Page 16 of All Jacked Up

Me: You’ve been quiet, Shakespeare. What’s been keeping you busy?

I waited for the Read notification, then the dots to appear that she was responding, but neither came up. It was late. She was probably asleep. Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I turned and looked out the window.

“Who is Shakespeare?” my sister asked.

“You reading my text?”

She shrugged. “It was right there. Hard not to see.”

I shook my head. “No one.”

Noa was someone I didn’t share. The relationship we’d managed to keep over the years through text had become a necessity for me. She had no idea the times I’d texted her when shit was dark and I needed her wittiness to make me feel more at ease. She was my escape from reality. I doubted she realized how much I relied on her. I couldn’t explain our relationship either. There wasn’t a label for it. Hell, I hadn’t seen her in ten years. But she knew me better than most people.

“Is it a female?” Opal asked.

Yes, but no—at least not the way she was thinking. I wasn’t attracted to Noa like that … okay, maybe that wasn’t the complete truth. Sometimes, I wondered what she looked likenow. How I’d feel about her when I saw her as a man, not some superficial punk kid. She sat, closed up in an office, reading other people’s books and editing them. I doubted she’d changed in looks much. That hadn’t been important to her. Books were the only thing she was concerned with. And I liked that about her. I also liked that she didn’t try to make me happy. She didn’t say what she thought I wanted to hear. She was just herself.

“Just a friend,” I replied.

“Who you call Shakespeare.”

Why couldn’t she let this go? She was like a dog with a fucking bone.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you call him or her Shakespeare?”

Groaning, I turned my head to look at her. She had her eyes narrowed, studying me as if the answer were going to appear on my forehead.

“Long story,” I said. “Let it go.”

“Why? It’s a simple question.”

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and I started to reach for it, but with my nosy-ass sister sitting beside me, I didn’t. We’d be back at her apartment soon enough. Noa was something that would remain the one thing I got to have for myself. I didn’t talk to anyone else about her. She was off-limits.

Five

Noa

Staring down at my phone, I paced back and forth, barefoot, across the living room of my hotel suite. I shouldn’t have responded to him. I’d told myself on the drive back that I would mourn the loss of a friendship and let him go. But, dang it, he’d sent the text, and I hadn’t been able to ignore it.

The door made a sound as the key card tapped it, but didn’t unlock it. I’d bolted the thing to keep Arden out. I’d sent his calls to voicemail and ignored his texts since leaving him without saying anything. But he deserved it. He’d just sat there and not said anything when Ransom and Opal Carver were rude to me. The way he’d been looking at Opal also wasn’t appropriate for an engaged man.

But did he really think of himself as engaged? He didn’t want me wearing the ring in public. The reasons for keeping it a secret were no longer relevant. And honestly, I was questioningthe entire thing. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be married to him. Right now, I didn’t think I liked him very much.

“Open the door, Noa,” Arden called out.

I rolled my eyes. He was going to wake up the entire floor. Stalking over to the door, I unlocked it and swung it open to glare at him.

“What?” I hissed.

He pushed past me and came inside. God, I wasn’t in the mood for this. I had Ransom to deal with. Which … shouldn’t be more important than talking to my fiancé about how he had treated me tonight. But oddly, it was.

Yeah, I had issues.

“Your leaving was rude and childish,” he began.

Oh, no. He wasn’t getting to do that. I was done listening to him correct me.

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