Page 3 of Bending The Rules

“Your begging won’t make a difference,” I shot back.

He scoffed. “Damn, Toni. Seventeen years of friendship, and I can’t even get a conversation?”

My nostrils flared, and I took a step toward him. “Your ass wasn’t thinking about seventeen years of friendship when you broke the rules, were you?”

He stared at me, but said nothing. I stared right back, crossing my arms. After a few seconds, he shook his head, then stepped aside to let me pass. I yanked the door open, but had too much respect for his father to slam it behind me.

I saved that aggression for my car door.

Today is the day that you’ll be nice to him.

I let out a dry laugh at myself for believing that, as I pulled out of the driveway and pointed the car toward my temporary home. I’d been mad at Justin about the demise of our friendship for seven years, and unless something drastic happened, would be for the foreseeable future.

On the wayawayfrom the Wright family home, the sentiment I repeated in my head was a lot different from the one I’d used on the way there.

Justin Wright has a lot of goddamned nerve.

Engaged.

That word pounded in my head long after dinner was over. After I’d scooped Bri and Cat from the airport, dropped Cat at home, then made my way to my own townhouse. Bri was a chatterbox – eager to tell me everything that had occurred over the last two days in her almost-seven-year-old world. I tried not to make a habit of tuning her out, but…

Engaged.

When the fuck did that happen?

There was a time when Toni wouldn’t have even let a man thinkhe could confidently ask her on a damn second date without me knowing him. Vetting him. Making sure he was good enough for her. And now… I had to find out in passing that she was getting married, and I didn’t even know the man’s name.

That was a big damned difference.

It shouldn’t have been a shock to my system, considering that Toni had been holding strong in her resolve to be pissed off at me for the last seven years. I thought she was dramatic, and told her so last year – an email that earned me a photo of her middle finger –had she been wearing an engagement ring in that picture?She definitely wasn’t wearing one now, but that was Toni.

Nontraditional.

Unwilling to be placed in a box.

Which was another reason why her beingengagedthrew me for a loop.

And that wasn’tallthat threw me.

It had never been wasted on me that Toni was a beautiful woman – I would have to blind not to notice. But being face to face with her tonight, after not having the opportunity in years, was… different.

Toni was kinda…banging.

She’d traded the long, relaxed layers that had been her signature look for a short, sophisticated cut that accentuated her high cheekbones. Lips that would have normally only held a swipe of lip gloss were painted deep purple – vibrant against her mahogany skin, giving her an air of mystery that was heightened by smoky eyes. She’d come to the front door of my father’s house wearing the hell out of a rich, navy-hued dress that clung to curves I’d never really lingered on before. But in the moment that she brushed past me, walking the familiar-to-her path to the dining room, I’d found myself thinking,“Damn, where did that ass come from?”

And then I immediately brushed the thought away, because Toni was my damnfriend.

Wasmy damn friend.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, then shook my head.

“Are you listening Daddy??”

When I looked down, Bri’s big brown eyes were pointed up at me, and her toothpaste-covered mouth was wrinkled in displeasure.

“Of course I am,” I said, bending to drop a kiss onto her forehead before I finished rubbing almond oil in her hair the way her mother had shown me. “Why’d you stop?”

“Just making sure. Anyway, AJ was just spinning the tire swingsooosuper fast, like this!” – she put her hands in front of, frantically mimicking pulling something – “And my hair was going all crazy like—” – she wiggled her arms over her head, getting in the way of me fixing the loose ponytail she’d be wearing to bed under her polka-dot bonnet – “and I was screamingsoooloud.”

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