Page 29 of Mr. Wrong Number

Mr. Wrong Number:Well I promise, if we were together irl, I would happily serve up that order. Hell, it’s what I would fantasize about you ordering, tbh.

It wasn’t logical, but his response sent a shiver through me. My fingers slid over the touch screen.

Me:Well it’s a shame we can’t... share a meal. Eat together. Ugh, gross. No way to make it sound like I’m not being creepy. I’m just saying that it’s nice to share a common interest, alright?!

I hit send, then added:Did that sound horndog creepy?

I hit send on that, but then felt the need to add:You know what I mean, right?

I looked up as I hit send, and Colin wasn’t looking at the TV anymore. No, he was staring down at the phone in his hand as if he’d never seen a phone before.

5

Colin

Holy shit.

Miss Misdial is Olivia?

She couldn’t be.

What in the actual fuck?

It couldn’t be possible, but I’d seen my text on her screen under the contact name of Mr. Wrong Number.

“You okay, Beck?”

I stared at my phone as it went dark and the messages disappeared. I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to see her face at that moment, but still I raised my eyes from the phone. Olivia was eyeing me from her spot at the table with an amused smirk, the smart-ass grin she always wore for me tilting up one side of her mouth.

“Fine.” I cleared my throat and slid my phone into my pocket. “Goddamned wonderful.”

I carried my glass over to the sink, needing to get out of there and clear my head. Because I wasn’t fine or goddamned wonderful. I set it on the counter, turned on the faucet, and clenched my teeth so hard they hurt. Apparently God had a sense of humor, and Olivia the Hottest Mess Marshall was my fantasy texter.

Hell.

I liked Liv just fine—she was easy on the eyes and fun to mess with—but Misdial was on another level.Or so I thought.I’d thought she was funny, charming, sexy, smart, unorthodox, and even kind of sweet.

Notlike Olivia.

Could it really be her?

I started scrubbing one of the plates in the sink and felt gutted, like I’d just lost something by losing Misdial. Honestly, I was so damned disappointed I wanted to hit something. I wanted to tee off on something so badly because just like that, without warning, I no longer had a relationship with a stranger on the phone.

And not only was it over for me, but I was going to have to ghost her.

There was no other option.

I couldn’t tell Olivia the truth; I’d shared too much and couldn’t deal with her having that kind of information. And I definitely couldn’t keep texting anonymously now that I knew Jack’s baby sister was the recipient.

Oh, hell no.

So... I was done. I was done, it was finished, and I wasgoing to have to nut up about the entire debacle and get over it. I’d known better anyway, right?

“So since I cooked, are you doing the dishes?” Olivia appeared at my side, but her perfume had reached me before she did. “I think that’s the rule.”

She was holding out her dirty plate, her eyes asking permission to dump the dirty dish on me, and I immediately regretted my decision to look at her. Because she looked the same. Long, dark hair, green eyes, pink cheeks—the same Liv I’d always known.

But now she was cross-contaminated with little bits of Misdial. Instead of just seeing the face of Jack’s sister, my brain kept loading up things I knew about her, like the fact that she preferred shoulder-biting, frenetic sex against the wall to a sweet romance.