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And when I lifted my eyes to him, I found him looking at me from the couch like I was a total dumbass, which was fine and actually made me want to laugh, because it felt normal. As much as Adam and I supported each other on a daily basis, we were never outright nice to each other. And if he was going to be this nice to me tonight, I understood that it was probably going to come with some level of taunting and ridicule.
“Let’s just be real here, alright?” he said in his I can’t believe I have to explain this to you voice. “You’re way smarter than that girl. Way more interesting. More sophisticated. You can hold a conversation with Caspar or anyone else in this world for way longer than she can, and I don’t even need to see her to know that you blow her shit out of the water in the looks department,” he said so matter-of-factly that I could barely process the compliment before he was already barreling on.
“Your idiot ex just wants someone who’ll be blindly impressed with him regardless of his achievements. He wants someone who doesn’t know about all his flaws yet. His failures. If he can’t be the person he wishes he was, he wants to at least live the fantasy of it, and that girl he cheated on you with—she still believes that fantasy,” Adam said simply, looking me dead in the eye. “And that’s the only thing she’s got on you, AJ. Naiveté.”
I stared.
Well, shit.
A giant lump formed in my throat as I hugged my pillow tighter to my front. Because apparently, I hadn’t been ready for Adam to give such a surprisingly accurate read on Caspar. Nor had I been ready for him to be this sweet to me tonight.
This protective.
It was silent for several seconds before I finally gathered myself enough to speak again.
“Naiveté’s a big word for you,” I observed softly, to which Adam promptly snorted.
“Alright,” he said, rolling his eyes back to the game and adding something or another about me being a smart ass, which I barely heard because I’d only cracked that joke to deflect from the realizations sweeping over me.
Hindsight really was twenty-twenty, because in retrospect, I could admit that things had been declining between Caspar and me for awhile. That I’d been blinding myself to a lot of things about him that angered me to no end—in particular, his painfully fragile ego, and his constant need to be praised and assured.
“I don’t even know why I stayed for so long,” I said, staring blankly at the game.
“Sunk cost fallacy,” Adam replied. When I looked at him, he explained. “You put all that time and energy into someone, you don’t want to feel like it was for nothing. Especially when you love them. Makes it hard to know when to cut your losses.”
My eyebrows pinched together as I found myself reckoning with the fact that Adam casually nailed it again. I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Were you always this smart?” I questioned.
He laughed. “Me? Yeah. Believe it or not, I’m more than just a pretty face.”
I snorted despite the fact that I couldn’t help myself from studying his face when he turned back to watch the game.
Though my eye line was angled toward the TV, my gaze subtly lifted toward Adam, running along his razor sharp jaw, those strong cheekbones and that goddamned dimple that lingered the way it always did when he flashed that deceivingly boyish grin. Fuck that grin, I thought. But then my eyes raked through his thick brown hair, which was fully dry now and tousled in a way that made the corners of my mouth curve up.
Ugh.
It was undeniable that Adam Maxwell was impossibly handsome.
Gorgeous, really.
Which was why it had been awhile, probably years since I’d let myself stare at him like this, and the only reason I was letting myself do it now was because I was drunk, this night was crazy, and as far as I was concerned, nothing I did, said, or thought right now counted. I was still completely rattled, having been tossed into the head bitch of emotional wringers tonight, and when you topped that with whiskey, it was grounds for a mental free-for-all.
So I gave myself a pass. Even went ahead and checked Adam out when he got up ten minutes later to send a work email from his laptop.
As he leaned over the table, I observed the stone-carved straightness of his nose, his finely etched lips, and the annoying perfection of his tan against his white T-shirt—along with every little twitch and flex of his muscled forearms as he quickly typed away.
Ridiculous. Imagine being this effortlessly good-looking, I thought to no one in particular.
Well. Maybe to Georgia.
It was at that point I decided it was time to text my best friend about all that had happened tonight, because the sooner she knew about Caspar, the sooner I could tell her about Adam—in particular, that moment we had by the door.
Along with the whole impromptu sleepover situation that was going on right now.
And the fact that I was currently willing myself not to stare at his package under those sweats.
“Oop—fuck,” I cursed as I knocked my purse onto the floor while trying to grab my phone. Serves you right for not looking where you’re reaching since you’re too busy staring at forbidden boss dick, I scolded myself just as Adam looked up from his laptop and snorted at my purse on the floor.
