Page 48 of You've Got Male

“Oh for God’s sake, you’re just picking out clothes together, not engaging in a secret affair,” she mumbled under her breath. But the wordssecretandaffairhad chaos exploding through her chest.

Chin up, she gave the door a quick rap with her knuckles and waited.

And waited. Until she began to regret her early arrival. Not to mention her sundress, which had taken her twenty minutes to pick out, or her hair and makeup that she had spent the better part of an hour styling.

All for a ClickByte video,she reminded herself, but her brain called bullshit on the statement.This was a bad idea. An incredibly stupid, epically ludicrous, baddest bad idea ever. Which was why she turned to make a stealth escape. Only the door swung open.

Evie froze mid-step.

“Hey, Mrs. G,” Ryan said, and Evie closed her eyes, silently berating herself for her lack of patience.

The idea of a faux date had her stomach in knots. Running into Ryan while she was dressed like a PTA mom on the prowl had her questioning her sanity. But it was too late to abort now.

Plastering a casual smile on her face, she turned. “Hey there, Ryan.”

The teen was dressed in a pair of athletic shorts, a shirt with the high school football team’s logo, and a ballcap. He had car keys in his hand and a gym bag slung over his shoulder with anexpression that said she’d obliterated the “good” right out of his morning.

His eyes darted around, discomfort tightened his frame, and a suffocating awkwardness settled around them both.

Until this moment, there’d never been an awkward moment between them. Evie had read him stories under sheet-forts and sewn him a Batman cape for Halloween. She’d driven him to and from school thousands of times and he’d spent as much time at Evie’s house as his own over the years. But it seemed within the span of a few seconds a gap the size of the Grand Canyon had opened up between them.

She wasn’t sure if Jonah had told Ryan about their “relationship” or if he’d learned about it from Camila, or worse—from ClickByte—but it was painfully clear that he knew. And the change in status quo unsettled him.

Evie suddenly regretted talking to Moira about her dinner with Jonah. Especially in such a public setting. She’d never imagined that it would be filmed, but she should have counted on Camila telling Ryan everything. She only hoped that Jonah had the conversation with his son before the bomb was dropped.

“You okay?” Evie asked and Ryan shrugged, his gaze locked on his cleated feet. Evie took a small step forward and gentled her voice. “It’s fine if you say no.”

Ryan met her gaze, and there was so much betrayal and misery in them she considered just telling him the truth, blaming it all on desperation and insanity, but he spoke before she could.

“Then, no,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Is there anything I can do to make this any better?”

“Not unless you want to break up with my dad. Because this is super awkward.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she said quietly, because whether it was her or some other woman, Jonah was eventually going to start dating. Perhaps it would have been better, though, if that womanwasn’t one of Ryan’s mom’s friends.

“But it is. Between you guys, my grades, Coach threatening to bench me, and my dad maybe starting a new job, my whole life is one big question mark.”

Evie didn’t know how she felt about being a part of that question mark for Ryan. The poor kid had enough uncertainty in his life as it was.

Just like Camila.

What had she done? It seemed so simple. A few public dates, maybe a kiss or two, a handful of ClickByte videos. She’d never considered just how deeply it might affect her relationship with Ryan or Jonah’s relationship with Camila.

“No matter what’s going on between your dad and I, we will always be here for you.”

His gaze landed on someone behind Evie and a tingling sensation tickled her neck. Evie turned around and her mouth went dry.

Jonah was standing at the bottom of the steps in a blue T-shirt that was in a losing battle with his biceps. Then there was his face—clean-shaven and handsome as hell. Even though he had on dark sunglasses she knew his eyes would be intense.

Concerned for his son.

“Your girlfriend is here,” Ryan said, then blew back into the house. “Later.”

She waited until he’d started up the car before she said, “I should have waited for you at home. I’m afraid I’ve just made everything worse,” she admitted. “I’m really sorry. Maybe we should forget the whole thing.”

Jonah removed his sunglasses and there was that look—the same one from the night of the meeting. Uncertainty. “Do you want to?”

---