Bullshit. It was all straight-up bullshit.

The nostrils on that nearly perfect nose flared, and those tiny, thin valleys across his forehead formed at the same time his frown did. “You think I would be an asshole to you?” he asked in that damn voice that had made me believe once that it was incapable of doing anything wrong.

He really didn’t want me to answer that.

This man who had once made me smile and laugh said nothing. That broad chest rose and fell under his hoodie, and the lines across his forehead got even deeper. His jaw moved from side to side. For a moment, I watched him struggle with something, and then he stood up even straighter, like that was somehow fucking possible.

“Lenny… I never meant to hurt you,” Jonah “Piece of Shit” Collins claimed, so carefully, I might have thought he was genuine if I hadn’t known any better. “You have to believe me.”

I couldn’t help it then. I raised my eyebrows. The nerve of this asshole.

It only took a quick glance at the picture frame on my desk again to help me reel my shit in, reel in the ugly words and the sudden urge to throw my computer screen at him like it was a ninja star. My hand wanted to go up to my eyelid and hold it down to keep it from twitching, but I kept that sucker down. Making a fist, I stared at him, squinting while I did.

“How did you expect not to hurt me? When you didn’t answer your phone once after I called you over and over again? Or when you didn’t respond to a single one of the emails I sent you either? Because there were a lot of them.“

I could see the tendons in his neck flex as he stood there, staring back at me with that grimace/frown/smile, and I was sure he was thinking of whatever excuse he’d made up in his head to justify what he’d done. But I only let him get out a single sentence. “I can explain.“

The smile I gave him didn’t feel as brittle as I figured it should have. And when I reached toward my mouse to prepare to get back to work, I didn’t feel bad for how cold I knew my expression—my entire body language—was toward him. He deserved it. He deserved it and fucking more, and he had no idea how lucky he was that I didn’t toss his ass out and tell him to fuck off until the end of time. He was so lucky I was over him and his shit and was more mature than I had been before.

“I don’t care anymore, Jonah. Decide what you want and let me know. I don’t care one way or the other. That’s all that matters to me, and we can go from there,” I said to him carefully, so fucking carefully, I would have high-fived myself for being so damn good at shooting him one last—fake—smile and then focusing back on my computer screen, ignoring him standing there in my office, in silence.

Because that was what he did. Stand there, looking at me. Whether he was cursing himself out or not, I had no idea. Whether he was cursing me out in his head, I had no clue either. All I knew was that he took his time there, totally still, facing me in his massive asshole glory, as I ignored him.

Two minutes later—minutes that I counted perfectly in my head as I randomly clicked around on the screen from time to time to make it seem like I really was working instead of trying to be cool—he exhaled deeply, stared some more, and before turning around, called out quietly, “I want to talk to you, Len. That’s what I want.” He paused, his gaze heavy. “I’m sorry.”

He left then.

Because that was what he did: leave.

Then and only then did I grab my stress ball from my drawer, wishing I had another for my free hand because only one wasn’t enough right then, and squeezed the fuck out of it, switching hands when the first one started to cramp. I was real grateful right then that I hadn’t set myself up to be disappointed with how easily he left.

But it was right after I traded hands that my cell rang with Grandpa Gus’s ringtone. I swore to God he was a witch. Only he could time this so perfectly.

We were going to need to talk. A lot sooner than I had hoped for.

I hit the answer button and didn’t bother trying to hide the tension in my voice. “Grandpa.”

“How’s my favorite demon?” he answered like he always did when he was in a really good mood, and like always, it made me smile even though I didn’t feel like it. I squeezed my eyes closed as I did it, feeling this knot swell up in my throat all of a sudden.

“Everybody is getting on my nerves today,” I told him honestly, struggling to even get those words out as a mental picture of Jonah’s face filled my head with those damn freckles and that grimace/frown/smile.

“Everybody is always getting on your nerves,” he replied. “Want to get out of there and get some lunch?”

We needed to talk. Now, apparently. Shit. I knew I should have done this months ago… even a year ago… but…

I hadn’t. I thought I’d have more time. My fault again.

“Are you in the mood for Pho Palace?” I asked. “I can meet you there in fifteen.”

“Meet you there in thirty,” he agreed a second before hanging up, not waiting for me to confirm thirty was good and not bothering to say bye. He never did. He said the b-word sounded too final.

That and I think he just liked hanging up on people.

Lowering my hand to the desk, I squeezed my eyes shut for another moment, shoved my chair back, and got to my feet. Fuck it. I had put myself in this mess, I was going to have to get myself out of it.

Chapter 4

“Jonah, it’s Lenny again. I’m worried about you. Where the hell are you hiding?”

My best friend hadn’t said anything in two whole minutes.

In the first sixty seconds, she had narrowed her eyes, looked up at the ceiling, made a thoughtful face, looked back at me, narrowed her eyes some more, and then pressed her lips together, squinting so much that she probably couldn’t see anything.

In that same amount of time, I had crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to make a comment.

Over the course of the next minute, she had pulled her phone out of her purse, which had been sitting on top of my desk since she was in the chair across from me, and started pecking away at the screen. Luna didn’t let me down as she finally loosened her lips, sat back in the chair, and took a deep breath. Her eyes went wide a moment before those green eyes flicked back in my direction as we sat there in my office the following morning.

Her index finger came up a second before she held up her phone with her other hand and aimed the screen at me. “This is him?”

The image on the screen was of a deeply olive-skinned man with shorts halfway up his thighs, a green short-sleeved jersey stretched so tight across his chest it made you wonder how the hell he got it on and off, standing on a field with his arms loose at his sides. The man had biceps so big it looked like someone had shoved a ball under his skin, thighs wide and tight and lined with muscles that overlapped each other. The ultra-serious expression on his face, brows furrowed, mouth slightly parted, irritated the fuck out of me.

“Yeah, that’s Jonah,” I confirmed, looking back at Luna’s face because I didn’t want to look at his anymore than I needed to.

My best friend gaped, literally gaped, as she looked back at the screen. Her finger started pecking away at her phone again, and it didn’t take a genius to guess she was scrolling through more pictures of him.

I sighed. “You’re about to say something stupid, aren’t you?”

Fucking Luna nodded before she made yet another face—still at her screen—and asked, in total fucking disbelief, “You slept with him?”

“No, we just played patty-cake,” I answered her dryly.

Her phone went down, and I had her undivided attention again. Even her elbows went to her thighs as she leaned forward and asked way too carefully, “No, Lenny, for real. You. Had. Sex. With. Him?”

I blinked. I didn’t need that reminder. “Yes.”

“Him?”

I poked at my inner cheek with the tip of my tongue. “I’m not really feeling your tone of voice right now.”

This bish looked back at the picture of Jonah Collins and shook her head again like she couldn’t believe it. “I just… I mean…” She was stuttering. She was literally stuttering, and I just about rolled my fucking eyes at her.

I mean, yeah, I understood. Jonah was… a fucker, of course… a dipshit, dumbass, motherfucker… but he was beautiful. Handsome in a way that only few men could be, not feminine at all, but sculpted so perfectly from his perfect hairline to his roughly striking face… and then there was that body.

God, I hated his guts, no matter what I told myself about not feeling anything. Hatred. Hatred was a feeling. But it was also a verb sometimes.

“Him?” she asked again in disbelief.