Page 13 of We Can't Be Friends

Covering her face, her head shakes from side to side. An impressively loud groan comes out from behind her hands.

Whoever he is—her boyfriend maybe—reaches out to touch her. Chloe steps back. Twice.

He reaches again.

She swats his hand away.

He tries again, going for a hand at her side, trying to hold it. Chloe pulls away mouthing the word, “No.”

I swiftly close the distance between us, stepping in between them.

“She said no.” My body a shield. My words the weapon.

My shoulder blades pull back, and I glare down at him. I have three or four inches on him. Even more on Chloe. The top of her head comes to my collarbone.

“How do you know what she said?” he spits out at me.

“I can read her body language a kilometer away. Anyone could see she’s sayingno.”

“She wasn’t saying no. Were you, babe?”

Spinning on my heels, I catch a desperate gray gaze. Chloe sways her attention to him and back to me, chest slowly moving up and down.

“Chloe,” we both say in unison. Shooting a quick glare at the asshole, I return my sight to Chloe.

Where he says it as a demand, I say it with. . . concern? Care?

“I wasn’t,” she mumbles.

“Told you.” He steps up beside me.

Chloe’s head drops to the sidewalk, focusing on her black platform Converse. She bites her lip, flicking her gaze up to me through long, dark eyelashes, and back to her shoes.

“Henry.” Her gaze draws up slowly, chin tilting up. Eyes narrowed, the gray a warning. Silently asking me to drop this, but I’m not. “Did you tell him no?”

I step closer to her, trying to keep him away from her. I resist the urge to reach for her—lacing my fingers through her tattooed ones, or pushing back the loose, wild strands of hair falling forward, brushing against her tan shoulder.

“Who are you?” the prick asks. The same question Chloe demanded the other day. “And why are you talking to mygirlfriendlike that?”

Girlfriend.

He’s the boyfriend she complained to Emerson about.

“I’m Callum Sullivan. We are f—”

She cuts me off in a protective tone. “He’s friends with Emerson and works with Liam at Hayes Hotels.”

I tilt my head. Must have asked about me.

Chloe brushes a hand on his shoulder. “We aren’t friends.”

I stare down at her, confused. She isn’t wrong.

We aren’t friends.

Then why do I feel a layer of protectiveness and concern for her?

“You need to back off,” he says in an attempt to big man me. He shifts his body to put him between Chloe and I. “Back away from her.”

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