He lets out a frustrated grunt. “No, I fucking don’t. But?—”
Before he can finish that thought, the door swings open so violently it clips him in the back. He turns, bristling, and Pansy bursts out of the bowling alley. She grips his shirtfront, her eyes suddenly so big they look like they’re going to pop out of her face.
I glance beyond her, but there’s no sign of Cormac.
Her gaze darts to me, and she bites her lip. “Cormac…he…he hit on me. I told him no, and he kissed me anyway. He?—”
“You’re a fucking liar,” I say.
José shoots me a murderous look before kissing her forehead as gently as if she were tubercular. “Go wait in the car, sweetheart.”
As soon as she steps away, I say, “José, she’s lying. You know she’s a liar.”
But he rips the door open and storms through it.
Fuck.Fuck.
I don’t even think. I charge in after him, running as fast as my short legs will carry me.
José almost slips in his bowling shoes, but he still reaches Cormac way before I do. He lifts a finger to poke at Cormac’s face.
“You hit on my fiancée!” José shouts.
“What?” Cormac asks, his gaze flitting to me as I get closer. “No. She hit onme.”
I throw myself at José’s back, ready to pull out my patented Nora pepper spray if I absolutely need to—but I’m too late.
Because the second before I land, he punches Cormac in the face.In the glasses.
So I do the vindictive-girlfriend thing and punch José.
Cormac had shatterproof lenses,thank God, but his frames broke, and there are profusely bleeding lacerations around his eye, plus an injury to his cornea.
We’re in a patient-care room in the ER, waiting for a doctor. Cormac is going to need stitches. Possibly eye surgery.
He looks so vulnerable on that hospital bed, with a huge bandage over his right eye and his left one bloodshot, his curly hair a mess.
It’s all my fault this happened to him.
José said the same thing—which was accurate in a literal sense—after he discovered that Pansy had “borrowed” his car, leaving him stranded.
Not that I give a damn about Pansy at this point, or José’s attempt at an apology. I told him I wasn’t ready to talk to himyet and left him at the bowling alley to “smooth things over with the manager,” a.k.a. try not to get arrested.
Because, yeah, he may very well get arrested, seeing as he started the whole fight. There were dozens of witnesses who can verify that I only hit him after he started it.
It also bears saying that I did more damage to my fist than to his face. My hand is bandaged up, but I deserve worse.
So does José.
If he’s arrested, I’ll bail him out, but I don’t know where he and I will go from here. It’s hard to imagine we could continue working together, even though this whole mess was concocted so I could keep The Ginger Station.
What happened to Cormac may have been my fault, but José’s the one who hit him. He hit the man I…
The man I love.
Yes, fuck. I love him.
I didn’t mean to like Cormac, and I definitely didn’t mean to fall in love with him. But it happened. Maybe it was inevitable, because he’s so good, and funny, and smart. How could any woman who spends time with him, who gets to know his soul, avoid falling in love with him?
