Page 5 of Revenge Cake

“Why did she call you a fuckboy?” one of the girls asks, as if she read my mind.

My eyes dart around the room to find the angel face Leilani. Heat shoots into my groin at the sight of her direct, unblinking stare. She looks like she’s trying to hypnotize me. “I have a lot of friends who are girls,” I say. “Brittani was always really jealous, but it got really bad toward the end there. I think she knew I had checked out already, so she freaked out.”

“Armaan said Brittani was a little…” Mia trails off.

“Crazy,” Armaan fills in.

At this, Brenna places her hands on her hips and looks up at Armaan with a scowl. “Armaan Singh, this is a house of women. If you ever call a woman crazy again, you’ll be shown to the door. I’m not kidding. We don’t make exceptions for boyfriends. Don’t do it again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, reaching out his hand and patting her head. Tiny little Brenna barely reaches Armaan’s pecks.

“I don’t really like saying she was crazy either,” I say to Brenna, “because she had some legit mental health shit going on, but let’s just say that she kind of…spiraled. Like, the person she was when we first started dating is not the person she became at the end there. It was kind of alarming.”

“She’s not crazy,” a husky voice says. “You’re just weak.”

Momentarily stunned, my lips part. When I glance around the room to find the speaker, I’m arrested again by the angel face. God, she’s beautiful, and in such a soft, sweet way. A sharp contrast to the voice that just insulted me, but there’s no doubting that challenging stare. That single brow lifting as if to say, “You heard me right.”

“Lani!” Mia shouts before turning to me. “She’s very blunt. She doesn’t realize that it comes across as rude sometimes.”

Finally starting to recover, my lips lift into a faint smile. “What makes you say that?” I ask the angel face. Mia called her “Lani.” I like it. It’s short, sweet, and to the point. Just like her.

Still unsmiling, Lani shrugs. “Armaan told us the whole story. He said you’ve been technically broken up for a month, but you’ve still been going to her house at night to comfort her. Who does that?” She grimaces. “What kind of person are you?”

When abrupt silence fills the room after her question, I realize I’m not the only one shocked. I’m so caught by it, I can’t even be mad at Armaan for apparently telling these girls every humiliating detail of my breakup with Brittani. Heat creeps into my cheeks, but my smile stays in place. I’m embarrassed, yes, but I can’t help feeling a little thrilled at her assessing, skeptical gaze. I love the way she looks at me, like I’m the most interesting person in the room.

“I don’t know…” Her hard eye contact makes it difficult for me to find the right words. “I guess I was just worried about her. She wasn’t doing well after we broke up and I kind of felt responsible for it. I’ve always been a sucker for crying, and she was leaving me these voicemails where she was literally sobbing, begging me to come over. Jesus…” I shake my head at the memory. “It was fucking terrible. I felt like she needed me.”

Lani isn’t moved. If anything, she looks even more disgusted. “You understand that the breakupper isn’t supposed to comfort the breakuppee, right? Brittani knows this too. I don’t think she really needed you. She was trying to punish you.”

A faint smile rises to my lips as I squint at her skeptically. “You know this from the stuff you heard secondhand from Armaan?”

“Yes,” she answers instantly.

My smile widens at her confidence, though I have to contradict her. “Brittani’s not a very manipulative person. Or, at least, she’s not very good at manipulating. She kind of wears her heart on her sleeve, you know? Almost to a fault. Like, when I go over there, she wants me to hold her on her bed while she cries. That’s all we do. She cries and I hold her. Don’t you think that’s kind of embarrassing?”

“For you or for her?”

My mouth drops open for the second time in as many minutes. Did she really just insult me again? Holy shit, this girl has balls. I stare at her dumbly for several seconds, vaguely registering that Armaan is chuckling quietly.

“I think it’s more embarrassing for you,” Lani says, as if she didn’t already make that clear. “Brittani is making you her bitch. You humiliated her and now she’s punishing you for it. Punishing you turns her on. I get it.” She smiles for the first time, a slight lift of her heart-shaped lips that draws my eyes to her mouth. “Her methods aren’t my style, but I would punish you too.”

In a rush, heat fills my belly, clenching my stomach muscles so tight I have to fight the urge to hunch. Is she really implying what I think she’s implying? My eyes dart to Armaan, if only to make sure I heard her correctly, and his eyes are as wide as mine must be.

“Lani,” Mia says, her tone pleading. “This conversation is getting weird. I think you’re making Logan uncomfortable.”

It’s true, but God Almighty not in the way Mia thinks. My face feels as hot as a furnace, my pants growing tighter by the second. If there wasn’t a group of people around us I would be tempted to ask Lani to take me into her bedroom and punish me now.

Lani looks hesitant for the first time, as if she only recognized her audacity after Mia pointed it out to her. As if she thought nothing before about picking apart the intimate details of the life of a complete stranger and handing him his balls on a platter.

God, she’s amazing. “Why do you think I humiliated her?” I ask, desperate to keep her talking.

The hesitation vanishes from her face. She lifts a brow. “Armaan told us about the best friend.”

“He sure did,” Brenna says, lowering her chin.

I don’t know why I have to fight the urge to flinch. I have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing even happened with Brittani’s best friend Olivia. Can I help it if I liked talking to her, and that she happened to be around? Can I help it if I didn’t like talking to Brittani after she lost her fucking mind and started demanding that I account for my every movement? After she started tracking my location on her phone and asking me about every place I went. My whereabouts were the only god damn thing she ever wanted to talk about, and I never even gave her a reason to mistrust me. Jesus Christ, our relationship was a nightmare.

Recovering myself, I say, “Nothing happened with the friend. That was all in Brittani’s head.”

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