Page 95 of Crazy for this Girl

My heart drops to my feet then, and I can’t move. I just continue to stare at the boy, turned man, transformed into someone that could flip his emotions off faster than I could wrap my head around it.

I had to stop talking to him to get away from my past because every man I dated was easily compared to him at every turn. From the food he liked, to his musical choices, to the things he liked to do and how he’d said them. No man stood a chance when a small piece of me clung to Cal like a lifeline.

Like a teenage girl with a shattered heart, waiting for the duct tape to put it back together.

And Cal held the fucking duct tape.

“I’m here to pick up an order for sixteen white roses,” he says, his voice deeper and more commanding than I’ve ever heard it before.

Then again, a decade equals ten years, so I guess it would.

He lifts a perfectly shaped brow when I don’t respond back right away. It’s because I’m instantly envious that I’m still learning how to get a hold of myself while he looks perfectly fine, unbothered, and just peachy keen in my presence.

“Are they ready?”

Fuck you.

It’s at the tip of my tongue. I’ve imagined myself saying it a million and one times before but the phrase won’t leave my damn throat, which only annoys me more.

This is the perfect moment.

One I’m allowing to flee away without any consequences bestowed on him because I’ve had a hell of a time getting karma delivered to my door and I can’t stop the damn subscription from coming.

Without a word, I turn, feeling his eyes burn into my spine, and only when I hit the threshold of the back room do I inhale for the first time.

“White roses,” I say, sounding as though I’m out of breath and back from a ten-mile marathon. “Are they ready?”

Aunt Sharon doesn’t even look at me when she points at the refrigerator. “Over there.”

It doesn’t take me long to find them, it being the only order of white anything, and I still myself for a moment to gain my composure.

I’m a grown-ass woman.

He’s not going to make me feel a certain type of way.

I’m in control.

Marching confidently—sorta—back to the front, I toss the flowers gracelessly on the countertop and begin to ring them up, ignoring him the best I can because fuck him again.

“Are these…” I flick my eyes up to him when it’s all he says, finding a scowl of disapproval painted on his features.

I ignore it.

“That’s sixty dollars and—”

“They look horrendous,” he clips, slicing those green eyes up to me. “Did Mrs. James create this order?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at them again with horror. It’s almost better than that fuck you from earlier that I wanted to deliver. “I’m not paying for these. I need sixteen white roses that look like they didn’t just get hacked up by a child and arranged neatly for the ungodly amount of money I’m about to spend for them.”

I glance down at the white kraft paper that surrounds the roses, then up at the petals. “They look fine.”

“I remember I was the one that was bad at math. There’re eighteen roses in there.”

My fingers wrap into a fist at how rude and snobby he is. It’s almost as if I’m living a bad dream where I’m speaking to a Karen but it’s Cal Harper instead, dressed in a finely designed jacket and trousers. My heart skids annoyingly across each of my ribs at the sight.

Reaching over for the bouquet, I spin it around and pluck two roses out of the bundle and spruce up the small space it created. Then I toss the two abandoned roses at his chest, twirl the arrangement to face him, and meet his eyes with a fuck around and find out, and I’m gonna pop you in the throat glare.

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