'I'm sorry I got carried away. Have dinner with me.'

I stared at the text message, incredulous. This motherfucker could not be serious. This morning he'd been talking about making me beg him to fuck me, and now he was asking me out to dinner. Shit was backwards.

I closed my eyes, shook my head, and tossed my phone down on the bed before I went about getting ready. Tonight was a burrito and margarita kind of night, and thankfully we were in Austin, Texas – which meant I had a good chance of getting the best fucking burrito of my little Connecticut-dwelling life.

I threw on jeans and a t-shirt, yanked my hair up into a ponytail, and set out to quiz the front desk folks about burritos.

My life could sometimes be pretty awesome.

I received a recommendation for a place called Chupacabra Cantina at the front desk. Well all right then. I set off to walk the few blocks in the dry Texas heat, taking in all of the sights but never stopping – I had a burrito to eat.

I finally came across the place, a bustling hole-in-the-wall in a nice white brick building. It just looked like the kind of place that would have amazing food, and I started to get excited.

That excitement was quickly quashed.

"Here, let me," Dean said, stepping from behind me to open the door.

I clenched my fists and silently counted to ten. "What are you doing?"

"I invited you out to dinner. I kind of guessed you wouldn't accept, but since I'm here and you're here..."

I walked in without saying a word, hoping that there was a hostess stand where I could tell them I would be dining alone. No such luck – self-seating, and there was a single table left.

I almost turned around and walked out, abandoning my quest. But Dean grabbed my arm and stopped me, looking annoyed.

"I just want to apologize. Let me buy you a fucking taco. No ulterior motive."

"Burrito," I snapped. I picked the weirdest fucking things to be mad about.

He rolled his eyes. "Taco. Burrito. Whatever. Let me buy you some Mexican food."

I hesitated but finally agreed. "Fine. Just let me eat in peace and don't talk to me."

"Still in a mood, I see."

I elected to ignore him and made my way to the open table. Miraculously, he managed to make it through ordering and receiving our drinks and ordering our dinners before he decided to push me and start talking.

"So tell me, Lizzy. What's wrong?"

I looked at him over the rim of my margarita glass and shook my head. "No talking."

"You're a captive audience now, sweetheart. Hate to break it to you."

I put my glass down. It was already half gone. I thought about everything I could say to him – start discussing all of these messy, sticky things that I was entangled in – and decided that maybe it was better to stick to work.

"What is Heyman planning next?"

"That's not what's wrong."

"No, but I'm not going to talk about that."

"Boyfriend troubles?"

"For the last time. He's not my boyfriend."

"Just casually fucking a subordinate, then?"

I shook my head. "You really don't know when to just leave it the fuck alone, do you?"

He stared at me for a minute, his eyes narrowed. "You really are upset about something."

I picked up my glass and took another sip. He was just going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and I didn't know how I was going to handle that.

He leaned back in his seat. "Paul isn't planning anything you're not aware of," he surprised me by saying. "You figured it out already. Keep going after your guys until it's just you. You won't be able to fight back, and you'll have to quit. If you accept the match at Survivor Series in the meantime – which I would, if I were you, before any more of your guys get hurt – then great. He thinks we'll be able to win it without a problem, and everything will work out like he wants it to."

"So he's backed me into one hell of a corner," I said. I'd kind of known that, but hearing it laid out by someone that wasn't me really drove the point home.

"Proverbial rock and hard place, Lizzy," he agreed. "I guess you just have to chose which hill you want to die on."

"How comforting," I replied dryly, looking around for our waitress. My drink was suddenly empty. "So is it just time to quit, then?"

Dean was silent for a few seconds, studying me. "I thought you didn't want to do that."

"I didn't, but Paul is very persuasive. I don't have any other choice. I'm going to walk away."

He was quiet. He was way too quiet. "What the hell happened to you?" He finally asked. "What happened to the woman who left a man she cared about in the middle of the ring to get his ass kicked to prove a point? What the fuck?"

"You guys finally did it. You beat me down."

A fresh drink appeared at that moment, mercifully followed quickly by our meals. It gave me something else to do besides stare at Dean. I couldn't help but notice that he wasn't eating, and I looked up to see him staring down at the table, chewing on his lower lip.

I dropped my gaze back to my burrito and focused on just eating it as quickly as possible without choking. I'd never in my life wanted to be somewhere else so badly. Like so many others lately, this night had gone completely sideways.

"This is about Barrett, isn't it?" He finally asked. "Your bad mood, your willingness to just drop everything and quit...he said something, didn't he?"

I shook my head. "None of your business."

He leaned forward, his jaw set in a hard line. "Oh but it is. You're my business. Whether you like it or not." He finally picked up one of his tacos and started eating. I stared, a bit disgusted – he had no table manners whatsoever. "What?" He asked with his mouth full. I just shook my head.

"That guy's no good for you," he continued between bites. "Don't listen to him."

"But you are good for me?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Don't really care, to be honest. I just know I wouldn't tell you to quit like a selfish bastard. But hey," he leaned back, his tacos already demolished, and raised his hands slightly from the table. "You do whatever you think is best, Liz."

"And what if I think the best thing for me is to get as far away from all of this as humanly possible? What would you do then?"

"I wouldn't go away. You can't just leave and have this all tied up in a neat little bow. We're in a little too far for that now, don't you think?"

I waited a minute before responding. I'd known his answer; it was the same since the beginning. I just still didn't understand why that was his answer.

"So if I were to take you back to the hotel tonight, let you fuck me, let you do whatever you wanted to do to me...do you think then you'd let me walk away?"

His eyebrows raised and I had to bite back a smile. He hadn't expected that.

After a minute, he shook his head. "No."

"No," I replied flatly. "So let me draw the conclusion that you're just fucking with me as part of Paul's master plan, and I could walk away and be done with you."

He shook his head. "It's not like that, sweetheart. I'm a gentleman, whether you believe it or not, and you're obviously in distress. Wouldn't be right to take advantage of you."

"You're lying," I said, standing up. "Thanks for the burrito and the heaping dose of bullshit. I'm outta here."

I walked out the door and began to head back to the hotel. He caught up with me quickly, one hand grabbing my arm and spinning me around.

I didn't have time to think or to push him away before he'd wrapped his arms around me and was kissing me, his mouth hard against mine. "I'm not this good of an actor, Lizzy," he said as he pulled away. "I want you. I don't know how else to make that any more obvious to you. This isn't a joke. This isn't a game. It's just me." He bent down and pressed his lips lightly against mine again. "And I'm not going anywhere. Neither are you; not until I'm done with you."

He let go of me and turned to walk in the opposite direction, leaving me somehow more confused and miserable than before. But when he paused at the end of the block to look back at me and shake his head, I realized for the first time that maybe I wasn't the only one feeling that way.