Page 45 of You're so Bad

I don’t know why that pisses me off, other than that she knows he’s supposed to be mine.

My phone buzzes, and I check it. It’s a text from Rafe.

Is Leonard behaving himself?

No, thank the lord. What are you up to?

At some frou-frou cocktail thing.

So I’d obviously love an excuse to leave.

If you two need backup, let me know. I’m good at intimidation.

Yes, I know. It’s your favorite.

Leonard glances at the screen of my phone, and I scowl at him, hiding it.

“There are no secrets between us, Tiger,” he says with a grin. “So your Viking friend wants to break my face?”

“Only if I tell him to,” I say.

“I’ll be as sweet as a peach.”

“Please don’t,” I say as the girl who’s been checking him out giggles and flutters her fake lashes. I grit my teeth and add more yarn to my pompom. It looks like it could be used to bludgeon someone.

Bianca comes over, her eyebrows raised. “Did you have trouble following the tutorial?”

“Not at all,” Leonard said, wrapping an arm around my waist again. He does it so confidently, like his arm belongs around me. Then again, he’s probably used to having his arm around a woman. “My girl prefers for her balls to be supersized.” He cocks his head. “You’ll understand why she needed to move on.”

I want to suck up Bianca’s surprise like it’s soda, but then a crafty look enters her eyes. “I can understand Shauna would want to remember things that way.”

She pats my hand, and I remember the way she looked at me in the bar that night—the night when Carter supposedly broke up with her. Her tear-streaked eyes. The way she told me,You’re the only one who would understand what it feels like to be alone.

She knew. She knew my parents had basically abandoned me in life before they did in death. She knew how much it still hurt, and she turned that knowledge against me like a knife.

I turn her hand over, then slap the basketball pompom onto it. It’s so big it barely stays on her palm. “I made it for you.”

“I have plenty of pompoms. I don’t need another. Besides, I don’t know what I’d do with it.”

“The same thing people do with any pompom,” Leonard says with a laugh. “Keep it for a while and then throw it away before it can gather too much dust.”

I smile sweetly at her. “Really, I want you to have it.”

“It’s yours,” she says through her teeth. “You’ve clearly spent a lot of time and effort on it. I don’tactuallywant it.”

I lean my head into Leonard’s shoulder. It’s warm, and his chest is hard beneath the button-up shirt. He strokes a hand through my hair, and I feel the glow of having backup, of not being here alone. “But I don’t need it. I’ve gothim, and you’ve heard how he feels about pompoms.”

Her face stretches into a fake smile. “A bit like how Colt and his mom feel about your monster things.”

Maybe we’ll go on debating this for the rest of the night, or possibly until Bianca and Colter celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. What’s the wedding gift for that? Arthritis?

“Say, speaking of monster bowls,” Bianca says slyly. She’s obviously about to say something bitchy, but there’s a loud yowl next to us, and I know it’s finally happened. One of the drunk women gave into the lure of the cute kitten and unzipped Bean’s crate.

The kitten pounces on the pompom in Bianca’s hand, and Bianca shrieks bloody murder before throwing it like it’s her wedding bouquet. My heart thumps with panic for Bean—cats might be known for landing on their feet, but she’s so tiny, such a baby, but Leonard catches both her and the pompom she’s still mauling. Yarn starts flying down. Leonard doesn’t take any notice of it—he’s too busy giving Bianca a stern look.

“Don’t hurt my cat.” He’s intimidating, his brow lowered, his smile gone. Usually, he’s all easy laughter and sex jokes, but this is a different side of him.

Like this, he’s not a man to be laughed at or with. He’s…magnificent.

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