Page 61 of Ruined Beta

Spencer pulls himself together, picking up the crab claws and sitting down holding them, as if someone might try to steal them now.

“How’s the chicken?” I ask Leanne.

“Mmm,” she murmurs. “So good.”

She’s about to grab another piece when she seems to remember that’s not all there is on the table. A second later, she’s trying the beef, and making more sexy little noises of enjoyment.

Spencer’s watching her from his seat, not even interested in his crab claws.

I can’t help wondering what might happen once we’re upstairs together later.

If I’ve learned one thing about fated mates, it’s that the usual rules of dating don’t apply.

Anything can happen when people who are truly meant to be together finally meet.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Leanne

Dinner is good, and these guys are fun to be around, but I can’t help wondering why E.A. isn’t sitting here with them. He excused himself to take care of something upstairs, and he hasn’t come back.

“So, do you guys order this stuff all the time, or do you ever actually cook?”

“Spencer knows how to cook,” Echo says, shrugging as he piles some food from a container onto his plate. “But mostly, you’d be right. We order in all the time.”

“It’s not healthy,” Toshi tells me. “I try to squeeze in healthier stuff for lunch. These two don’t appreciate it at all.”

“And E.A. does?” I ask.

They all look at each other as if they’re not sure what answer to give.

Spencer sighs and puts down the crab claws he’s barely touched.

“E.A. doesn’t eat with us. He’s …” he trails off, shrugging. “There’s no word for what he is.”

“He’s a control freak,” Toshi says. “He needs to know exactly what’s in everything, so he has to make it himself.”

“Because he has allergies, or something?” I ask.

“No, because he needs to know,” Toshi answers. “He literally only buys stuff from people who grow it themselves, and he has all this information on pesticides and farming that most of us would rather not know.”

“Wow. So, you guys never just take all this stuff up there and eat with him?”

“I think all this stuff grosses him out,” Spencer admits. “He doesn’t like to make a big deal out of it, so we just let him leave when he wants to leave.”

E.A. felt like a garden-variety asshole before I read through the stuff he put in that envelope, and maybe he still kind of is, but he feels more like a complex puzzle every time I learn something new about him now. Did I seriously only meet the guy today?

It seems crazy that I’ve literally just met them.

I feel so comfortable around them, and we’ve barely spent any time together.

I guess eating food and talking about criminals are kind of my comfort blankets.

Doing this stuff with other people makes it easy to feel close to them.

I didn’t even have someone to talk to about cop shows back in Silver Lake.

Lunch with colleagues didn’t have the same feel, but I guess I was masking my alcohol problem back then, so I wasn’t being myself. I was hiding from who I was. It made me feel isolated even when I had people who called themselves my friends.

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