A blush creeps up my neck, and when he takes the mask and slips it over his face, I let him, still reeling from the subtle, genuine compliment. He’s generous with them, and it does weird things to my nervous system.
I’m not sure what I’m doing to receive them.
Curious passersby gawk—which he ignores—as he slips my hiking boots onto his hands. “I. Am. Robot,” he says, jerking the shoes around. “Robot. Hate. Blazers.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Blazers suck.” Despite the humiliation, I fight my grin and shove his arm. “But I can’t throw them away.”
Hundreds of dollars of clothing sit in a pile, and though Jett is paying me far more than I used to make, I can’t morally throw away perfectly good clothing. Donate them, maybe. But I am not adding to the clothing waste epidemic.
He drags his duffel bag over. “Easy peasy. Put it in my bag. We can ship it all back when we get to Sydney.”
“Won’t your bag be overweight then?”
The cost to ship from Australia back to Los Angeleshasto be astronomical.
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “But I’ll pay the fee.”
“If you’re going to pay the fee anyway, why don’t we keep them in my bag?”
Tasting the scheming in the air, I narrow my gaze. He smiles, coy but cunning.
“Because if you keep them, you won’t ship them back. And if you wear those, you can’t wearthis.”
With a shit-eating grin, he reveals two shirts from his backpack and hands me one with a small brown tag with my name on it. I recognize the handwriting immediately.
“What did she send you?”
I hold the fabric like it’s a bomb. If Charlie sent him something, it means Amy was also in on it, and Mateo, too. Those three together are a deadly combination, especially if there’s wine involved.
“I don’t know, sugar tits, why don’t you take a look?”
An odd choking sound escapes me.
There’s no fucking way.
“They didn’t…” I trail off as I lift the shirt.
Oh, they did.
Jett proudly holds his up.I’m with sugar tits, the bright-red font on the front reads. On mine, it saysI’m sugar tits.
“I’m going to kill them,” I grumble, and when Jett laughs, I point a finger at him. “Don’t get comfortable, you’re next.”
“Why do they call you sugar tits?”
“Oh my god, please stop saying it.” Pressure builds behind my forehead, and I rub my temple. “Text Charlie and tell her the next time I see her, I plan to go nuclear on her ass.”
He whips out his phone and recites my words for the voice-to-text feature. Ten seconds later, a ding rings out.
“Charlie says…” He absorbs the message before reading it out. “‘I’ll be waiting to use Mateo as a human shield. Bring it on, sugar tits.’” He slips his phone back into his pocket. “Now will you spill the beans on why she’s calling you—” I glare at him, and he refrains from using the wordssugar tits.“—that nickname?”
I would rather eat tree bark than tell Jett the origin, but the longer I stay silent, the more awkward things become, if that’s even possible.
“A man I dated called me that in the middle of…” The confession whooshes out of me, but I am not sayingsex. That’s where I draw my professional line in the sand.
“Oh?Oh.”
Nothing—not a single thing on this planet or any other in the galaxy—kills the mood faster than a man squeezing your breast mid-thrust, then saying, “I like how you take me, sugar tits.”
