Page 91 of Sexy

“I’m glad.” I have so much more to say, but I’m just not sure how to start. So we sit there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the waves and watching jet skis off in the distance.

“I’m going to LA tonight.”

My heart wrenches in my chest. But what did I expect?

“How much do you really know about me?” He fills in the silence left hanging.

“Enough to know you weren’t who I thought you were.”

“Hmmm,” he grunts. “I was so pissed about that, you have no idea.”

I have nothing to say. So I say nothing.

“You never tried to know me, Tiffy. You never once tried to know me. You didn’t make any effort.”

“That’s not true,” I say, feeling a little defensive. “I looked you up on Wikipedia.”

It was a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. “You saw Fletcher the stripper. Fletcher the player. Fletcher the fuckup.”

“To be fair, Fletcher”—my anger gets the best of me—“those were the only parts you showed me.”

“Really? You sure about that?”

“You were a man-whore.”

“I told you you were special the first night we met.”

“That was after you propositioned me at the show.”

“You came there to fire me based on rumors.”

“Rumors that were partially true! And you outed yourself as the matchmaker, remember? I didn’t come up with that idea myself.”

He shrugs. “I was trying to help you. And I did help you.” He looks over at me, the anger in his heated stare apparent now. “You just never saw it.”

“You hurt me too, Fletcher. You set Cole up with Katie and never told me why. You let me find out on my own. You took me to a restaurant to practice—”

“You wanted all that, Tiffy. And I didn’t tell you about Cole because I didn’t have the evidence until after you broke into my hotel room and went through my private papers.”

I don’t reply. I’m angry again and I don’t want things to end like this.

“I saw you, ya know.”

“Saw me where?”

He shakes his head. “Not where, Tiffy. You’re so preoccupied with where and when. The only thing that matters is the how and the why.”

I sigh. We’re going in circles. “You lied to me, Fletcher. And sure, I was no one to you, so I guess you had that right. But you don’t get to judge me. Not when our whole relationship was based on the idea that you could change me.”

“Is that what you think?” he asks, laughing. “Well, try on this perspective for a minute, Miss Preston. I fell for you the minute I saw you out in the audience. I never wanted to change you, you wanted me to change you. I liked the clothes you wore. I liked the sexy you had back then. I liked everything about you, which is why I went out of my way to help you. It was Cole who needed the new and improved version, not me.”

I huff out a breath of air though my nose, the anger building inside me. “You don’t even know me, Fletcher.”

“Ditto, babe,” he snarls. “Ditto.”

I stand up and wipe the sand off my ass. “Well, I’m glad you’re good, Fletcher. And maybe one day we’ll be friends again. But I’m not going to sit here and let you tell me who I am. Not when you haven’t even asked one goddamned question about me. Not one, Fletcher. You were never interested.”

He stands too, grabbing me by the wrist. “So tell me, then. What makes you tick, Tiffy Preston? You figured me out. I had a debt I needed to pay, a family I dropped everything to take care of, a woman and a child who weren’t even my responsibility. I left college for them, you know. I put my whole life on hold to take care of my brother’s mistake. Scraping by doing this and that. Trying to pay the taxes on this monstrous house and put food on the table. Pay the babysitter while Samantha went to nursing school. And I did my best. Any way I could. I came up with dozens of ideas to get something rolling and that matchmaking business was all I had for years. And I was good at it. I helped those girls, Tiffy, Every single one of them. I changed the way they saw themselves.”