I told him with my eyes, “I have no idea.”

His gaze said, “that was bad-ass.”

Mine replied, “I know.”

No one said much for the rest of dinner. Whether it was because we were all tired, too busy eating or if someone was feeling crabby because of how Sacha had reacted, I had no clue. I fell into the first two categories; I was also busy thinking about what he’d said about his mom. The curiosity was killing me, even though I knew full well it wasn’t any of my business whether it was true or not. Everyone finished eating and we all lined up to pay for our meals individually, with me paying for Eli’s when he happened to disappear. I waited by the doors for Sacha.

One of the last few people to pay, he was busy stuffing Aussie currency into his wallet when I said “Boo.”

He smiled faintly as he stuffed his wallet into the pocket of his jeans.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Sacha rolled his eyes and raised a shoulder. “Nothing that matters.” He reached up to tug the hood over my head again. “I’m glad you’re at least talking to me.”

I smiled at him, hoping the pleasure and pride I was feeling over what he’d done radiated onto my face. “I think you’re pretty wonderful right now.”

He had a funny expression on his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I bumped my shoulder with his. “That was really nice of you, you know. Saying something to them,” I explained just in case he didn’t know what I was referring to.

Sacha glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, getting to the door first to hold it open before waving me forward. “Let’s go before everyone else finishes paying. I don’t want to deal them right now.”

Nodding, I went into the cool night with him following behind.

We walked in silence for a little bit before he suddenly said, “They’re real assholes sometimes.”

I shrugged my shoulders so that I wouldn’t outright say, yeah they are. “Well, you’ve known them for a long time and you’re together constantly. It happens.”

He nodded, his attention on the sidewalk as we made our way toward the hotel a few blocks down. “You know from experience?”

Another flashback of the incident so many years back flashed through my brain, and I had to fight the urge to snort. “You have no idea how mad those three have made me. I can feel a headache coming on just thinking about it.”

Sacha let out a soft little snicker.

Sensing he was still frustrated, I kept going. “Once, I went five months without talking to any of them. Before that I’d never gone more than a week without seeing them since kindergarten.”

“What happened?” he asked, and why wouldn’t he? If he’d mentioned the same thing to me, I would have asked too because I’m nosey.

“Well…” Damn it, what the hell could I say? I wasn’t exactly ready then—or possibly ever—to tell him about my boobs. I’d told Brandon about my operation the night I decided that I was ready to sleep with him for the first time. The three idiots knew because we’d been friends forever. There were no secrets between us. I’d been talking about getting the surgery done for years, but they knew mainly because it was them: my twin and the two guys who were pretty much skin tags I couldn’t get rid of.

But Sacha wasn’t a lifelong friend, and we weren’t about to strip down or make him my third boyfriend, so he was only going to get a small part of the story.

“They all got pretty drunk one night a few years ago and said some really mean stuff about me behind my back to the other guys on the tour.” I blew out a breath and bit the inside of my cheek. “I didn’t take it too well.”