“Someone is a bit territorial over a little skin showing, huh?”
“No, dollface. I know how to fight. I’m not worried about a guy looking at you wrong. I’ve slit enough throats to combat that.” His tone held menace as he threw around that Armanelli power. He didn’t do it often. It was how I knew Cade still felt something for me. Felt something deep and dark and dangerous. “We wouldn’t leave the building because I’d rip the dress off and bend you over your desk.”
“Cade,” I whispered, taking a step back, knowing I couldn’t resist him if he pushed me much further. And I had to because I felt the heartache of losing him already.
Losing him when I didn’t even quite have him was gut-wrenching. Depressing. And staggeringly more difficult than I’d thought.
“Want me to show you, baby doll? Or are we still playing your silly game?”
“No,” I blurted out and swiped my makeup and purse off my desk. “Find someone else to fuck over a desk.”
He straightened my chair and then leaned on it. “You think I can replace that sinful mouth of yours? Or find a girl who gives as good as she gets and can rival me in hacking, Ms. Hardy?”
“I’m sure you could find someone.” I shrugged, but the idea tore my heart out.
He nodded once, a frown appearing on his face, and he stepped back. Maybe he was letting me go; maybe he’d finally decided I was replaceable. “Yes, Izzy. Maybe I could, but I wouldn’t want to.”
He waved me past him, and I walked out toward the elevators. I tried not to look back, tried not to catch one last glimpse of my heart being left there, bleeding out on the floor.
When I turned, he was still leaning on my chair, his hands fisted around the back of it.
Did he feel it too? The way we were losing something we never really had?
22
Izzy
I texted Lucas as soon as I got to the club, then I disappeared into the crowd. It was dim enough for people to lose their identities under their masks, but I still found my friend at the bar in all white with a feathered white mask around his eyes.
He handed me the black one and said, “White and black swans. Somehow, I think it’s poetic.”
I chuckled as I slid mine on. “Probably not.”
“Let’s get Izzy Bizzy a drink,” he murmured. “I want that look on your face gone.”
“I should probably just let you have fun and take one for the team. I’m not in the mood.”
“This is what I mean.” His shoulder bumped mine as we took a seat at the bar. “Something’s up with you. I should have brought the damn candy canes so we could talk it out.”
I pulled my hair from the tight ponytail I normally wore to work and shook it loose around my mask. Then I leaned over and unbuttoned his white suit. “We’re not at the office. Candy canes don’t work now.”
His lips pinched at the corners as they thinned, while his blue eyes bored into me. “They work about as good as we’re going to get, considering we don’t have the real thing.”
I studied him. “Are you good?”
He sighed and wiped a hand over his face. “You know you don’t always have to be my sponsor, right? And I’d tell you if I was at my breaking point.”
I picked at a nail. “I’m not saying that you wouldn’t. I’m just—”
“You’re not sure you’d tell anyone if you were about to go off the deep end? So you’re projecting your own hypothetical actions onto me?”
Scratching my forehead, I looked around the bar. A blonde bartender with a peacock mask carried over a mojito for me and stared at Lucas with lust in her big green eyes. Poor girl had no idea that Lucas would never sleep with her, but I had to admit, Lucas in a white suit was a sight to see. Even so, he liked brunettes with beards, and she didn’t have either of those attributes. “You want a drink now? On the house?”
He chuckled and pulled my stool close like he wanted her to believe we were together. I knew the drill. I laid my head on his shoulder and saw her face fall almost immediately. “I’ll have an old-fashioned.”
“Great.” She hurried away to make his drink.
I gazed up at him lovingly. “Would you like me to act like your girlfriend all night or just for the next minute?”
He pinched my side, and I yelped. He laughed as he said, “If I did like women, you’d be the perfect one.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m a mess according to . . .” I almost said Cade but then cleared my throat. “Gerald.”
“You finally get hit by the sad bus and are depressed you lost your shit boyfriend now?” He pushed his lip out, and I flicked it. “Fuck, Izzy. That hurt. I’m only teasing you because you’re not sad about that and you know it.”
“Well, technically I am sad,” I admitted but waited for the bartender to drop off his drink before I continued. “Am I sad about Gerald?” I hummed for a second like I was thinking about it. “Probably not. He’s finally stopped texting.”
“No shit. Do you know why he stopped now?”
“Not really.” I glanced away.
“What aren’t you telling me? You came back from that trip like you had a broken heart, but . . .” The freaking lightbulb in his head must have gone off. “Do you have a broken heart, Izzy?”
I took a swig of my mojito, staring into my drink. He paused so long that I glanced up.
The thing about Lucas was he knew my quirks, my tells, my everything. That’s what you got when you worked so closely with someone. It was funny, my twin sister may not have been able to pick up on them, but someone I worked with forty hours a week and then hung out with on the side certainly knew me best. Perceptive colleagues who spent the majority of their time with one another could easily learn more than was intended for them.
“You’re fucking Cade? Is he the one who broke your heart?” my friend bellowed.
“Jesus! Be quiet.” I smacked his arm. “I’m not fucking him. Not anymore. And it was mostly hate fucking. Honestly, most of the time, I really despised him . . . except when I didn’t.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Izzy Bizzy.” His tone sounded soothing and concerned.
“No. Don’t do that.” I hated being coddled. “Don’t get all big brother on me. I already have four of them.”
“Each and every one of them are hot too. Please tell me that one day, one of them will swing my way.”
“Not as of yet, but I can’t have you as another overprotective brother-in-law. So you’re going to have to steer your spear not so near.”
He choked on his drink as he laughed. “The fuck are you talking about? I’m not trying to marry anyone.”
“Right. I know. But my sister wasn’t trying to get married either, yet here I am with a brother-in-law.”
“True. True. I think we need shots.” He rubbed his jaw. “And another drink. Damn, Izzy. I was not expecting you to tell me you fucked our boss.”
I groaned. If I was laying it all on the table, I should confess to the rest that was bothering me. “And quite frankly, I can handle that. But I . . .” I took a breath and said what I needed to. “I can’t handle losing someone else because I lost someone when I was really young.”
Lucas sat up straight, in disbelief, like he was a dog who’d heard a suspicious sound. His ears were perked, ready to attack or protect his best friend. Me.
That’s why I decided to tell him. Why I knew he’d be the one to understand.
So as people danced around in masks and had the time of their lives, I told my best friend everything. And he listened. His jaw may have dropped when I told him about the cabin retreat and about my first love, but he didn’t judge me. He didn’t even wrinkle his nose at me.
And at the end of my story, he leaned in. “Was he at least good?” Lucas whispered close to my ear, and I threw up my hands before dropping my head on the bar.
“You’re a terrible friend, you know that?” I asked without picking up my head.
“I’m your best friend,” he growled before pulling my hair so I would sit up. I glanced at him. “And I ask the questions that matter. Because you know what will happen if he’s good?”
I rested my elbow on the bar and set my chin in my hand to give him the full attention he wanted as he dragged out his point. “What will happen, dear Lucas?”
“You won’t get over him. You’ll find your way back again and again.”
“I told you it was mostly hate fucking.”
“Hate fucking is the best fucking, and we all know it.” He held up a shot of rum and ticked his head at mine. “Cheers to you and the dumpster fire that your life is about to be.”
“I’m not cheers-ing to that.” I had lifted my shot glass but pulled it back.
“Fine. Cheers to me pulling you from the dumpster fire that you’re inevitably about to fall into.”
I rolled my eyes but clinked my glass against his before I downed it. “I hate that you’re probably right.” I took a deep breath. “I already told him we’re going our separate ways.”