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Cooper was elegant now. Where before he’d lived in jeans and tees, now he wore bespoke tailoring and hand tooled shoes…
I should have been there to see that graduation from kid to man.
I should have-
There were plenty of things I should have done, and he denied them all to me.
I narrowed my eyes at him as rage swelled through me.
“Lauren?” he managed to gasp out after a good two minutes of gawking at me. “Is that really you?” His hand came up to reach for me, and I knew he was going to try to cup my cheek. The minute he almost connected, I jerked back.
His touch wasn’t something I could bear at that moment. My anger was too new, too fresh, that it was like a raw wound.
It made me want to attack out of self-defense. To make him hurt like I was hurting.
“It’s me,” I told him blandly, and stepped away from the door to let him come in. “I’ll show you to Justin’s office.”
He reared back at my tone, nearly fell down the stairs at the move. “What?” He shook his head, almost as though he was incapable of understanding what I was saying.
“I said, I’ll lead you to Justin’s office.”
Another head shake. “You can’t be…” His mouth worked. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
For a second, time froze once more as I processed that ridiculous question. “Happy to see the man who broke my heart?” I demanded, my mouth curling in a sneer. “Yeah, I’m really goddamn happy.”
Chapter 3
LAUREN
Eight Years Ago
I tugged at my skirt, wishing it was longer, wishing I hadn’t listened to Clarice when she’d told me to wear it.
Jesus, it was short. So short I was certain the football team would be able to see my panties and take it as an open invitation.
For all I considered myself a bland little wren, other people didn’t seem to agree.
Okay, when I said other people, I meant guys.
For some reason, they saw something I didn’t. Clarice who was a statuesque blonde with tits the size of melons and legs as long as my body—seriously, they were crazy long—got less attention than I did.
And I didn’t get it. Didn’t understand why the guys seemed to bypass her for me. In a way it was great for my ego, but it was more irritating than anything else.
I’d asked her once if it was because they thought I’d be an easy lay. She looked as puzzled as me as she’d said, “No, honey, you’ve just got something they want.”
To this day, two years into our friendship, neither of us ‘got’ it. And to be fair, I wasn’t willing to use it to my own gain either.
Being the center of the football team’s attention wasn’t exactly my goal in life. Even if it was some of the cheerleaders’…
Rolling my eyes at the thought, I knocked on the door and waited for Clarice and her current no-hope of a boyfriend to join me on the top step.
Clarice was shrieking as he chased her out the car, trying to slap her ass as he ran. Why she put up with that shit, I didn’t know.
She was beautiful and Steve was just a jerk, but still, we all had our issues and Clarice’s was an inability to pick a decent guy.
The door opened and a guy with dark, but somehow golden hair and the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen stood there. He had his hand on the top of the door, with a red cup in his other. I could see it was half full—not with beer, but coke.
Blinking at the sight, then blinking at him, I murmured, “Hey.”
