Page 103 of False Start

“Yeah.” I furrowed my brow. “I mean, sort of.”

“And you’re shocked she doesn’t want to be seen in public with you?” Rob laughed under his breath before taking a sip of his beer. “She seems smart. Maybe you should introduce us.”

“Fuck no,” I replied, relaxing my fist before I did something I’d regret. “And we’ve spent the last two weeks together.”

“She probably needs a break.” Rob shrugged. “What do you care, anyway? I didn’t think you even liked this girl.”

“That was before,” I said. “She’s a friend.”

“You don’t fuck your friends, asshole.” Rob ran a hand through his black, curly hair. “And if you like someone, you date them, you introduce them to your friends. You don’t hole up in their apartment like they’re a god damn state secret.”

My knee-jerk argument that I wasn’t hiding Kit died in my throat. Damn if Rob didn’t have a decent point. I hadn’t intentionally hit Kit away, but we’d naturally holed up the last week.

“She thinks I’m ashamed of her? That I’m not serious?”

“Of course she thinks you’re not serious. You’re not serious about anything.” He picked up the baby monitor, pressing it to his ear. “Did Mila just say she loves Hudson? That smarmy little booger-eater?”

“You’re going to be a wreck when she’s a teenager. You know that, right?” I growled. “And you’re supposed to be helping with my problems, not spying on your kid.”

Rob grumbled as he set the monitor back down. “Fine. If you want to be in an actual relationship, you need to ask that person. Not me. I don’t know if she’s embarrassed by you or thinks you’re embarrassing.”

“She doesn’t think I’m embarrassing.” I winced, thinking back to more than a few times on the rally when she was definitely embarrassed to be seen with me. “Okay, maybe she thinks I’m a little embarrassing, but more of that ‘he’s so cool I get embarrassed just being near him’ way.”

Rob shook his head, his lip curling. “That’s not a thing.”

“You wouldn’t know about it, but it is. So, the answer is I ask her out?”

I’d lost his attention as Mila squawked “Hudson,” again through the baby monitor. “Dude, I don’t know, but that’s what I’d do. Ask her to go somewhere. Do something besides fuck.”

“We did an entire car rally together.”

Rob raked a hand over his face. “So you keep telling me, and please, don’t pull up the picture of your dumb trophy again.”

I pocketed my phone with a frown. “I’m bringing it to the stadium so I can show everyone.”

“I bet you are.”

“Where should I take her?”

He shrugged. “How the fuck should I know?”

“I could take her out to Topaz.”

“That place is so damned pretentious.”

He was right. While it was the hottest restaurant in Norwalk, it was also expensive as hell, served too everything with foam, and had paparazzi sitting outside at all hours. Kit would hate it.

Rob and Kit had a surprising amount in common: they both preferred being at home, they hated anything pretentious or trendy, and they didn’t like me at first.

“Where would you take someone you liked?”

He rubbed his chin. “I don’t date.”

“If you did.”

“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Rob said gruffly. “Talk to Noa or Diego. They seem to have figured out how to get serious with somebody.”

“What about the barbecue?”

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