“Where are you going?” he asked as I strode straight past him. “And why did you block me?”
Peter had left me a string of texts after Halloween night asking me if I wanted to talk, if he could bring me a cup of coffee at work, and finally, if he could take me out. I’d ignored him and, with that last text, blocked him.
Apparently, hitting that block button was the only thing I’d ever needed to do to get his full and undivided attention.
Once again, joke’s on me…
“Now you’re giving me the silent treatment?” he asked as he kept pace with me to the parking lot.
“Do you have a work-related question?” I asked him.
“Helena,” he said, and it was the wounded tone in his voice that had me stopping at last to wheel on him. “What is it?” he pressed, spreading his arms. “What’s happened? Are you still angry about that day on the elevator?”
The day I’d nearly died, he meant. The day I’d nearly diedagain.
Had he really forgotten everything that had happened after he’d gotten off that elevator?
Leave it to Peter to assume my reaction had everything to do with him, and nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t have time to waste on him anymore. In truth, I never did.
“We’re at work,” I reminded him, picking up my stride again, shouldering the yellow and lived-in boho patchwork purse I’d returned to after ditching the beat-up pumpkin number.
“Neither of us are on the clock,” he countered as he hurried to catch up with me.
“I’ve got somewhere to be,” I said—which wasn’t entirely a fib. My plan was to take myself to see a movie, and to buy a treat. Lately, the walls of my apartment had seemed to squeeze me, its emptiness reminding me of how much I’d missed out on by chasing the wrong things.
Sure, I had a good job, and I adored my family, but I had never gotten to meet my person. And it was looking more and more like… I never would.
I blamed myself for spending time chasing men who hadn’t been playing for keeps—men who were not interested in finding their soulmate. Men like Peter.
“Where are you headed?” he asked. “Can I come with… you…”
He trailed off as we neared The Judge, a scowl clouding those handsome features as I pulled free Grim’s jingling keys.
“What in the devil isthat?” he asked, his gaze bouncing between me and Grim’s monster car.
“Mine’s in the shop,” I said—slinging out a full-on fib this time. I followed that up with the truth, though. For some reason, I still felt obliged to offer Peter particulars that were really none of his business. “I’m… borrowing it.”
“From whom? Mad Max?” he demanded, his voice pitching upward, a look of abject disgust crossing his features as he rounded the black-as-night vehicle, peering over the rims of his glasses the way a food critic would regard a moldy hot dog.
His scrutiny of The Judge stoked my anger, though I couldn’t exactly say why. Regardless, I turned toward him, chin lifted and shoulders thrown back.
“My boyfriend,” I said, a bald-faced lie—one blurted out with the hopes he would shut up and get lost, leave me alone for the remainder of my short life, and take his pompous pride with him while he was at it.
And the stricken look on his face—it was beyond worth the twinge of guilt my deception evoked. He stared hard at me, incredulous.
“Your boyfriend?” he repeated, like he couldn’t believe such a word could ever be paired with someone like me.
That hurt, though it shouldn’t have.
“Yes,” I said, shoving the key into the driver’s-side door.
“Since when do you have a boyfriend? Wait a second. Isthatwho you had in your apartment with you the other night?”
Again, the night I’d nearly died, he meant.
But could this seriously be ruffling his feathers?
Wasn’t he seeing Cleo?
