Page 28 of Breakup Games

“Me.” She blacks out her phone screen and tips her head. “You know about true narcissists.”

“I do. You’re the one that got away and he’ll never actually be able to move on.”

“It’s almost a good thing that I—“ she says but stops, turning to look out the window. “It doesn’t matter. It’s been years and I just wish the guy would leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her genuinely. “I, uh, have a little confession.”

“Yeah?”

“I looked up your divorce case.”

“Oh.” She shrugs. “I assumed you’d do your due diligence.”

“The guy is an asshole.” I slow at a stop sign and look over at her. “But you came out of it stronger. And it takes a lot of strength to even leave an abusive relationship so I have a lot of respect for you.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. How anyone could hurt her is beyond me.

“What do you lie about in your reels?” I ask and she laughs again, shaking her head at the insanity.

“I post a lot of made up scenarios to get a point across if there’s anything to do with how to handle an ex’s new partner,Cory thinks I’m talking about him and his girlfriend. The whole situation is kinda weird.”

“I like weird.”

“You want to know my baggage?” She raises her eyebrows.

I want to know everything about her. How does she take her coffee? What’s her favorite color? What does she need for me to make her feel safe? Fuck, I want to know what she tastes like, how good it would feel to push my cock inside of her. “Yeah. Why not?”

“Okay, well you know I have my whole social media thing where I talk about my past experiences and the lessons I’ve learned. But the whole “making up lies” thing is really when I go into situations that happened to clients. I can’t say that my client, Kristina Benson, found out the first guy she dated after filing for divorce was actually married and his sister he talked so much about was really his wife. Ya know, HIPPA and all.”

“Yeah.”

“So I say it in the first person, like it happened to me. Which is a great marketing technique, by the way. People love some good spilled tea. Well, Noel, the girlfriend, does the same thing and is supposedly writing a book about all her past experiences, too. Which is fine, it's just…weird.”

“That’s really fucking weird. Is he pushing her to do it because you were successful? I did see in the court docs that he seemed rather money-hungry and was salty he couldn’t take away your social media accounts.”

“I’m actually impressed you did your homework.” Her smile is back and I would do fucking anything to keep it on her face. “And I think so. I have this morbid curiosity about it. Like it doesn’t matter, it doesn't affect my life, but I can’t help but wonder why?” She shakes her head. “Does she have no self respect? I wouldn’t want to try to become my boyfriend’s ex-wife, ever.”

“Well, if you go missing I’ll know whose basement to check.”

She laughs. “Seriously. A few friends happened to stumble on her posts and called to make sure I still had my skin because she wants to wear it.”

“A narcissist and someone with a personality disorder are a match made in heaven in the narc’s eyes.”

“Right? I actually feel sorry for her.” Mira’s face grows somber. “It’s sad to be so broken you’d stay with someone cruel. I don’t know the extent of the manipulation, but I’m sure she believes I’m the bad guy and he’s a poor innocent victim. And I can’t fault her too much since there was a time when I thought Cory really loved me too.” She bites her lips and shrugs. “I pray for her. Like really, at night when I say my prayers, I pray that they’re both happy because if they are truly happy, they’d leave me alone. So it’s a little selfish, but everyone deserves to be happy. Cory and I met when we were young, things didn’t work out, and that’s okay. I moved on and I really wish he could find it in himself to let go and live a life without me in it.”

I look at her again, taken aback by her emotional intelligence and general kindness. While she said the girlfriend’s behavior is odd—which is really fucking is—she hasn’t said anything bad about her, or really even her ex.

No…you don’t come across people like Mira often, so when you do, you’ll do whatever you can to hold onto them.

Which is exactly what Enzo Moretti is going to do.

Chapter

Eighteen

MIRA

There’s not much traffic by this hour but I still have a good amount of time left in the car with Mason before we reach my house. It’s odd how he can go from being extremely irritating one second to letting his mask slip and showing me that there’s a caring man underneath.

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