd hurl her half of the argument like a weapon, practically shove it down their throat, and they'd walk away worse for it.

Even though the temper, even though the hurt she still didn't want to acknowledge, Dani knew that Parker was too important to do that. Still, she couldn't help the brief, nastily spoken, "At least I'm being honest."

He just kept walking, and for a breath of a moment, her heart actually hurt. She closed her eyes, expression tight, but didn't chase after him again. Her pride wouldn't let her -- even though it was Parker, and even though she cared about him more than she could remember caring about anyone, she wouldn't let him see that he'd hurt her. Better he just think she was angry, better he not see her mouth twist and waver as she stalked in the opposite direction.

She brought her hand up, pressing it tightly against her mouth, and power walked down the sidewalk. A group of girls were walking leisurely, chatting, and because they didn't move, she just shouldered through them. By the time she got to the end of the block, her eyes were burning, and it was getting more and more difficult to cling to the shreds of anger.

The crossing light turned red and she stopped at the edge of the curb, hand still tight against her mouth, and hated herself as tears slipped down her cheeks.