Page 12 of Sass

Rhys waited until the storeroom door closed before he spoke. “Their flat’s empty, Kip. And Leon needs somewhere to stay. It was a perfect solution, not to mention the neighbourly andfriendlything to do,” he reminded me, making altogether far too much fucking sense. “But what I don’t understand is this crazy dislike you seem to have for the guy. He’s a good man and a great business neighbour. And you know damn well he went the extra mile for us after the fire. He even gave up his parking space for you.”

Good god, enough with the damn parking space.My gaze shot to the stairwell, and I lowered my voice. “I never asked him to do that.”

Rhys eyeballed me. “Which is exactly my point. He’s nice people, not to mention you looked ready to eat him alive the first time he showed his face in Flare. Then a month or so later, you couldn’t stand the guy. This is getting ridiculous, so spill. What happened?”

I drummed my fingers on the glass top of the service desk and narrowed my gaze. “It has to stay between us.”

Rhys crossed his heart with a smile that looked ready to tip into laughter at any moment.

“I mean it,” I warned.

“All right, all right. I promise.” He edged closer. “I won’t say a word, although I don’t keep secrets from Beck. If he asks, I won’t lie to him.”

I shot another glance to the stairs. “Fine.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him into his office—myoffice, goddammit—and shut the door. He sat on his desk amongst a pile of half-packed boxes, looking two seconds away from pissing himself with laughter.

I stabbed a finger at his chest. “Don’t.”

He tried and failed to stem the squeaky snort that escaped regardless and raised his hands at my scowl. “I can’t help it, all right? And why the hell all this secrecy? This ridiculous beef you have with Leon has been going on for two years. I’ve never seen you so discombobulated by a guy.”

“Discombobulated?” I raised a brow. “You’ve been hanging around the sexy professor too long. Cross a lumberjack with a marshmallow, feed him a dictionary every day for breakfast, and you get Beck.”

Rhys snorted. “That’s actually... pretty accurate. Now stop procrastinating.”

“All right. All right.” I sighed and leaned against the closed door with my arms crossed. “So, I might’ve run into Leon not long after we first met, at a party... somewhere.” I waved a hand in the air.

Rhys held my gaze. “Aaaaand?”

“Aaaaand... I might’ve... maybe... possibly... hit on him.” I winced and checked through the glass, but the stairs were still clear.

Rhys said nothing, the weighty silence of which somehow filled the room.

I sighed and turned back to him. “And before you ask, no, we didn’t do the nasty. He turned me down... flat. Like ‘squashed as a bug under his shoe’ flat. Like I was ‘some kind of manwhore that would require the use of disinfectant after contact’ flat.”

Rhys bit back a smile. “Dramatic, much?”

I shot daggers at him. “No. It’s exactly how his words made me feel.” I gave Rhys a summary of what happened, admittedly a little one-sided, and the smile slipped from his face.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, Kip. I shouldn’t have made that joke. No one has the right to shame you like that.”

My gaze was drawn back up the stairs as I remembered Leon’s earnest offer to stay elsewhere. I sighed and turned back to Rhys. “Okay, to be fair, it’s not that he said anythingspecific. It was more his tone, and maybe I was too sensitive at the time. But I’m twenty-six and single for fuck’s sake. I like sex and men likeme.Life’s too short to walk away from that happy arrangement, right? There’snothingwrong with how I choose to live my life.”

A small frown creased Rhys’s brow. “No, Kip, there’s absolutely not. And if Leon implied that, he was well out of line.”

I continued, trying not to sound like I was convincing myself. “And it doesn’t mean I don’t have principles. A few of them,anyway.” I listed them off on my fingers. “I don’t fuck anyone that I don’t like, or that I don’t have a good feeling about. They have to be single, as far as I know. I don’t fuck if I’m stupid drunk or if they are. I always play safe, and I don’t do repeats. I avoid hurt feelings or raised expectations. And I’m crystal clear about not looking for a relationship.”

Rhys nodded. “I know you are. And I know you care about people.” He reached for my hand, and I blinked back an unexpected emotion that threatened to unravel me. “But Leon’s never struck me as the judgy type, either.”

I shrugged. “That’s what I thought too. And okay, he did try to apologise after, sort of. But every time I see him, I remember, and I feel so fucking small in his eyes. Next thing I know, I’m angry before I even realise it.”

“And that’s why you’ve given him such a hard time for two years?”

I huffed. “Consider them random acts of resistance.”

“Against what?”

I thought about that. “Against not measuring up to some moral high ground he seems to lay claim to that isn’t real and that I shouldn’t give a fuck about.”

“So, why do you?” Rhys studied me closely. “Because you clearlydocare what he thinks or you wouldn’t still be in such a fury about it.”

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