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“Yup.” I picked up one of the halves of Jacob’s sandwich. “He just likes when I feed him.” I put it up to Jacob’s mouth.

Jacob exhaled loudly through his nose. Like he was trying to not gag. Or like maybe he thought he was a dragon and could disintegrate it with some fire breath.

“Eat it, please,” I whispered.

He shook his head. But then he leaned forward and took the tiniest bite. He immediately spit it out onto the plate. “Ugh. That’s so disgusting.”

Jacob!

Adonis laughed. “I thought that was your favorite, man?”

“Absolutely not,” Jacob said with a laugh. He coughed into his hand. “Sophie and I are still getting to know each other.”

“I thought you’ve been friends for forever?” Adonis asked.

RJ laughed. “What the hell are you two doing over there? Are you guys pretending to date or something? Like Jacob and Scarlett did?”

RJ! Read the room!

“You two pretended to date?” Adonis asked Jacob and Scarlett, instead of questioning my nonsense. But what was there to question, really? RJ had just blatantly told Adonis that Jacob and I weren’t a thing.

Gah! But it had been a bad plan anyway. Cozying up to Jacob never would have worked. After all, Adonis knew I liked Mr. Halifax. And that certainly hadn’t stopped him from pursuing me.

“Yeah we did fake date,” Scarlett said. “Well, it was pretend at first, but then...”

Axel cleared his throat.

“I was trying to make this guy wake up,” Scarlett said and smiled up at Axel.

“But she didn’t know that I was already awake,” Axel said. “And that she was slowly killing me.”

She and Axel kept talking, but Jacob leaned over to whisper to me. “Sorry. I couldn’t pretend to like that. So gross, Soph.”

He hadn’t just not pretended to like it. He’d spit it out like a barbarian.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I just want him to leave me alone.”

“Okay. I’ll get him to leave you alone.”

“You will?”

“If that’s what you want,” Jacob said. “I’ll talk to him.”

I glanced at Adonis. I wasn’t exactly sure what Jacob was going to say to him. He and Adonis were about the same height. But Jacob was built more like a football player. And Adonis actually was built more like a basketball player. Long, lean muscles. If Jacob told Adonis to back off, Adonis would have to listen. Because I was pretty sure Jacob could beat the crap out of him.

“Thank you,” I said.

Jacob put his plate down. “A word, Adonis?”

Oh, he was going to do this right now?

Jacob stood up and nodded his head toward the kitchen.

“Sure, man,” Adonis said.

The two of them walked into the kitchen.

“What is that about?” Scarlett asked.