“I’ll believe you, whatever you say. And I know it was bad. I know it had to have been bad.” I point to the picture of The Hive. “This is—this is next-level perfection. He’s a selfish ass. He deserves this. But there are so many people who will be collateral damage if you do this here.”
He still doesn’t look at me, and that’s when I notice the bags under his eyes and the droop in his shoulders. The dishes at the sink that suggest someone ate here already this morning. The slight scent of bacon lingering in the air.
He hasn’t slept.
That’s why I haven’t seen him.
If he’s needed to be here, he’s come at night.
When I’m not here.
“Please—” I start.
“I hear Mr. Twizzlers and his body shop business could move to a different spot in town if Ms. Red Robin spilled all the dirt she has on him.”
I gasp.
I actually gasp.
Mr. Twizzlers was my code name for Kurtis, our local chiropractor, and yes, I said he had a body shop business on Main Street.
Fine.
That one was probably easy.
But Ms. Red Robin was my code name for myself. The only time I used it was when I told him about the time I hid all of the flyers for the annual rodeo because I was mad that Addison was going to be crowned Rodeo Princess. And I changed all of those details. Something about an art festival and the Crochet King.
“Zen found all of the rodeo posters in a cubby under the desk,” Grey adds like he’s reading my mind. “I looked it up. Your friend Addison was crowned Rodeo Princess the same year as the flyers. You said you didn’t tell me anything about her, but this paints a picture that suggests she’s Ms. Taco Bell who might or might not have used blackmail to be crowned Ms. Crochet King at an art festival.”
“Oh, god,” I squeak. I’m not hungover anymore, but I wish I was. “That’s—that’s—”
“Genius?”
“Diabolical.”
One corner of his mouth lifts, and god help me, I want to kiss it.
I want to climb him, wrap my arms and legs around him, and kiss that corner of his mouth.
He can expose me.
He can tell everyone what he’s figured out, and he can probably put more pieces of gossip together.
And I want to kiss him for it.
“You can make the chiropractor move and re-open your café there,” he says quietly. “Then we both get what we want.”
He doesn’t promise to keep all of my secrets as his own.
He also doesn’t offer up anything else he might’ve figured out and pieced together.
He’s dangerous. And he definitely hates Chandler.
“Are you blackmailing me?” I ask. “Buying my compliance with your knowledge?”
He meets my gaze again, and this time, there’s zero mistaking what I’m reading in there.
It’s worse than blackmail.
Worse than tearing apart my café.
Worse than his anger and irritation with me.
It’s forgiveness.
I blink and try to make myself believe it’s something else, but I can’t.
Not when he opens his stupid sexy mouth again. “I’m not mad at you.”
Fuck. “You should be.”
“I get it. I would’ve ghosted me too.”
“I was an asshole.”
“You were brutally honest until the very end, and you did what you thought you needed to do to protect both of us.”
“Stop making excuses for me.” Keep making excuses for me.
His gaze doesn’t waver, but something shifts in his eyes.
Recognition.
Like he gets why I want him to be mad at me. Like he understands that it’s easier to keep people at arms’ length and only let them so far in.
Laney and Emma? My mom? Grandpa?
They’re in.
Emma not talking to me is horrific. I’m hiding from facing it, but it is. It’s bad on a losing my grandma level, and it reminds me of every relationship I’ve ever seen go south.
Which is a lot of relationships.
I’m feeling that thing with Emma that I’ve shielded myself from, and having Grey forgive me right now almost makes me feel like Emma’s forgiven me.
Like I’m still worthy of being someone’s friend.
Or more.
Like it could be okay, even knowing the pain that’s come from my friendship with Emma being up in the air.
“Who told you that you have to be perfect?” All of his intense focus is trained on me, his eyes flicking over my face like he’s taking stock of how every teeny tiny muscle is reacting to the question.
“Me,” I whisper. “Perfect is—”
“Safest.”
“Yes.” I blink and pull back. “No. No. Laney’s the perfect one. The safe one. I’m the gossip. I don’t have to do anything right. I just have to know—”
“How to use it all right,” he finishes for me.
Nailing it.
Again.
He shifts, and I realize he’s been moving this whole time without me noticing it.
And now he has me trapped between his two long, solid arms, my back to the prep table, him leaning into my bubble, and oh my latte, this.
“My parents blamed me for existing for my entire life,” he says quietly, no hiding, no blinking, no hesitation. “I was the accident. The highest-maintenance. The one who wasn’t supposed to disrupt their lives. So I made myself as small as I could be. But fuck that. We get to exist. We get to make mistakes. We get to be wrong. Even when we know we’re being wrong. We’re human. And right now, I want to make another very big mistake with you.”
13
Grey
Bad idea.
Bad, bad idea.
I should not want to kiss Sabrina right now. I shouldn’t be trapping her against the table. I shouldn’t be telling her any damn thing at all about my life.
But it’s so damn good to see her. To feel her. To breathe in the coffee-and-soap scent of her and watch her bright eyes study me while her lids lower and her breathing comes faster and she darts that quick pink tongue out to lick her lower lip.
“Mistakes hurt,” she breathes.
“You don’t date.”
“You don’t miss much.”
“I don’t date.”
“You’re doing very bad math.” She clearly knows where my brain is going.
“Math is my expertise,” I tell her.
Her fingers curl into my shirt right at my breastbone. Both hands, clutching the buttons on my shirt for dear life. “Do you have any idea how much I could hate you? How much I should hate you?”
“I’m good with you hating me.”
Her lips unexpectedly curve up. “Stop being funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“You’re a disaster.”
“Welcome to the club, Duchess.”
She whimpers, and that’s the last thing I hear before she tugs my shirt and leans forward, planting those lips on mine, plump and hot and hungry.
“Don’t—call me—that,” she breathes against my mouth.
“Want you—hate me,” I breathe back.
She’s nipping and licking and sucking and I’m not in a cold silver-and-white kitchen in a snowy mountain town.
I’m surrounded by heat and humidity while waves roll to shore, my hands roaming over the soft cotton of her T-shirt down to the curve of her hips under her thick pants.
“Can’t do this,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Fuck me, I don’t know.”
Her tongue plunges into my mouth.
My cock is hard as iron. I can’t touch her enough. Feel her enough. Remember her enough.
Fuck, Hawaii was good.
When she was just a random woman having a tough night, and all of my primitive take care of her neurons fired and I felt good about myself and my own worth as a human being for what felt like the first time in forever.
I want to feel that again.
She’s not a safe choice. I know she hates what I’m doing here.
But she understands.
And she’s still kissing me.
Maybe I’m still the moron who doesn’t know she’s using sex to manipulate me.
If I am, I don’t care. I’m not changing my mind about what I’m doing merely because she’s boosting herself onto the table and wrapping her legs around my hips and arching her pussy against my aching dick.
“Oh, fuck, no,” she suddenly gasps.
“What? What?”
“Walked in—Emma—here—move. Move.”
Is she saying—nope.
Don’t care.
I lift her, cradling her ass in my hands while she moans and threads her fingers through my hair and kisses me like I’m the missing piece to her puzzle. And in four steps, I’m shoving her against the back door while I kiss her back like she’s the missing puzzle to my lone piece.
She squeezes her legs tighter.
I knead my fingers into her strong ass muscles, pressing my erection against her center through our clothes while she moans in my mouth.