Page 19 of Roughing the Princess

But Jasper cut him off. “Sorry, gotta go. Bad connection.” His side of the screen went blank.

I stormed into our recording studio. “What the fuck, Jasper?”

He smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“For blasting my private business to the worldagain? Tova’s going to freak the fuck out.”

“No, what’s going to happen is that it’s going to force the two of you to finally have a real conversation.”

“She likes to keep her private life actually private, Jasper. Even if we were dating, she wouldn’t want my brother to be talking about it in an interview.”

He shrugged. “Nothing is private in this world. Especially for someone as famous as her. And you or whatever.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I already had a text from her:

“What the hell, Talon?!”

I wanted to call her. I wanted to clear this up. But I also didn’t dare. Because if I called, she wouldn’t pick up. I’d only ever called her once. And I was pretty sure I’d left a super embarrassing voicemail. But she’d never mentioned it. Maybe she never heard it…

“Did you tell your brother to say that?”

I texted back. “Of course not. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“What have you told him about the two of us?”

“That we text. That’s it. He knows that.”

“Apparently not. Talon, be honest with me. Is this all some kind of PR stunt?”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“No, I’m not joking. Tell me the truth. Why have you been texting me?”

Because I’m fucking in love with you!“You know why.”

“No I don’t. Or else I wouldn’t be asking. I’ve seen you in the tabloids, Talon. You have a new woman on your arm every week. I don’t like playing games.”

I winced. Yeah. That wasn’t untrue. But it wasn’t like that with her. Where the hell was all this coming from? She didn’t wait for me to respond before she texted again:

“Talon, everyone is going to be talking about this now.”

I swallowed hard. Was that really such a bad thing? Maybe Jasper was right. This was finally making us have a real conversation. I walked out of the room, ignoring him calling after me. “So what?” I texted back.

“So what?! Talon I don’t want people talking about us.”

I was pretty sure that was all I needed to hear. “Sorry that the idea of people thinking we’re dating is so embarrassing for you.”

She didn’t text back.

Because of course she didn’t. Because I was honest and she hated when I was honest. She wanted to just pretend we were friends. When we both knew the truth. At least…it was true for me. I ran my hand across my mustache. And why the fuck had I grown out this stupid stache?!

I needed to go workout. I tossed my phone on the couch. I was done texting.

***

Jasper leaned against the door jamb of our home gym. “You have a bunch of missed texts,” he said.

“I don’t care.” I lifted the bar over my chest again. I’d lost track of how many reps I’d done. But my arms were shaking, and still all I could think about was Tova sitting on her couch mortified about the thought of people thinking we were together.

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