Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
I could see his frustration.
I also could see Knox would be dealing with even more of the stuff I’d been dealing with, namely not confiding important life stuff to friends, only for them to find out and feel betrayed you didn’t trust them with that important life stuff.
Even if it was understandable that you didn’t.
“I’ve already given him shit about this,” I told him.
“And so has everyone else,” Brady told me.
“Okay. Then I don’t understand how this tracks with us pretending we kinda/sorta are into each other,” I remarked.
“He got in my shit about you.”
Whoa.
This was news.
“What?” This question came out on a gasp.
“A while ago. We’ve been having words on and off because I’ve been making it plain I wasn’t big on the shit he was pulling, even before he got with Cheyenne. But when Gabe and Willow were connecting, he cornered me in the workout room at the office and got up in my shit.”
“What’d he say?”
“That me making a play for you was horseshit. That he knew our game, and it was totally uncool.”
Admittedly, Knox was right. It was foolhardy and smacked of desperation (that last from me, which I was belatedly understanding was not a good look).
“I can’t say I disagree with him,” I said carefully.
Brady had no reply.
“What’d you say to him?” I asked.
“I told him he’d know fucked-up, uncool plays since Cheyenne was a rebound, she was not the woman to bring into our crew because he was eventually going to get shot of her, but he did it so he could shove her in your face. And if he can dish it out, he needed to man the fuck up and take it.”
Oh boy.
Those were fightin’ words for sure.
“Bet that didn’t go over too good,” I muttered.
“I thought he was gonna take a swing at me.”
I flinched.
“Unless it’s company business, he hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Crap.
That was really bad, and something else to jot down on our list to talk about.
“I’m sorry, Brady.”
“I’m not. If he gets his head out of his ass, he’ll understand why he’s being such a goddamn baby about you.”
I hoped he didn’t say that “goddamn baby” part to Knox. Though I figured he didn’t because that surely would have made fists fly.
“We’re over in a way we’ll never be past that, my man,” I told him something I’d already shared. “At first, when you suggested we do our thing, I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t in my right mind. I was hurting about Cheyenne. I—”
“You were hurting because he shoved her in your face.”
Boy, Brady had a thing about that for sure. Maybe even a bigger thing than me.
But he wasn’t done.
“She doesn’t fit. Not him. Not our crew. And he knew it. So not only was he rubbing your nose in his whole ‘I can get another chick just like that’ play,”—he snapped his fingers on these words, and I fought flinching again, because yeah…that was why it hurt because he could get another chick just like that—“he was messing with Cheyenne’s head too. Also uncool.”
If she was stalking me/Knox, then…agreed. It was definitely going to be uncool.
“Are you sure that’s where he was at?”
I asked the question, but I’d heard Knox tell her off over the phone. They didn’t actually last very long, though it was longer than a few weeks (huh).
And now she was maybe/probably stalking me.
Shit.
“You won’t tell me why you two ended it,” Brady noted. “But I’m gonna ask again, why did you end it?”
“That’s between me and Knox.”
“Loon, he asked his ex-girlfriend to send you into his hospital room,” Brady pointed out. “You were the first person he asked for, and as far as I know, the only one.”
My heart skipped, my skin warmed, and I ignored both.
Ulk.
“And Lan tells me you’re nursemaiding him,” he continued.
Ulk times two.
“And you two acted like a couple while you were doing it,” he finished.
Ulk times a thousand.
His voice lowered when he said, “I thought you wanted him.”
“We’re not meant to be.”
“I don’t get that.”
“And I don’t get what still pretending to flirt and be into each other would accomplish,” I replied. “Especially when…Gemma…” I let that hang.
He didn’t address Gemma.
He said, “Because it’s working.”
This time, my heart jumped and my eyes stared.
Working?
What was working?
“A man who is not still into a woman does not get up in his bud’s face about flirting with her, especially when he knows we’re just fucking around, though, not literally,” he stated. “If he can get anyone he wants, what does he give a shit about me going after what I want?”
“He and I did have a thing, Brady, and it was intense.”
“And it was over, so he’s got no call to harass me if he let you slip through his fingers. We didn’t start that shit up the day after you two split. It was months later.”