Page 63 of Sunflower

Much to my delight, he purposely ignored the jammer and growled at me. “Shut up.”

This taunting thing wasfun.

“Why?” I asked, smirking cheekily. “I thought you wanted information. That’s why you approached me, isn’t it? For information? I’m only giving you what you asked for.”

“Yes, but notthatsort of information. Christ.” A disgusted sneer appeared on his face.

Tilting my head to one side, I tried to look as naïve as I could, given the circumstances. “What exactly are you so opposed to hearing about? Just so I know what to avoid in the future, you know. Is it the step sibling thing?”

His expression didn’t really change.

“Or is it the gay thing?”

His nose scrunched with revulsion before he could stop it.

“Ah,” I said, nodding in sympathetic understanding. “You don’t enjoy hearing about men fucking each other.”

I paused long enough for him to glare at me. “That’s enough.”

“Your loss, really,” I continued, ignoring his attempt to silence me. “There’s honestly nothing better than getting your hole wrecked by a thick, slick cock—”

“I said, that’s enough!” he interrupted loudly, his torso leaning forward as if to threaten me before he caught what he was doing. He coughed once and looked around before he settled back into the bench, swiping his gloved hand down his front. “Facts. I just want facts.”

“Well, I’d say it’s a fact that Callum is a fucking machine in the sack,” I muttered obnoxiously under my breath, earning myself one final, indignant snarl, before I held my hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I shall refrain from elaborating on Callum’s and my sexual escapades, lest I alarm your delicate sensibilities.”

I considered it a win when he rolled his eyes and looked away from me again. So, it was with alarm and a fair amount of regret when my high at winning a point against this dickhead was destroyed by the next words out of his mouth:

“Did George enjoy the movie as well?”

My jaw snapped shut, and the smirk I’d been sporting dropped instantly from my face.

“Oh, you didn’t think I knew about that, did you?” he asked, a smirk of his own appearing. “I have eyes everywhere, Joey. You’d do well to remember that.”

Ireallywanted to ask if that was the case, why the fuck did he insist on being such a pain in my ass, but I didn’t. This wasn’t only a fact-finding mission for him, but for me as well. I needed information just as much as he did.

“George is Callum’s uncle,” I said quietly, lying through my teeth and making shit up on the fly. “They wanted to catch up and talk about a shared Christmas gift for Erin. Callum asked if I’d be okay with them chatting before the movie, and I said it’d be fine.”

There. That sounded somewhat believable.

Right?

“Is that what they told you?” he asked in a snide, condescending tone. “Huh.”

A tense silence dropped over us as he waited for me to ask him to elaborate, while I stubbornly refused to say anything at all.

Eventually, he sighed and rolled his eyes again. The young, obnoxious side of me mentally pumped my fist into the air at winning another point against this prick, while my more adult side reminded me that forcing a quiet exterior would be a better option than angrily punching him in the face.

“George is Callum’s boss,” he said sedately, picking at a piece of invisible lint on his pant leg. “They work for a clandestine cell in the US that is known to be actively and subversively conspiring against the Office of the President.”

I felt my eyebrows rise as I slowly blinked in astonishment.

What.

The Fuck.

Memories flickered through my brain of things I’d been told over the past few days…

Callum telling me about how George had seen me getting approached by a US government official.

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