Page 16 of Dirty Fighter

Casting one last warning scowl, I climb in.

He swallows loud enough for me to hear, and I scrunch my eyes shut, willing myself to ignore him.

The bed dips and shifts, and when he leans back, one of those mammoth shoulders dares to brush mine.

“No way, buddy.” I yank the pillow out from beneath his head to make a barrier between us.

And then we’re lying there, side by side, in the too-quiet room, staring at the ceiling.

Ugh! “I can hear you breathing.”

Silence, and then… I don’t know what it is, exactly. But I’ve got this unsettling sense that he might— No.

No way.

Except, I’m pretty sure, yes way. “Jason, if you’re smiling right now? So help me God!”

There’s a sort of quake in miles of mattress beneath us. I jackknife up and gasp. “You’re laughing!”

More quaking.

“I’m sorry!” he coughs out with a force that suggests he was in an epic battle to stifle it. “You’re just so…”

This man wants to die. “So what, Jason?”

“Mad. And Rowan, I get it.” He sits, pulling his knees up into that masculine vee and leaning over them as he shakes his head. “This bedroom situation is the cherry on top of the shit-sundae kind of day that has sucked from up to down.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“It’s my fault we’re stuck in this bed. And you’ve got every right to be pissed about that.”

And now he’s being reasonable. Ugh.

Which means that I need to be reasonable.

Dig deep, girl. “Just like you’ve got every right to be pissed about… everything.”

There’s a shrug of acknowledgment and then he bites his bottom lip, squinting into the space in front of him.

“It’s just that I’ve never actually seen you pissed off before. And yeah, it’s been a minute. But we lived in the same house for a year. And this”— he gestures toward me, moonlit eyes meeting mine —“is a Rowan I didn’t know existed. How’d you manage to keep her under wraps like that?”

There’s an obvious answer. But all I’m willing to give him is a simple, “Night, Jason.”

7

Rowan

I wake to the gentle rush of waves along the shore and the early morning sun peeking through the treetops and slipping in the windows of⁠—

Wait.

In a blink, the blurry bliss of a surprisingly restorative night’s sleep clears, and I sit up, remembering that…

I should neither feel rested nor restored because…

I was forced to share a bed with Mr. Key Jiggling Jackoff himself and therefore…

I intended to stew and huff and toss and turn all night, ensuring that neither of us got a blink of sleep and…