Page 27 of Last Love

Ryder

- “And before I knew it, I realized the changes I was making were going to be for us.” -

There’s no way that just happened.

Is a lack of drugs hallucination a thing?

Am I feigning so fucking hard for a hit that I just slipped into a delusional state?

Was she really just…here?

Fucking in front of me?

Right at the tips of my fingers like a fucking person instead of just a goddamn haunting memory?

An unexpected vibration in my pocket pierces through the confusion.

I mindlessly move to retrieve my cell at the same time Jo grunts. “Huh. That was…weird.”

Swiping open the text instantly has me wishing I hadn’t.

Kara: We could do the Merengue instead.

Kara: Or just grab some lemon meringue pie at the bakery around the corner from my apartment…

Kara: Do you like lemon meringue?

It takes minimal time and even less to answer to respond thanks to autofill.

Me: No.

Shoving the device back into my pocket occurs just as a familiar annoyance rears its ugly head.

Fuck me.

How is I’ll be twenty-nine in a few months yet somehow still feel like I’m eighteen texting the side piece while my actual girlfriend is pissed off at me for fucking something up I don’t quite remember fucking up?

The next blow of irritation is stronger than first because Pres is not my girlfriend.

She hasn’t been in over a decade.

She’s not…technically mine.

Although, as far as I’m fucking concerned, she always will be.

Pangs I swore I was just soberly learning to soothe spread like wildfire throughout my limbs until I’m left with no choice but to grab a toothpick from my other pocket.

“Is she coming back?” Jo inquires, half-hopeful, half confused.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, baby.” Merrick relocates his glare to me and folds his arms across his chest. “How the fuck do you know my boss, Collins?”

“Wait,” I point the stick his direction, “she’s your boss? She’s the lonely, ‘older’ woman who has the huge fucking townhouse that paid us a fortune to only move like thirty boxes?”

“I didn’t say older.”

He did.

Which made me picture someone in their mid-fifties with more gray hair than blond who shares her chardonnay with her six cats.

Not a woman that has me hard as fucking rock after just one look.

Fuck…how did she manage to get sexier?

Tighter figure.

Slimmer stomach.

Curvier hips.

Slightly bigger tits.

And the cherry red painted on sexy lady whose hood I’m dying to be under?

The signature box-frame glasses I can’t help but love.

“Collins,” McCoy states in a firmer tone, more aggressive tone, “how the fuck do you know her?”

“I’m in love with her.”

“What?!” McCoy and his girlfriend shout in unison.

“Yeah.” Shoving the toothpick against the inside of my cheek, I do the unthinkable.

I make an on-the-fly change.

I stop resisting the truth to the outside world.

To those that have proven they’re here to be allies not spies under the radar.

“I’m fucking in love with her.”

“Ohmygod!” Jovi squawks over the server who is attempting to summon our attention.

“You guys bowling or what?” One of the chicks in the groups asks, eyes lingering a little too long on McCoy in my personal opinion.

“Later.”

His less than pleasant response has her backing down instructing the server on their current needs.

Completely unbothered by his own unfriendly behavior, he resumes his interrogation of me. “You the asshole she split with?”

I know I have no fucking right to be pissed she was dating someone else.

I know that’s fucked up and completely out of line.

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