Page 78 of Big Girl Panties

The girls whined as Leilani gathered them and led them into the kitchen.

"What happened, man?" Niko asked once the house was silent.

"I fucked up."

"Did you cheat on her because…"

"No," I shook my head so hard I probably gave myself whiplash. I dropped onto his couch and screeched when I landed on a naked Barbie missing one arm. "Shit." I ran a hand down my face as I blew out an exaggerated sigh. "The night I met Brooke, I lost a bet inside the ring with Dallas. The bet was that he got to pick who I took home that night."

Niko's eyes widened like he was watching a car crash in slow motion. "And he picked Brooke."

I nodded, feeling like the world's biggest idiot.

"And she found out on her own."

Another nod. "But in all fairness, that bet evaporated the moment I started talking to her. I didn't take her home that night. I didn't even kiss her or ask for her number. She was all I could think about that night, like, obsessively think about. So I found her the next morning and have pretty much spent every day together after that."

"Did you explain that to her?"

"Yep," I said, drawing out the word. "She was so angry she couldn't hear anything I was saying. It was like trying to reason with a hurricane."

"So then you're not giving up."

"Hell no. I love this woman like head over heels in love. I can't picture my life without her. But I think she needs a few days to calm down before she'll let me grovel properly and explain that I'm an idiot, but I'm her idiot."

"Can we help with anything?"

"No. This is my mess, and I need to clean it up. Preferably with grand gestures and maybe a really good playlist."

"Have you tried calling her?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "An embarrassing amount of times. Like she probably thinks I'm-a-stalker amount of times."

Niko scowled, and I pulled out my phone. "I've texted her even more times." My phone lit up, and even though I had no notifications, I checked for a reply or missed call from her.

Nothing.

"Okay." Niko leaned forward and ripped my phone out of my hand with the grace of someone removing a bomb. "Let's not do that anymore." He clicked my phone and the screen went black. He forced a smile, but his eyes clearly said he thought I'd lost it, and I kind of had. "Let's put away the phone and come up with a plan."

"A plan," I repeated, nodding. "Yeah. A plan to win her back."

"Listen." Niko turned his nose up like something smelled bad, which, let's be honest, it probably did. "I love you, but you currently smell like a man who's given up on personal hygiene and started a committed relationship with despair. You need to shower, shave, put on clean clothes, and remember that toothpaste exists before doing anything else. No woman wants to be won back by someone who looks like they've been living in a cave, eating nothing but regret and pizza."

I lowered my head, sniffed my shirt, and scowled. He wasn't lying. I smelled like a gym sock that had given up on life.

Time to clean up my act, literally, and win back the woman who made me believe in happily ever after.

Chapter 33

Collateral Damage

Glancing up at the clock, I groaned dramatically and threw my dishrag at the espresso machine. "Oh, come ON!" I'd kept myself so busy perfecting my latte art, because apparently hearts were harder to create than they looked like on TikTok, that the day had flown by, and now it was time to close and go home to my empty house where Karen would judge me for eating ice cream straight from the container. Again.

My phone chimed, echoing through the quiet café like a fire alarm in a library.

Davina: I canceled the podcast this week.

I stared at the text as if it were written in ancient hieroglyphics. Our podcast was supposed to empower women everywhere, and here I was, the co-host who currently believed in love about as much as I believed in unicorns running Fortune 500 companies.