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“Stop that,” he growls. His thumb presses into my arch, and a sigh looses from my lips. He tenses.
“Don’t stop,” I breathe, but he doesn’t listen. He just shifts awkwardly and lets my foot drop back to the ground, before sliding out of the booth and heading for the bathroom.
When our food comes, the waitress delivers it with a huge smile for Jonah. I choke out a laugh when I see how much he ordered. Pancakes, waffles, sausage, fried tomatoes, bacon, eggs, toast.
We both reach for the same pancake, and Jonah yanks his hand back. “Yep, we could not be more different,” I needle and he rolls his eyes, but wraps a sausage in a pancake.
He proceeds to eat it delicately with a knife and fork, while I watch. His brow goes up, daring me to say something. He swallows and makes another one.
I chew my food and he watches me eat. We both go for the last sausage and he pushes it toward me, shaking his head. He can be nice. When he wants to be. Is it just regret from earlier? I don’t understand him.
“So, since we’re not friends, does that mean you still plan to torment me?” I ask lightly, but I really want to know the answer. We’ve broken through a barrier tonight, I think. I hope.
He frowns around a mouthful of sausage and pancake. “I actually need your help.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” Pleasure lights me up.
“Don’t gloat.” He pops a piece of bacon into his mouth while I crunch my toast.
“It’s what you would do.”
He smiles. “Fair.”
“So you need me? And in exchange, you won’t torment me anymore?”
22
Jonah
How do I respond? Callie is looking at me with those big blue eyes, asking if I’ll stop tormenting her.
“Well?”
“I won’t deliberately torment you,” I say slowly. Am I really willing to make peace with Callie? To give up my plan of dangling her in front of Dylan? Is she better as an ally or an enemy?
She nods. “Okay, what do you need?”
I suck in a deep breath and meet her eyes. “I need you to help me destroy Green Media.”
Callie’s delicate brows go up. She spears a strawberry and pops it into her mouth while I watch her with barely leashed hunger. I’m half hard under my slacks from the touch of her foot, for fuck’s sake.
I reach for the beer and she pokes my hand with her fork. I let out a low, frustrated noise. “I’m about to tell you everything, so relax. Fuck, Thompson. You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“Thank you,” she says primly. “I appreciate that.”
I take a long gulp of beer. She watches me the whole time, those pretty blue eyes intent on me, those delicate brows drawn low.
“Why do you need to destroy Green Media?”
My hand tightens on the beer. “Dylan Green betrayed me. He was my friend.” Something ugly twists in my gut at the words. “He befriended me when I was the unpopular kid in school. I was on scholarship to his fancy private high school, and everything about me was wrong. My background. My clothes. My accent. Dylan was popular. Rich and athletic. He took me under his wing. We stayed friends through high school, and even though we drifted apart during college, we reconnected in business school. We started the company that would become Green Media on the day we graduated. I thought he was the real deal, you know?”
Callie grimaces and sips her own beer. “So, what happened?”
I nod. “It’s cliché, but it was a woman. Annalise. An old friend of his, and someone he wanted to date, though he never told me.” Fucking Annalise. Saying her name feels like swallowing poison.
Callie makes a pained face. “A woman. Ouch.”
I turn my beer in my hands. “Dylan…changed. In college. Became crueler, more possessive. I didn’t see it at the time. When this all happened, our business was doing pretty well. I was the CEO and co-founder. And I was admittedly better at business than Dylan was. He went to business school because his dad wanted him to. He didn’t have the ambition required to really make it.”
