Page 29 of They Break Beauty

Hold on a second. “Why offer this now?”

“Why not?”

“You know why she’s not here right now?”

“Of course. It’s all over her IG.”

Oh.

“You’d know that if you were a little more sociable on there. Your last post was weeks ago sometime in the summer when you were close to finishing that fashion app.” Off my look, he told me, “I was gonna message you to ask you about this until I realized you’re hardly on there. Hence me approaching you in-person instead.”

“I see.”

“So? What do you say?”

Dammit. The bastard had me backed into a corner.

I couldn’t let this opportunity pass by for her. She’d worked so hard and she’d been fighting to gain traction for the last few years since she’d started making her own clothes as a teen. I couldn’t let her be wrenched from the life she’d been so excited about here in Stonewell. And this was my shot to prevent that from coming to pass.

I nodded. “Okay. Deal.”

“And you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, what do you want, cutie?”

“Nothing. I’m fine as is.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Everybody wants something.”

“There is one thing.”

“There it is.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Go on, hit me with it.”

“Keep Levi away from me.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

“It’s my ask. End of story.”

“Yeah, the thing is, asking me to make Lev do anything is like asking for the goddamn world.”

“Then I guess we have a problem and—”

“Hold up. Look, we’d be doing this thing at our new place. There’s a recording studio there. So you’d have your own chance to tell Levi to stay away. I’ll be there as a buffer or whatever the shit.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s seriously the best I can do when it comes to him.”

He leaned in, catching me off guard, so much so that I couldn’t even react as he breathed me in. “You should know, he’s got his eye on you. And when Lev locks onto something, he doesn’t just simply let go. Although, this is the first time that the target of his fixation has ever been a person. It’s usually some lofty goal or dangerous objective. This is hella interesting, cutie.”

A shudder rolled through me.

This wasn’t good. Not at all.

I had to shut it down.

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