“I think I might be starting to get a little offended by how surprised you sound, Luna,” I told her, totally joking, because really, I did get it.

“I always… you never…” She kept stopping and starting with her words as she grew flustered. “You’ve never said anything about a guy before, Len. Not once in ten years. I just thought you were… asexual or something for the longest time.” Her cheeks went pink as she whispered, “I thought you were a virgin until... you know.”

I blinked at her again, knowing she had a point. “Yeah, no.”

She gasped. “You never said anything! I thought for a while there you had something going on with that Noah guy, but then nothing ever happened, and I know you, if you really liked him, I bet you would have gone for it, and—did you lose it to him?”

My shady-ass past was finally coming to light. “I’m thirty-one. I didn’t lose my virginity to Jonah, Luna. Jesus.”

“Who then?”

There was a reason I’d never brought this up before: I just hadn’t seen the point. On the other hand, Luna had given me some intimate details of her and the guys she’d dated before so… it was the least I owed her. “This one guy I was friends with when I started going to college. He was in a few of my classes.” I shrugged, thinking about the guy that I had liked as a friend.

“Let me see a picture of him.”

I rolled my eyes with a snort. “Stalker, much?”

“Does he look like him?” she asked, shaking her phone at me.

I slid her a look. “No. And stop looking so surprised. You might start hurting my feelings.”

That had her groaning. “You know what I mean!”

I shrugged my good shoulder at her, honestly relieved that I had finally managed to tell her the entire story. At least 90 percent of it. Even though she was my best friend, she didn’t need to hear the bad parts. No one did. I knew there were plenty of things she hadn’t shared with me over the years. The same way I knew there were a handful of other things I had never told her either.

“So he’s back?” she asked, focused back on her screen.

“Yeah.”

Her green eyes went wide as she sat in the chair, eyes moving back to her phone while she processed my news. “What are you going to do?” she asked after a second.

“See what he says,” I answered her simply. “I don’t really have another choice.” It wasn’t like I could pick him up by his ankles and give him the shakedown over the side of a skyscraper so he’d tell me why he was here or what he wanted. Unfortunately.

“What does Grandpa Gus think?”

Fuck me. I straight-up grimaced at her.

That was what it took to get her to shove her phone back into her purse, drop her mouth wide, and gasp, “You haven’t told him?”

I thought about lunch the day before and winced at how I’d talked myself out of telling him anything, even after he asked me if I was constipated from the faces I’d been making. “No…”

“Lenny!”

“I was going to, but he was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to ruin it,” I explained, knowing it sounded about as lame of an excuse as it really was.

Luna’s mouth was still open as she shook her head for about the tenth time in the last ten minutes. I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t believe I’d been that much of a coward either. “You know, I never thought the day would come where I’d be the one calling you a chickenshit.”

I rolled my eyes before glancing back down at the claim I had been in the middle of filing so I could get reimbursed for a faulty leg press that I’d had to pay to get repaired. “You know, I never thought the day would come where I would be calling you a smart-ass, Luna, but look at that, miracles do come true,” I muttered in return… even though we both knew she was totally right.

I was being a chickenshit. A big one.

And she hadn’t been the first one to call me out on it. Peter had too the night before after I’d told him about my surprise visitor, and that was because at this point, other than Luna, he was the only other person who knew what I was avoiding.

That was: telling Grandpa Gus something he should have known months ago.

The truth… not that I had ever technically lied to any of them. I just hadn’t said anything, period. That was the only factor that worked in my favor: that none of them had known. Until now at least.

Grandpa was going to be even more pissed he was the last person to find out.

Luna had canceled on me the night before because her daughter hadn’t been feeling well still, and we’d planned for her to come by the gym in the morning while her father-in-law watched her Ava, which was how and why we were here, in the office at the gym with the door closed, with her making crazy faces at me because I had sex with one of the most attractive rugby players in the world.

Luna Ripley, one of my top five favorite people in the entire world, gaped again before bursting out laughing. “Rip said something similar a few days ago, but what can I say? I’ve mastered my craft by learning from the best,” she said, referring to her husband.

Her husband.

Jesus.

We were old enough to be married now, I remembered, deciding to focus on that for a second. Well, she was married. This was who we were now. Making and canceling plans because of kids. Real, human children.

Fuck, I still hadn’t gotten used to that.

Her comment got a groan out of my throat as I shoved aside this thing with Grandpa Gus and Jonah that loomed over my head. “Bish, I know you’re not talking about my pal Rip like that.”

“Bish, we both know who I’m talking about,” she claimed, bringing a smile onto my face as I signed my signature on the bold line of the form.

“Hey, don’t talk about Grandpa like that either.”

That got her laughing one more time. “I can’t believe it though,” she said after a moment. “How have you not told him? He always knows everything. He knew I was pregnant before I did, remember? Now that I think about, I’m surprised he didn’t hire a private investigator or anything.”

I’d forgotten that, but she was right. She’d been around the ageless vampire long enough to know how the man worked. And he hadn’t hired a PI because I’d asked him very, very nicely.

It hit me then that he had let me get away with not telling him about Jonah.

“After he got mad, initially, he just never asked. Then last night, he left as soon as I got home because it was pickleball night, and I was in my room by the time he got back. This morning he was arguing with the tech people for our internet service, and we barely said two words to each other,” I tried to explain, hearing my own bullshit and cringing at it.

Excuses, fucking excuses. I was a total chickenshit now. Seriously.

This person that was the closest thing I would ever have to a sister snorted across from me, thinking the same thing.

It was my turn to make a face at one of the best people in my life. “I don’t know what the hell you’re snorting about.”

She was smiling—she was always fucking smiling—as she glanced at her ancient watch, then stood up and shook her blue-haired head, hand gripping the strap of her purse. “You know what I’m snorting at, Len.” She smiled even wider. “I need to go. I’m meeting up with Rip for lunch, but text me later.” The little shit wiggled her eyebrows. “You know, after you tell Grandpa G about you-know-who. Hehe.”

I scowled as I got up and kissed her on the cheek, getting one back. “Tell him I said hi. Are we still on for lunch next week?”

“I will, and, yes, we’re on.” Luna slid me a smile and held her palm up between us, and I smacked it. “I know he’s an asshole, but he’s a really hot one, Len. Almost as hot as Rip. I’m so proud of you.”

I groaned and waited until she was halfway down the short hall before I called out, “I love you, Luna!”

“Love you too, Len!”

I smiled to myself as I shoved my chair back and looked down at the claim form I’d just signed before grabbing it and heading out of the office. It didn’t take more than a second to find Peter hanging over the top edge of the cage’s walls, looking into it as two men, who I couldn’t recognize from this far, circled each other.

On the way toward the gym next door, I waved at the small group of men and women on the mats, covered in sweat and breathing hard following whatever exercises they had just gone through.