“I’ll wait for you outside.”
Confusion and want swirl in her eyes as I shut the door, placing a barrier between us. It takes all my mental strength to drag myself out of the dressing room and back into the department store. Every inch of my body is screaming to be touching her. But I don’t want to scare her off. She has no idea I’m Blade. That I had her sweet body falling to pieces around my fingers mere days ago. Right now, I’m just the friend of the guy whose car she backed into.
It was pure luck that I spotted Stevie earlier as she rode the escalator to the women’s floor. I’d been with Parker in the men’s shoe section, watching him try on twenty different pairs of dress shoes for some family event.
The little asshole got me here on the false pretense of running a quick errand before picking up some wood-oven pizza from my favorite restaurant. Quick being a complete lie as I’d been here for over two hours and was five minutes away from strangling him with a shoelace. Luckily, Stevie saved me from committing manslaughter.
“Hey, thanks for waiting,” Stevie slips next to me, gold dress pooling in her arms, “you really didn’t have to.”
“It was not without an ulterior motive.”
“Oh?” Her brow quirks up as she passes me on her way to the checkout desk. “And what might that motive be?”
“Asking you for your number.”
“What number? Apartment number? Phone number? Body count number?”
Always a bit of a brat, this one.
“Social security, actually. I was really hoping to steal your identity and open multiple credit cards in your name so that I could fund my addiction to Cadbury chocolate.”
I watch as her steps falter slightly and she lets out a short laugh.
“Cadbury chocolate?”
“Yup. It’s an English brand of chocolate. Once you try it, all the American stuff tastes like crap. I get special limited-edition flavors shipped in from the UK or Australia sometimes. Costs a pretty penny.”
She pauses and turns her head to stare at me for a few seconds. Her warm brown eyes narrow as she assesses me, trying to tell if I’m lying. It is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. How this woman manages to be sexy as sin one minute and cute as fuck the next, I’ll never know.
“That statement is so oddly specific. I can’t tell if you are bullshitting me or not.”
I give her a smirk. My chocolate addiction is a real thing. I’ve loved the stuff since I was a kid, but the Cadbury obsession is one Parker regrets creating after bringing me to spend Christmas with his family years ago. I force him to bring me back an entire bag of the stuff whenever he travels home.
“I guess you’ll just have to give me your social security number to find out.”
She rolls her eyes as she turns back to finish making her way to Luisa. I stand off to the side as she pays. When she finishes, she turns and holds her hand out to me, palm up. Which is a little weird, but I high-five her anyway.
“No, dumbass, your phone. Or did you really want my social security number?”
I am a dumbass.
An actual idiot.
This woman. She brings out every part of me.
Pulling my phone from my jeans pocket, I unlock it and open it to the contacts app before slipping it into her hand. I’m careful to watch as she types that no weird texts or notifications pop up. I had two phones at one point, one for Aleksander and one for Blade. But it became such a pain in the ass, I reverted back to one phone and just got a second e-SIM for it. Which means that any number of things could pop up, especially stream notifications or Discord messages.
I hate handing people my phone. When your life is based online, it breeds a certain level of anxiety around privacy.
“Here, I texted myself, but,” she scans me up and down, “we’ll see if you actually text me.”
I take the phone back, glancing at the screen.
Stevie Andwell.
“I guess we will.”
***
“On second thought, maybe I should just wear a blue tie. It’s kind of my thing.”
“I don’t care what color the tie is, it’ll all look the same against your pale neck when I’m strangling you with it.”
“I said I was sorry!”
I shoot Parker another glare before going back to the game on my phone. Even though my career is PC based, I spend my free time outside of training, streaming, and filming by playing on my consoles or my phone. It’s a way to keep my brain working and hand-eye coordination up without feeling burnt out over the same games over and over. It’s like ordering takeout from a different cuisine: you love food altogether, but you need to switch it up, otherwise you’ll get sick of the same thing.
My phone vibrates from a text notification, and my heart pauses for a second before realizing it’s from Sydney and not Stevie.
Stevie left right after buying her dress; apparently, the store she wanted to buy shoes from was far away, and she wanted to get there before traffic hit. I was tempted to try to find a way to get her to stay, but begging a girl is not really my style.
SYD: Your interview’s confirmed. Sent you the calendar invite.
SYD: Don’t decline it.
I groan. I know Syd wouldn’t have agreed to the interview if she didn’t think it was worth the opportunity, but it’s still a pain. Hopefully it’s an online interview and not something at a coffee shop. I did that once, and it was awful.
“Oh yeah, the blue is proper good.”
I glance up to see Parker admiring the shit out of himself in the mirror. The guy is like a damned peacock half the time – he buys more clothes than Jackson and me combined. I’ve never met a guy who is so optimistic and nerdy but also full of himself and bleeding money.
“Have you made a decision, Mr. Covington?”
The sales associate has popped back around. The old guy has been watching Parker like a hawk. He could smell the sales commission from a mile away. I have to give him credit, he picked the best mark.
“Yes, I’ll be taking this tie. You can add it to the same tab as earlier with the cufflinks and shoes, and then I’ll be done.”
He hands the tie over to the associate.
“Wonderful choice. I’ll get the payment processed. The tie is two hundred and forty dollars which brings your total to one thousand seven hundred and forty-five. Just to confirm.”
“Perfectly well, John.”
The old man shuffles off with excitement, and I stare at Parker as he shrugs his bomber jacket back on.
“What’s the tie made of? The emperor’s holy silk?”
“It’s Gucci, you ass.”
“Oh, of course. How uncultured of me.”
“Mate, you act like you don’t make double the rest of us.”
“Not true if you add in your inheritance.”
He just sighs in response and starts walking away from me to the sales desk. He knows I’m right. The Covingtons are stupid rich. I could stream for another ten years and still not be worth half as much as he is right now.
“Plus, having money doesn’t mean I can tell a brand from a mile away.”
“True, you can buy fame, but you can’t buy culture.”