Page 61 of Take The Risk

​“We’re going to come to a little understanding.” Alex dared me with a look to try and get past her. “Now, explain yourself.”

​As desperately as I wanted to leave and hunt Phoebe down, especially to make sure Prescott got his hands off her, I stayed put. Pissing off the woman you’re crazy about’s best friend was dangerous and stupid. And I’d been stupid enough for one week.

​ Crossing my arms over my chest to keep from picking her up bodily and moving her out of the way, I gritted out, “Fine. Let’s talk.”

​“Good.” Alex turned calculating, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Now, let’s start with you ignoring her all week. ’Cause you’re not going to mess with her head anymore if that’s the kind of shitty boy you are.”

​My shoulders relaxed. At least I had a decent answer for this. “I didn’t ignore her.”

​At her incredulous look, I pulled my phone out. Unlocking it, I tossed it to her.

​“I didn’t. Saturday, okay, not calling her or texting her Saturday was stupid.” I’d thought about it all day and cursed myself to hell and back. It just hadn’t felt like…enough to send a text after what had happened. “The storm that hit in the morning destroyed one of our job sites. I was bailing out water and dealing with collapsing roofs starting at four o’clock in the morning.” I didn’t know what was up with Georgia and the storms lately, but I’d had enough. “I didn’t finish until eleven that night, and by the time I did, I’d lost my phone. I drove by her house, but the lights were off, and I’d forgotten Lock wasn’t there, or I’d have gone to the door…”

​Some of the deadly intent in her eyes mellowed. Some. “Continue,” she encouraged.

​“The next day, I still couldn’t find my phone and had to go get a new one. We still had some damage to clean up, so by the time I ended up at the café, I was exhausted. Phoebe was just there”—looking so heartbreakingly beautiful I had to look away from her, or I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from touching her—“I didn’t know how she’d want me to handle it, given my mom had warned her off.”

​“I’m not loving that.”

​Neither was I. I’d been forced to sit with Phoebe across the table from me when I wanted her beside me, or better still, in my lap.

​“I tried to get her attention subtly. I nudged her foot with mine a few times—” But she hadn’t so much as looked at me. “Then Aaron showed up.” And I’d wanted to kill him the second he’d touched her. “Clearly, I jumped to conclusions when Louise told me she’d overheard Phoebe saying he could stay with her. It didn’t help that everyone speculated if there was something romantic between them.”

​Looking back now, I realized how idiotic I was.

​“Let’s just clear that up, shall we? Because if you’re a Neanderthal who is going to have issues with one of her lifelong friends, that’s going to be a problem for me.”

​“I’m not going to have a problem with him.” I wasn’t. He’d understand she’s off-limits when I made it clear and then we’d be fine.

​Alex’s look was disbelieving. “That still doesn’t explain why you ignored her calls and her texts.”

​This was at least not my fault. “I didn’t.” I pointed to my phone in her hand. “Look. I sent her messages. I called her. There was no reply.”

​Pinching her lips together, Alex made herself at home on my phone. She looked at my texts with Phoebe and my call logs, and then she decided to go through my texts with Olivia. Given there was the issue of my “date” with Olivia, I decided not to stop her.

​“She never got these.” Alex handed me my phone back.

​“And I never got anything from her. My sister Delilah found my phone at some point when she came to the job site to help out. My phone had been encased in mud, and it fried its circuits or something because Phoebe was blocked, which I figured out this fucking morning. The blocks must have been ported over when I restored my new phone from the cloud.” That was a fun moment when another client chewed me out for not answering them.

​I held up my hands when Alex looked like she was about to accuse me of bullshit.

​“If I had blocked her, why would I have texted her or called her? My calls never went through. They disconnected right away and my texts went unanswered. I thought it was she who wanted nothing to do with me.”

​ I still felt queasy just thinking about it.

​“So only Phoebe was blocked magically because of some mud?” She made it sound like I was high.

​“No. Several other people’s contacts were messed up, and a few other people were blocked, too.” When she looked like she was going to blast me, I reminded her, “I texted and called, remember?”

​She nodded. “So why did you ignore her when she came to your job site?”

​“Because I’m a dumbass?” I paced, gripping the back of my neck. Staying in here was starting to make me antsy. I needed to find Phoebe before the asshole convinced her that she was better off with him. “The first couple of times she came by, either Mom was there or Olivia. Or even Helen. I still didn’t know how Phoebe wanted me to handle anything, so I used work as an excuse. By the end of the week—” A week of driving by her house and seeing Aaron’s car in the driveway “—I let other things piss me off…and I fucked up, okay?”

​“I believe you,” she said slowly, and I stopped pacing, letting out a relieved breath. This was good. “Look, I can’t let you just go out there all willy-nilly. You need to understand a few things or you’re going to screw this up. And as long as you never hurt her again, I’m going to grant you an opportunity to fix this. But you only get one, Tyler.”

​I only needed one. “Done.” Anything to get out of here.

​“Phoebe will kill me if I tell you this. She’s really sensitive about it. I also know you know about her…work. You’ll be signing an NDA, by the way. However, we’ll keep that between us.” Alex was challenging me.