Page 305 of Manhattan Bossholes

“Go!”

Jimmy refused to move. Anger and stress and worry made for a toxic combination, filling me up with the kind of rage that made me feel out of control. “Are you happy?” I growled at Natasha. “Does this give you some kind of thrill, torturing this family?”

“You’re really something, Trent Saunders,” she said. “You know that? Just love hearing yourself speak.”

“I’m something?” She was the one who’d almost cost me my job this morning, and here she was playing the victim, glaring at me like I was completely out of line.

“Yes!” she cried, sounding exasperated. “Now are you done throwing around accusations?”

“I’m not throwing around anything. My God, Natasha, why can’t you just⁠—”

She stomped up to me, face turned up to look me in the eye. Any closer and I’d be able to feel the rise and fall of her chest against mine. My eyes—my damn traitorous eyes—fell to her lips. Despite all my anger, there was a part of me that wanted to grab hold of her and let the heat of my frustration bleed into a kiss that would set us both on fire. But we couldn’t have that anymore. Not after what she’d done.

“If you could just shut up for one damn second and listen to me,” she said, leveling me with a look that irritated the shit out of me. “I’d tell you that your mother reached out to me on Snug.”

“I don’t give a fuck how she reached out to you.”

“She also told me she was worried about you,” Natasha continued. I didn’t want to hear it. “And that she didn’t know why you’d cut her off.”

“A fucking lie.”

“But I didn’t know any better!” she said. “Because you never explained things to me. All I saw was a mother desperate to reconnect with her son.”

What, so it was my fault for not getting into that whole messy backstory with her? It was none of her business. Natasha should have just accepted it when I said I didn’t speak to my parents unless absolutely necessary. Why did she have to go inserting herself where she didn’t belong?

“I did meet up with your mom at her insistence,” Natasha said. “I tried to make excuses for why you hadn’t reached out.”

“That wasn’t for you to do.”

“I understand that now. But at the time, all I saw was an opportunity to salvage what might have been a relationship between you and your mom. You know how much family means to me. I didn’t want you to lose out on the chance to have the kind of time with your mom that I’d do anything to have with mine.”

That knocked a tiny bit of the wind out of my sails. I did know what family meant to her—and the idea that my mom could have used that to trick her didn’t seem entirely far-fetched.

“I thought I might be able to help you reconnect,” Natasha continued. “That’s all I was trying to accomplish. So no,” she continued, glaring at me. “I didn’t sell you out. I didn’t trade secrets for money, or do whatever the hell else you imagine I did.”

“Am I imagining this?” I said, gesturing to Jimmy and the massive bruise up the side of his face. Even if I could admit that my mom might have been lying about paying Natasha off, Jimmy’s state wasn’t something I was going to let go.

Natasha shook her head, giving me a scornful look. “Don’t be ridiculous, Trent. I didn’t hurt your brother. And the fact that you even contemplated that is insulting. After Jimmy heard about Nana Dee, he tried to hitchhike into the city and got himself robbed and beat up in the process.”

My heart beat in my throat at that news, my gaze landing on my brother. What the fuck?

“He was stranded and called me to ask for help,” Natasha said. “I borrowed my neighbor’s car so I could go pick him up. Then I brought him here.” She threw her arms out. “So now you know everything. Okay? Exactly as it happened. I know I screwed up by listening to your mom. I had good intentions, but I shouldn’t have gone behind your back. I can own that. But I didn’t betray you, Trent. Not like you betrayed me. Not once in any of this did I act with the goal of hurting you—but you can’t say the same. You believed lies about me without even attempting to ask me for my side of the story, and your response was to go nuclear.”

I held on to enough self-control to keep from wincing, even as her words hit the mark.

“You assumed the worst of me,” Natasha said, taking a step back. “And you used that as an excuse to burn my life to the ground. Again.”

“I didn’t burn anything to the ground.”

“I’ve gotten fired twice because of you, Trent. And sure, maybe the job at the coffeehouse wasn’t the greatest, but Saunders Furniture…I was really happy there.” She looked at me, her eyes haunted. “This morning, I had a job I loved, and a guy I…well, a guy I thought cared about me, if nothing else. And now it’s all gone. You took it all away, just like that. I trusted you, and you ripped the rug out from under my feet.” I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about her parents, her ex, the stories she’d told me. “So, like I said before, consider me gone. And this time, I won’t come back.”

With that, Natasha climbed into her neighbor’s car and drove away.

I watched her disappear from the lot, feeling like I’d run a marathon today. When I glanced back at Jimmy, I saw something I’d never seen before. Jimmy was shaking his head at me, his eyes filled with disappointment, like for the first time ever, I’d let him down.

25

NATASHA