Page 18 of Perfect Alpha

“What about you?” she repeats.

Words fail me, my throat dry as a forest fire.

She tilts her chin up in invitation, and my lips are seconds from taking hers when she says, “If you expect me to give a shit about how you feel, maybe you should have thought twice before you treated me like garbage and then decided to bang anything that moves.”

When Victory pulls away, my body temperature drops twenty degrees. Even though it’s the right thing to do, watching her walk away never gets any easier.

Chapter 7

Victory

Aidanbusieshimselfbyalternating between coloring his placemat and playing with his firetruck. Hannah is a remarkably easygoing parent, probably because she’s basically a kid herself. Her indulgent smile at Aidan playing with his new favorite toy melts my heart.

I love them bothsomuch.

The Speakeasy doesn’t turn into party central until after 10 p.m. The atmosphere is still distinctively family-friendly with country music playing over the speaker system.

The live cover bands show up when the drinking crowds do, the free-flowing alcohol making everything look and sound better.

“Remember not to press the button,” I remind Aidan, which was our compromise for bringing a toy to the dinner table.

“Me ‘member,” Aidan solemnly promises. “No siwrens, right?”

“That’s right, little man.”

Hannah is bouncing around in her seat and holding back a smile, so I expectantly raise an eyebrow. I know her better than anyone on earth and something is coming. She picks up her menu and tries to act nonchalant.

“It’ssoannoying how much Cade loves you and how little attention you pay to his feelings,” Hannah asserts without preamble, scanning the menu with feigned interest.

Frowning, I immediately yank it out of her hands. She works here for God’s sake, so she doesn’t need the damn menu when she’s dropping bombs on people.

“Say what?” I risk a glance at Aidan, who doesn’t care one iota what the grown-ups are talking about.

Hannah rolls her eyes heavenward. “You guys are impossible.”

Kitchen clatter, tinny music, and muted conversations should all be in my sphere of awareness, but they aren’t. The roar of my heartbeat and the blood rushing through my veins is all-consuming.

What the hell is Hannah talking about?

“You’re insane,” I say. “Cade hasn’t been in love with me for years, if he ever was at all.”

My throat burns painfully when I admit the fear that Cade was playing me the whole time we were together. He certainly didn’t look in love withmewhile surrounded by his groupies at the Moose.

I can’t count how many times he told his buddies over the years that he “doesn’t do the girlfriend thing.” Yet, he made an exception for me, only to obliterate my heart with as much casualness as one would change a pizza order.

Hannah gives me the patient smile she usually reserves for when Aidan is being particularly difficult. She takes my hand, turning on the tone she uses for old, senile customers who don’t remember their own names.

“Victory Parker, my brother is madly in love with you. I know this to be true as sure as I know that I gave birth to Aidan, and that was eighteen hours of screaming agony complete with a ring of fire ripping my body open from the inside out.”

I wince at the memory of Hannah’s home birth where she refused to take any drugs. If I ever have kids, that isnothow labor and delivery are going down for me.

“There are certain things I justknow, okay?” she insists. “And while I haven’t meddled in your disaster of a relationship for years, it’s high time I finally said something, or else I’m liable to knock your two stupid heads together.”

My mouth is doing some kind of ungraceful flapping motion while I try to come up with words. How can a literary agent forget every word in the English language?

The server comes by and Hannah has a friendly conversation with her colleague, presumably ordering for both of us as though everything hasn’t just changed. Not a single word she says makes it past the drumbeat that’s moved into my ears.

Hannah and Cade have an unbreakable bond, and they’re usually completely in tune with each other. But what Hannah is saying isn’t true.

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