Blitz (Blast Brothers #3) - Sabrina Stark Page 0,78

assume you'll find a new job."

"Yeah. Hopefully. But there's no guarantee it will be around here." I sighed. "Even with my job at the bank, do you know how lucky I was to get a job right here in the area?"

"No. Should I know?"

"Well, you're a businessman, aren't you? So you must know the job market here isn't so great, at least not compared to a bigger city."

"So?"

"So, let's say I do move out now. I'll just have to move again in three months." My stomach clenched as I continued. "I don't even know where. I might have to move across the state. Or even across the country."

As I said it, I felt an all-too-familiar pang in my heart. Call me old-fashioned, but I still held out hope that I'd find a job right here in the Bayside area, so I could live near my family.

In front of me, Chase said nothing, but he didn't appear to be any happier with this logic than anything else I'd said over the past few minutes.

My chin jerked upward. "So…are you satisfied?"

When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet. "No."

"Why not?"

He shoved a hand through his hair. "Hell if I know."

"Yeah, well I can totally relate, because I don't know why you're so darn unhappy."

"Who says I'm unhappy?"

"You don't have to say it. I can see it all over your face." Deliberately, I softened my tone. "But you know what? It's pointless to argue." I glanced toward the guest bathroom. "Do you know when my clothes will be done?"

Chase glanced at his watch. "Maybe fifteen minutes, give or take."

With all of the tension between us, it felt like fifteen minutes too long. Still, I tried to look on the bright side. "Perfect. So as long as we've got some time to kill, maybe we should get our story straight."

"What story?"

"Here's the thing…" I hesitated. "I didn't want to bring it up, but as long as we're laying it all out there, Ginger and Emory – they obviously think we're together." I paused. "Well, Emory might not think that, but you get the idea. So anyway, I was just wondering…" Gosh, how to put this?

I was still trying to think of the right way to say it when Chase asked, "Wondering what?"

"Well…how do we go about correcting that?"

He shook his head. "Correcting what?"

Did I seriously need to spell it out? But judging from his expression, I obviously did. "The story of us being together, you know, like a couple. It was a lie, or a joke, or whatever. And I'm not complaining, honest. But I am asking, how do we go about correcting it? Like, should we say we were just teasing? Or say we broke up, or—"

Chase cut me off. "Who says it has to be a lie?"

I blinked. Wait, what?

Chapter 53

Chase

Holy hell.

I meant it.

The realization hit hard and heavy, like a sucker punch to the gut.

But it didn't hurt. The only thing that hurt was the thought of Mina moving away.

Whether to another city or to another state, it was too far for my liking. Here in my condo, we hadn't moved from the entryway, and Mina was still blinking up at me in apparent surprise. "Um…come again?"

She might not realize it, but I was just as surprised as she was. But unlike her, I knew exactly what I wanted. I said it again. "Who says it has to be a lie?"

"But…" She bit her lip. "It was a lie."

"Yeah, but it doesn't have to be."

"So what are you saying?" She gave a shaky laugh. "You want to go steady?"

I stared deep into her eyes and told her the God's honest truth. "Mina, I'm not joking."

"Wait, so you're saying, you weren't acting earlier with Ginger and Emory? I mean, when you pretended to be my boyfriend?"

"I don’t know what I was doing," I said. "But I do know I didn't like them messing with you."

She tried for another laugh. "Well, if you didn't like it, imagine how I felt."

Mina was a nice person. So yeah, it was easy to imagine how she felt. But there was no way she could ever fathom how I felt.

And why?

It was because I wasn't nice.

And if the people hassling her were a couple of guys instead of those two women, my "rescue," as she'd put it, would've played out a lot differently.

But she didn't need to know that, did she?

I reached out took her hand in mine. "Listen, I like you, probably more than I've