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She scoffed. "Okay, sure." The waitress dropped off her drinks and hurried away without another word. Lexi lifted her glass and again downed it in a couple of sips before picking her phone up and burying her face in it again.
I hoped the food wouldn't take long to cook.
Lexi let out a loud giggle. "Look at this." She held her phone out for me to watch a ridiculous video. "Isn't that hilarious?"
"Yep, pretty funny." I leaned back in my chair and sipped my water, glancing out the window at the crowd of photographers camped out. I couldn't imagine chasing people around and hoping to capture a shot of them all day. It seemed like such a waste of time.
The slurping sounds of Lexi finishing off drink number three snapped me out of my wandering thoughts. "Maybe you should slow down."
"Maybe you should learn to lighten up and have some fun." Her words were starting to slur, and she swayed in her seat.
"I'm plenty of fun when I want to be." My head was throbbing, and my fingers drummed on the table. Where the fuck was the food?
"Is that so? Well, let's see how fun you can be," she purred. I watched as Lexi slid down her chair and under the table. This was not good. We were by the window, and all it would take was one of those photographer assholes outside to turn their heads and snap a picture that would seem so much worse than it was.
"What the fuck are you doing? Get up." I whispered through clenched teeth.
"Make me." She giggled and I felt her hand run up my leg. She got to my knee before I jumped up, my chair scraping back and turning everyone's attention on me. It was bad enough Lexi had already managed to kiss me today. No fucking way was she getting her paws anywhere near my dick.
I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and tossed some bills down on the table. Lexi looked up at me from under the tablecloth with glassy eyes. "Where are you going?"
"I can't do this." I turned and stormed out of there as fast as I could. I heard some camera clicks as I left the restaurant alone, but I didn't care. When I got to the safety of my car, I exhaled, resting my forehead on the steering wheel. What a fucking disaster.
Harrison and I needed to have a serious discussion. But before that, I needed to tell Amara what just happened and hope that she understood.
Yesterday, after True’s dumpster fire of a date with Lexi, he came home totally freaked out and told me every horrible detail of how she’d thrown herself at him, gotten drunk, and he’d run off shocked and disgusted. It wasn’t easy to hear, but I was glad he’d felt like he could share it with me. I couldn’t hold any of it against him. I was the one who’d pushed him to do this whole damn thing in the first place, a decision I regretted more and more by the second.
It wasn’t easy to share my man, even in a made-up sort of way. My whole system was flooded with baby hormones that made me a possessive bitch, and holding that back was hard. Not jumping into the car and rushing over to claw Lexi’s eyes out was even harder. Somehow I managed to keep myself in check.
Sitting on the couch, I rested my laptop on my thighs while I plucked away at my keyboard, slowly coding my way through a new feature for my app. True was adamant that he wanted to quit this whole thing, that it wasn’t worth it. And honestly, I was on the same page. But I wouldn’t tell him.
Nope.
Because this was his dream. I couldn’t be the reason he didn’t chase after his dream with everything he had. If he decided on his own he couldn’t do it, I’d mentally throw a little party. But it was up to him to make that decision. I didn’t want to sway him.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, and I picked it up as our group text lit up.
Kennedy: Don’t look at the headlines today
Montana: Best to just stay off social media, too
Amara: FML. Now I have to look
Kennedy: DON’T DO IT
And now all I could think about was looking. I knew it wouldn’t be good. I knew I shouldn’t. But if there was something out there, I was drawn to seeing it by some masochistic part of myself that apparently liked to see me in pain.
My stomach exploded with butterflies as I took a deep breath and steeled myself for whatever I was about to see. My hand trembled as I opened a new browser on my laptop. I navigated to the CNT website, and there it was, a video front and center on the main page of Lexi in True’s arms, her lips on his. He told me it happened. He told me he tried to get her off of him as soon as he could. And he told me he hated every single second. But that didn’t stop the tears from stinging my eyes.
I shut my laptop and took a deep breath, willing the tears gathering in my eyes not to fall. Just as I took my next deep breath, the front door swung open, and True’s voice echoed through the room. “Hey, mama, where are you?”
I wiped my eyes and exhaled. “In here.”
He carried a bag with the sandwiches he’d picked up for lunch, but when True saw my face, he dropped his keys and the bag on the table and rushed to sit next to me, pulling me into his arms. “What happened?”
A stray tear slipped down my cheek. “Nothing, it’s fine. I just did something idiotic.”
He stroked my hair, and I started to relax. His scent surrounded me, and I sank into the warmth of his body. “What’d you do?” His voice didn’t hold judgment, he was just curious.
