Page 182 of Crazy for this Girl

“Like buying my forgiveness?” She scowls at that and I begin counting again, making her wait the full ten seconds before responding again.

“Like buying your truth. We talk after your negotiations as Miss Reese and Mr Harper. Then afterward, we speak as Cal and Laynee. All bullshit of working together shoved aside. I don’t want to hear that you’re fucking boss during that conversation.”

“But I would be.”

“Not when we’re talking about us.”

“That breeches us not getting messy,” she counters with a cocked brow.

“It won’t be by the time I negotiate my own conditions.”

She pushes her cheek out with her tongue. “And if I don’t agree?”

I smirk confidently because she will. “Then it’s going to be a long two years of how it is right now if I don’t get you to break first.”

“Dinner at a restaurant.”

“My place.”

“That’s not—”

“Say professional, Miss Reese, and I’ll show you my definition by the way I’m feeling right now. Hint, it involves your legs spread on my desk.”

She quickly pushes off said piece of furniture as if I’m going to make her do it right now. “My place.”

“It’s a date.”

“It’s not a date.” Her eyes slit into a perfect warning of what she needs herself to believe. It might not start as a date, but it’ll be our version of one by the time I’m done.

“Eight work for you?”

“Nine,” she sasses back. “My boss is a dick and has me doing a bunch of shit.”

I shake my head with a smile. “I’ll be there, Miss Reese.”

I didn’t know it was possible for me to feel any more guilt than I already have when I step into Laynee’s apartment and see how janky it is. It doesn’t appear to be renovated, ever, and the furniture is all old and worn, sitting on chipped hardwood floors that are irreplaceable. The neighborhood she lives in isn’t the greatest, and I’m going to demand in one of my negotiations with her that she move out of this shithole before I do it for her.

Might set me back a few steps with getting her to fall back into what we used to be again, but it’s worth it to know she’s safe and sound, and living in something decent.

“Can I get you some bourbon?” Laynee asks me as she closes the scratched-up maroon door behind me. I don’t even think I want to ask if she knows what that’s from.

I’m also about to ask Laynee why she has bourbon, but decide against it and thank her for getting me a glass when she comes back with one.

“My roommate is out for the night, and she won’t be back until late, so we have the whole place to ourselves for privacy.”

I didn’t need to know that for it to make this harder. “Fantastic.”

“And I ordered us pizza.”

“Huh?”

She narrows her eyes. “What?”

“You’re offering your boss pizza for a negotiation?”

Yeah, okay, I’m being a dickhead, but she wants me to be serious about this shit when really, I wanted to delve in and force her to just blurt everything out already instead of doing this in a slow ass process.

Like normal people.

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