Page 48 of The Girl I Once Loved

“Stacy, now is not the time for you to flex how you’re a daddy’s girl. We’re kind of busy here.”

“So I’ve heard,” she muses, eyeing her nails. “You want to help Noah with his money problems, and I want to help him with his girlfriend problems.”

My back snaps to attention, not liking the mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“Stacy, I’d be very careful with what you say next. I still haven’t forgiven you for that fucking stunt you did on Sky last year.”

“You didn’t seem so upset when you came to our Christmas party,” she pouts.

“I went because Derrick invited me, and I needed some place to go that wasn’t my house to think shit over. I didn’t go for you,” I explain with a stern tone, so she knows I’m not fucking around.

“Ouch,” she feigns being hurt by placing her hand over her heart, but I can see in her green eyes that what I just said really did hurt her, no matter how hard she’s trying to put on a brave face to hide it.

Derrick must see it too, because his brotherly instincts quickly kick in.

“Maybe you should go back upstairs, Stacy,” he says affectionately.

“Fine, have it your way. I’ll go. But you two numbnuts need me. I can get Daddy to agree to give Noah the money if I ask for it. And I can also make sure that Skylar goes off to college like you want without putting up a fight. But if you two are too damn stubborn and proud to ask for my help, then I guess my time is wasted here.”

But just as she’s about to storm out of the room, I stop her from taking another step.

“Wait!” I blurt out.

Stacy makes a show of slowly turning around, keeping her hands on her hips.

“How?” I finally ask.

“How what?”

“How can I make Sky leave?”

“Are you sure you really want to know? Because it won’t be pretty.”

“I really want to know.”

The smile that crests her face creates knots in my stomach.

“Easy. All you have to do is break her heart in a way that she’ll never be able to forgive you. There is only one thing a woman won’t tolerate and that’s being made a fool of by the one person she trusts most.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Derrick mumbles beside me, but I’m too interested in what Stacy has to say to pay him any mind.

“Go on.”

“If we make it so that Sky finds you in bed with me, for instance, she’ll never look your way again.”

“No,” I all but shout. “Fuck that. I’m not touching another woman that isn’t Skylar.”

“Noah,” Derrick reprimands when his sister’s eyes widen to two large saucers at my outburst, but I’m still too angry at her solution to give a shit about her hurt feelings.

I don’t cheat.

Aside from a stolen kiss in Derrick’s bathroom with Sky one year—which I immediately told Stacy about—I’ve never cheated on anyone. Not even throughout all the years Stacy and I were together, did I even think about cheating. And I didn’t even love her.

Like hell, I’d ever do it to the girl I am in love with. Fuck that.

Unsurprisingly, Stacy regains her composure faster than I can.

“I know, okay? I know you would never cheat on Skylar,” she spits out my girlfriend’s name like a curse. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t fool her into believing you have. All you have to do is follow my lead, and I’ll have her thinking the worst. You won’t even have to do much. Maybe kiss me, but that would be the extent of it, if that. Do you think you can get off your high horse and manage to do that at least? For her sake?”

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