Page 26 of Sneak Attack

CHAPTER10

COLE

“I’ll be back in a minute, okay, bud?”

Jasper, sitting at the kitchen table after dinner, mumbled something while slurping ice cream off his spoon.

I took it as anokay.

Now that I finally had Selma alone for a couple minutes, we needed to talk because that bullshit she pulled after the game was absolutelynot okay. Not only for me, but for Jasper.

I’d seethed through the post-game interviews, still thrown from her affection and then been pissed all over again when I left the locker room, and she was waiting in the hallway with my parents.

They suggested we grill out at my house, so Bongo wouldn’t be alone and Selma, all smiles and with Jasper tucked tight to her side, had replied. “Sounds like a great idea.”

The hell it was. Based on my mom’s eye roll and thinly pressed together lips, she’d thought the same thing I did.

We couldn’t tell her no in front of Jasper. She was pushing boundaries lately I didn’t appreciate and if you gave Selma an inch, she’d take a full marathon. Manipulating me into spending time with her by using my son as her tool was absolutely never happening again.

“What in the hell was that earlier?” I asked as soon as the front door shut behind me. I made it a rule to never argue with her in front of Jasper.

“What was what?” She was digging through her purse, looking for her keys. Her tone was all nonchalance, but it was all a lie.

Her Nissan Armada had keyless entry and she didn’t need them to open her doors or start the car. Last year, when she told me she was thinking of getting a new SUV and her dad was taking her shopping, I’d told her to make sure whatever she bought had that feature. It was easier with Jasper and his school stuff and safer, so she didn’t have to be doing exactly what she was doing now—digging through her purse.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I stopped walking, waited for her to realize I wasn’t next to her anymore and she had to face me.

“It was just a hug, Cole. Maybe you shouldn’t read so much into it.”

“A hug. You jumping into my arms and wrapping your legs around my waist in the middle of the field, with Jasper right there watching was ‘just a hug’?”

“So, I was excited. What’s the big deal?”

I’d learned long ago Selma’s manipulative streak was nasty. Partly because she was so slippery about it. It was the same as the night I was back home over the summer and met her out because she’d claimed to have been missing Hilary and no one except me would understand. Several drinks in, shots offered by her, and I was comforting her in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with Hilary. But I was drunk, definitely still feeling that guilt over Hilary’s death, and still thinking of Eden and pissed off for doing it.

When she cuddled up next to me after, and slipped her arm around my waist and whispered,“We should do this more often. I’ve missed you,” while raining soft kisses over my shoulder and my chest, should have been my first clue she’d taken me for a completely different kind of ride.

“The big deal is we don’tdothat, Selma. Ever. It’s good for Jasper to see his parents getting along, it’s not okay to start making him think we’re going to actually be together. It’s a good thing for us to be friendly, but that wasn’t anything friendly and you know it. It pisses me off and gives everyone the wrong idea.”

“Everyone like Eden?”

Ah…and there it was. That nasty tone and the jealous flare in her eyes.

It shouldn’t have surprised me.

“The hell?” It was all I could muster. “What is wrong with you?”

“Oh please. Like you can stand right here in front of me and tell me you haven’t seen her?”

“It’s none of your damn business who I see.”

“So, you have. You have seen her.” Her spine turned to steel and there was a fire in her eyes I did not appreciate. She was also changing the subject.

“What does me seeing her have anything to do with that crap you pulled today? That shit was photographed. Probably posted everywhere. There’s probably chatter somewhere about us together, or some shit.”

“Oh. And that’s a problem now? You never minded before.”

“I minded, Selma. And you know it. And whatever shit you’re pulling now, for whatever reason, that ends. Same with posting me anywhere on any of your socials. We aren’t together. We never were, and we never will be, and youknowall of that, so I don’t even care what game you’re playing. I’m not joining. I’mdonejoining your little games.”

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