TWENTY
STELLA
“Move to the couch,” Milo bellowed angrily.
“Milo? What are you doing?” I tried to ask politely and not anger him anymore, but I was so confused.
“Move to the couch,” he repeated, the gun still pointed right at me.
I had no idea what was going on, but I wasn’t stupid. If someone with a gun was telling you to do something, you listened.
However, moving over to the couch meant moving away from my phone in my purse, away from knives or anything else sharp in the kitchen, and away from the door to escape, so I took the only thing I could that was subtle enough to grab—a piece of broken glass the size of my palm. It was jagged, and I tried to hide my wince of pain from it cutting my palm as I wrapped my fingers around it and stood.
I walked sideways to the couch so I never put him fully behind me. I’d never seen Milo act like this, and that scared me. He didn’t even look like the same person. His hair was unruly, his eyes wild.
“Sit down,” he commanded once I got to the couch, and I complied.
Luna was at her sister’s party and Axel was with his parents, so I was on my own to figure this out.
“I should have known better.” Milo was standing about six feet in front of me, gun still in hand, but now it was moving along with him as he paced back and forth in my small living room.“In culinary school, you told me I was the best friend you had.”
I remembered telling him that, but I had meant my best friend I hadat school. I thought he knew Luna had been my best friend since childhood and always would be.
“Then you asked me to move here with you and start this business together, but you suddenly added Luna to the mix, and you all but forgot about me. We were supposed to be a team—business partners—and then Luna got in the way.”
I swallowed nervously.
I hadn’t really asked him to be a partner. I had always dreamed of this beingmyplace, but I was happy to add Milo and Luna to my team, and I truly had thought that was clear.
“Milo, we are a team—you, me, and Luna.”
That comment did not make him happy.
His face turned redder as he stepped closer to me and yelled loudly, “Luna isnotpart of our team!”
“O…O…Okay.” I tried to appear conciliatory and appeasing as I placated him. I felt it best to just agree at this point and not piss him off more.
He calmed slightly at my concession.
“I knew you hadn’t wanted to date anyone when you first moved here,” he continued. “I wasn’t happy about it, but I was willing to be patient because I always envisioned us as a team both in the kitchen and in bed.”
I tried to hide the shock and the cringe feeling inside me from showing on my face. Even if Ihadbeen willing to date in the beginning, Milo wasn’t my type. Plus, I had heard horror storiesof people who dated and worked together, so I knew I never wanted to do that.
I stilled my movements, trying to keep him as calm as I could long enough for me to try to come up with a plan.
“I even had your back when that asshole Braden tried to get involved.” He shook his head, as though he were thinking back to that moment in disgust. “I started to have doubts about your true feelings for me after the letters from Braden came and you never took me up on my offer to be your pretend boyfriend. It’s the whole reason Igaveyou those letters, so you would come to me!”
What did he just say?
“You wrote the letters?” I asked, stunned.
“You were taking too long to come to your senses about us,” he explained, as though it were so simple. “But instead of you running to me after the letters, you ran into the arms of that jerk from the security company.”
His face turned even angrier, and his nostrils flared. “I saw what he wrote in your stupid flower note.”
That’s when it dawned on me. Milo had been the one to move my flowers. He must have snuck up here at some point to see the note and moved them, which was why they weren’t on the counter like I’d remembered.
The note he was talking about from Axel said, “The pink color in these roses reminds me of the color on your skin when you’re naked, flushed, and underneath me.”
